Most of us revolutionary activists are "practical" people. We feel, "Why bother with ideology and theory and such other things, … that is for the scholars and 'intellectuals', … the most important thing is to get on with the work". The lower-level activists and members feel that it is enough for the CC and the higher committees to study and provide guidance; and often many members of the higher committees also feel that other work is too pressing to "allow" much time for theory.
On the other hand, there are a few others who feel it is necessary to know every work of the Great Teachers in order to work "properly.” They spend a lot of time trying to read everything. They also tend to treat everything they read as dogma.
It is necessary to avoid both of these attitudes in our study. All comrades should devote sufficient time and attention to study in order to understand the essence of our ideology-Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. Instead of memorizing a large number of books, it is necessary to deeply understand the essential and fundamental aspects of our guiding ideology. When we do this and learn to apply it in our daily work, we can greatly improve our practice, both as individual activists and as the Party as a whole. Very often we understand and analyze the world around us only according to our own limited experiences and therefore come to wrong conclusions. A proper understanding of MLM thought can help us overcome such mistakes. At other times, a superficial understanding can lead to following only the letter of certain party decisions and positions without understanding their essence and spirit. Such mistakes can also be avoided by a deeper understanding of MLM Thought. By studying MLM Thought, we learn from the positive and negative experiences of the world revolution; we learn to absorb the good in it, and we learn to differentiate between the good and the bad in our own practice. We learn to recognize, criticize and fight all kinds of opportunism. In short, MLM Thought is a must to mold our practice in the light of theory.
This Basic Course in MLM Thought is designed to provide activists with an understanding of the most important aspects of our ideology. Our ideology is first and foremost a "practical" theory to be implemented and put into practice. The theory itself was developed in the course of numerous class struggles. Therefore, it is essential to understand the concrete material conditions and social practice through which the great teachers of the proletariat - Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot - discovered and formulated its basic principles. Thus, this book has been presented by relating the historical process of the growth and development of MLM thought. The basic concepts have been briefly presented by linking them, wherever possible, to the socio-economic conditions, major political events and class struggles that gave rise to them. In order to understand any particular aspect in detail, a more specialized study would be required. This basic course, however, is intended to provide an essential basis for understanding the dynamic process of the development of our ideology and the historical conditions and circumstances under which certain standpoints and theories have emerged.
Come, let's begin our study.
Chapter 2-What is MLM Thought?
The party that leads the revolution is the Communist Party; and the ideology that guides the thinking and practice of the Communist Party is Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. We all know this. However, many of us are not so sure what exactly is meant by Communist ideology or MLM thought, and what its various parts or aspects are. Quite a few understand it simply as the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Such an understanding is incomplete, inadequate and superficial. What is needed is to go deeper into the matter and understand the inner essence. Therefore, let us first try to understand this essence of MLM thought.
At the time when Marx and Engels first developed and propagated the theory of communism, Engels wrote a pamphlet called "The Principles of Communism" in 1847. In it, he defined what communism was in the following very simple way: "Communism is the doctrine of the conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat." Thus, in this very brief definition, Engels explains that the essence of communist ideology is to provide the theory of what is necessary to achieve the ultimate freedom of the working class (the proletariat). This freedom would ultimately be achieved through the establishment of a communist society.
Stalin explained the same thing in the following way: "Marxism is the science of the laws governing the development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of building a communist society." Here Stalin explains the broad scope of Marxism. First, it is a science that provides answers to questions concerning not only society, but also the whole of nature. Thus, Marxism is an all-encompassing science. Second, it is a science of revolution; and this revolution is not of the rich (as in previous bourgeois revolutions of the capitalist class), but of the poor and toiling masses. And thirdly, it is the science of building a socialist and communist society.
This science is today called Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought, after the names of the three teachers who played the greatest role in its foundation and development - Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. Besides these three, we recognize three other great teachers who played a tremendous role - Frederick Engels, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot. Engels was Marx's comrade who worked closely with him to lay the foundations of Marxism and to develop it further after Marx's death. Stalin defended and developed Marxism-Leninism after Lenin's death. Pol Pot advanced Marxism-Leninism in Kampuchea, leading the Khmer Rouge to establish Democratic Kampuchea, the last remaining communist organization with state power until its fall.
Marxism was first elaborated by Marx with the help of Engels more than 150 years ago. The main parts of Marxism are: the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the discovery of the materialist conception of history or historical materialism; Marxist political economy, which discovered the laws of motion of capitalism and its contradictions, and the doctrine of surplus value, which revealed the source of exploitation; and the theory of scientific socialism, which is based on the doctrine of class struggle and the outline of the principles governing the tactics of the class struggle of the proletariat.
Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. It was first developed by Lenin around the turn of the century in the course of the Russian Revolution, while fighting against the opportunism of the Second International and while advancing the international communist movement through the Third International. Leninism, while defending and developing Marxism, made the following significant contributions the discovery of the laws of motion of capitalism under imperialism and how they would inevitably lead the imperialist powers to war; the qualitative development of the theory and practice of proletarian revolution during the bourgeois-democratic revolution as well as the socialist revolution; a clear understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the first principles of socialist construction; the theory and direction of the national movements and the movements in the colonies and the connection of the national liberation movements with the world socialist revolution; the development of the organizational principles of the Leninist party - the party of the new type. Stalin, while defending and developing Leninism, made a special contribution to the principles and laws governing the period of socialist construction.
Mao Zedong Thought is an extension and development of Marxism-Leninism applicable to the present era. It was developed by Mao in the course of the Chinese revolution, in the process of socialist construction, in the struggle against modern revisionism and especially during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The contributions of Mao Zedong Thought include the theory of contradictions, the development of the theory of knowledge and the formulation of the mass line of "from the masses to the masses"; the theory of new democracy, the formulation of the road of revolution for the colonies and semi-colonies, and the formulation of the three magic weapons of revolution-the party, the people's army and the united front; the theory of the protracted people's war and the development of the principles of military warfare; the development of the organizational principles of the proletarian party through the understanding of the two-line struggle, rectification campaigns and criticism and self-criticism; the development of the political economy of socialism on the basis of the Soviet and Chinese experience and the dialectical understanding of the process of socialist construction as the correct handling of contradictions in the process of transition to socialism; and finally, and most importantly, the theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat to consolidate socialism, combat modern revisionism and prevent the restoration of capitalism, and its concrete expression in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Thus, Marxism, Leninism and Mao Tse-tung Thought are not separate ideologies, but represent the constant growth and development of one and the same ideology. In the following pages, we will try to trace the history of the process of its development. In doing so, we will also try to understand the nature of its various parts and aspects listed above. The list may seem long and difficult, but it need not be. If we concentrate and try to understand the basic essence of each aspect in its historical context, we will be able to grasp much.
Chapter 3-Socio-economic Conditions Leading to The Birth of Marxism
As we will see later, Marxism teaches us that every idea or theory is always the product of some material conditions. Whenever new material conditions arise, new ideas and theories are bound to emerge. The same truth applies to Marxism itself. Therefore, in order to better understand Marxism, we should try to know the material conditions, i.e. the socio-economic conditions, in which Marx and Engels first gave birth to Marxism.
Marxism was founded more than 150 years ago, in the 1840s. It was first established in Europe, which at that time dominated the entire world economically, politically and militarily. This world domination was such that almost all earlier advanced civilizations such as India, China and Persia were subordinated to it. Marx and Engels were born and lived in some of the most economically advanced parts of Europe as they developed the ideas of Marxism. They observed, participated in, and were influenced by all the major political events of the time. Therefore, to understand how Marxism was born, we must first look at the Europe of that time and see the main factors in the socio-economic situation of that time.
- 1) The most important factor was the Industrial Revolution, which lasted from about 1760 to 1830, and although it was centered in England, it influenced the whole world. The Industrial Revolution was so named because it was during these seventy years that the world first experienced an explosive and revolutionary upsurge in industrial development. It was during this time that modern large factories were first established and grew at a very rapid rate, especially in England. Along with this came the tremendous expansion of the world market, which sent English manufactured goods to all parts of the world. Although other countries such as France, Holland, and parts of Germany and the United States also established large factories, this period was heavily dominated by England. Its dominance was such that it came to be called the "workshop of the world," supplying manufactured goods to all countries.
The Industrial Revolution changed the capitalist class. This class was previously not so economically strong and was a middle class (it was called the bourgeoisie because bourgeois in French means middle class). But with the Industrial Revolution, this middle class was transformed into a class of industrial millionaires-the modern industrial bourgeoisie. The immense wealth of this new class gave it the power to challenge more forcefully the feudal classes, which were still the ruling classes.
In addition to the modern industrial bourgeoisie, the Industrial Revolution also gave rise to another class - the modern industrial working class, or proletariat. This class, made up of workers who worked together by the thousands in large factories, was also very different from the earlier workers who worked in small groups in tiny workshops. Possessing nothing but their labor power, the modern proletarians possessed a strength and self-confidence unknown to earlier generations of workers and toilers. This strength came from their contact with modern industry, their discipline learned from the factory system, and their superior organization due to their large numbers gathered under one roof in single factories. Their position in society made them potentially the most revolutionary force in history.
- 2) The other important factor was what was dominating the political situation in Europe at the time. It was the spate of bourgeois democratic revolutions led by the rising capitalist class, the most important of which was the French Revolution of 1789. The French Revolution not only brought about very radical changes in France. It also led to the Napoleonic Wars, in which the armies of the French bourgeoisie conquered almost all of Europe and introduced bourgeois reforms, abolishing feudalism wherever they went. They dealt a death blow to the kings and the old feudal classes. Although the French armies were later defeated, the old ruling classes could never regain their old position. The modern bourgeoisie continued its revolutionary wave with numerous other bourgeois revolutions, resulting in the final defeat of the feudal classes and the victory of capitalism as a world system.
Thus, on both the economic and political levels, the period of the birth of Marxism was a period of great advances and victories for the capitalist class, when it finally established its rule in the most advanced and dominant countries of the world.
- 3) Although this was the period of the greatest advance of the bourgeoisie, the main factor that gave birth to Marxism during this period was the rise of working class consciousness and proletarian organizations and movements, thus signaling the emergence of the proletariat as an independent and self-conscious force.
This rise of a class-conscious proletariat first took place in England and France. This was primarily due to the early spread of modern industry in these two countries. While the spread of modern industry brought great wealth to the bourgeoisie, it also meant the most inhumane working and living conditions for the working class. Nearly three-quarters of the workforce consisted of women and children, because they provided the capitalists with cheaper and more controllable labor. Children as young as six were forced to work fourteen and sixteen hours a day in the spinning mills. As the bourgeoisie amassed more and more wealth, the workers fell into greater and greater misery. While the owners of the cloth mills multiplied their capital many times over, the wages of the weavers were reduced to one-eighth of what they used to receive.
Thus the conditions of the proletariat were such that rebellion was not only possible, but almost imperative. The first such outbreaks were spontaneous, with no clear direction. One example was the Machine-Breaking Agitation of 1810-11 in England, in which groups of weavers attacked textile mills and smashed all the machinery they could lay their hands on. This was their way of protesting against modern industry, which was destroying their livelihoods. Such protests, which had no clear direction and were severely repressed, quickly died out.
What followed was the spread and growth of the labor movement and labor organizations, which provided the answer and direction for the struggling proletariat. Earlier unions, limited to skilled workers, began in 1818 to unite all working people in what were then called "general trades" unions. As these unions began to grow in England, a movement to form a national union began to build. This was formed and by 1833-34 had a membership of 500,000. In addition to unions, workers also began to organize into cooperatives and mutual benefit societies. In other countries where unions were largely banned, these were the main forms of working class organization, and they also grew in numbers and strength.
As workers' organizations began to grow, workers in Britain launched the Chartist movement in 1837, demanding the vote for workers. This was the first broad, truly mass and politically organized proletarian revolutionary movement. It used the method of mass petitions to Parliament, somewhat similar to the signature campaigns sometimes organized today. These petitions gathered up to 5 million signatures. Some of the Chartist demonstrations had 350,000 participants, showing the organized strength of the working class. However, as the movement grew in strength and militancy, it faced severe repression and was crushed by 1850. In the early 1840s, while Engels was in Manchester (in England), he was in close contact with revolutionary Chartist leaders as well as their weekly, The Northern Star, and was influenced by the Chartist movement.
The growing militancy of the workers' movement during this period often led to the first workers' uprisings, which were brutally suppressed. Examples include the London and Manchester uprisings of 1816 and 1819, the Lyons, France, silk workers' uprisings of 1831 and 1834, and the Silesian hand-loom linen weavers' uprising of 1844 in Prussian Germany (now part of Poland). The latter had a strong impact throughout Germany and on the young Marx.
Thus, by the 1840s, the proletarian movement in many industrialized countries was growing rapidly in strength and intensity. However, it was still very weak and not yet able to pose a threat to either the dominant big bourgeoisie or the old feudal ruling classes. Nevertheless, the emergence of the proletariat as an independent class force was an event of world-historical significance. The emergence of the proletariat into material existence also meant the birth of the ideas that represented this new revolutionary class. Many ideas and theories claiming to represent the interests of the working class emerged. Marxism, when it was first formulated in the 1840s, was only one of them. However, although many theories had emerged from the same economic conditions, Marxism alone provided the tools to properly understand these conditions and also to change them. Therefore, in the years to come, Marxism alone would prove to be the true proletarian ideology.
Chapter 4-Early Life of Marx and Engels Until they became Marxists
Obviously, no one can be born a Marxist - not even Marx. There has to be a process by which ideas and views are developed and formulated and take on a basic form that can be called an ideology. Of course, Marx and Engels had to go through such a process before they themselves discovered and grasped the basic truths of what we now know as Marxism. This process of thought was, of course, to a great extent determined by the concrete experiences they both went through. In order to understand this in some depth, let us look briefly at the early life experiences of these two great teachers.
Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the city of Trier, in what was then called Rhenish Prussia, now part of Germany. His father, Heinrich Marx, was one of the city's leading lawyers. The family was wealthy and cultured, but not revolutionary. Both of Marx's parents came from a long line of Jewish priests. Thus, although economically well off, they faced social discrimination in the anti-Jewish atmosphere of Prussia. In 1816, Marx's father was forced to convert to Christianity because the Prussian government at the time had issued a rule prohibiting Jews from practicing law. Similarly, in 1824, another Prussian law was passed to prevent non-Christians from being admitted to public schools. To overcome this, Heinrich Marx was again forced to baptize his son Karl, along with all his brothers and sisters. Thus, although not a believer in organized religion, Marx's father was forced to adopt a new faith in order to practice his profession and provide a good education for his children.
Marx's hometown, Trier, is the oldest city in Germany, having been the residence of Roman emperors for many centuries, and later the seat of Catholic bishops with a religious administration for the city and surrounding area. In August 1794, French armies conquered the city, established a civil administration, and introduced the ideas and institutions of the French Revolution. It was not until the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 that the city was returned to the Prussian king. Thus, during the time of Marx's birth and youth, it still carried the definite influence of twenty-one years of French revolutionary ideas.
Trier was a small town, similar in size to our smaller taluka towns, with a population then of about 12,000. It was mainly a market town for the surrounding area, which had been a famous wine-growing region for centuries. Its population was made up of the typical professions of a 'service' town - civil servants, priests, small traders, craftsmen, etc. It had been untouched by the Industrial Revolution and was therefore economically relatively backward. It also had a high level of poverty during Marx's youth. Official statistics in 1830 put the unemployment rate at one in four, although the real figure must have been much higher. Beggars and prostitutes were common, and petty crime such as theft was extremely high. Marx thus witnessed the misery of the poorer working classes from an early age.
After attending elementary school, Marx entered the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in 1831, from which he graduated in 1835. Within three weeks, he was sent for further studies at the law faculty of the university forty miles away from Trier, in the city of Bonn (an important center that is now the joint capital of Germany). Wanting to learn as much as possible, Marx immediately enrolled in nine courses, which, in addition to law, included poetry, literature, art, etc. At first he attended the lectures regularly, but gradually lost interest, especially in the law lectures, which he found dry and unsatisfying. He reduced his courses to six and then to four.
He decided to study on his own and soon became involved in the stormy life of the students, of whom he soon became a leader. Since he was deeply interested in writing poetry, he also joined the Poetenbund, a circle of young writers founded by revolutionary students. In the constant struggle between the sons of the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie, he soon became a leader of the bourgeois group. He was often involved in fistfights and sometimes in sword fights. He carried a stiletto knife (similar to our Gupti knives), for which he was once arrested and given a police case. He was also sentenced to a day in the university's student prison for "nocturnal disturbance of the peace and drunkenness." Marx even had his right eyebrow injured in a sword fight. This led to his father withdrawing him from the University of Bonn and taking him back to Trier in August 1836.
While in Trier, he became secretly engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a nobleman and high Prussian government official. Jenny, who was four years his senior, and Marx were childhood sweethearts who had decided to marry while Marx was still at school. They were now engaged with the consent of Marx's parents, but without the consent of Jenny's parents, which was not obtained until 1837.
In October 1836 Marx moved to the University of Berlin, which was the capital of Prussia. The university was much larger than Bonn and was known as an important center of learning. After registering for his university courses, Marx immediately plunged into a storm of work. He stayed up night after night, ate irregularly, smoked heavily, read heavy books, and filled notebooks. Instead of formal classes, Marx pursued his studies on his own. Working at a tremendous pace, he moved from law to philosophy to poetry to art to writing plays and stories and then back to philosophy and poetry. His overwork had a bad effect on his health, especially his tuberculosis-affected lungs, and he was sometimes forced to take a break. But he was always back to his excessive work habits, reading everything from the ancient to the latest works of scientists and philosophers. His inclination was towards philosophy, always trying to find universal meaning; always searching for the absolute in principles, definitions and concepts.
During his second year at university, he joined a group of philosophy students and teachers called the Young Hegelians. They were followers of the famous German philosopher Friedrich Hegel, who had taught at the University of Berlin and died in 1830. They tried to give a radical interpretation of Hegel's philosophy and were sometimes called Left Hegelians. One of Marx's friends in this group, its intellectual leader, was a professor named Bruno Bauer, who was a militant atheist who constantly attacked the teachings of the Church. Such attacks, along with the Young Hegelians' radical political views, made them a target of the Prussian authorities. Thus, when Marx completed his doctoral dissertation, he could not receive his degree from the University of Berlin, which was dominated by reactionary appointees of the Prussian government. After completing his studies in Berlin, he submitted his dissertation and received his doctorate in April 1841 from the liberal-leaning University of Jena, which was outside of Prussian control.
After receiving his degree, he had hoped to become a lecturer at the University of Bonn, where Bruno Bauer had moved in 1839. But Bauer himself was in trouble because of student unrest caused by his anti-religious lectures. Finally, the king himself ordered Bauer's removal from the University of Bonn. This meant the end of Bauer's teaching career as well as any hope of a teaching job for Marx.
Marx began to concentrate on journalism, which he had begun immediately after leaving the university. This also helped him to become more involved in the rapidly growing radical democratic opposition movement that was then developing in his Rhineland province and the neighboring province of Westphalia. These provinces, which had experienced the liberating influence of French antifeudal reforms, were important centers of opposition to the Prussian king. Industrialization had also led to the growth of the bourgeoisie, especially in Cologne, the richest city in the Rhineland. This meant strong support for this radical opposition movement from industrialists who were fed up with the excessive controls of the feudal lords.
Marx began writing for the Rheinische Zeitung, a daily newspaper supported by these industrialists, and in October 1842 he became its editor-in-chief. In Marx's hands, the paper soon became a fighter for radical democratic rights. This brought Marx into constant conflict with the repressive Prussian censors. Finally, when the paper published a criticism of the Russian tsar's despotism, the tsar himself put pressure on the Prussian king to take action. The paper was banned and forced to close in March 1843. Marx then began to participate in a plan to publish a new journal, The German-French Yearbooks.
During this period, from 1841 to 1843, Marx was deeply involved in the tumultuous political life of the time. However, he was basically a radical democrat and did not hold communist views at that time. On the level of philosophy, his major transformation during this period came in 1841 after reading a book called The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach, which presented a critique of religion from the standpoint of materialism. This book played a major role in shifting Marx's ideas from the idealism of the Young Hegelians to materialism. Another philosophical work of 1841 (The European Triarchy) that influenced Marx was the attempt by his friend Moses Hess to develop a communist philosophy by combining French socialist and left Hegelian ideas.
At the time, however, Marx had only a limited knowledge of socialist and communist ideas. His first contact was in 1842, when he read with interest the works of many of the leading French socialist theorists. However, these readings did not convert him to communism or socialism. That change came more through his contact with working-class communist groups and his study of political economy, both of which took place mainly after he moved to Paris in late 1843.
Seven years after their engagement, Marx and Jenny were married in June 1843. They had a short honeymoon in Switzerland, during which Marx wrote a pamphlet presenting his first criticisms of Hegel. After the honeymoon, he began to study and prepare to move to Paris, from where the aforementioned German-French Yearbooks would be published. The move to Paris was planned to avoid the Prussian censors. However, although the journal was planned as a monthly, it collapsed after only one issue, which appeared in February 1844.
Marx's time in Paris, however, was marked by very important new experiences. Most important was his direct contact with the various socialist and communist groups for which Paris was a hot center. In addition to meeting a large number of theorists and revolutionaries, Marx benefited greatly from regular contact with the many working-class revolutionaries in Paris. At the same time, Marx began a study of political economy, reading most of the works of the famous English economists. The revolutionary contacts and further study had their effects. These were reflected in Marx's writings.
The single issue of the Jahrbücher was crucial because it contained Marx's first broad generalization of a Marxist materialist understanding of history, contained in an article criticizing Hegel's philosophy. It was in this article that Marx made the highly important formulation regarding the historical role of the proletariat. He also made his famous formulation that religion is the opium of the people. The same issue also contained an article by Engels on political economy, which also gave a materialist understanding of the development of modern capitalism.
It was Marx's interest in Engels' writings that led to their meeting in Paris between August 28 and September 6, 1844, which proved to be a historic encounter that helped the two great thinkers clarify their ideas and lay the first foundations of Marxism. Although they had previously independently come to similar conclusions, this meeting helped them reach complete theoretical agreement. It was at this meeting that they came to a clearer understanding of the materialist conception of history that was the cornerstone of Marxist theory.
Frederick Engels was born on November 28, 1820, in the textile town of Barmen in the Rhine Province of Prussia. His father was the wealthy owner of a cotton mill and a fiercely religious Protestant Christian with reactionary political views.
Barmen, like Marx's Trier, was in the part of Prussia that had experienced twenty years of French conquest. It was therefore also influenced by progressive ideas. Its main characteristic, however, was that it was one of the largest Rhenish industrial centers. Thus, Engels saw at a very early age the severe poverty and exploitation of the working class. To survive in the face of factory competition, artisans were forced to work from morning to night. They often tried to drown their sorrows in alcohol. Child labor and occupational lung disease were rampant.
Engels attended the city school in Barmen until the age of 14, when he was sent to the grammar school in the neighboring town of Elberfeld (today Barmen and Elberfeld have merged into one town). This gymnasium had the reputation of being one of the best in Prussia. He was an intelligent student with an early flair for learning languages. He was also part of a poetry circle among the students and wrote his own poems and short stories. He wanted to study economics and law, but his father was more interested in having his eldest son learn the family business. At the age of 17, he was suddenly taken out of school and made to apprentice in his father's office.
Although this was the end of Engels' formal schooling, he continued to use his free time to study history, philosophy, literature, and linguistics, and to write poetry, to which he was drawn. The following year, in July 1838, Engels was sent to work as a clerk in a large trading house in the large port city of Bremen. The big city atmosphere brought Engels into contact with foreign literature and the press. In his spare time he began to read fiction and political books. He continued to learn new languages and, in addition to German, acquired some knowledge of Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, etc. This ability to learn languages continued throughout Engels' life, during which he became quite fluent in over 20 languages, including Persian and Arabic. Also in Bremen, Engels became a good horseman, swimmer, fencer, and skater.
While at school, Engels had been a fighter against bureaucracy. Now, as a grown youth, he was attracted to the radical democratic ideas of the bourgeois democratic revolution then taking shape in Germany. The first group to which he was drawn was the Young Germany literary group, which espoused radical political views. He soon began writing for a journal they published in the port city of Hamburg, not far from Bremen. He wrote two articles about the situation in his home district. He exposed the severe exploitation of the workers in Barmen and Elberfeld, the diseases they suffered, and the fact that half the children in the town were deprived of schooling and forced to work in the factories. He particularly attacked the hollowness of the religiosity of the exploitative industrialists (including his own father).
Towards the end of 1839 he began to study Hegel, whose philosophy he tried to reconcile with his own radical democratic beliefs. However, he did not make any further progress in this direction until 1841, when he completed his legal training in Bremen and, after a gap of a few months, moved to Berlin for a year's military service.
During his military service he entered the University of Berlin as an external student and took a course in philosophy. He then became closely associated with the Young Hegelian group to which Marx had belonged. Like Marx, he was greatly influenced by the materialist views in Feurbach's book, which was published that year. Engels' writings now began to have some materialist aspects. The main thing he always stressed was political action. This was what led him to split from his earlier Young German Group in 1842, which he felt was confined to empty literary debate. However, he remained closely associated with the Young Hegelians, especially Bruno Bauer and his brother.
It was this closeness of Engels to the Bauers that prevented a friendship with Marx when they first met in November 1842. At that time, Engels had finished his military service and was on his way from his hometown to join his father's business as a clerk in Manchester, England. On the way, he visited Marx at the newspaper office in Cologne, where Marx was then editor-in-chief. By this time, however, Marx had begun to criticize the Young Hegelians, and especially the Bauers, for focusing too much of their propaganda on religion rather than politics. As a result, Marx and Engels, who had different political affiliations, could not get along at this first meeting.
It was Engels' experiences in England that made him a communist. He developed very close relations with the workers of Manchester, as well as with the leaders of the revolutionary workers' Chartist movement. Manchester was the main center of the world's modern textile industry, and Engels soon undertook an in-depth study of the working and living conditions of its workers. He regularly visited working-class neighborhoods to gain first-hand knowledge. In the process, he fell in love with Mary Burns, a young Irish factory worker who would later become his companion and wife. In addition to gathering material for his future book on the conditions of the working class in England, Engels came to understand the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. His regular participation in the movement convinced him that the working class was not merely a suffering class, but a fighting class whose revolutionary actions would build the future.
In addition to his contact with the working class, Engels also studied in depth the various socialist and communist theories, even meeting many of the French and German leaders and writers who had formulated them. Although he did not adopt any of these theories, he made an analysis of their positive and negative points. At the same time, he began to study bourgeois political economy in depth. This was to help him analyze the economic relations of society, which he began to see as the basis of all social change. The first results of his study were set down in an article published by Marx in his Paris journal. As mentioned above, this led to a correspondence between Marx and Engels and their historic meeting in 1844.
Engels was on his way back from Manchester to his hometown of Barmen when he stopped to meet Marx, who was in Paris at the time. Their discussions helped Marx to better formulate the materialist understanding of history in which they had both begun to believe. At this meeting they also began work on their first joint book, which was an attack on Bruno Bauer and the Young Hegelian group to which they had both previously belonged.
Engels spent the next eight months doing intensive communist propaganda and organizational work in Germany. During this time he was in constant revolt against his father, who opposed his communist work and tried to get him to work in his factory. After only two weeks in his father's office, Engels completely refused and left Barmen to join Marx. By this time Marx had again become the target of the feudal authorities. The Prussian king had put pressure on the French king, who expelled Marx from Paris. Marx was forced to move with his wife and eight-month-old child to Brussels, Belgium. This is where Engels came and set up house right next to Marx's house.
In the meantime, Marx had done deep work and had developed the main features of the new world view that they had discussed in their earlier meeting. In Brussels, both Marx and Engels began to work intensively together. This was, as Engels said, to develop the new outlook in all possible directions. The result was the historic book, The German Ideology, which was published almost a hundred years later. The main purpose of this book at that time was for the two great thinkers to clarify themselves regarding their old understanding and to set up the pillars of the new world view that later became known as Marxism. Marx and Engels had become Marxists!
Chapter 5-The Three Sources of Marxism
From the earlier account of the early life of Marx and Engels, it is clear that they were both very extraordinary and brilliant men. However, it is also very clear that Marxism was not an invention that suddenly emerged from the thoughts of these magnificent minds. The socio-economic changes of the time provided the basis for the emergence of the true proletarian ideology. The actual content and form of this ideology, however, were the product of the struggles that were being waged in the most important fields of thought of the time. As profound intellectuals, Marx and Engels had a broad and deep understanding of the latest developments in thought in the most advanced countries of the time. They were thus able to stand on the shoulders of the great thinkers before them, absorbing what was good in them and rejecting what was wrong. And so they built the structure and content of Marxism.
Let us see what were the main fields of thought on which they based their ideas. In this way, we can also understand the main sources of Marxism.
- 1) The first source of Marxist thought was German classical philosophy. Every ideology must have its foundation in some philosophy, and both Marx and Engels, as we have seen, had a strong foundation in German classical philosophy.
German philosophy had become the most influential school of European philosophy in the period from 1760 to 1830. It had its base in the German bourgeoisie. This class was intellectually very advanced but had not developed the political strength to make a revolution or the economic resources to make an industrial revolution. This was probably what inclined them toward elaborate systems of thought.
However, this class, which had many officials, had many contradictory aspects. It sometimes leaned toward the industrial bourgeoisie and the proletariat on the one hand, and sometimes toward the feudal classes on the other. This was reflected in German philosophy, which had both progressive and anti-progressive aspects. This was especially seen in the philosophy of Hegel, on which Marx and Engels largely based themselves. They therefore rejected all the anti-progressive aspects that perpetuated the existing feudal society, and developed upon the progressive and revolutionary parts to lay the foundations of Marxist philosophy.
- 2) English political economy was the second major source of Marxism. England being the center of the industrial revolution, it was natural that the study of economy and its laws should reach its peak in this country. It was a new field of study that essentially began with the growth of modern capitalism. It had its firm basis in the modern industrial bourgeoisie and played the role of justifying and glorifying capitalism. It also provided the intellectual arguments for the rising bourgeoisie in its struggles with the feudals.
In England, its period began with the publication of Adam Smith's world-famous book The Wealth of Nations in 1776. He basically argued that capitalism, if given the fullest freedom to grow, would lead to the greatest progress of mankind. He thus provided the argument for reducing any kind of control by the feudal over the capitalist class. David Ricardo was another famous classical economist who played a crucial role in the struggles of the bourgeoisie with the landlords. He was the one who pointed out that as capitalism developed, the average rate of profit of the capitalists fell. His most important discovery was the development of the labor theory of value, which showed that all economic value is created by labor. Other later economists analyzed the causes of economic crises under capitalism.
English political economy basically served the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. It therefore played a revolutionary role against the feudal classes. However, the economists very often did not carry their analysis beyond the point where it hurt bourgeois class interests. For example, although Ricardo developed the labor theory of value, he did not expose the exploitation of labor by the capitalist class. That was done by Marx. He took the work of the English economists beyond the boundaries of the capitalist class and drew the necessary revolutionary conclusions from it. In this way, Marx developed the principles of Marxist political economy.
- 3) The third source of Marxism was the various socialist theories that originated mainly in France. These theories represented the hopes and goals of the newly emerging proletarian class. They were both a reflection of and a protest against capitalist exploitation and oppression of the working class. At that time, France was the main center of revolutionary groups and revolutionary theory that inspired the whole of Europe. Therefore, it was natural that socialist theories also came mainly from France.
Most of these theories were seriously flawed because they were not based on a proper scientific analysis of society. Nevertheless, they represented a break with the individualism, self-interest and competition of bourgeois revolutionary theory. They also pointed the way forward for the proletariat out of capitalist society. Marx therefore studied these theories of socialism and communism before formulating the Marxist principles of scientific socialism. While in Paris, he spent a great deal of time with the leaders and members of the many French revolutionary and socialist groups. Marx took the best of socialism and gave it the scientific basis of the doctrine of class struggle. He thus developed the principles of Marxist scientific socialism.
This, then, is the story of how Marxism emerged from the three great sources of ideas in the then most advanced countries of the world. The three sources of Marxism - German philosophy, English political economy and French socialist theories - corresponded to the three main components of the new ideology - Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism, Marxist political economy and Marxist theory of scientific socialism. In the following pages we will try to understand the essence of each of these parts.
Chapter 6-The Basic Formulations of Marxist Philosophy : Dialectical and Historical Materialism
As we have seen repeatedly, Marx and Engels always insisted that all philosophy should be practical and connected to the real world. This was most clearly expressed by Marx in his famous saying, "Philosophers have always interpreted the world in different ways, but the point is to change it." By this Marx meant that he did not want to become a philosopher like our Rishis and Munnis who sit on some mountain and meditate on supernatural things. He did not see much point in thinking and contemplating unless it was connected with the practical world. His basic quest was to try to understand how the world was changing and thus to participate in the actual practice and change of today's world and society. Thus, he was interested in a philosophy that would be applied in social practice.
In order to do this, Marx had to take a stand on the basic division in all philosophy-the division between idealism and materialism. This division concerns the basic question of what is primary - spirit or nature. Those who take the stand that spirit is primary belong to the camp of idealism, while those who take the stand that nature is primary belong to the camp of materialism. Idealism is always connected with religion in one way or another. As men of practice who were absolutely opposed to religious beliefs, it was natural that Marx and Engels established Marxist philosophy firmly in the camp of materialism.
In doing so, they were undoubtedly influenced and helped by the writings of Feuerbach and other materialist philosophers of the time. However, these philosophers were mechanical materialists who understood nature and society as a machine that goes round and round without any development or real change. Marx rejected mechanical materialism because it gave no understanding of historical change and development.
For this, Marx had to turn to dialectics, which is the science of the general laws of motion. The essence of dialectics is that it understands things in their interrelationships and contradictions. Dialectics could thus provide the science of development that Marx knew was necessary to change the world.
At the time, Hegel's philosophy and laws of dialectics (which Marx studied in depth) were the most advanced in Europe. But Hegel had developed his philosophical laws in an idealistic way, making them applicable only to the field of thought. He belonged to the camp of idealism and refused to recognize that nature and material social being are primary and that spirit and ideas are secondary. Thus he did not accept that his system of thought was itself a product of the development of human society to a certain stage. He refused to understand that his laws of thought were themselves reflections of the laws of nature and society. Thus, as Marx said, Hegel's dialectic, by being idealistic, was turned on its head-that is, it was absurd and illogical. Marx turned Hegel's dialectic upside down - that is, he made it rational - by placing it on the basis of materialism. Marx took Hegel's dialectical laws and gave them the approach of materialist philosophy. He thus made Hegel's laws of thought also laws of nature and society. He thus formulated dialectical materialism, which is the essence of Marxist philosophy.
By giving dialectics a rational and materialist basis, Marx transformed it into a philosophy of revolution. Marx and Engels applied dialectical materialism to the study of society and history, and thus discovered the materialist conception of history. The materialist conception of history was a new and revolutionary way of understanding society and social change. It explained the basis of social changes and political revolutions not as the invention of the brains of a few brilliant men, but as the product of the processes within society. It showed all revolutionaries that the path to social change lay in understanding society and formulating ideas to bring about change accordingly.
The starting point of the materialist conception of history is the level of development of the material productive forces, i.e. tools, machines, skills, etc. Marx says that according to the stage of development of the productive forces we get certain relations of production, i.e. relations of ownership and control over the means of production. Thus, for example, backward productive forces such as the wooden plow and wind, hand and animal-powered mills give us feudal relations; modern productive forces such as tractors, reapers, etc., when they become widespread, give rise to capitalist relations of production. These relations of production constitute the economic structure of society, or the economic base of society.
On top of the economic base of society arises a legal and political superstructure with certain forms of social consciousness. Marx goes on to say that it is the mode of production (consisting of the productive forces and relations of production) that conditions social, political and intellectual life in general. For example, the feudal mode of production leads to very severe oppression of women and lower castes and a very undemocratic political system; the capitalist mode of production, on the other hand, reduces social oppression and brings some bourgeois democratic rights.
At a certain stage in the development of the productive forces, they come into conflict with the existing relations of production. These old relations of production begin to hinder the development of the productive forces. Unless these relations of production are changed, the productive forces cannot develop. This period when the relations of production begin to act as chains on the development of the productive forces is the beginning of the epoch of social revolution. A revolution is necessary to change the relations of production, that is, the relations between the different classes in society. Once this happens and the relations of production or property are broken, i.e. the economic base is changed, then the change of the whole superstructure follows quite quickly.
This materialist conception of history was Marx's first great discovery, made in 1844-45. It was the foundation upon which the other great pillars of Marxist theory were built.
In later years, Marx and Engels and the other Marxist teachers further developed Marxist philosophy. But its essence remained the basic principles of dialectical and historical materialism mentioned above.
Chapter 7-Struggle Against Utopian Socialism and the Establishment of Scientific Socialism
Utopian socialism is the term used to describe the main trends of pre-Marxist socialism that emerged and became prominent in the first half of the nineteenth century. The terms "utopian" (derived from the idea of utopia, a state of things in which everything is perfect) and "socialist" first became popular in the 1830s. They were used to describe a group of thinkers who developed theories for transforming society on a more egalitarian basis by eliminating the individualism, selfishness, and competitiveness in human nature. Many of these thinkers, or their followers, sought to implement their theories by creating ideal communities in which all members worked, lived, and shared the fruits of their labor on a cooperative basis. They believed that such ideal communities would set an example that would be followed by the rest of society. Thus, they did not rely on the actual processes in society to build their schemes of socialism. Rather, they believed that the rationality of their plans and ideas would be enough to convince people and change society.
Utopian socialism was primarily a reaction to the oppression and exploitation of the working class under capitalism. Working people had fought bitterly for the overthrow of feudalism. But the bourgeoisie's slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity had only meant freedom for the capitalist class and intensified the exploitation of the workers. The various socialist doctrines emerged as a result of the emerging class contradictions between the capitalists and the workers and as a protest against exploitation. They tried to build a system that would bring justice to the working people.
The anarchy of capitalist production was another reason for the new socialist theories. The utopian socialists tried to build rational systems that would provide for the needs of humanity in an orderly and harmonious way. Some of them even tried to convince capitalists and government officials that their socialist systems were much more rational, planned, and therefore desirable than the existing capitalist system. They even tried to raise funds for their projects from the rich.
The main flaw of pre-Marxist socialist doctrines was that they had no real basis in the class contradictions and class struggles unfolding in society. Although their ideas were themselves the product of the class contradictions within society, the utopian socialists did not realize that it was absolutely necessary to wage class struggle in order to achieve socialism. Although their ideas were in reality a reflection of the aspirations of the infant proletariat, the utopian socialists failed to recognize the centrality of the revolutionary role of the proletariat in the achievement of socialism.
When Marx and Engels came into contact with the socialist and communist groups, they began to try to convince the adherents of utopian socialist theories of the fallacy of their ideas. They participated intensively in the debates in the various revolutionary and working-class groups where these theories and ideas were discussed. Their main aim was to give socialist theory a scientific basis. To do this, they had to expose the errors and misunderstandings of the earlier socialists and place socialism on the solid basis of the Marxist theory of class struggle.
As Marx himself pointed out, the theory of class struggle was not something new invented by him. In fact, the earlier socialists and even bourgeois writers were well aware of and wrote about classes and class struggle. However, the essential difference of the Marxist theory of class struggle is that it showed how class struggle inevitably leads to socialism and communism.
Marx first showed that classes were not something that had always existed in human society. He showed that there was a long period in human history when there were no classes at all (i.e., during primitive communism). There would also be a period in the future when there would again be no classes. Second, Marx specifically analyzed the contemporary class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and showed how this class struggle would inevitably lead to the revolution of the workers and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., socialism. Third, Marx pointed out that this dictatorship of the proletariat was itself a period of transition to a new society. The proletariat could only develop by destroying itself as a class, by abolishing all classes and establishing a classless society, i.e. communism.
It is this theory of class struggle that Marx and Engels developed, propagated and put into practice throughout their lives. It is this Marxist theory of class struggle that transformed socialism into a science and laid the foundation for scientific socialism. Thus, socialism could no longer be seen as the product of a brilliant mind, but as the necessary result of the struggle between two historically developed classes - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Because of scientific socialism, the task of socialists did not become one of trying to develop the most perfect, harmonious and rational system of society, as the utopian socialists had tried to do. Under scientific socialism, the task was to analyze society, to analyze the history and economic basis of the class contradictions in society, and from this economic basis to find the way to end all class conflict and bring about socialism and communism.
The scientific clarity of Marxist socialist theory was so great that most sincere elements in the various socialist and communist organizations of the 1840s soon rejected the pre-Marxist and non-class varieties of socialism. Marx and Engels soon became the ideological leaders of the socialist movement. When a new international organization was formed in 1847, uniting workers, intellectuals and revolutionary socialist groups from different countries, they immediately became its leaders. They proposed its name, the Communist League, and it was they who were appointed to draft its program. This program is the world-historic Communist Manifesto.
The Communist Manifesto was not only the first program and general line of the international proletariat. It also laid down the basic principles of scientific socialism and the approach to all other types of socialism. Quickly translated into numerous languages, the Manifesto soon spread the basic ideas of Marxist scientific socialism throughout Europe and then the world. The basic principles outlined in this document have remained essentially unchanged for more than 150 years.
Chapter 8-Marxist Political Economy
As we have seen, Marx developed his principles of political economy in continuation of and in opposition to the bourgeois political economy of the English economists. Most of Marx's earlier economic writings from 1844 to 1859 were in the form of a critique of bourgeois political economy. He refuted the claims of bourgeois political economists that capitalism was a permanent and universal system. On the other hand, he proved that capitalism could only exist for a limited period and was destined to be overthrown and replaced by a new and higher social system. His later economic analysis, especially the various volumes of his magnum opus, Capital, focused on discovering the economic laws of capitalism. The in-depth analysis of the relations of production in capitalist society, in their origin, development and decline, thus forms the main content of Marx's political economy.
Bourgeois political economists always made their analysis in terms of a relation between things, i.e. the exchange of one commodity for another. Marx, however, showed that economics does not deal with things, but with relations between persons, and ultimately between classes.
Since capitalism is dominated by the production of commodities, Marx began his analysis with an analysis of the commodity. He pointed out that the exchange of commodities is not just an exchange of things, but actually an expression of the relationship between individual producers in society, linked by the market. Although the exchange of commodities has existed for thousands of years, it is only with the development of money and the birth of capitalism that it reaches its peak, linking the entire economic life of millions of individual producers throughout society into one whole. Capitalism even transforms the labor of the worker into a commodity that is freely bought and sold in the marketplace.
The worker sells his labor power to the owner of the means of production, the capitalist. The worker spends part of his working day producing the equivalent of his wage, that is, producing what is necessary to cover the cost of maintaining himself and his family. The other part of his working day is spent producing for the maintenance and growth of the capitalist. The worker receives absolutely no payment from this production, which is for the capitalist. This extra value that each worker produces, over and above the value necessary to earn his wage and maintain himself, Marx called surplus value. It is the source of profit and the source of wealth of the capitalist class.
The discovery of the concept of surplus value revealed the nature of the exploitation of the working class. It also revealed the source of the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This class antagonism was the main manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society: the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of property. This discovery of surplus value was described by Engels as Marx's second major discovery (along with the discovery of the materialist conception of history). Lenin called the doctrine of surplus value the cornerstone of Marx's economic theory.
Marx also analyzed in detail the periodic economic crises that repeatedly affected capitalism. He also explained capitalist crises as another manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. He thus exposed the falsehood of the bourgeois economists of the time who propagated that capitalism could not face any crisis because the operation of the market would solve all problems. They tried to show that whatever the capitalist produced would automatically be sold on the market.
Marx, however, showed that the very nature of the operation of capitalism would inevitably lead to crisis. He showed how the capitalists, in their desperate urge to make more and more profit, go on increasing production like mad. At the same time, however, each capitalist sought to maintain a higher rate of profit by cutting the wages of his workers and driving them into poverty. The working class is the largest section of society, and the poverty of the working class automatically means the reduction of its capacity to buy the goods available in the market. Thus, on the one hand, the capitalist class continues to increase the production of goods supplied to the market, while on the other hand, it continues to reduce the purchasing capacity of a large part of the buyers in the same market. This, of course, leads to a serious contradiction between the expansion of production on the one hand and the contraction of the market on the other. The result is a crisis of overproduction in which the market is flooded with unsold goods. Scores of capitalists are driven into bankruptcy. Lakhs of workers are thrown out of their jobs and forced to starve, while the shops are filled with goods that remain unused because there is no one to buy them.
Marx further concluded that the anarchy of these crises of capitalism could only be resolved by resolving the fundamental contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private character of ownership. This could only be done by overthrowing the capitalist system and establishing socialism and communism, thus giving a social character to the ownership of the means of production. Marx showed that the social force that would bring about this revolution had been created by capitalism itself; it was the proletariat class. It was the proletariat alone that had no interest in continuing the present system of exploitation and private property. It alone had the interest and ability to establish socialism.
Marx analyzed how each crisis aggravated the contradictions of the capitalist system. He described the process with each crisis of the centralization of capital in the hands of an ever smaller handful of capitalists. This was accompanied by an immense increase in the misery and discontent of the vast mass of workers. As the contradictions of capitalism sharpened, the revolutionary upheavals of the proletariat grew in strength, culminating in revolution, the confiscation of the capital of the capitalists and the building of a socialist society with a social character of property corresponding to the social character of production.
In this way, starting from the most basic unit of the economy, the commodity, Marx brings out the nature of the economic laws that govern capitalism. He thus reveals the scientific economic basis for the socialist revolution and the road to communism.
Chapter 9-Marxism Fuses Its Links with the Working Class
As we have seen, Marx and Engels were deeply involved in the revolutionary communist groups of the 1840s. They became the leaders of the Communist League, an international organization that united revolutionaries from various European countries. They also drafted its program - the Communist Manifesto - which acquired world-historical significance. However, at that time - 1848 - the influence of Marxism had not yet reached the vast masses of the working class. The influence of the Communist League was limited and consisted mainly of exiled workers and intellectuals. In fact, Marxism was only one of the many currents of socialism at the time.
The revolution of 1848, which spread insurrection throughout the European continent, was the first major historical event in which Marxism proved itself in practice. Marx and Engels were in Brussels when the revolution first broke out in France. The Belgian government, fearing the spread of the revolution, immediately expelled Marx from Brussels and forced him to leave for Paris, where he was soon joined by Engels. However, as the revolutionary wave spread to Germany, both decided to move there immediately in order to participate directly in the revolutionary events.
There they tried to consolidate the work of the Communist League and the workers' associations. They published a daily newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which served as an organ for propagating the revolutionary line. The newspaper took a line in support of radical bourgeois democracy, as the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution was the main task in Germany at that time. At the same time, however, the paper served as an organizer of the emerging revolutionary proletarian party in Germany. Marx and Engels even tried to form a mass workers' party by uniting the workers' associations of various German provinces. The paper lasted a year. With the collapse of the revolution in Germany and other parts of Europe, the paper was forced to close, and Marx was exiled by the Prussian king. He retreated to Paris, but soon had to leave again because of persecution by the French authorities. Engels continued to fight in Germany as a soldier in the revolutionary armies until the end. After military defeat, he fled and joined Marx in London in late 1849. England remained their center for the rest of their lives.
The defeat of the 1848 revolution had spread confusion among revolutionaries and proletarian activists throughout Europe. Most of the earlier dominant currents of socialism could not provide a proper understanding of the reasons for the course of events during the revolution. In such an atmosphere, Marx took on the task of explaining the social forces behind the initial victory and later defeat of the revolution. Since France was the center and main point of departure for both the rise and fall of the Revolution, Marx focused his analysis on French events. He did this in his brilliant works The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. These were Marx's first attempts to explain current historical events in terms of the materialist conception of history. He analyzed with complete clarity the class forces behind each of the major twists and turns of the revolution. In doing so, he provided the class basis for revolutionary proletarian tactics. By exposing the role of different classes at different stages, he showed who the friends and enemies of the revolution were, and therefore how the proletariat should approach each of them.
In the period that followed, Marx continued to write about all the major political events around the world. In all these writings he presented a clear perspective from a proletarian point of view. This distinguished them from all other varieties of socialism, which proved incapable of providing real answers to the ever-changing world situation. It clearly established the superiority of Marxism over other brands of socialism as a practical tool for understanding and changing the world.
At the same time, Marx and Engels worked energetically to unite the weak and fragmented organizations of the working class. The Communist League, which had its main center in Germany, faced severe repression from the Prussian police. Many of its members in Germany were put behind bars, and the organization itself was finally dissolved in November 1852. During the long period of reaction following the failure of the 1848 revolution, Marx and Engels continued to try to reorganize and revive the working class movement. In addition to writing and publishing extensively, they maintained constant contact with working class organizations in various countries, especially England, France and Germany. Their constant attempt was to form an international organization of the working class and to establish separate parties of the proletariat in the industrially developed countries.
The main work in this regard was done by Marx. He worked under very difficult conditions during this period. After being expelled by the governments of various countries, even after settling in London, Marx was under constant surveillance by the secret police, especially the Prussian secret police. In addition to political repression, Marx's economic situation was always very bad. Because of the poor and disorganized state of the revolutionary working-class movement at the time, it was unable to support him as a full-time employee. Thus, his only source of income was the small payment per article he received for writing for a major American newspaper, The New York Tribune. This, of course, was totally inadequate for Marx's large family. They faced constant poverty, debt, and even starvation. Many times they had to pawn things from the house to buy food. Marx had six children, but only three survived beyond childhood. When his infant daughter died, the funeral had to be postponed for several days until money could be raised. Marx himself faced constant serious illnesses that he had to fight to complete his work.
Throughout all these economic difficulties, Engels was the main support for the Marx family. After the failure of the 1848 revolution, Engels had been forced to take a job in his father's firm in Manchester. He worked there for twenty years, first as a clerk and then for the last five years, until 1869, as a partner in the firm. During this time he had a substantial income with which he regularly helped Marx.
Engels' help, however, was not only economic. Although his work did not allow him much free time, he made every effort to continue his studies and help Marx. They corresponded very regularly and exchanged ideas constantly. Marx always consulted Engels on important questions, especially decisions concerning the international labor movement.
Their efforts finally bore fruit in 1864 with the formation of the International Workingmen's Association - the First International. Marx soon became its leader and was primarily responsible for drafting its first program and constitution. However, the program of the International did not contain the strong words of the Communist Manifesto. Unlike the Communist League, the First International was not an organization limited to small groups of revolutionaries. In fact, many of the sections of the International, especially those in England and France, represented organizations with large mass followings of workers. However, most of these organizations did not have a clear and correct understanding. Although they were composed mainly of workers, the level of consciousness was usually lower than that of the selected revolutionaries of the Communist League. Therefore, the program and the constitution had to be formulated with this in mind. The correct line had to be presented in a manner acceptable to the member organizations of the International. Marx, with his great ideological depth and practical organizational experience, was at that time the only person capable of drafting these documents in this way and was therefore given the task. In the years that followed, it was he who drafted all the most important documents of the First International.
Thus, it was Marxism alone that could provide the ideological, political and organizational perspective for the First International. The implementation of this perspective meant a constant struggle against the various anarchist and opportunist tendencies that arose within the movement. Among other things, the anarchists opposed strong organization, while the opportunists opposed determined struggle. Fighting both deviations, Marx and Engels worked to build the International into a mass organization of struggle, uniting workers in both Europe and America. They were largely successful in this, leading at the same time to the formation of independent proletarian parties in many of the industrialized countries of the world.
By the time of the historic Paris Commune of 1871, Marxism had come a long way from it's position at the time of the 1848 revolution. Marxism was no longer just one of the currents of socialism. The earlier brands of utopian socialism had been swept away by history, and it was Marxism alone that retained full practical significance. Marxism, too, was no longer confined to small groups but had become a mass phenomenon. Its influence extended to proletarian movements in various industrialized countries. It gave ideological leadership to independent proletarian parties. It led a massive proletarian movement that had begun to challenge the bourgeoisie. Marxism had fused its links with the vast masses of the working class.
Chapter 10-The Lessons of the Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was the first time in history that the proletariat seized power and attempted to establish its own rule. The Commune failed to consolidate its rule and was crushed within 72 days. However, its experience was of world-historic significance. In its brief existence, it had provided a glimpse of the new society. Through both its positive examples and its mistakes, it had provided immensely valuable lessons for the working class of the world. Marx, in his role as leader of the First International, summarized the lessons of this great experience for the international proletariat.
The background to the Paris Commune was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. It began in July 1870 when the reactionary French emperor Napoleon III ordered an attack on Prussia (which became Germany with other smaller provinces in January 1871), mistakenly believing that the Prussians were in a weak position. His armies were quickly defeated and Napoleon III himself surrendered and was taken prisoner by the Prussians in September 1870. Napoleon III's surrender was followed by the establishment of a republic led by a politician named Thiers. Thiers signed a peace treaty with the Germans in March 1871. However, Paris, which had been surrounded by the Prussian army since September 1870, did not submit to Thiers. It was under the control of the Paris National Guard, composed mainly of workers. On March 18, 1871, Thiers sent his army to disarm the National Guard. There was an uprising in which two French army generals were shot and the army was forced to retreat. Power had passed into the hands of the National Guard, which within a week held elections and created a council of 92 members. The Council, which included a large number of workers, became the organ of government. It introduced many progressive measures for the reorganization of social life and the administration of the city, and thus had the full support of all the working people. However, the Paris Commune was a government under constant attack. Fearing the strength of the working class, the German and French oppressors had immediately joined forces to crush the Commune. Germany even directly helped the Thiers government by releasing a large part of the French army that had surrendered and been captured in 1870. Strengthened by reinforcements, the Thiers government then launched a full-scale campaign to take Paris. The workers fought bravely, but they were no match for the well-equipped professional army. After many days of heroic fighting, resulting in thousands of martyrs, the Commune was crushed on May 28, 1871. Even after the takeover, over 30,000 Communards were slaughtered in cold blood. More than 45,000 were court-martialed, many of whom were executed and others sent to prison or exile. It was as if the bourgeoisie was determined to teach the workers an unforgettable lesson, lest they ever dream of seizing power again.
The First International was at the height of its popular appeal at the time of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. It had a broad militant base among the workers and regularly provided guidance on political questions. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Marx immediately issued a document on behalf of the General Council of the First International. This document is one of the first applications of Marxist tactical principles to the war. It called for international solidarity of the workers, while placing the blame for the war on the rulers of France and Prussia. Because of the propaganda of the International, there was a strong spirit of internationalism among both German and French workers. In fact, Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, two members of parliament and leaders of the German Proletarian Party who were Marxist members of the International, were imprisoned by the Prussian government for voting in parliament against war loans.
In the early stages of the war, Marx characterized it as a defensive war on the part of Germany because of the reactionary nature of the aggressive regime of Napoleon III. However, he predicted the fall of this reactionary ruler. When this happened, Marx immediately issued a document calling on the German workers to oppose what had now become a German war of conquest. He called for peace with France and recognition of the newly formed republic. He characterized the Republic as being led by the financial aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. However, he believed it was premature to attempt to overthrow the Republic and establish a workers' government. In fact, Marx strongly opposed any attempt at insurrection in Paris. This was because the German enemy had already surrounded Paris and there was little chance of any uprising surviving under such circumstances.
Despite Marx's advice, activists from various anarchist and conspiratorial tendencies who had a following in Paris made various attempts to organize an insurrection. When the insurrection actually took place, Marx, despite all his earlier opposition, declared his full and militant support for the Commune. Immediately recognizing its historic importance, he sent hundreds of letters around the world trying to build support. He kept in touch with the Communards through messengers and sent advice to the internationalists in the Commune. In consultation with Engels, who was an expert in military matters, he also sent advice on the military defense of the Commune. Although the leadership of the Commune was in the hands of members of other groups and tendencies, the Marxists within the Commune made every effort to strengthen its activities and defense. After the defeat of the Commune, the International was the main organization to provide shelter and employment to the Communards who had to flee the brutal repression of the French bourgeoisie.
Marx, who immediately hailed the Commune as an event of immense historical significance, produced an in-depth analysis that sought to draw lessons from the experience. This work, The Civil War in France, was written during the Commune but could not be published until two days after its fall. It served to disseminate the Commune's achievements and to build the correct approach to the Commune among revolutionaries and workers around the world.
Marx first highlighted the major positive and revolutionary measures taken by the Commune, which he presented as the incubation of the new society. He pointed out the major political decisions such as the separation of church and state, the abolition of subsidies to the church, the replacement of the standing army with a popular militia, the election and control of all judges and magistrates, the capping of salaries for all government officials and making them strictly accountable to the electorate, etc. The most important socio-economic measures were free and universal education, the abolition of night work in bakeries, the abolition of fines for employers in workshops, the closure of pawnshops, the confiscation of closed workshops to be run by workers' cooperatives, relief for the unemployed, rationed housing and assistance for debtors. All these measures showed that the Commune had no clear direction and that all its decisions bore the clear stamp of the actions of the proletariat. Although the Commune was constantly faced with the desperate question of its own survival, its actions provided the first glimpse of what kind of society the coming proletarian revolution would bring. It provided the first experience of the proletariat in state power-what Marx and Engels called the first dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Commune, through its weaknesses, also provided the most valuable lessons for the future struggles of the proletariat. These were pointed out by Marx. A serious weakness of the Commune was the lack of a clear and centralized leadership of a single proletarian party. From this, Marx concluded that the leadership of a strong, clear-sighted and disciplined proletarian party was absolutely necessary for the success of the revolution. The other point that Marx emphasized repeatedly was the need to smash the old state apparatus. In order to build the new workers state, it was not possible to rely on the previous state machinery of the bourgeoisie, with its state officials who were totally committed to preserving the old social order. In fact, in order to build the workers' state, it was first necessary to smash the previous state apparatus and get rid of all the high-ranking officials associated with it.
In the period of reaction and repression that followed the Commune, there was considerable confusion among the revolutionary forces as to how to evaluate the experience and draw the correct conclusions. The anarchists, who had participated in the Commune in large numbers, were particularly at a loss. Marx's analysis provided a clear position that eliminated all kinds of confusion. Marx also helped spread the correct understanding of the Commune throughout the world. After the Commune, the bourgeoisie portrayed Marx as the real leader of the Commune, and he was even interviewed by the world press. Through these interviews, he was able to present the correct position in different countries. Marxism again provided the correct answers.
Chapter 11-Spread of Marxism and Rise of Opportunism
The period after the Paris Commune was one of reactionary offensive by the bourgeoisie against the working class movement. This had its effects on the First International. The French section was hardest hit, with most of its members becoming refugees in other countries and fierce factional struggles among them. The German labor movement also suffered a setback with the long imprisonment of the main Marxist leaders, Bebel and Liebknecht, who had opposed the war and the annexation of parts of France. This meant that the two most important sections of the International were paralyzed. At the same time, there was a split in the English section, with some of the leaders leaving the International in opposition to the militant stance taken by Marx in support of the Commune. This, combined with the manipulations of the anarchists, weakened the International. Marx and Engels decided to move the headquarters of the International from London to New York. This decision was made at the 1872 Congress of the International. However, the weakened International could not revive and was finally dissolved in 1876.
The dissolution of the First International, however, did not stop the advance of Marxism and the formation of new proletarian parties. The period after the Paris Commune saw a long period of peace, almost 35 years, without any major wars between the major capitalist countries on the European continent. During this period, the labor movement expanded rapidly in most industrialized countries. Socialist parties, basically proletarian in composition, built large and sophisticated structures. Under their leadership, trade unions, daily newspapers, workers' cooperatives, etc. grew. Often operating under legal conditions, they participated quite successfully in bourgeois parliaments. It was many of these parties that came together to form the Second International in 1889. This formation of the Second International gave further impetus to the growth of new proletarian socialist parties in different parts of the world.
Marx and Engels continued to play the role of ideological leaders and practical organizers of this growing working-class movement until the end of their lives. They provided constant theoretical input to strengthen the foundations of the growing movement. Marx concentrated on the further study of political economy and a more in-depth study of capitalism. The first volume of Capital was published in 1867. After that, Marx continued to struggle against severe illness to try to complete the later volumes of this work. However, it remained unfinished until his death on March 14, 1883. Engels, however, completed the monumental task of collecting Marx's notes, editing them, and finally publishing the second and third volumes of Capital. In fact, Engels also did considerable theoretical work after becoming a full-time employee in 1869. Together with Marx and alone, he published various works on philosophy, socialist theory, evolution, the origin of social and political institutions, etc. After Marx's death, he played the central role in leading and building the movement in various countries. Through regular correspondence, he played the role of a center that was otherwise non-existent during this period. This he did until his death on August 5, 1895.
A large part of the work of Marx and Engels was to combat the tendencies of opportunism that began to gain strength as the movement grew. One important trend was that of Lassalleism, which first emerged during the First International but continued in later years. Its originator, Ferdinand Lassalle, was the founder of the first working-class socialist party, founded in Germany in 1863. The main opportunist aspects of Lassalleism were the discouragement of workers' struggles for higher wages and appeals to the state for government aid to set up workers' cooperatives, which Lassalle saw as the main means of reforming society and gradually bringing about socialism. To combat this misunderstanding of wage struggles, Marx wrote Wages, Prices and Profits and presented it to the General Council of the First International in 1865. The struggle against Lassalleism continued in 1875 when Marx wrote the Critique of the Gotha Program. The Gotha Program was the program drawn up at the time of the unification of the Lassallean and Marxist proletarian parties of Germany into one party. At that time, the Marxists were so eager for unity that they made many compromises with the opportunist policies of Lassalleism. In his Critique, Marx made a thorough criticism of the points that had opportunist politics. However, the Critique was only given to a handful of leading Marxist members of the German party. It was not circulated, and very few of its proposals were put into practice. However, in 1891, when a new party program was being drafted, Engels insisted that the Critique be published, despite the protests of some of the leading members of the party. This time the Lassalist aspects did not appear in the new program.
Other opportunist tendencies that emerged were similarly strongly opposed by Marx and Engels while they were alive. After Engels' death, however, one of the greatest attacks on Marxism came from within the proletarian movement itself. Since direct opposition to Marxism was very difficult, this attack came in the form of an attempt to "revise" Marxism. This trend, which later came to be called revisionism, was first initiated by Bernstein, one of the leading members of the German party and also of the Second International. He first presented his views within the German party in 1898-99. Bernstein proposed that, because of changed conditions, it was necessary to change all of Marx's basic formulations. He proposed that it was not necessary to have a violent revolution to bring about socialism, and that reform of capitalist institutions would gradually bring about socialism. As opportunism grew in the working class movement, Bernstein's revisionism soon found adherents in various parties. At the same time, however, many genuine revolutionaries rallied to the support of Marxism. The debate was taken up at the 1904 Congress of the Second International. The Congress strongly condemned revisionism by a vote of 25 to 5, with 12 abstentions. There was also another compromise resolution that did not condemn revisionism as strongly, which was not adopted because of a tie vote of 21 to 21. Thus, in both resolutions there was a very large section that supported or did not want to take a strong stand against revisionism. Although the Congress ultimately condemned revisionism, it was already clear in 1904 that opportunism and revisionism had built up a substantial base at the highest levels of the international working class movement. But opposition to opportunism was also strong in many countries. A particularly strong center was Russia, where the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, had already fought numerous battles against Russian varieties of opportunism.
Chapter 12-Marxism in Russia – Early Life of Lenin
Russia was one of the countries where Marxism and Marxist literature spread very early. In fact, the first translation of Marx's magnum opus, Capital, was in Russian. An edition published in 1872 (just five years after the original German edition) was an immediate success, with good sales and numerous positive reviews in prestigious journals. Its impact was so great that by 1873-74 quotations from Capital were appearing in the propaganda of radical student agitations in major Russian cities. The translation of other Marxist works into Russian was also taken up early on by Russian revolutionaries attracted to Marxism.
One such revolutionary was Vera Zasulich, a woman revolutionary known for her attempt to assassinate the governor of St. Petersburg. She began a correspondence with Marx in 1881, which she later continued with Engels after Marx's death. In 1883 she became part of the first Russian Marxist organization - the Emancipation of Labor group led by George Plekhanov. Plekhanov attended the First Congress of the Second International in 1889, where he met Engels for the first time. After this meeting, Plekhanov continued to maintain close ties with Engels and to take guidance from him.
Plekhanov played the most important role in establishing Marxism in Russia. He translated and popularized many of the works of Marx and Engels. While fighting the anarchist, peasant socialist views of the Narodniks, he also made many theoretical contributions to Marxism. At the time, Russia was under the tyrannical rule of the Tsar, against whom many revolutionaries and revolutionary groups had begun activities. Many of these groups, however, were inclined toward anarchism and terrorism. Plekhanov and the Emancipation of Labor group played the decisive role in converting significant sections to Marxism. However, Lenin, who later joined this group, was the outstanding figure who advanced Marxism and the proletarian movement.
Lenin was the party name of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who was born on April 22, 1870, in the city of Simbirsk, the capital of the Simbirsk province. It was located on the Volga River, the largest river in Russia. Although it was a provincial capital, communication with the outside world was limited during Lenin's youth. There was no railroad, and the main means of transportation were the steamboats that traveled up and down the Volga. However, this stopped during the long winter months when the river froze into ice and trips had to be made on horseback.
Lenin's father was a well-educated man who, through hard work, had risen from the level of a poor peasant to become a teacher, a school inspector, and finally the director of elementary schools in Simbirsk province. In 1874 he also received the noble rank of civil councilor. He died in 1886. Lenin's mother was the daughter of a country doctor. Although she did not go to school, she was educated at home and even learned many foreign languages, which she later taught her children. She died in 1916. They had eight children, two of whom died in infancy and one in her teens. Lenin was the fourth child. All of his brothers and sisters grew up to be revolutionaries.
However, Lenin was most influenced by his older brother, Alexander. Alexander was a brilliant student and gold medalist at the University of St. Petersburg (then the capital of Russia). He was a member of the secret revolutionary study circles of revolutionary youth in St. Petersburg and conducted political propaganda among the workers. Ideologically, he stood between the Narodniks and Marxism. In 1887, Alexander, along with his older sister Anna and other comrades, was arrested for attempting to assassinate the tsar. Anna was later released and banned from St. Petersburg. Alexander, however, who was the leader of the group, was hanged on March 8, 1887, along with four of his comrades. Lenin, who was only 17 at the time, vowed to avenge his brother's martyrdom.
From an early age, Lenin was a model student with a very systematic method of study. Unlike other students, he never produced his assignments at the last minute. Rather, he prepared an early outline and draft, constantly making notes, additions, and changes before producing his final draft. He had a very high level of concentration and would not talk to anyone who disturbed him while he was studying. He was a great admirer of his older brother and from a young age tried to imitate Alexander in everything he did. A month after his brother was hanged, Lenin had to take his final exams, despite severe tension and grief. He received a gold medal as the best student in the school.
Despite the gold medal, Lenin was unable to gain admission to either St. Petersburg University or Moscow University because he was the brother of a known revolutionary. He finally gained admission to the smaller University of Kazan. Within three months, however, he was expelled from the city of Kazan for participating in a demonstration against new regulations limiting the autonomy of universities and the freedom of students. The policeman who escorted him to the city limits tried to convince the young Lenin that he was facing a wall. Lenin replied, however, that the wall was a rotten one that would crumble with a kick. The following year, in 1888, Lenin was allowed to return to Kazan, but was not readmitted to the university. Here he began to attend one of the secret Marxist study circles.
During this time, and later when the family moved to another province of Samara, Lenin spent much of his time reading and studying. In addition to reading the works of Russian revolutionaries, Lenin, at the age of eighteen, began to read many of the works of Marx and Plekhanov. He began to spread his knowledge of Marxism, first to his eldest sister, Anna, and then by organizing small discussion groups among his friends. He also took up swimming, skating, mountain climbing, and hunting.
Meanwhile, his mother repeatedly tried to get him readmitted to the university. However, he was again rejected in Kazan. He was also denied a foreign passport to study abroad. After many applications, Lenin was finally accepted as an external law student at St. Petersburg University in 1890. He could take the exams directly without attending the lectures. Lenin was determined to finish his studies at the same time as his former Kazan classmates. He therefore studied on his own and completed the four-year course within a year. In the exams held in 1891, he received the highest marks in all subjects and was awarded a first class degree. In January 1892, he was admitted to the bar and began practicing at the Samara Regional Court.
However, Lenin was least interested in his legal practice. While taking his exams in St. Petersburg, he had developed Marxist contacts there and received a supply of Marxist literature. In Samara, Lenin spent much of his time lecturing in illegal study circles of workers and others. He also formed the first Marxist study circle in Samara. Samara was a center of the Narodniks, and Lenin concentrated his energies on fighting the Narodnik ideology of the time, which had moved toward liberalism. At the same time, he had great respect for the brave, selfless Narodnik revolutionaries of the 1870s, many of whom lived in Samara after retiring from politics. Lenin was always eager to learn from them about their revolutionary work, their techniques of secrecy, and the behavior of revolutionaries during interrogations and trials. It was in Samara that Lenin began his first writings, which were circulated among the study circles. He also translated the Communist Manifesto into Russian. Lenin's activities and influence began to spread beyond Samara to other provinces of the Volga region.
Having developed well-rounded views, Lenin now wanted to expand the scope of his revolutionary work. In August 1893, he moved to St. Petersburg, an important industrial center with a large proletariat. As a cover, he took a job as an assistant to a senior St. Petersburg lawyer. However, he did very little legal work, concentrating entirely on revolutionary activities. Lenin soon became a leading figure, breathing new life into the many secret study circles in St. Petersburg. He also influenced the Moscow circles. In addition to lecturing in the circles, he was always interested in learning every detail of the workers' lives. In the circles, he convinced a large section of the revolutionaries to move from selective propaganda (propaganda was then understood in a similar way to our political education classes today) in small circles to mass agitation among the broad mass of workers.
It was during this period that he met his future wife, Krupskaya, who had already come into contact with Marxism and was teaching for free at a night school for workers. Many of her workers' students were part of a study circle led by Lenin. Lenin himself was always eager to learn from her deep knowledge of the lives and working conditions of St. Petersburg workers. When Lenin was ill, she would visit him, and gradually their friendship grew into love.
Meanwhile, Lenin continued to expand his contacts in many other Russian cities. In February 1895, at a meeting of the groups in various large cities, it was decided to send Lenin and another delegate from Moscow abroad to make contact with the Emancipation of Labor group. Lenin's first visit to Europe lasted from April to September 1895. During this time he met with Plekhanov and Axelrod of the Emancipation of Labor group, as well as other leaders of German and French working-class organizations. He desperately wanted to meet Engels, but was unable to do so because Engels was on his deathbed.
Upon his return to Russia, he united all the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg into a political organization called the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. The League immediately began agitation, organizing strikes in the city's large factories. It also made plans to publish an illegal workers' magazine. However, the magazine could not be published. The secret police, who had been watching Lenin closely, finally managed to arrest him with the help of an informer. He was picked up in December 1895, along with the manuscript of the first issue of the illegal magazine, and sent to prison.
Even from prison, Lenin managed to maintain close contact with his comrades on the outside. His mother and sister Anna brought him many books, and he sent letters in the books using a code language that he had taught his sister. He also sent letters written in milk, which served as invisible ink that later became visible when heated. He used black bread as inkpots so that he could swallow them whenever a prison guard came near. From prison, Lenin was even able to write pamphlets and lead strikes, which were on the rise throughout Russia in 1896. He became known as the real leader of the League. At the same time, he began intensive study and research for his first major theoretical work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia. While he studied hard from morning to night, Lenin kept himself in shape by doing regular exercise every day before going to bed.
After more than a year in prison, Lenin was released but immediately sentenced to three years in exile in Siberia, which he reached in May 1897. Krupskaya had also been arrested in the meantime. Lenin proposed to her from Siberia. She simply replied, "If I'm to be a wife, so be it." She was allowed to join him in Siberia, where she arrived in May 1898. Lenin spent most of his time in Siberia doing theoretical work. With Krupskaya's help, he translated an English book, Industrial Democracy, into Russian. He also completed his work on the development of capitalism in Russia, which was legally published in 1899. He also began his struggle against the economists-an opportunist trend linked to the Bernsteinian revisionism mentioned in the previous chapter. He also wrote extensively on what should be the program and immediate tasks of the Russian Revolution. When he returned from exile in early 1900, he immediately began to work on these tasks.
Chapter 13-Lenin and the Proletarian Party of a New Type
The most urgent and pressing task upon Lenin's return from exile was to build a revolutionary proletarian party. The Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) had been formally founded in 1898 at a congress attended by 9 delegates. However, the Central Committee elected at the congress was soon arrested. Although the banner of the party had been announced, this congress did not actually succeed in uniting all the groups and building a single party organizational structure. This task remained in 1900.
The plan for building the party had been worked out in detail in exile. The key to this, Lenin believed, was the establishment of an all-Russian political newspaper. Lenin proposed that the only way to politically and organizationally unite the scattered Marxist study circles, groups and organizations was through a political newspaper. This newspaper would be able to politically unite all the various cells throughout Russia by presenting the correct line and immediately fighting all opportunist deviations. At the same time, the most difficult task of secretly distributing an illegal paper would in itself create an underground organization trained to confront the repressive Russian secret police. Lenin wanted to put this plan into action before calling a party congress, because it was also necessary first to defeat the opportunist and revisionist tendencies that had arisen in the movement in recent years.
Lenin's plan was first discussed with and approved by the leagues of struggle in various Russian cities and at a conference of social democrats that he called to discuss the plan. His main collaborators in this plan were Martov and Potresov, members of the St. Petersburg Central Group, who were arrested and sent to Siberia at the same time as he was. The plan was to publish the paper from abroad, as it was too dangerous to publish it in Russia. Lenin also planned to join forces with Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labor group, which already existed abroad. The editorial board was to consist of six members - three from the Emancipation group abroad and three from Russia - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. After all the arrangements were made, the first issue of the newspaper appeared in December 1900.
It was called Iskra, which means spark. Its title page carried the words of the first Russian bourgeois revolutionaries of 1825 - The Spark Will Light a Flame. Iskra was printed in different countries at different times - Germany, England and Switzerland. It was never sent directly to Russia, but took extremely circuitous routes to reach the secret Iskra committees in Russia. Distributors had an extremely difficult job avoiding the secret police, and when Iskra smugglers were caught, they were immediately exiled to Siberia. Iskra was an important tool for educating the working class, with lectures in study circles often consisting of reading articles from the newspaper. Iskra agents used every opportunity to distribute the paper and secret Iskra leaflets. These were distributed not only in factories, but also on the streets, in theaters, in army barracks and through the mail. In the big cities they were distributed in the streets or from the balconies of the theaters. In working-class areas, they were distributed late at night or early in the morning by keeping them in factory yards and near water pumps where they would be seen in the morning. After each such operation, called sowing, a special mark was made on a nearby wall so that a full report of the effects of the night's work could be obtained in the morning. In small towns and villages, the Iskra pamphlets were brought in on market days in farm wagons and pasted on walls. All of this was dangerous work, as discovery meant immediate arrest and the possibility of exile to Siberia. The comrades involved in this work slowly began to form the team of professional revolutionaries on which Lenin planned to build the proletarian party.
As for the structure and composition of the party itself, Lenin believed that it should consist of two parts: a) a close circle of regular cadres of leading party workers, mainly professional revolutionaries, i.e., party workers who were free from any occupation except party work and who possessed the necessary minimum of theoretical knowledge, political experience, organizational practice and the art of confronting and fighting the tsarist police; and b) a broad network of local party organizations and a large number of party members who enjoyed the sympathy and support of hundreds of thousands of working people. As the process of building such a party proceeded with the help of Iskra, Lenin gave direction to the process through his articles and books. Of particular importance were Where to Begin? What to Do? and Letter to a Comrade on Organizational Questions. In these works he laid the ideological and organizational foundations of the proletarian party.
In addition to organizational questions, one of Lenin's major battles was the struggle against the economists who wanted to limit the Social-Democratic Party to the economic struggle of the workers. They had gained strength in Russia during Lenin's exile, and Lenin realized that economism had to be defeated ideologically before the party congress could be convened. He launched a direct attack on them, particularly through his book What Is to Be Done? Lenin showed how the economists' views meant bowing to the spontaneity of the working class movement and neglecting the role of consciousness and the leadership role of the party. He showed how this would lead to the slavery of the working class to capitalism. While mouthing Marxism, the economists wanted to transform the revolutionary party into a party of social reform. Lenin thus showed how the Economists were actually Russian representatives of the opportunist tendency of Bernsteinite revisionism. Lenin's book, which was widely distributed in Russia, succeeded in decisively defeating economism. It thus laid down the principles that later became the ideological foundation of the Bolshevik Party.
The actual birth of the Bolshevik tendency within the RSDLP took place at the Second Party Congress, which was held in July-August 1903. The main debate at the congress centered on what the nature of the party should be and who should be allowed to become members. Lenin, who had in mind a tight, effective, professional revolutionary party, proposed that all party members should work in one of the party organizations. Martov, on the other hand, had as his model the loosely functioning legal parties that had become common in the Second International at that time. He proposed loose criteria for membership that would allow anyone who accepted the party program and supported it financially to become a member. In other words, he was willing to grant membership to any party sympathizer. In the vote on this point, the majority sided with Martov. But later, when some opportunist sections walked out of the congress, the majority sided with Lenin. This was reflected in the elections to the Central Committee and the editorial board of Iskra, which were held in accordance with Lenin's proposals. However, the differences between the two groups remained strong and continued after the congress. From then on, Lenin's supporters, who won the majority of votes in the Congress elections, were called Bolsheviks (which means majority in Russian). Lenin's opponents, who received the minority of votes, were called Mensheviks (which means minority in Russian).
Immediately after the congress, the Mensheviks began manipulations and splitting activities. This created a great deal of confusion. To clear up the confusion, Lenin published his famous book, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, in May 1904. It gave a detailed analysis of the internal party struggle during and after the Congress and, on this basis, explained the main organizational principles of the proletarian party, which later became the organizational basis of the Bolshevik Party. The circulation of this book brought the majority of local party organizations to the side of the Bolsheviks. But the central bodies, the Party Organ and the Central Committee, fell into the hands of the Mensheviks, who were determined to overturn the decisions of the Congress. The Bolsheviks were thus forced to form their own committee and establish their own organ. Both groups also began separate preparations for organizing their own congress and conference. These were held in 1905. The split in the party was complete. But the foundations had been laid for the building of a truly revolutionary party-the proletarian party of a new type.
Chapter 14-Russian Bourgeois Revolution of 1905 : Development of Proletarian Tactics
The period of the split in the RSDLP came at the beginning of a period of major changes in the world situation. The long 35-year period of peace in Europe between the major capitalist countries was broken by a series of wars. The age of imperialism had dawned, and the new imperialist powers began to fight for the conquest and expansion of markets. They engaged in a series of regional wars. An important war among them was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. These regional wars were just a way for the imperialist powers to prepare for the devastating World War I of 1914-18 in order to redivide the world.
The same period was also a time of a new wave of revolutions. However, the main source of these revolutions was no longer Europe, but Asia. The first of these revolutions was the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905, which was followed by the Turkish, Persian and Chinese bourgeois revolutions. The most important of these revolutions, from the point of view of the role of the proletariat and the development of Marxist revolutionary tactics, was the Russian Revolution of 1905. Its starting point was the Russo-Japanese War.
The Russo-Japanese War, which began on February 8, 1904, ended in defeat for the Tsar and a humiliating peace treaty on August 23, 1905. The Bolsheviks took a clear revolutionary stand on the war, against their own government and against any false notions of nationalism or patriotism. Their approach was that the defeat of the tsar would be useful, as it would weaken the tsarist state and strengthen the revolution. In fact, this is what happened. The economic crisis of 1900-03 had already increased the hardships of the working masses. The war added to this suffering. As the war went on and the Russian army suffered defeat after defeat, the people's hatred of the tsar grew. They responded with the Great Revolution of 1905.
The historic movement began with a huge Bolshevik-led strike by oil workers in Baku in December 1904. This was the "signal" for a wave of strikes and revolutionary actions throughout Russia. In particular, the revolutionary storm broke with the indiscriminate shooting and massacre of a demonstration of unarmed workers in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905. The tsar's attempt to crush the workers in blood only provoked an even fiercer reaction from the masses. Throughout 1905, there was a growing wave of militant political strikes by workers, seizures of land and landlords' grain by peasants, and even a revolt by the sailors of the Russian Navy's battleship Potemkin. Twice, in an attempt to deflect the struggle, the tsar offered first a "consultative" and then a "legislative" Duma (Duma is the Russian parliament). The Bolsheviks rejected both Dumas, while the Mensheviks decided to participate. The height of the revolution was between October and December 1905. During this period, for the first time in world history, the proletariat set up Soviets of Workers Deputies - assemblies of delegates from all the mills and factories. These were the embryos of revolutionary power and became the model for the Soviet power established after the socialist revolution of 1917. Beginning with an all-Russian political strike in October, revolutionary struggles increased until the Bolshevik-led armed uprisings in Moscow and various other cities and nationalities throughout the country in December were brutally crushed and the tide of revolution began to recede. However, the revolution was not yet defeated, and the workers and revolutionary peasants were slowly retreating and fighting back. More than a million workers participated in strikes in 1906 and 740,000 in 1907. The peasant movement covered about half of the districts of tsarist Russia in the first half of 1906 and about a fifth in the second half of the year. But the peak of the revolution had passed. On June 3, 1907, the tsar staged a coup, dissolving the Duma he had created and withdrawing even the limited rights he had been forced to grant during the revolution. A period of intense repression began under the tsarist prime minister, Stolypin, known as the Stolypin Reaction. It would last until the next wave of strikes and political struggles in 1912.
Although the 1905 revolution was defeated, it shook the foundations of tsarist rule. It also gave the working class and peasantry a rich political education in the short space of three years. It was also the period in which the Bolsheviks proved in practice the fundamental correctness of their revolutionary understanding of the strategy and tactics of the proletariat. It was in the course of this revolution that the Bolshevik understanding of the friends and enemies of the revolution, and of the forms of struggle and organization, was firmly established.
The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had opposite understandings of all the above questions. The Menshevik understanding was the reformist and legalist understanding that had by then become common in many parties of the Second International. It was based on the understanding that the Russian Revolution, being a bourgeois revolution, had to be led by the liberal bourgeoisie, and therefore the proletariat should not take any step that would frighten the bourgeoisie and drive it into the arms of the tsar. The Bolshevik understanding, on the other hand, was the revolutionary understanding that the proletariat could not rely on the bourgeoisie to lead the revolution and had to take over the leadership of the revolution itself. It was on this revolutionary basis that the Bolsheviks developed their understanding of all the other important strategic and tactical questions of the revolution.
Thus, the Bolsheviks called for the extension of the revolution and the overthrow of the tsar through armed insurrection; the Mensheviks sought to control the revolution within a peaceful framework and to reform and improve the tsarist regime. The Bolsheviks urged the leadership of the working class, the isolation of the liberal bourgeoisie, and a firm alliance with the peasantry; the Mensheviks accepted the alliance and leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie and did not regard the peasantry as a revolutionary class to be allied with. The Bolsheviks were willing to participate in a provisional revolutionary government formed on the basis of a successful popular uprising, and called for a boycott of the Duma offered by the tsar; the Mensheviks were willing to participate in the Duma, and proposed to make it the center of the country's "revolutionary forces."
The Menshevik understanding was not an isolated example of a reformist tendency. In fact, the Menshevik understanding was fully representative of the understanding of the main leading parties of the Second International at the time. Its position was fundamentally supported by the leaders of the International at the time. Thus, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were fighting not only the reformism of the Mensheviks, but also the reformist understanding that then dominated the so-called Marxist parties of the International. Lenin's formulations, however, were a continuation and development of the revolutionary understanding of Marx and Engels. It was a further development of Marxist revolutionary tactics applied to the new conditions brought about by the growth of capitalism into a new stage - imperialism. Lenin elaborated these tactics in his various writings during the course of the revolution and especially in his book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. This book, written in July 1905 after the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had held separate congresses, brought out the essential differences in the strategy and tactics proposed by the two groups.
The basic tactical principles presented by Lenin in this and other works were
- 1) The main tactical principle that runs through all of Lenin's writings is that the proletariat can and must be the leader of the bourgeois democratic revolution. For this to happen, two conditions were necessary. First, it was necessary for the proletariat to have an ally who was interested in a decisive victory over the tsarist empire and who might be willing to accept the leadership of the proletariat. Lenin believed that the peasantry was such an ally. Second, it was necessary that the class fighting the proletariat for the leadership of the revolution and striving to become its sole leader be expelled from the arena of leadership and isolated. Lenin believed that the liberal bourgeoisie was such a class. Thus, the essence of Lenin's main tactical principle of the leadership of the proletariat meant at the same time the policy of alliance with the peasantry and the policy of isolation of the liberal bourgeoisie.
- 2) Regarding the forms of struggle and organization, Lenin believed that the most effective means of overthrowing the tsarist empire and establishing a democratic republic was a victorious armed uprising of the people. To achieve this, Lenin called for mass political strikes and the arming of the workers. He also called for winning the 8-hour day and other immediate demands of the working class in a revolutionary way, defying the authorities and the law. Similarly, he called for the formation of revolutionary peasant committees to bring about changes such as the seizure of land in a revolutionary way. This tactic of defying the authorities paralyzed the tsarist state apparatus and unleashed the initiative of the masses. It led to the formation of revolutionary strike committees in the cities and revolutionary peasant committees in the countryside, which later developed into Soviets of Workers' Deputies and Soviets of Peasants' Deputies.
- 3) Lenin further argued that the revolution should not stop after the victory of the bourgeois revolution and the establishment of a democratic republic. He proposed that it was the duty of the revolutionary party to do everything possible to transform the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. He thus gave concrete form to Marx's concept of uninterrupted revolution.
These tactical principles became the basis of Bolshevik practice in the period that followed. It ultimately led to the victory of the proletariat in the October Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the first workers state.
Chapter 15-World War I:Opportunism v/s Revolutionary Tactics
The rise of imperialism from the turn of the century brought with it the wars of the imperialist powers for the conquest of colonies. An example of this was the Russo-Japanese War mentioned in the previous chapter. This war was fought because both Russia and Japan wanted to control Manchuria in northern China and Korea. Similar wars to capture or regain colonies broke out in various parts of the world. Thus, it became crucial for the international proletarian movement to adopt the correct revolutionary position on the questions of colonialism and war. This, therefore, came before the congresses of the Second International.
By then, however, opportunism had become quite widespread within the parties of the Second International. Many leading sections of the parties in the imperialist countries had in fact begun to take the bourgeoisie's stand on many of the crucial political questions. This was very clearly seen at the 1907 Congress of the Second International, where the questions of colonialism and war were first taken up.
On the question of colonialism, the leading body of the Congress - the Congress Commission - adopted a resolution on colonial policy and submitted it to the general body for approval. This resolution, while criticizing the bourgeoisie's colonial policy, did not completely reject the principle of colonial conquest. In fact, it argued that under a socialist regime it could be in the "interests of civilization" to seize colonies. Such an openly imperialist position on the part of these so-called Marxists was strongly opposed by the revolutionaries in the General Council, and the resolution was ultimately defeated, but only by a narrow margin of 127 votes to 108.
Similar opportunism on the part of the leadership was seen in the case of the stand on the question of war. Bebel, a well-known leader and close follower and associate of Marx and Engels, prepared the resolution. However, the resolution was left vague, with no specific direction or course of action to be taken by the members in the event of war. This, in turn, was strongly opposed by the revolutionaries-especially Rosa Luxemburg of Germany and Lenin. They then proposed an amendment that gave a clear direction to the members of the International to fight to prevent war, to fight to end war quickly if it starts, and to make full use of the economic and political crisis in the event of war to arouse the people and bring about revolution. This was a continuation of the revolutionary proletarian position on war that Marx had already clearly established. Since the opportunists could not openly oppose this understanding, this resolution was adopted by the congress. As the danger of war approached, the 1910 and 1912 Congresses of the International again debated and passed resolutions on the war. They decided that all socialists in parliament should vote against war loans. They also repeated in their resolutions the wording of the amendment proposed by Luxemburg and Lenin in 1907.
But the grip of opportunism on the Second International was so strong that most of the leaders who passed these resolutions had absolutely no intention of standing by them. This was seen when the First World War actually broke out in July-August 1914. The German Social-Democratic Party, which was the undisputed leader of the Second International, led the way. The trade-union bureaucrats, instead of trying to rally the workers against the war and for revolution, immediately entered into a no-strike agreement with the employers. At the party caucus (faction) meeting held before the parliamentary vote on the war loans, the vast majority voted for the war. Only a handful of revolutionaries, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, opposed it. Kautsky, then the main ideological leader of the Second International, abstained. Thus, on August 4, 1914, the German Social Democratic Party threw out all previous congress resolutions and voted unanimously in parliament to support the imperialist war. For the revolutionary proletariat, the Second International ceased to exist from that date. The German party was immediately followed by the majority of socialists in France, Britain, Belgium and other countries. The Second International split into separate social-chauvinist parties that fought each other.
The Bolsheviks were almost the only party to stand by the antiwar resolutions. With the leaders of the Second International falling completely into opportunism, it was left to Lenin and the Bolsheviks to maintain and implement the correct Marxist position on the world war. Lenin immediately produced writings presenting this correct understanding. The Central Committee of the RSDLP (B) issued a call to "turn the imperialist war into a civil war" and to build a new Third International in place of the Second International. Lenin began the process of building the Third International by uniting all the left antiwar forces. Although these forces began to hold conferences in 1915, much confusion remained. Lenin had to take on the task of clearing up this confusion and establishing among these elements the correct revolutionary position on the principles of socialism in relation to the war, as well as the tasks of revolutionary social democrats internationally and in Russia. Lenin did this through his various writings, which were disseminated both in Russia and internationally.
The principles and tasks outlined by Lenin can be presented as follows:
- First, socialists are not pacifists who oppose all war. Socialists aim to establish socialism and communism, which, by eliminating all exploitation, will eliminate the very possibility of war. However, in the struggle to achieve the socialist system, there will always be the possibility of wars that are necessary and of revolutionary importance.
- Second, in deciding the attitude to be adopted toward a particular war, the main question for socialists is: what is the war being waged for, and which classes are orchestrating and directing it? Thus, Lenin pointed out that during the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, Marx had supported the wars waged by the bourgeoisie against feudalism and reactionary kings. Since these wars were aimed at the abolition of feudalism and the establishment or strengthening of capitalism, they were progressive or just wars. Using similar criteria, Lenin points out that in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, socialists will support all such wars that advance the world socialist revolution. According to such an understanding, Lenin gave examples of the types of wars that can be called just or progressive wars: - 1) national wars waged by a colonial or semi-colonial country against its imperialist exploiter, 2) civil wars waged by the proletariat and other oppressed classes against their feudal or capitalist ruling classes, 3) socialist wars for the defense of the socialist homeland.
- Third, Lenin pointed out that on the basis of the above understanding, there was nothing just or progressive about World War I. He compared the imperialist war to a war between a slaveholder who owns 100 slaves and a slaveholder who owns 200 slaves for a more "just" redistribution of slaves. The essential purpose of World War I was the redistribution of colonial slaves. So there could be no progressive, defensive or just war. It was an unjust, reactionary war. The only stand against it could be the call to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Thus, the only use of such a war was to use it to make a revolution. In order to do this, Lenin pointed out that it was advantageous for one's own country to be defeated in the war. Defeat would weaken the ruling class and facilitate the victory of the revolution. Therefore, every socialist revolutionary must work for the defeat of his own government in the war.
- Finally, Lenin pointed out that it was the duty of socialists to participate in the movement for peace. However, while participating in the movement for peace, it is their duty to point out that no real and lasting peace is possible without a revolutionary movement. In fact, those who want a just and democratic peace must stand for civil war against the governments and the bourgeoisie.
Although these principles and tactics were propagated by all the parties of the Second International, only the Bolsheviks put them into practice. It was this approach to the war that helped them to take advantage of the revolutionary crisis situation created by the war and, within three years, achieve the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917.
Chapter 16-Lenin’s Analysis of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
Marx's analysis of the laws of movement of capitalism belongs to the stage of free competitive capitalism, where a large number of capitalist producers competed in the market. He analyzed to some extent the process of centralization of capital. However, he did not live long enough to see the beginning of a new stage of capitalism - the stage of imperialism. This happened at the beginning of the 20th century and it was left to Lenin to analyze this process. In 1897-98, Lenin made an initial analysis of the development of the capitalist world market, but did not fully analyze the issue of imperialism. However, with the outbreak of the First World War, which was a war caused by imperialism, a full analysis of imperialism became necessary in order to understand the economic basis of the war and its political consequences for the proletariat.
This question became even more urgent in 1915 when the opportunist and revisionist leader of the Second International, Karl Kautsky, wrote a book on imperialism in which he argued that the world economic system was moving toward "ultra-imperialism" where there would be stability and no risk of war. His argument was similar to some people who analyse globalization today and argue that because of the growth of multinational groups and corporations and the spread of their capital to all countries, these multinationals will be opposed to war and therefore there is no danger of a world war. This theory, which was presented during the First World War, gave a false picture of imperialism. Since such a false theory was presented by Kautsky, who was then recognized as the main theoretician of Marxism, it was absolutely necessary to oppose this theory and present the correct understanding. It was necessary to clear up the confusion created by the Second Internationalists and to present the correct analysis and tactics to the international working class movement. To do this, Lenin undertook extensive research in 1916 and produced his famous work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In addition to this major work, he also wrote many other articles linking this basic economic analysis to the tactics of the proletariat.
First and foremost, Lenin sought to clear up the confusion created by Kautsky and other opportunists as to "what is imperialism? To answer this question, he pointed out that imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is (1) monopoly capitalism; (2) parasitic or decaying capitalism; (3) moribund capitalism or capitalism on its deathbed. The replacement of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the essence of imperialism.
Monopoly capitalism manifests itself in five main forms: (1) Cartels, Syndicates and Trusts - The concentration of production has reached a level that gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists who unite to crush other competitors. They fix prices, allocate production among themselves, and make other arrangements and agreements to prevent others from entering and succeeding in the market. They play a decisive role in economic life. (2) The monopolistic position of the big banks and the creation of finance capital through the merger of monopoly industrial capital and bank capital - During Lenin's time this had already reached the level where three, four or five giant banks manipulated the whole economic life in the main industrialized countries. (3) The export of capital, which is gaining special importance - This feature, which is different from the export of goods under non-monopoly capitalism, is closely connected with the economic and political division of the world. (4) The economic division of the world by the international cartels - in Lenin's time there were already more than a hundred such international cartels, which dominated the entire world market and divided it among themselves in a "friendly" way. Of course, this "friendliness" would only be temporary and would last until there was a war to redivide the markets. (5) The territorial (political) division of the world (colonies) among the major capitalist powers - This process of colonization of all the backward countries of the world was basically completed at the time of the dawn of imperialism. Any further colonies could only be obtained through the redivision of the world, through war.
On the basis of the above characteristics, Lenin defines imperialism as follows: "Imperialism is capitalism in the stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has been established; in which the export of capital has acquired a pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all the territories of the globe among the greatest capitalist powers has been completed".
The fact that imperialism is parasitic or decaying capitalism manifests itself first of all in the tendency to decay that is characteristic of every monopoly under the system of private ownership of the means of production. Compared to the rapid expansion under free competition, there is a tendency for production as a whole to decline under monopoly. Technological progress is discouraged, and new inventions and patents are deliberately suppressed. Second, the decay of capitalism is manifested in the creation of a huge class of rentiers, capitalists who live without working but only on the basis of the interest or dividends they earn on their investments. Thirdly, the export of capital is parasitism on a high level, since it means the open exploitation of the cheap labor of the backward countries. Fourth, finance capital seeks domination, not freedom. Political reaction all along the line is a characteristic feature of imperialism. Corruption, bribery on a large scale and all kinds of fraud become common. Fifth, the exploitation of the oppressed nations and especially the exploitation of the colonies by a handful of "great" powers increasingly turns the imperialist world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the backward nations. It is reaching the stage where a privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries is also living partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the colonies.
Imperialism is moribund capitalism because it is capitalism in transition to socialism. Monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism, the beginning of its transition to socialism. The enormous socialization of labour by imperialism leads to the same result. The basic contradiction of capitalism between the social character of production and the private character of property is only aggravated under imperialism. Thus Lenin says: "Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat."
Chapter 17-The Great October Socialist Revolution
As noted in Chapter 14, the period following the defeat of the 1905 Revolution was one of extreme repression and reaction under the leadership of the tsarist prime minister, Stolypin. The working class was made the main target of attack. Wages were cut by 10 to 15 percent and the working day was increased to 10 to 12 hours. Blacklists of labor activists were drawn up and they were denied jobs. Fines were imposed on workers. Any attempt to organize was met with brutal attacks by the police and goondas organized by the Tsar's agents. In such a situation, many intellectuals and petty bourgeois elements began to retreat, and some even joined the camp of the enemy.
To face this new situation, the Bolsheviks switched from offensive tactics (such as the general strike and armed uprising used during the period of the 1905 Revolution) to defensive tactics. Defensive tactics meant the tactics of gathering forces, the tactics of withdrawing the cadres underground and continuing the work of the party from underground, the tactics of combining illegal work with work in the legal organizations of the working class. The open revolutionary struggle against the tsarist empire was replaced by roundabout methods of struggle.
The surviving legal organizations served as a cover for the party's underground organizations and as a means of maintaining links with the masses. To maintain their links with the masses, the Bolsheviks used the trade unions and other legally existing people's organizations, such as sick funds, workers' cooperatives, clubs, educational societies and even parliament. The Bolsheviks used the platform of the State Duma to expose the policies of the tsarist government, to expose the liberal parties, and to win the support of the peasants for the proletariat. The preservation of the illegal party organization enabled the party to pursue a correct line and to gather forces in preparation for a new upsurge in the tide of revolution.
In implementing this tactic, the Bolsheviks had to struggle against two deviations within the movement-the liquidators and the otzovists (recallists). The Liquidators, who were Mensheviks, wanted to shut down the illegal party structure and set up a legal "workers" party with the consent of the government. The Recallists, who were Bolsheviks, wanted to recall all Bolshevik members of the Duma and also withdraw from the trade unions and all other legal forms of organization. They wanted only the illegal form of organization. The result of both tactics would have been to prevent the party from gathering the forces for a new advance of the revolution. Rejecting both deviations, the Bolsheviks used the correct tactic of combining legal and illegal methods and were able to gain a strong presence in many workers' organizations and also win over a number of Menshevik workers' organizations. This strengthened the party and prepared it for the next upsurge in the revolutionary movement, which began in 1912.
The Bolsheviks held a separate party conference in January 1912 and constituted themselves as a separate party-the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) [RSDLP (B)]. At this conference itself, they assessed the rise of the revolutionary movement, which was evident from the increase in the number of strikers in 1911. At this conference and at later meetings of the Central Committee, new tactics were decided according to the new situation. These included broadening and intensifying the workers' struggles.
An important aspect of the tactics of this period was the launch of the daily newspaper Pravda (Truth), which helped to strengthen the Bolshevik organizations and spread their influence among the masses. Previously, the Bolsheviks had a weekly paper for advanced workers. Pravda, however, was a daily mass political newspaper designed to reach the broadest sections of workers. It was launched on May 5, 1912, and lasted for two and a half years. During this time it faced numerous problems and heavy fines from the government censors. It was suppressed eight times, but reappeared each time under a slightly different name. Its average circulation was 40,000 copies. Pravda was supported by a large number of advanced workers - 5600 workers' groups rallied around the Bolshevik press. Through Pravda, the Bolshevik influence spread not only among the workers, but also among the peasants. In fact, during the period of the rise of the revolutionary movement (1912-14), the solid foundation for a mass Bolshevik party was laid. As Stalin said, "The Pravda of 1912 was the laying of the foundation for the victory of Bolshevism in 1917.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, the revolutionary situation became even more ripe. The Bolsheviks conducted extensive propaganda among the workers against the war and for the overthrow of the tsarist empire. Units and cells were also formed in the army and navy, at the front and in the rear, and leaflets were distributed calling for a fight against the war. At the front, after the intensive agitation of the Party for friendship and fraternity between the soldiers of the warring armies, there were more and more cases of refusal of army units to take the offensive in 1915 and 1916. The bourgeoisie and landlords made fortunes from the war, but the workers and peasants suffered increasing hardship. Millions had died directly from wounds or from epidemics caused by war conditions. The situation became particularly acute in January and February 1917. Hatred and anger against the tsarist government spread.
Even the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie was suspicious of the tsar, whose advisers were working for a separate peace with Germany. They too, with the backing of the British and French governments, planned to replace the tsar in a palace coup. But the people acted first.
From January 1917, a powerful revolutionary strike movement began in Moscow, Petrograd, Baku and other industrial centers. The Bolsheviks organized huge street demonstrations in favor of a general strike. As the strike movement gained momentum, on March 8, International Women's Day, the working women of Petrograd were called out by the Bolsheviks to demonstrate against hunger, war and tsarism. The workers supported the working women with strikes, and by March 11 the strikes and demonstrations had taken on the character of an armed uprising. On March 11, the Bureau of the Central Committee called for the continuation of the armed uprising to overthrow the tsar and establish a provisional revolutionary government. On March 12, 60,000 soldiers crossed over to the side of the revolution, fought the police and helped the workers overthrow the tsar. As the news spread, workers and soldiers everywhere began to depose the tsarist officials. The February bourgeois-democratic revolution had won. (It is called the February Revolution because the Russian calendar at that time was 13 days behind the calendar in other parts of the world, and the date of the revolution's victory was February 27, according to the Russian calendar).
As soon as the tsarist empire was overthrown, the Bolsheviks set up Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. But while the Bolsheviks were directly leading the struggle of the masses in the streets, the compromising parties, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries (a petty-bourgeois party that was a continuation of the earlier Narodniks), seized the seats in the soviets and built up a majority there. Thus they headed the soviets in Petrograd, Moscow and a number of other cities. Meanwhile, the liberal bourgeois members of the Duma made a backdoor deal with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and formed a Provisional Government. The result was the formation of two bodies representing two dictatorships: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Provisional Government, and the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, represented by the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. Lenin called this dual power.
Immediately after the bourgeois revolution, while still in Switzerland, Lenin wrote his famous Letters from Afar, in which he analyzed this dual power. He showed how the soviets were the embryo of the workers government, which had to lead and win the victory in the second stage of the revolution-the socialist revolution. Its allies would be the broad semi-proletarian and small peasant masses and the proletariat of all countries.
On April 16, 1917, Lenin arrived in Petrograd after a long exile, and the next day he presented his famous April Theses to a meeting of the Bolsheviks. He called for opposition to the Provisional Government, for a Bolshevik majority in the soviets, and for the transfer of state power to the soviets. He presented the program for securing peace, land and bread. Finally, he called for a new party congress with a new party name, the Communist Party, and for the building of a new International, the Third International. The Mensheviks immediately attacked Lenin's Theses and warned that "the revolution is in danger. Within three weeks, however, the first openly held All-Russia Conference (Seventh Conference) of the Bolshevik Party adopted Lenin's report based on the same Theses. It adopted the slogan "All Power to the Soviets! It also approved a very important resolution, introduced by Stalin, declaring the right of nations to self-determination, including secession.
In the months that followed, the Bolsheviks worked energetically on the conference line, convincing the masses of workers, soldiers and peasants of the correctness of their position. The Sixth Party Congress was also held in August 1917, after a gap of ten years. Because of the danger of attack by the Provisional Government, the Congress had to be held in secret in Petrograd, without Lenin's presence. Stalin presented the main political reports, which called for preparation for armed insurrection. The congress also adopted a new party constitution, which stipulated that all party organizations would be based on the principles of democratic centralism. It also admitted the group led by Trotsky to the party.
Soon after the congress, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, General Kornilov, organized a revolt of the army to crush the Bolsheviks and Soviets. However, the soldiers of many divisions were convinced by the Bolsheviks to disobey orders and the revolt failed. After the failure of this uprising, the masses realized that the Bolsheviks and Soviets were the only guarantee for achieving peace, land and bread, which were their urgent demands. There was a rapid bolshevization of the soviets, the tide of revolution was rising, and the party began to prepare for armed insurrection.
During this period, Lenin was forced to remain in Finland, away from the main battlefield, for security reasons. It was during this period that he completed his book The State and Revolution, which defended and developed the teachings of Marx and Engels on the question of the state. Lenin's work, which particularly exposed the distortions of opportunists like Kautsky on this question, was then of enormous theoretical and practical importance on the international level. This was because, as Lenin himself clearly saw at the time, the Russian February bourgeois revolution was a link in a chain of socialist proletarian revolutions that had been triggered by the First World War. Because of the revolutionary situation created by the war, it was now a question of immediate practical importance, and it was necessary to educate the international proletarian movement and the masses to a correct understanding of it.
With the revolutionary tide rising, Lenin landed again in Petrograd on October 20, 1917. Within three days of his arrival, a historic Central Committee meeting decided to launch the armed insurrection within a few days. Representatives were immediately sent to all parts of the country, especially to the army units. On November 6, 1917, the eve of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Provisional Government, having learned of the plan for the uprising, launched an attack on the Bolsheviks. The Red Guards and revolutionary units of the army fought back, and by November 7, 1917, state power had passed into the hands of the soviets.
The very next day, the Congress of Soviets passed the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. It formed the first Soviet government-the Council of People's Commissars-of which Lenin was elected the first chairman. The Great October Socialist Revolution had established the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But it was a long struggle before workers' power was consolidated. First, the war with Germany had to be ended. This was finally done with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in February 1918. But even this did not bring lasting peace. As soon as World War I ended, the victorious imperialist powers of Great Britain, France, Japan and America began to intervene directly and indirectly, helping the old ruling classes of Russia to wage a civil war against the Soviet state. This civil war lasted until the end of 1920. The Soviet state emerged victorious, but at the end of the war the economy was in ruins.
Chapter 18-The Formation of the Third International
The end of the First World War was a period of revolutionary upsurge throughout the world. The success of the October Revolution had repercussions in many countries, even where Marxism had little or no influence. Europe, the main battleground of the war, was in the deepest revolutionary crisis. The war had led to the overthrow of four emperors and the collapse of their four great empires-the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg), and Turkish (Ottoman). The state structures were in shambles and the masses were in the mood for revolt. Mass protests began even before the end of the war. In January 1918, a wave of mass political strikes and anti-war demonstrations swept across Central Europe. This was followed by revolts in the armed forces of various countries. There was also a national upsurge that led to the formation of many new states as the old empires collapsed.
In Germany and Hungary, however, the crisis led to revolution. In November 1918, German sailors mutinied, and this immediately spread a wave of revolt throughout Germany that led to the overthrow of the Kaiser and the establishment of a republic under the leadership of the Social Democratic Party. Soviets were immediately formed in Berlin and other cities. However, these were crushed in January 1919 after two weeks of street fighting against the reactionary military forces reorganized by the Social Democratic government. Later, in April 1919, a Soviet Republic was formed in Bavaria (a province of Germany). But it too was crushed.
In Hungary, the Communists led a coalition with the Social Democrats and took control of the government in March 1919. But they were driven out within five months by military pressure from the Allied governments. Workers' struggles continued for at least another four years, but both revolutions ultimately failed.
Nevertheless, the rising tide of revolution and the success of the revolution in Russia had led to the formation of communist parties in many countries. There was now a real basis for a union of the communist parties, for the formation of the Third, Communist International. As noted above, Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves had issued the call for the formation of the Third International in 1914. Now they took the initiative to actually found it.
In January 1919, Lenin addressed an open letter to the workers of Europe and America, urging them to form the Third International. Soon after, invitations to an international congress were sent out. In March 1919, the First Congress of the Communist Parties of the various countries, held in Moscow, founded the Communist International. The Congress established an Executive Committee of the Third, Communist International.
Just one month after the First Congress, Lenin explained the historical significance of the Third International as follows: "The First International laid the foundation of the proletarian, international struggle for socialism. The Second International marked a period in which the ground was prepared for the broad, mass spread of the movement in a number of countries. The Third International has gathered the fruits of the work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross, and begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat". He thus pointed out that the most significant aspect of the Third International was that it now represented the proletariat, which had succeeded in seizing state power and had now begun to build socialism.
After intensive preparation, the Second Congress of the Communist International, held in July 1920, was a great success with broad representation from 41 countries. Lenin made important contributions to Marxist theory in connection with this Congress. He prepared what he intended to be a handbook of Communist Party strategy and tactics, which was distributed to the delegates at the Congress. It was called "Left" Communism, an Infantile Disorder, and focused on correcting the "left" errors then prevalent in many parties that had joined the International. Lenin also prepared the Theses on the National and Colonial Question, which was adopted at the Congress. This was a landmark document that laid the Marxist-Leninist theoretical foundations for understanding and leading the national liberation struggles then gathering momentum in all the colonies and semi-colonies. Lenin also outlined the basic tasks of the Communist International and the theses on the agrarian question adopted at the Congress. The Congress also adopted Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution, on the Trade Union Movement, on Communist Parties and Parliament, and on the Statutes and Conditions of Admission of the Communist International. In its Statutes, the Comintern (Communist International) clearly declared that it "breaks once and for all with the traditions of the Second International, for which there existed only white-skinned people.
In addition to theoretical formulations, the International, through its Executive Committee, began to play a prominent role in guiding the parties and movements in the various member countries. In particular, it tried to make the most of the postwar revolutionary situation in the capitalist countries, which lasted until 1923. However, mainly due to the betrayal of the social-democrats in the Second International, as well as the ideological and organizational weaknesses of the communist parties in these countries, the revolution could not be successfully completed in any other capitalist country.
However, the Comintern played an important role in founding, developing and guiding the newly formed communist parties in the colonies and semi-colonies. During the twenties, as the national liberation movements in these countries advanced rapidly, the Comintern sought to guide and train the Communist Parties to provide leadership to these movements. For the first time, Marxism was building a base among the people of the backward countries of the world.
Chapter 19-The National and Colonial Question
The first national movements arose in Western Europe.
These national movements were led mainly by the bourgeoisie in their struggle against feudalism. The main aim of these national movements was to unite a large territory under the rule of numerous feudal lords into one nation and state. This was necessary for the bourgeoisie to have a single large market and to avoid the harassment and domination of the various feudal lords. Thus, the bourgeois revolution against feudalism and the national movement to establish a single nation-state were often combined into one. Thus, the national movement was not usually a struggle for independence from the oppression of another nation. In all of Western Europe, the only place where a national movement for independence took place was when Ireland fought to free itself from Great Britain.
Marx and Engels lived in a period when the later national liberation struggles had not yet broken out on a large scale. They therefore did not devote much attention to developing a Marxist theory of the national question. Marx did, however, formulate the basic position on the Irish question, calling on the English proletariat to support the national struggle of the Irish people and oppose their national oppression.
The next phase of nationality movements came in Eastern Europe with the spread of capitalism and the weakening of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Nationality movements and organizations began to grow throughout Eastern Europe, including Russia. It was necessary for the international proletarian movement and the RSDLP to have a correct understanding and stand on this question. It was during this period that Stalin, in 1913, gave the first systematic Marxist account of the national question. Stalin himself was a Georgian, a member of an oppressed nationality in Russia, where a national movement was rapidly developing. In Georgia, therefore, it was doubly necessary to present the correct Marxist understanding and take the correct political stand. This is what Stalin tried to do in his seminal work, Marxism and the National Question.
In his work, Stalin began by defining what a nation is. He defined a nation as "a historically developed, stable community of people based on the common possession of four main attributes, namely: a common language, a common territory, a common economic life, and a common psychological make-up manifested in common specific features of national culture. Stalin rejected the concept of a nation based solely on religion or culture, as the Jews were. He insisted that a community must have all of the above characteristics to be called a nation. Stalin proposed that all such nations should have the right to self-determination. However, this right of self-determination could not be limited to autonomy or to joining a federation, as some other parties of the time proposed. The right of self-determination had to include the right of secession, i.e. to separate and exist as an independent state. However, Stalin pointed out that the exercise of this right depended on the concrete historical circumstances at a given time. It was up to the revolutionaries to try to influence the nation's decision on self-determination. The revolutionary party's decision would be based on whether autonomy, federation, secession or some other course would be in the best interests of the toiling masses, especially the proletariat.
Although Stalin's presentation clarified many issues, it was still incomplete because it did not link the national question to imperialism and the colonial question. This was done only after Lenin's analysis of imperialism in 1916. On the basis of an analysis of imperialism, Lenin linked the question of the self-determination of nations to the national liberation struggles being waged in the colonial countries. In this way, it came to encompass the vast majority of the world's peoples. It did not remain an internal problem of a few countries that had oppressed nationalities within their borders. The national question became a world problem, a question of liberating the oppressed peoples of all dependent countries and colonies from the burden of imperialism.
Thus, when Lenin presented his thesis on the socialist revolution and the right of nations to self-determination in 1916, he included all the countries of the world in his analysis. He divided the countries of the world into three main types:
First, the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States of America. These are oppressor nations that oppress other nations in the colonies and at home. The task of the proletariat of these ruling nations is to oppose national oppression and support the national struggle of the peoples oppressed by their imperialist ruling classes.
Second: Eastern Europe and especially Russia. The task of the proletariat in these countries is to defend the right of nations to self-determination. In this context, the most difficult but most important task is to unite the class struggle of the workers in the oppressor nations with the class struggle of the workers in the oppressed nations.
Thirdly, the semi-colonial countries, such as China, Persia, Turkey and all the colonies, which at that time had a total population of one billion. With regard to these colonial countries, Lenin held that socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation, but must also resolutely support the movement for national liberation in these countries and support the rebellion and revolutionary war against the imperialist powers that oppressed them.
This was the first time within the international socialist movement that such a clear stand was taken on the national and colonial questions. Naturally, there was some debate and confusion. One such argument was that support for self-determination and national liberation went against proletarian internationalism. It was argued that socialism aimed at the unification of all nations. Lenin agreed that the goal of socialism was to abolish the division of humanity into small states, to bring nations closer together, and even to merge them. However, he believed that it would be impossible to achieve this through the forced merger of nations. The unification of nations could be achieved only through the transitional period of the complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their freedom to secede. While presenting the Party Program in 1917, Lenin said: "We want free unification, therefore we must recognize the right to secede. Without the freedom to secede, unification cannot be called free. This was the proletariat's democratic approach to the national question, opposed to the bourgeoisie's policy of national oppression and annexation.
Chapter 20-Early Life and Revolutionary Contributions of Stalin upto the 1917 Revolution
In the early years after the October Revolution, Lenin directly directed all affairs of the state and the party. In August 1918, a female member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party attempted to assassinate him, leaving two bullets in his body. Lenin was weakened by this attempt, but continued his rigorous work schedule, which left him with only three to four hours of sleep. This overwork soon began to have a serious effect on his health, especially his brain. Beginning in late 1921, he began to experience severe headaches and bouts of vertigo (a disease that causes dizziness), which interfered with his work. In May 1922, he suffered a paralytic stroke that affected his right hand and leg and his ability to speak. From that time until his death, despite Lenin's many efforts to recover and return to work, he could not play an effective role. Shortly before Lenin's stroke, in April 1922, the Central Committee had elected Stalin as General Secretary. It was Stalin who took over the leadership of the party during Lenin's illness and after his death on January 21, 1924.
Stalin (meaning "man of steel") was the most popular of the many party names of Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, who was born on December 21, 1879, in Gori, a small town in Georgia, then an oppressed nationality within the Russian Empire (today Georgia is an independent country). His parents were poor and illiterate, descendants of serfs. His father, a few years after being freed from slavery by his landlord, had moved in 1875 from his village near Tbilisi, the capital of the Caucasus (a backward region of the Russian Empire where Georgia and several other oppressed nationalities lived). He set up a small cobbler's shop in Gori, which was the equivalent of a county seat. However, he was unable to make much money and left his wife and child in Gori to take a job in a shoe factory in Tiflis, where he died in 1890.
Since Stalin's father did not contribute much to the household, it was his mother, Yekaterina, who took care of him and raised him. She worked long hours as a laundress and her earnings paid for all the household expenses. She had three children before Stalin, all of whom died shortly after birth. As Stalin was her only surviving son, she made every effort to give him a good education. Despite her poverty, she did not send her son to work, as would have been normal. She sent Stalin to the local parochial school at the age of nine. She herself worked hard and learned to read and write in her old age. Catherine was thus a remarkable example of the courage and determination of the working masses.
Stalin personally experienced poverty from his earliest childhood. His home consisted of two extremely small rooms that served as a store, workshop, and home. Although Stalin was strong and hardy, at the age of six or seven he contracted smallpox, which left lifelong scars on his face. He also had a blood infection that left him near death and permanently disabled his left arm.
During his five years at the Gori School, Stalin was noted for his intelligence and exceptional memory. It was here that Stalin first came into contact with rationalist ideas and turned against religion. He began to write poetry and was influenced by Georgian literature and poetry, which had strong nationalist tendencies. It was during these years that Stalin was filled with strong feelings of fighting against social injustice and the oppression of his people.
Due to his poverty, it would have been impossible for Stalin to pursue higher education. However, he was recommended as the "best student" for a scholarship by the school principal and the local priest. This enabled him to continue his studies in October 1894 at the highest institution of higher learning in the Caucasus. This was the Theological Seminary (a college for training Christian priests) in Tiflis. Stalin's five years at the Tiflis Seminary were crucial formative years in his becoming a Marxist.
Georgia was in a constant state of unrest during Stalin's youth. One source of unrest was the rebellious mood of the peasantry, where the abolition of serfdom had been delayed even after it had been abolished in Russia. The other source was the constant influx of revolutionary ideas from Russia. The tsarist government had a long history of deporting many of its rebels and bourgeois revolutionaries to the Caucasus. Later, these deportees included Marxist workers revolutionaries such as Kalinin, the future president of the Soviet Union, and Alliluyev, the Bolshevik organizer and later Stalin's father-in-law.
The Tbilisi seminary was one such center of unrest. It was the main breeding ground of the local intelligentsia and also the main center of opposition to the tsar. In 1893, just a year before Stalin entered the seminary, there was a strike that led to the dismissal of 87 students. The main leaders of the strike later became prominent Marxists and revolutionaries. One of the leaders, Ketskhoveli, was also from Stalin's Gori school, just three years his senior. He soon became Stalin's first political mentor.
Stalin himself, in his first year, immersed himself in reading all kinds of radical literature. He had to do this in secret, as most books of a non-religious and political nature were strictly forbidden in the seminary. His poetry, radical and political in nature, was published for the first time under a different name in a leading Georgian magazine. This was also the time when Stalin, at the young age of fifteen, came into contact with secret Marxist study circles. Soon Stalin came under the scrutiny of the seminary authorities and was even sent to the punishment cell for reading forbidden literature. Around this time, he joined a secret discussion group within the seminary itself. This intensified his activities, which brought him more often into conflict with the seminary authorities.
At the age of eighteen, in August 1898, he joined Messame Dassy (meaning The Third Group), the first group of socialists in Georgia, whose leaders later became prominent Mensheviks. Stalin would later say, "I became a Marxist because of my social position (my father was a worker in a shoe factory, and my mother was also a working woman), but also … because of the harsh intolerance and Jesuit discipline that so mercilessly crushed me in the seminary…. The atmosphere in which I lived was saturated with hatred against the Tsarist oppression". Outside the seminary, in the city of Tbilisi, the workers were on the move during this period. These years saw the first strikes in the Caucasus. As soon as Stalin joined Messame Dassy, he was given the task of leading some workers' study circles. He did this by holding secret meetings in the workers' bastis during the short free time he had at the seminary. Meanwhile, the seminary authorities were looking for a way to deal with Stalin. Finally, in May 1899, he was expelled from the seminary for failing to appear for his exams.
Expulsion from the seminary did not change Stalin's revolutionary activities much. After a short stay with his mother in Gori, he was back in Tbilisi, organizing and educating while staying among the workers. In December 1899, he took a job as a clerk at the Tbilisi Geophysical Observatory. This job paid very little, took very little time, and provided an ideal cover from the tsarist secret police.
Under this cover, Stalin continued to expand his activities. The following year, in 1900, he organized and spoke at the first May Day celebration in the Caucasus. Because of tsarist repression, this 500-strong meeting had to be held not in the city but in the mountains above Tiflis. The meeting was an inspiring event that led to strikes in the factories and railways in the following months. Stalin was one of the main organizers. The following year it was decided to hold the May Day demonstration openly in the middle of Tbilisi, but the main leaders were arrested in March 1901. Stalin's room was also searched, but he managed to escape. From that day until the success of the revolution in 1917, Stalin led the life of an underground professional revolutionary. His first task was to take over the leadership of the organization and organize the May Day event despite the loss of the main leaders. He did this successfully, and despite arrests and violent attacks by the police, a historic demonstration of 2000 people took place.
These early years of Stalin in the socialist organization were also days of intense debate on economism and other issues. Within the Georgian organization, Stalin always opposed the opportunists and stood with the left wing. When Iskra appeared, Stalin's group was the first to become its enthusiastic supporters, distributing it in Tbilisi. Soon after, in September 1901, they started an illegal newspaper in the Georgian language called Brdzola (meaning The Struggle). Stalin, who was one of its main writers, wrote many articles that basically upheld the Iskra line. Of particular importance was a detailed article The Russian Social-Democratic Party and Its Immediate Tasks, which appeared in December 1901.
In November 1901, Stalin was elected to the Tiflis Social-Democratic Committee, which was then the effective governing body for the entire Caucasus. He was immediately sent to Batum, a small town of 25,000 that was a new center of the oil industry, connected by an oil pipeline to the larger and older oil city of Baku. There, under cover of a New Year's celebration, he soon formed a city committee. He also set up a secret press in the single room where he lived. Many leaflets were published, which soon led to workers' struggles. One such struggle led to a police shooting in which fifteen workers were killed. All these activities were carried out despite the opposition of the local Socialists, who later became Mensheviks. Finally, in April 1902, after only four and a half months in Batum, Stalin was arrested at a secret meeting of the Batum Committee. The secret press, however, remained undiscovered. It was during the Batum period that Stalin adopted one of his many party names by which he remained famous for the many years he worked in the Caucasus. He was called Koba, which means indomitable or unconquerable in Turkish, and was the name of the folk hero of one of Stalin's favorite poems from his youth.
Stalin spent a year and a half in various prisons. In prison he maintained strict discipline, got up early, worked hard, read a lot, and was one of the main debaters in the prison commune. He was also known as a patient, sensitive, and helpful comrade. In November 1903, after a period of imprisonment during which no charges could be brought against him, he was exiled to Eastern Siberia. While in prison, in March 1903, he was elected to the executive committee of the newly formed All-Caucasian Federation of Social-Democratic Groups. Since it is very rare for an imprisoned comrade to be elected to a committee, this action gives an idea of Stalin's importance in the Caucasian organization. Stalin's exile to Siberia coincided with the buildup to the Russo-Japanese war. Stalin and his comrades took advantage of the confusion to escape almost immediately upon arrival in Siberia. By the end of January 1904, he was back in Tiflis.
As soon as he returned, Stalin was called upon to take a stand on the issues that had led to the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The majority of the socialists in the Caucasus were Mensheviks, and even many of the Bolsheviks were in favor of compromise. Despite this large majority for the Mensheviks, Stalin soon took a stand with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He began writing in the Georgian party press in strong support of the Bolshevik line. In his first article, he wrote that the party was "the militant group of leaders" and "must be a coherent centralized organization." His strong political position brought him into contact with Lenin, who requested copies of Stalin's articles from abroad. Along with his ideological struggle against the Mensheviks, Stalin was also deeply involved in the revolutionary struggles that were building up throughout the country as part of the 1905 Revolution. Stalin's center was the Caucasus.
In addition to participating in the organization of workers' strikes, Stalin immediately began to put into practice the Bolshevik call to prepare for armed insurrection. He became the main organizer, inspirer and leader of the military organization in the Caucasus. An efficient and secret laboratory for explosives was also set up. In the course of the struggle, a number of combat units were formed. They took part in numerous uprisings, attacks on the gangs of the ruling class and maintained contact with the peasant guerrillas. In the later period of the revolution's decline, when the party faced a serious shortage of funds, some of the best fighting squads were used for large and daring money actions. Stalin played the principal role in building and directing this very secret technical branch of the Party. He also wrote articles during this period explaining the Marxist approach to insurrection.
In December 1905, Stalin attended his first all-Russian conference of the Bolsheviks, where it was decided to build unity with the Mensheviks. Here he met Lenin for the first time. He also attended the April 1906 Unity Congress, where he was the only Bolshevik out of eleven delegates from the Caucasus. The rest were all Mensheviks. He was also the only Bolshevik from the Caucasus to attend the 1907 Congress. At both congresses, resolutions led by the Mensheviks and Trotsky calling for a ban on armed action and the confiscation of money were among the points of discussion. However, the Caucasus continued to be the main center of such actions, with an estimated 1150 such actions taking place there between 1905 and 1908.
In late 1907, Stalin was elected to the Baku Committee. In this oil town of 50,000 workers, workers of different nationalities and religions were facing severe exploitation. Stalin soon united the workers and developed the only center of struggle during the dark period of the Stolypin reaction. Adopting a new identity, he set up a residence and a clandestine printing press in the Muslim part of the city. It was during this period that Stalin began to write in Russian for the first time. In 1908, Stalin was arrested, but continued to write articles and direct party activities from prison. He was exiled again in 1909, but escaped again within four months.
Stalin returned via St. Petersburg and found the party headquarters in the capital in a disorganized state. Upon his return to Baku, he wrote strongly about the state of affairs and called for an All-Russian newspaper to be published from Russia. Later he also demanded that the practical leadership center be transferred to Russia. After many months of intensive work in Baku and articles for the party organ abroad, Stalin was arrested again in March 1910. After several months in prison, he was exiled again, where he remained until June 1911. This time, forbidden to return to the Caucasus or any major city, he settled in a town near St. Petersburg and Moscow. Within two months, however, he was arrested again. After a few months in prison he was released, but had to live outside the big cities.
It was during this period that the first Bolshevik Central Committee, elected at the Bolshevik Conference in January 1912, coopted Stalin onto the committee at its very first meeting. One of Stalin's first acts as CCM was to publish the first issue of the Bolshevik daily Pravda. Almost immediately, however, he was arrested again. After three months in prison and two months of exile in Siberia, he escaped again. He reached St. Petersburg in time to lead the campaign for the Duma elections. Although the Bolsheviks won only six seats, they represented eighty percent of the industrial workers.
In late 1912 and early 1913, Stalin spent several weeks abroad, where he met and had extensive discussions with Lenin and other comrades. It was during this period that he wrote his famous theoretical book on the national question. He returned to St. Petersburg in February 1913, but within a week was betrayed by another member of the Central Committee, Malinovsky, who was an agent of the tsarist secret police. This agent also betrayed another CCM, Sverdlov. Both Stalin and Sverdlov were exiled to the remotest parts of Siberia, where escape was most difficult. Lenin made elaborate plans to arrange their escape during this period, but the escape plans themselves were made by the same secret agent. Instead of arranging the escape, this agent merely arranged for closer surveillance of the CCMs. Thus Stalin was forced to remain in exile this time for four long years, until the February 1917 bourgeois revolution led to the overthrow of the tsarist regime. He was then allowed to return to St. Petersburg, where he arrived on March 12, 1917. From then until Lenin's arrival in April, he headed the party center.
Looking back on Stalin's political life of some twenty years before the revolution, it stands out as a model of courage, self-sacrifice, dedication and devotion to the cause of the revolution. Except for long years in prison and exile, Stalin's life was spent almost entirely in the underground, in close and lively contact with the masses. In such a difficult life of total devotion, there was little time for Stalin to have much of a "private life. His first marriage was in his youth to Ekaterina Svanidze, the sister of one of his socialist comrades at the Tiflis seminary. They had a son who was raised by his parents after Yekaterina's death during the 1905 revolution. Stalin's second marriage was to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the daughter of one of Stalin's close worker comrades. He had a close relationship with the family, and it was they who sent him parcels of food, clothing, and books during his exile. However, this second marriage did not take place until they were both assigned to Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad) during the Civil War. That was after the October Revolution.
Chapter 21-Socialist Construction – the Russian Experience
At the time of the October Revolution, there were two types of so-called Marxist views regarding the construction of socialism.
One was the view held by the Mensheviks and others like them. These people were opposed to proceeding with the socialist revolution and wanted power to remain in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Their argument was that since capitalism had not advanced sufficiently and the means of production were concentrated, especially in agriculture, the time was not right for the proletariat to take power. They proposed that the proletariat should wait for some time until capitalism had advanced to some extent under the rule of the bourgeoisie. This would create the conditions for the nationalization of all the means of production and the construction of socialism. The Mensheviks were therefore opposed to the proletariat seizing power and carrying out a program of socialist construction.
The other view was held by a group within the Bolshevik Party called the "Left" Communists. Their position was that power should be seized and all the means of production immediately nationalized, even by seizing the property of the small and medium peasants and other producers. These "left" communists thus wanted to take an antagonistic stance toward the peasantry and thus drive away the main ally of the revolution.
It was in the struggle against these two tendencies that Lenin outlined the correct road to socialist construction. The main aspects of Lenin's path of socialist construction can be outlined as follows: a) The proletariat should not lose the chance, but make full use of the favorable conditions to seize power. Waiting will only mean that capitalism will go ahead and ruin millions of small and medium-sized individual producers. b) The means of production in industry should be confiscated and converted into public property. c) The small and medium-sized individual producers should be gradually united into producers' cooperatives, i.e., into large agricultural enterprises, collective farms. d) Industry should be developed to the maximum and the collective farms should be placed on the modern technical basis of large-scale production. The property of the collective farms should not be confiscated; on the contrary, they should be generously supplied with first-class tractors and other machinery. e) Exchange through buying and selling, i.e., commodity production, should be maintained for a certain period, because the peasants would not accept any other form of economic connection between town and country. Trade, however, should be conducted only through Soviet trade-between the state, the cooperative, and the collective farm. This should be developed to the fullest, and capitalists of all kinds and descriptions should be driven out of trade.
Of these five points, the first two, the seizure of power and the nationalization of big industry, were completed within the first few months. However, the other steps in the process of socialist construction could not be taken immediately because of the extremely difficult conditions of all-out enemy attack faced by the first proletarian state. Because of the civil war, the very survival of the state was in question. In order to face this all-sided attack, the party had to mobilize the whole country to fight the enemy. A set of emergency measures called "war communism" was introduced.
Under War Communism, the Soviet government took control of medium and small-scale industry in addition to large-scale industry; it introduced a state monopoly of the grain trade and banned private trade in grain; it established the system of surplus appropriation, under which all the surplus produce of the peasants had to be turned over to the state at fixed prices; and finally, it introduced universal labor service for all classes, making manual labor compulsory for the bourgeoisie, thus freeing workers needed for more important tasks at the front. This policy of "war communism" was, however, of a temporary nature to meet the needs of the war. It helped to mobilize the entire people for the war and thus led to the defeat of all foreign interventionists and domestic reactionaries by the end of 1920 and the preservation of the independence and freedom of the new Soviet republic.
In 1921 the situation in Russia took another turn. After the victory in the civil war, the task had to turn to the peaceful work of economic reconstruction. To this end, a policy shift was made from war communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP). Under the NEP, the forced appropriation of the peasants' surpluses was stopped, private trade was resumed, and private producers were allowed to set up small businesses. This was necessary because the measures of war communism had gone too far and were resented by certain sections of the party's mass base-especially the peasantry. But the Trotskyists strongly opposed the NEP as nothing more than a retreat. Lenin countered the Trotskyites at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921 and persuaded the Congress to adopt the policy change. He also gave a theoretical justification for the correctness of the NEP in his Report on the Tactics of the Russian Communist Party, presented to the Third Congress of the Communist International in July 1921. The NEP continued until the end of 1925, when the Fourteenth Congress decided to move on to the next stage of socialist construction, socialist industrialization.
Socialist Industrialization: The Soviet Union was still a relatively backward agrarian country, with two-thirds of total production coming from agriculture and only one-third from industry. Moreover, as the first socialist state, the question of economic independence from imperialism was of central importance. Therefore, the path of socialist construction had to focus first on socialist industrialization. In Stalin's words, "The transformation of our country from an agrarian to an industrial country, capable of producing the machinery it needs by its own efforts-this is the essence, the basis of our general line." Thus the emphasis was on heavy industry, which would produce machinery for other industries and for agriculture.
This policy succeeded in building a strong industrial base independent of imperialism. It also made it possible to defend the socialist base in the Second World War. Industry also expanded at a rate several times faster than in the most advanced imperialist countries, proving the immense superiority of the socialist system. The main factor for this was the wholehearted participation of the whole working class in the increase of production. At a time when the whole capitalist world was suffering from a very serious economic crisis, the socialist industry marched forward without any problems.
However, due to the special emphasis on the priority development of heavy industry, agriculture was neglected in the plans. Thus, during the period when industrial production increased more than nine times, grain production did not even increase by one-fifth. This showed that the growth of agriculture was very low compared to industry. This was also the case within industry, with heavy industry growing much faster than light industry. In his Critique of the Soviet Economy, Mao criticized this emphasis and called for the simultaneous development of both industry and agriculture. Within industry, he called for the simultaneous development of both light and heavy industry.
Collectivization of agriculture: The first step in this process was taken during the NEP restoration period itself with the formation of the first cooperatives among small and medium peasants. However, little progress was made due to the resistance of the kulaks (rich peasants). Moreover, the kulaks had adopted a position of active opposition and sabotage of the socialist construction process. They refused to sell their grain surpluses to the Soviet state. They resorted to terrorism against kolkhozes, party workers and government officials in the countryside, burning kolkhozes and state granaries. In 1927, as a result of this sabotage, the marketed share of the harvest was only 37% of the prewar figure. That year the party decided to launch an offensive to break the resistance of the kulaks. Relying on the poor peasants and allying itself with the middle peasants, the Party was able to achieve success in grain purchases and advance the process of collectivization. But the great advance came at the end of 1929.
Prior to 1929, the Soviet government had pursued a policy of restricting the kulaks. The effect of this policy was to arrest the growth of the kulak class, some sections of which, unable to withstand the pressure of these restrictions, were driven out of business and ruined. But this policy did not destroy the economic foundations of the kulaks as a class, nor did it tend to eliminate them. This policy was indispensable up to a certain point, that is, as long as the kolkhozes and state farms were still weak and unable to replace the kulaks in grain production.
At the end of 1929, with the growth of the kolkhozes and kolkhoz, the Soviet government turned sharply from this policy to the policy of eliminating the kulaks, of destroying them as a class. It repealed the laws on land tenancy and hired labor, thus depriving the kulaks of both land and hired labor. It lifted the ban on confiscating the kulaks' property. It allowed the peasants to confiscate the kulaks' cattle, machinery and other farm property for the benefit of the collective farms. The kulaks thus lost all their means of production. They were expropriated just as the capitalists had been expropriated in industry in 1918. The difference, however, was that the kulaks' means of production did not pass into the hands of the state, but into the hands of the peasants, united in the collective farms.
A step-by-step plan was adopted for the implementation of this policy. Depending on the conditions in different regions, different rates of collectivization were set and the target year for the completion of collectivization was determined. The production of tractors, harvesters and other agricultural machinery was greatly increased. State loans to collective farms were doubled in the first year. 25,000 class-conscious industrial workers were selected and sent to the countryside to help implement the plan. The process of collectivization, in spite of some mistakes, progressed rapidly towards success. By 1934, ninety percent of the total arable land in the country had been brought under socialist agriculture, i.e., state farms or collective farms.
The whole process of collectivizing agriculture was nothing less than a revolution in which the proletariat allied itself with the poor and middle peasants to break the hold of the kulaks.
This revolution solved at one blow three fundamental problems of socialist construction: a) it eliminated the most numerous class of exploiters in the country, the kulak class, the mainstay of capitalist restoration; b) it transferred the most numerous working class in the country, the peasant class, from the path of individual agriculture, which breeds capitalism, to the path of cooperative, collective, socialist agriculture; c) it provided the Soviet regime with a socialist base in agriculture, the most extensive and vital, yet least developed, branch of the national economy.
With the victory of the collectivization movement, the Party proclaimed the victory of socialism. In January 1933, Stalin proclaimed that "the victory of socialism in all branches of the national economy has abolished the exploitation of man by man". In January 1934, the Report of the 17th Congress of the Party declared that "the socialist form of social and economic structure now has undivided power and is the sole dominant force in the entire national economy." The absence of antagonistic classes was later repeatedly emphasized in the presentation of the Constitution in 1936 and in later political reports.
Errors in the Russian Experience: The Russian experience of socialist construction has been of central importance to the international proletariat, and especially to all countries where the proletariat has seized power. In his work Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Stalin attempted to theorize about the process of socialist construction and the economic laws of socialism. However, he did not make a self-critical analysis of the Russian experience. Later, Mao made an analysis of the Russian experience and pointed out certain errors in practice as well as in Stalin's formulations.
Mao pointed out the following main errors in the Russian experience: -
- 1) Not giving due importance to the contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces. This was reflected in the prolonged coexistence of two types of ownership - on the one hand, ownership by the whole people, as represented in the nationalized industries and state farms, and on the other hand, ownership by the collectives. Mao believed that the prolonged coexistence of ownership by the whole people and ownership by the collectives was bound to become less and less adaptable to the development of the productive forces. In essence, a way had to be found to make the transition from collective to public ownership.
- 2) Not giving importance to the mass line in socialist construction. Mao pointed out that in the earlier period the mass line was adopted, but afterwards the Soviet Party became less dependent on the masses. It emphasized technology and technical cadres rather than politics and the masses.
- 3) Neglect of the class struggle. After the success of the collectivization process, not enough importance was given to the continuation of the class struggle.
- 4) Imbalance in the relationship between heavy industry on the one hand and light industry and agriculture on the other.
- 5) Distrust of the peasants. Mao criticized Russian policy for not giving due importance to the peasantry.
In addition to these lessons from Stalin and the Russian experience, Mao also learned from the Chinese experience. He thus made an attempt to develop the Marxist theory of socialist construction.
Chapter 22-Fight against Trotskyism and Other Opportunist Trends
Throughout the period of the Russian Revolution and even after the seizure of power, the Bolshevik line had to struggle against various opportunist lines. One of the most important of these anti-Marxist trends was Trotskyism, named after its originator, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was a member of the RSDLP who sided with the Mensheviks at the time of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. He later tried to form a bloc separate from both the Bolshevik and Menshevik tendencies, even presenting himself as a "centrist" who would unite the two groups. After the success of the February Revolution, he criticized himself for his mistakes and was admitted to the Bolshevik Party and made a member of the Central Committee. After the October Revolution, he served as Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1917-1918) and Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (1918-1924), from which post he was dismissed for his opportunist and factional activities.
Especially during the period of socialist construction, Trotskyism played a very disruptive and factional role. Stalin led the party in a determined struggle against Trotskyist opportunism. The three specific features of Trotskyism outlined by Stalin in his speech on Trotskyism or Leninism are
- 1) The theory of permanent revolution: - According to this theory, Trotsky proposed that the proletariat should move rapidly from the bourgeois-democratic stage to the socialist stage of the revolution without the help of the peasantry. He thus rejected any talk of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. He thus rejected the role of the peasantry, the strongest ally of the proletariat. This theory, which looks very "leftist," actually meant in essence the betrayal of the revolution, because without the peasantry there was no hope of success for the proletariat and the revolution was bound to end in failure. Another aspect of this theory was that revolution in the advanced capitalist countries was necessary for the construction of socialism. His theory of permanent revolution was also a theory of world revolution, suggesting that while the revolution would begin on a national basis, revolutionaries should immediately work to spread it to other countries. Again, this proposal seems very "leftist," but it actually meant a very defeatist understanding that opposed the possibility of building socialism in one country.
Lenin opposed this anti-Marxist theory as soon as it appeared in the period immediately after the 1905 revolution, when Trotsky was not part of the Bolshevik tendency. However, it appeared in various forms and had to be opposed at various points after the October Revolution, when Trotsky had joined the Bolshevik Party and become one of its leading members.
The first time was immediately after the revolution, during the peace negotiations with Germany. Trotsky, on the basis of his theory, wanted the war to continue because he felt that it would help the revolutionary situation in Germany and that the success of the revolution in Germany, an advanced capitalist country, was more important than the consolidation of the Russian Revolution. Lenin and Stalin strongly opposed this argument, but a special Seventh Congress had to be held to discuss and reject this understanding.
Another example of this theory was the struggle of Trotsky's Opposition against the introduction of the NEP (New Economic Policy). As an opponent of the alliance with the peasantry, he felt that the NEP was nothing but a retreat. He did not accept the necessity of maintaining this alliance and preparing the ground for socialist construction. Again, this understanding had to be fought and defeated at the Tenth Party Congress.
A third example was at the time of the turn from the NEP to socialist industrialization. At that time, Trotsky joined with other elements to propose that it was not possible to build socialism in one country. This proposal, based on Trotsky's understanding of "permanent revolution" and "world revolution," would have meant a defeatist and opportunist approach to socialist construction, supposedly basing the success of socialism in Russia on the success of the revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. Stalin united the party against this understanding at the Fourteenth Party Congress in 1925.
- 2) The second feature of Trotskyism is its opposition to Bolshevik party principles. Trotsky's opposition to democratic centralism and the Leninist concept of the party was evident from the beginning in his support for the Mensheviks during the split with the Bolsheviks. Even later, in 1912, he united all the opportunist tendencies, such as the Liquidators and the Recallists, into a faction called the August Bloc. While pretending to be a "centrist" who would unite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Trotsky in fact fully supported and worked with the Mensheviks. Lenin, supported by Stalin and others, opposed and fought this opportunist bloc.
In 1923, when Lenin was seriously ill, Trotsky took advantage of the leadership vacuum to demand the withdrawal of all norms of democratic centralism in the party. He united all the various opposition elements to formulate the Declaration of the Forty-Six Oppositionists, which demanded the freedom of factions and groups in the Communist Party. This factionalist demand was also defeated.
But Trotsky's demand for "freedom" and "democracy" was entirely opportunistic, depending on whether or not he was in a position to make decisions. Thus, in 1920, when he was at the center of decision-making, Trotsky proposed the "militarization" of the trade unions and their subjection to the discipline of the army. He opposed the extension of democracy to the unions and the election of union bodies. Lenin, Stalin and other comrades led the struggle against this understanding, insisting that the unions should base all their activities on methods of persuasion.
- 3) The third feature of Trotskyism was its repeated false propaganda against the Bolshevik leadership. In the early period, Trotsky concentrated all his attacks on Lenin. In the later period, Stalin became the focus of all kinds of slander.
Failing to win the party over to his side in open debate, Trotsky began secret manipulations. In 1926 he set up a secret faction with an illegal press and secret propaganda. This was discovered and he was eventually expelled from the party. He moved abroad, but continued to maintain links with other factionalists within the party. In 1929, another group (the Right Opposition) was formed under the leadership of Bukharin, a member of the Politburo, which opposed the struggle against the kulaks and the advance of the process of collectivization of agriculture. This line was also defeated.
By the 1930s, however, Trotskyism ceased to be a political tendency within the working class. It abandoned attempts to openly propagate its anti-Marxist line and turned to clandestine planning and maneuvering. Trotsky and the top Trotskyists in the Soviet Union developed links with foreign intelligence services and began working on plans to assassinate leading elements in the party and take over its leadership. As part of this plan, Comrade Kirov, then second only to Stalin in the party leadership, was assassinated in 1934. The ensuing investigations uncovered the main conspirators, many of whom were members of the Central Committee. Public trials were held in which they confessed to their crimes. Many were sentenced to death and executed.
Chapter 23-Tactics During World War II
For most of the period between World War I and World War II, the world capitalist economy was in a state of collapse. World industrial production grew very slowly and world trade stagnated. In fact, total world trade in 1948 (three years after the end of World War II) was the same as in 1913 (the year before the start of World War I). The worst phase was the so-called Great Depression of 1929-33, from which capitalism did not really recover, even by the start of the Second World War in 1939. It was a crisis that affected practically the whole world, from the most industrialized to the most backward. Industrial production fell and unemployment reached its highest level ever. In Germany, almost half of the working class was unemployed. Prices plummeted, affecting the economies of almost every country.
As economic hardship increased, contradictions sharpened and there was widespread social and political unrest in many countries. In Latin America, there were attempts to overthrow the government in almost every country, many of which were successful. There was also an upsurge of independence movements in many countries, including India. Thus, throughout the colonies and semi-colonies there were struggles and a shift to the left. In the imperialist countries, the ruling classes tried desperately to control the social impact of their crisis. Some of them introduced social welfare programs to divert the masses from struggle. But most of the ruling classes used repressive means to suppress the people. Many countries installed right-wing and fascist regimes. Italy was the first to turn to fascism. Japan turned from a liberal to a national-militarist regime in 1930-31. Germany brought the Nazis to power in 1933. Many other imperialist countries also saw the rise of right-wing parties and the retreat of reformist parties.
The Communist International analyzed this growth of fascism. It showed how three factors in the post-World War I situation had affected the imperialist classes and led to the rise of fascism. First, the success of the October Revolution and the victory of socialism had made the bourgeoisie fearful of the advance of the proletariat and the success of the revolution in their own countries. Second, they were facing the deepest economic crisis in the history of capitalism. Third, the first two factors were driving the toiling masses around the world toward revolution. The response of the imperialist ruling classes to all these three factors was to introduce fascism.
At the Seventh Congress of the Comintern held in 1935, fascism and the danger of war were analyzed in detail. Fascism was defined as the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinist and imperialist elements of finance capital. It was explained how the imperialists were planning to drastically increase the plunder of the toiling masses. They were preparing for a new imperialist world war, attacking the Soviet Union, dividing China among the imperialist powers and thus stopping the advance of the revolution. As the big imperialist countries started to set up fascist governments, they aggressively started local wars in preparation for a new world war for the redivision of the world. When Germany and Japan started attacking and invading new areas, the other imperialist powers like Britain, France and the USA started a policy of compromise and concessions towards the fascist aggressors and tried to use them to destroy the Soviet Republic. In the context of such dangerous tactics of the imperialists, the international proletariat had to work out and implement its tactics.
The tactics of the proletariat were in direct opposition to the tactics of the imperialists. The goals of the international working class were the defense of the Soviet Union, the defeat of fascism and the instigators of war, the victory of the national liberation struggles and the establishment of Soviet power in as many countries as possible.
To achieve these goals, the Third International adopted tactics based on Marxist principles of war tactics. As in World War I, the International called on all communists to try to prevent the outbreak of war, and if war did break out, the International gave instructions that all communists should work to transform the unjust imperialist war into a civil war and thus complete the revolution. However, the main difference from the situation in World War I was that there was now a single socialist base-the Soviet Union. It was the duty of every communist to defend this socialist base. Therefore, if the Soviet Red Army was forced to go to war to defend the Soviet Union, the nature of the war would change. It would become a just war in defense of socialism, and it would become the task of every communist to mobilize the workers and toiling masses of all countries for the victory of the Red Army over imperialism. Thus, the communist approach to the war and the tasks of the communist parties of the world were made clear in 1935 itself, four years before the actual outbreak of the war.
The Third International further elaborated detailed united-front tactics to fight fascism and implement the above understanding. Two types of fronts were to be formed in the capitalist countries. One was the anti-fascist workers' front, which was to be formed together with the social-democratic parties. The other was the anti-fascist popular fronts, which should be formed, where necessary, together with other anti-fascist parties besides the social-democrats. In the colonies and semi-colonies, the task was to form anti-imperialist popular fronts, including the national bourgeoisie. The ultimate goal of the communists in participating in all these fronts was to achieve the victory of the revolution in their own country and the worldwide defeat of capitalism.
In the years leading up to the war, most communist parties tried to implement the above tactics. United fronts were formed and movements developed in many countries. However, in the various twists and turns of the situation and in the different concrete conditions in different countries, some of the parties did not succeed in implementing the correct tactics.
However, the Soviet government under Stalin, which was facing the most dangerous situation, was able to apply the correct tactics in the concrete situation of the Second World War. In the pre-war years, all attempts were made to build a united front of the non-fascist governments against the group of fascist aggressor countries. However, it soon became clear that these countries were not interested in a united front, but were trying their best to use Germany to crush the Soviet Union. To defeat this tactic, Stalin signed a no-war pact with Germany in August 1939, forcing the first part of the war to be a war between the imperialist powers. Thus, communist parties around the world operated under the tactic of "turning the war into a civil war" during the first two years of the war. The Soviet Union used this period to make all possible preparations for its defense in case one of the imperialist countries launched an attack.
This happened in June 1941, when Germany attacked the socialist base. With this attack, the Red Army was forced to respond, and the character of the war changed to that of an anti-fascist people's war, and the tactics previously envisaged by the Third International became applicable. Some of the parties, using the correct tactics and taking advantage of the deep revolutionary crisis, were able to achieve the revolution. In particular, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was able to lead the Red Army and the entire Soviet people to a heroic victory in the war. It defeated the mighty German army and joined hands with the communist parties and fighters of Eastern European countries to liberate them from German occupation. Thus, by using these tactics, the international proletariat could not only protect its socialist base but also break the imperialist chain in several places by 1949, get out of the imperialist world system and build a socialist camp covering one third of humanity. Thus, the strategy and tactics developed by the Third International during the period of the Second World War proved to be basically correct in practice.
But there were also serious failures. This was mainly due to the incomplete training of the leadership of the Third International in the correct approach to the implementation of these tactics, and to the strong remnants of the reformist approach of the Second International in many of the European parties and in the parties formed by them, such as the Communist Party of India. Parties like the CPI and the Communist Party of Great Britain spent most of their time in the People's War period trying to increase production. Many of these parties did a lot of strike-breaking and became alienated from the working class. Some others, like the Communist Party of France, which joined in united fronts with the ruling class parties, did not even try to maintain a distinction between communists and other reactionaries in the united front. Such an approach led to these parties becoming tails of the ruling classes in the united fronts in which they participated. It also led to the development of rightist tendencies, which in the following period would lead the leaderships of almost all of these parties down the road of revisionism.
The Third International, while unable to combat these revisionist tendencies, had also lost its effectiveness in providing guidance in the very different conditions of the various member parties. Except for the regular publication of its periodicals, the Comintern's activity had been greatly reduced since 1940, and even the customary May Day and October Revolution manifestos were discontinued between May 1940 and May 1942. It was finally decided to dissolve the Comintern. Since a congress could not be convened under wartime conditions, the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) sent a resolution recommending the dissolution of the International to all its sections. After receiving the approval of most of the sections, including all the important ones, the Comintern was dissolved on June 10, 1943.
Chapter 24-Mao’s Early Years
Mao Tse-tung was born on December 26, 1893, in the village of Shaoshan Chung in the fertile valley of Shaoshan in Hunan Province of China. The county where Mao was born was a rich agricultural area. It was also a strategic area, with all major road and river routes passing through Hunan Province. At the crossroads of trade, the people of Hunan were known for their peasant merchants. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hunan also became an intellectual center and a center of dissidence and revolt, producing many of China's best scholars. It produced both the military generals who helped the Chinese emperors and the revolutionaries who overthrew their rule. It was also a major center of the largest peasant revolt of the nineteenth century - the Great Taiping Rebellion. Hunan provided lakhs of fighters for the rebellion, which lasted 14 years from 1850 to 1864. This massive support for the peasant uprising was due to the severe poverty of the peasantry caused by landlord exploitation and excessive taxation. Although the rebellion was brutally suppressed, the memory of it remained strong in the villages around where Mao spent his childhood and youth.
Mao's father, Mao Jen-shen, was born a poor peasant and forced to become a soldier for seven years to pay off his father's debts. Later, through hard work and careful saving, he was able to buy back his land. He became a middle-class farmer and small trader. However, the family's standard of living remained very poor. Even at the age of sixteen, Mao ate only one egg a month and meat about three or four times a month. Mao's father put his children to work as soon as possible. Mao began working in the fields at the age of six. Mao's mother, Wen Chi-mei, was from Xiangxiang County, only sixteen miles from Shaoshan. Mao was the eldest son. He had two younger brothers and an adopted sister. All three were members of the first peasant Communist Party branch that Mao founded. All became martyrs in the revolution.
Mao was a rebel from an early age. He called his father the Ruling Power. He often united with his mother, his brother, and the workers against his father's authority. That was the opposition. Even in school he rebelled against the old customs. Once, at the age of seven, in protest against his teacher, he ran away for three days and stayed in the mountains around his village. After this protest, which Mao calls his first successful strike, he was not beaten in school.
Mao's first school was the village primary school, which he entered at the age of seven. As soon as he learned to read sufficiently, he developed a passion for reading. He preferred romantic books about rebellion and adventure. He often read all night by the light of an oil lamp. Mao's father, who had very little schooling himself, was not interested in Mao continuing his education for too long. He needed someone to work in the fields and keep his accounts. So he took Mao out of the village school in 1906.
However, Mao continued his interest in reading and constantly demanded to be sent for further education. His father could not understand his son's interest and thought the solution was marriage. At the age of fourteen, Mao was married to a girl from the same area. However, Mao refused to consummate the marriage.
Meanwhile, the revolutionary atmosphere in the surrounding areas was growing rapidly. Two rebellions took place during this period that had a lasting effect on Mao. One was the 1906 uprising in Hunan led by revolutionaries from the party of the nationalist Sun Yat-sen. The other was an uprising against a landlord by a group of peasants in Shaoshan itself. Both were crushed and the leaders beheaded. Mao was deeply affected by this injustice and longed to do something radical for the country and its people. He also longed to continue his education. Finally, in 1910, he was sent to a middle school in his mother's hometown of Xiangxiang.
The students at this school were all from landlord and wealthy backgrounds who initially looked down upon Mao. However, Mao soon outshone all the other students with his superior intellect and hard work and study. He would sit in the classroom reading for long hours after everyone had left. His teachers were very impressed with his ability. Within a few months, however, he was itching to move on to a higher level. After a year, he easily passed the entrance exams for the middle school in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan. In September 1911, Mao walked the forty miles to Changsha. Mao, who was almost eighteen, saw a city for the first time.
Changsha, a city of scholars, was in extreme turmoil at the time of Mao's arrival. Teachers and students had formed revolutionary associations under various names. Underground literature was circulating, and an explosion was expected at any moment. Mao, who had already developed some radical thinking, was eager to participate in the events. Within a month of Mao's arrival, the 1911 bourgeois revolution led by Sun Yat-sen broke out. Mao immediately decided to join the revolutionary army. However, the revolution was soon betrayed and fell into the hands of counterrevolutionaries. After five months, Mao resigned from the army and returned to Changsha.
Upon his return, Mao was searching for what to do and what direction to take in life. He looked up advertisements in newspapers and enrolled in a number of schools, ranging from a soap-making school and a police school to a law school and a business school. Finally, he took the entrance examination for the First Provincial Middle School in Changsha and placed first. After six months, however, he left the school and set up his own education plan, which consisted of reading every day at the Hunan Provincial Library. For six months, he would spend the whole day in the library, from morning to night, with only a small lunch of two rice cakes. This period of intensive reading covered a very wide range of social and scientific topics by both Western and Chinese authors. It was the foundation of Mao's education. However, six months of such study left Mao completely penniless. His father, unable to understand his son's desire to continue reading on his own, refused to support him unless he enrolled in a real school.
So in 1913, Mao entered the Hunan First Normal College, which was a teachers' college. He stayed there for five years, from 1913 to 1918. The collapse of the Chinese central government and the outbreak of World War I had created conditions of extreme upheaval throughout China and the world. In China, wars between provincial armies of warlord generals became commonplace. It was also the period when Japan, taking advantage of the involvement of the other imperialist powers in the war, tried to achieve total domination over China. This led to strong opposition from Chinese intellectuals and revolutionary sectors.
It was during these years that Mao's political ideas took shape. In 1915, he became secretary of the students' association at the Normal College and founded the Association for Student Self-Government. This organization organized numerous agitations against the college authorities for student demands. Mao also led this organization in street demonstrations against Japanese rule and its Chinese puppets. This organization would later become the nucleus for future student organizations in Hunan Province.
As the attacks by the warlord generals increased, students in many places formed self-defense corps. In 1917, Mao became the head of his college battalion. He obtained some weapons from the local police and led the students in guerrilla attacks on warlord groups to obtain more weapons. Using his knowledge of guerrilla tactics used by earlier Hunanese fighters as well as his study of military theory, Mao built the college battalion into an effective fighting force. Mao also took a keen interest in all the major military campaigns of the ongoing World War I. He lectured and wrote articles on strategy and tactics.
Mao was also involved in several other activities. He fought against social evils such as opium use and prostitution. He fought against the oppression of women and tried to ensure the maximum participation of women in the student movement. He wrote and encouraged swimming, sports and intensive physical training among students and youth. He himself maintained extreme physical fitness - he took cold baths throughout the year, swam in cold water, went barefoot and bare-chested for long walks in the hills, etc. In 1917, he started a night school where he and other students and teachers taught the workers of Changsha's factories free of charge.
In 1918, Mao inaugurated the New People's Study Society, which he had been planning for about a year. It was one of many such student groups, but it grew into something else, the nucleus of a political party. From the beginning it insisted on action as well as debate. It would not only talk about revolution, it would practice it, first of all revolutionizing its own members, turning them into "new men". It had girl members and addressed, among other things, the oppression of women in the traditional marriage system. Its activities followed a program of debate, study and social action. Social action included night schools for workers, visiting factories, demonstrating against Japanese imperialism, writing articles, fighting for new ideas, and using the vernacular. In later years, all thirteen original members of the Society joined the Communist Party of China (CPC), which was founded in 1921. By 1919 there were eighty members, of whom over forty would join the party.
Around the time of Mao's graduation from Normal College in 1918, he was joined in Changsha by his mother, who had come there for treatment. She could not be cured and died in October 1918. After her death, Mao moved to Beijing, the capital of China, where he took a very low-paying job for six months as an assistant librarian at Beijing University. He got this job through Li Ta-chao, the university librarian who was the first Chinese intellectual to praise the Russian Revolution and one of the first to introduce Marxist thought to China. Under Li Ta-chao, Mao developed rapidly toward Marxism. He began to read the works of Lenin that had been translated into Chinese. Toward the end of 1918, he joined the Marxist Study Group formed by Li. He also met many intellectuals and Marxists. One who influenced him at that time was Chen Tu-hsiu, who later became the first secretary of the CPC. Chen was the editor of the radical journal New Youth, for which Mao had written and which influenced him.
Mao spent only six months in Beijing. During that time, however, he fell in love with Yang Kai-hui, the daughter of one of his teachers at Changsha College, who was now a professor at Peking University. She was a student at the time, taking a course in journalism at the university. It was their first love. Their love was of the type that was then called "new" love, where the partners made their own choice, going against the traditional system of arranged marriages. For a while their love remained secret. They were not sure if there was time for love when the country needed them so much. They decided to wait some time before making a final decision.
In April 1919, Mao returned to Changsha just before the outbreak of the historic May 4 Movement of 1919. This anti-imperialist democratic movement shook all of China. Though initiated by students, it quickly swept up large sections of workers, merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and others. Mao immediately threw himself wholeheartedly into political agitation. Upon his arrival, he immediately took a low-paying job as a primary school teacher. However, he spent all his free time organizing agitation and spreading Marxism. He encouraged the study of Marxism in the New People's Study Society and other student societies with which he was in contact. At the same time, he built up the United Students Association of Hunan, which included a large number of junior high school and college students. Uniting all sections, Mao organized a movement to seize and burn Japanese goods. He published a weekly magazine, the Xiang River Review, which quickly had a great influence on the student movement in southern China. When the weekly was banned in October 1919, Mao continued to write in other journals. He soon got a job as a journalist for various Hunan newspapers and set out for the major cities of Wuhan, Beijing, and Shanghai to gain support for the Hunan movement.
But when he landed in Beijing in February 1920, he soon became involved in plans to build the Chinese Communist Party. He held discussions with his university librarian, Li Ta-chao, and other intellectuals. He visited the factories and railway yards and discussed Marxism with the workers. He continued to study the works of Marx and Engels and other socialists. He also met Yang Kai-hui, who had studied Marxism. They discussed their devotion to each other and to the revolution. They became engaged.
After Beijing, Mao spent four months in Shanghai, China's largest city and its largest industrial and commercial center. Here he held discussions with Chen Tu-hsiu and other Shanghai Marxists. To support himself, he took a job as a laborer, working twelve to fourteen hours in a laundry. It was during this period, in May 1920, that China's first Communist group was formed in Shanghai.
When Mao moved back to Hunan in July 1920, he began working to set up a similar Communist group there. His father had died earlier that year, and Mao initially made his home in Shaoshan. His two brothers and his adopted sister were among his first recruits. He then moved back to Changsha, where he continued to recruit. There he took a job as director of a primary school and also taught a class at the Normal College, for which he received a comfortable salary for the first time.
Toward the end of 1920, Mao married Yang Kai-hui, and they lived together for the year and a half that Mao was in Changsha as a primary school principal. They were considered an ideal couple, as Yang was also involved in the work of the Party, of which she became a member in 1922. They had two sons, one of whom died in 1950 as a volunteer in the Korean War against U.S. imperialism. The other became an accountant. Yang, who did secret work for the party, was arrested and executed in 1930.
Although Mao participated in various agitations during this period, the main focus of his work was the founding and building of the CPC. After forming a communist group in Hunan, Mao went to Shanghai to attend the secretly held First National Congress of the CPC in July 1921. He was one of twelve delegates representing only 57 party members at the time.
After the congress, Mao became the provincial party secretary of Hunan Province. From the beginning, he paid special attention to building the party in Hunan on the basis of Leninist party principles. He recruited young people from existing revolutionary organizations as well as advanced workers won through the expansion of the workers' movement. He published two monthly journals to raise the ideological and political level of the party members and youth league members and to help them carry on communist education among the masses.
During this period until 1923, Mao concentrated on organizing workers in Changsha, the Anyuan mine (in neighboring Kiangsi province), and the Shuikoushan lead mine. In August 1921, he founded the first Communist trade union. In 1922 he founded the Hunan branch of the All-China Labor Federation and became its chairman. The Anyuan Colliery movement and organization in particular was an excellent example of Communist organization. The Party first ran recreational schools for the colliery workers to continue their Marxist education. Then it organized a trade union. Meanwhile, a branch of the Socialist Youth League was formed among the workers, the best members of which were later absorbed into the Party. At the Anyuan colliery, there were major strikes that had national repercussions. It had a strong organization that survived even during the repressions. The workers provided valuable support and participation in various stages of the revolutionary war. Anyuan was the liaison center for the first communist base area in the Chingkang Mountains.
Mao did not attend the Second National Congress of the CPC, held in July 1922, because he missed his appointment. He attended the Third National Congress of the CPC in June 1923, where he was elected to the Central Committee. This congress decided to promote an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal national front in cooperation with the Kuomintang Party led by Sun Yat-sen. It instructed Communist Party members to join the Kuomintang Party as individuals. Mao did so and was elected as an alternate member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee at its First and Second National Congresses in 1924 and 1926. He worked as head of the Kuomintang's Central Propaganda Department, edited the Political Weekly, and directed the sixth class at the Peasant Movement Institute.
Chapter 25-Mao’s Fight Against Right and ‘Left’ Lines andand the Victory of the Chinese Revolution
The First Revolutionary Civil War: From 1924 to the beginning of 1926, the Chinese revolution advanced rapidly with the proletariat and peasantry in great ferment. In 1925, the protest against the May 30 massacre of demonstrators by the British police in Shanghai turned into an anti-imperialist popular movement involving all sections of the masses throughout the country. The country was on the verge of a decisive struggle between revolution and counterrevolution.
However, two deviations plagued the CPC. The dominant right-wing opportunist clique was led by then Party General Secretary Chen Tu-hsiu. He held that the bourgeois-democratic revolution should be led by the bourgeoisie and that the goal of the revolution should be the establishment of a bourgeois republic. According to his line, the bourgeoisie was the only democratic force with which the working class should unite. He did not consider the possibility of an alliance with the peasantry. On the other side were the "left" opportunists, represented by Chang Kuo-tao, the leader of the All-China Federation of Labor. He saw only the working-class movement. He argued that the working class was strong enough to make the revolution on its own. Thus, his clique also ignored the peasantry.
While fighting these two deviations, Mao made his first major contributions to the development of Marxist theory. In March 1926, he published his famous Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, and in March 1927, his Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. In these works he tried to answer the most fundamental questions of the Chinese revolution. Who are the friends and enemies of the revolution, who is the leading force, and who are the reliable and fickle allies? He argued that it was the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie, that had to lead the revolution. However, the proletariat would not be able to win by fighting alone. He emphasized the role of the peasantry, which was the proletariat's closest and most numerous ally. He also pointed out that the national bourgeoisie was a fickle ally, with the possibility of the right wing becoming an enemy and the left wing remaining a friend of the revolution. Mao also presented his ideas on how to mobilize the masses, establish a revolutionary government and organize the peasant armed forces. This was Mao's clear perspective on the direction the revolutionary forces should take.
This was the time of the Northern Expedition, which was a crucial part of the first phase of the Chinese revolution-the First Revolutionary Civil War. It was a march by the revolutionary army under the leadership of the Revolutionary National United Front (Kuomintang-CPC United Front). It was launched in July 1926 from Kwantung in southern China with the aim of waging a revolutionary war to smash the reactionary government of the imperialist-backed northern warlords and achieve the independence and unity of China. The Northern Expedition was initially a great success, defeating or winning over all of southern China and many of the southern warlords. Under the influence of the Northern Expedition, there was an upsurge among the peasantry. The proletariat staged many armed uprisings in the cities to coincide with the advance of the revolutionary army. Even Shanghai, China's largest industrial and commercial city, was liberated in March 1927 after three attempts at armed workers' uprisings.
After winning major victories, however, the bourgeois clique represented by Chiang Kai-shek (the main Kuomintang leader after Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925) broke the united front. In April 1927, massacres of communist cadres were launched in various parts of the country with the support of the imperialists. However, instead of mobilizing the workers and peasants against the Kuomintang reactionaries, the right-wing opportunist Chen Tu-hsiu leadership of the CPC submitted to them. In July 1927, another Kuomintang clique launched massacres against the communists. This led to the collapse of the united front and the defeat of the First Revolutionary Civil War.
The right-wing line of Chen Tu-hsiu, which dominated throughout the period of the First Revolutionary Civil War, was one of the main reasons for the failure of the revolution during this period. Although Mao fought against this right line, he could not win the support of the majority in the party. In fact, at the Fifth National Congress held during this period, in April 1927, Chen succeeded in removing Mao from the Central Committee.
The Second Revolutionary Civil War Period : In August 1927, at the beginning of the next period-the Second Revolutionary Civil War Period-Chen Tu-hsiu was removed as General Secretary after being severely criticized for his right-wing opportunism. Mao was reinstated to the Central Committee and made an alternate member of the Provisional Political Bureau. However, the correct criticism of the right line gave way in November 1927 to the dominance of a "left" line in the Central Committee led by Chu Chiu-pai, an intellectual comrade who had returned from his education in Russia. This line mistakenly believed that the Chinese revolution was in a "continuous upsurge" and therefore called for armed uprisings in many cities. The leadership criticized Mao for advocating and leading a peasant uprising and opposing urban uprisings. He was again removed from his central posts. He was also removed from the Hunan Provincial Committee. The Left Line suffered heavy losses and was abandoned in April 1928.
The Sixth Congress of the CPC, held in Moscow in June 1928, corrected this first "left" line and adopted a basically correct understanding, rejecting both the right and the "left" positions. Although Mao did not attend the Congress, it basically reaffirmed his position on many points. In his absence, he was re-elected to the Central Committee. It was while implementing this understanding and building the Red Army after the failures of the Northern Expedition and the urban uprisings that Mao made his further contributions to the development of Marxist-Leninist theory. In October 1928 he wrote Why can Red Political Power exist in China, and in November 1928 he wrote The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains. These historical works provided the theoretical basis for the historical process of building and developing the Red Army that was then under way. Starting with a small group of workers and peasants, Mao had established the first base in the Chingkang Mountains in October 1927 after the failure of the 1927 peasant uprising. From 1927 to the beginning of 1930 the area of armed peasant uprisings and revolutionary bases in the countryside expanded steadily. Many of the Communist-led fighting groups joined Mao's forces. The Red Army grew to 60,000 soldiers, and a little later to 1,00,000 soldiers.
However, "leftist" ideas began to reassert themselves and took over the leadership of the party in 1930. Two "left" lines, led by Li Li-san in 1930 and Wang Ming in 1931-34, dominated the party and caused incalculable damage. In June 1930, Li Li-san drew up a plan to organize armed uprisings in the major cities of the country and to concentrate all the units of the Red Army to attack these major cities. The attempt to implement this plan between June and September 1930 resulted in heavy casualties and demands from the cadres for its revision. During this period, Mao led an attack on Changsha but withdrew to avoid heavy losses in the face of superior imperialist and Kuomintang forces. After the retreat, a brutal crackdown took place in Changsha, including the execution of Yang Kai-hui, Mao's wife, who was working underground there. Li Li-san made a self-criticism at a plenum in September 1930 and resigned from his leadership positions. Mao and Chu Teh (commander of the Red Army) were appointed to the newly formed Polit Bureau.
However, this Polit Bureau was bypassed by a plenum convened in January 1931 by Wang Ming, one of the group of twenty-eight so-called "Bolsheviks" who had returned from training in Russia. They did not call Mao and Chu Teh to the plenum, but removed them and others from the Central Committee. In August 1932, Mao was also removed from his posts as secretary of the Front Committee and political commissar of the Red Army. With full control of the Party and the Red Army, the Wang Ming clique made numerous mistakes that resulted in heavy losses. Throughout, their main attack was on Mao, who was the representative of what they considered to be correct opportunism and the main danger within the Party. Mao's correct line was called the "rich peasants' line. Sectarian and factional methods were used by the leadership of the "Left" line to attack not only Mao but also the leaders of the earlier "Left" lines, Li Li-san and Chu Chiu-pai. While the Wang Ming clique was wreaking havoc in the party, Chiang Kai-shek was organizing repeated campaigns of encirclement and repression against the Red base areas. The first four campaigns were defeated because of Mao's leadership and the influence of his strategic principles before the "left" leadership gained full control of the Party and the Red Army in the base areas. However, when the "Left" leadership actually moved into the base area, its direct leadership led to serious mistakes and the defeat of the Communist forces in the Kuomintang forces' fifth campaign. In order to break Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement and win new victories, it was decided in October 1934 to undertake the world-shaking strategic transformation of the Red Army, known as the Long March. Mao was accompanied by his next wife, Ho Tzu-chen, a Party cadre from a local peasant family in the Kiangsi base area. They had married in 1931 after the death of Mao's previous wife, Yang Kai-hui. They had two children who were left with peasants in the Kiangsi base area at the beginning of the Long March.
It was during the Long March, at the Tsunyi Plenum of the CPC in January 1935, that the leadership of the party passed into the hands of Mao and his policies. This was a turning point for the Long March and for the Chinese revolution. It was then decided to continue the Long March northward to better coordinate the nationwide anti-Japanese movement that had been growing steadily since the Japanese invasion and occupation of Northeast China in 1931.
During the Long March, in addition to the repeated attacks by Kuomintang troops, the party had to confront the line of flightism and warlordism led by Chang Kuo-tao. Two Central Committee meetings held during the Long March rejected Chang Kuo-tao's proposal to retreat to the national minority areas of Sinkiang and Tibet. However, he refused to abide by the party's decision and attempted to form a new party center. He led part of the Red Army in a different direction, but they were attacked and killed by Kuomintang forces. Chang himself became a traitor and joined the Kuomintang. The main force of the Red Army reached its destination in Shensi Province in northern China in October 1935, one year after the start of the Long March. The Red Army, which had numbered about 3,00,000 just before the start of the Fifth Surrounding Campaign, was now reduced to just over twenty thousand. It was this core that established the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghshia base area (on the borders of these three provinces in northern China). It became known as Yenan, the name of its capital. This was the base from which Mao led the Party and the Red Army to victory in the war against Japan until 1945.
It was during this period that Mao and Ho Tzu-chen divorced in 1938. He married Chiang Ching in April 1939. Chiang Ching was the Party name of Lan Ping, a theater and film actress who had joined the Party in 1933 and moved to Yenan in 1937 to teach drama at the Yenan Art Academy and participate in the propaganda teams that went among the peasantry. Mao, who had a keen interest in art and literature, met her in the course of this work, and they fell in love and decided to marry.
The War of Resistance Against Japan: Immediately after the completion of the Long March, Mao focused on adopting and implementing a new tactical orientation to end the civil war and unite maximum forces for a war of resistance against Japan. His lecture On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism was a major development of the Marxist-Leninist united-front tactic. This was later developed in his May 1937 report on The Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party in the Period of Resistance to Japan. In a brilliant exposition of the stage of development of China's internal and external contradictions, Mao explained the change in the main contradiction caused by Japan's aggression and therefore the change in united-front tactics necessary to face the new situation. He called for a united front with the Kuomintang to drive out the Japanese aggressors. Chiang Kai-shek, however, did not agree to a united front until forced to do so by CCP propaganda and pressure from certain factions within his own party. He finally agreed when he was arrested in December 1936 by two of his own generals, who insisted that he form a united front with the CCP. The anti-Japanese united front was formed in August 1937.
During the War of Resistance, Mao again had to fight against wrong trends, although they did not grow to take over the leadership of the Party and the struggle. One was a pessimistic trend of national subjugation that existed in some Kuomintang sections of the United Front. After some defeats at the hands of the Japanese, these people felt that the Chinese were bound to be oppressed and dominated by the Japanese and other imperialists. One faction even prepared to surrender. On the other hand, there was a tendency in some sections of the CPC to think that since the united front had been formed, there would be a quick victory over the Japanese. These comrades overestimated the strength of the united front and failed to see the reactionary side of Chiang Kai-shek's clique. To correct these mistaken theories and to point out the correct course of the war, Mao published his book On the Long War in May 1938, in which he pointed out that the war would eventually end in victory, but that the victory would not be quick. In this and other writings, he also laid down the military principles of the war.
Mao also wrote various philosophical works to help educate the Party cadres and remove the harmful effects of the earlier Right and "Left" lines. Based on these writings, a lengthy rectification campaign was conducted between 1941 and 1944 to combat the major errors in the Party. This was combined with in-depth discussions to review the history of the Party. Chou En-lai, who had been a leading comrade throughout this period, was particularly involved in this process. This eventually led to an open and complete repudiation of the earlier wrong lines. This understanding was adopted in the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party at the CPC Plenum in April 1945.
Armed with the correct line and correct tactics, the CPC led the Chinese people to victory, first in the War of Resistance against Japan and then against the reactionaries led by Chiang Kai-shek. From a fighting force of just over twenty thousand at the end of the Long March, the Red Army grew to a strength of one million by the end of the anti-Japanese war in 1945. At that time, at the Seventh Congress of the CPC in April 1945, Mao presented a detailed summary of the anti-Japanese war and an analysis of the current international and domestic situation in his Report on the Coalition Government. He laid out a specific program for forming a coalition government with the Kuomintang after victory over the Japanese forces.
The Third Revolutionary Civil War Period: However, after the victory over the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek refused to agree to the formation of a coalition government on reasonable terms because of the support of U.S. imperialism and the superior strength of his military forces. At that time, even Stalin wanted the CPC to come to an agreement, saying that they should not have a civil war and should cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek, otherwise the Chinese nation would perish. Nevertheless, the CPC under Mao went ahead and fought what became known as the Third Revolutionary Civil War. Relying on the full support of the masses, especially the peasantry, the Red Army was able to change the military balance of power, shifting from strategic defensive to strategic offensive in July 1947. By October 1949, the CPC had won a nationwide victory over the U.S.-backed Kuomintang within four years.
As China triumphed, the Marxist-Leninists and the proletariat throughout the world were filled with joy and pride at the formation of a seemingly invincible socialist camp encompassing one-third of humanity. Mao, however, gave an idea of the challenges and dangers of the coming period. In 1949, on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the founding of the CPC, he said in his speech "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship": "Twenty-eight years of our Party is a long period in which we have achieved only one thing - we have won the fundamental victory in the revolutionary war. This calls for celebration because it is a victory of the people, because it is a victory in a country as large as China. But we still have a lot of work to do; to use the analogy of a journey, the work we have done so far is only the first step in a long march of tens of thousands of miles.
Chapter 26-The Path of Revolution for the Colonies and Semi-Colonies
Immediately after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the international communist movement openly recognized the significance of the Chinese revolutionary road for the colonies and semi-colonies. In the January 27, 1950, editorial of For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy, the organ of the Cominform, it was stated: "The road taken by the Chinese people… is the road that should be taken by the people of many colonial and dependent countries in their struggle for national independence and people's democracy."
"The experience of the victorious national liberation struggle of the Chinese people teaches that the working class must unite with all classes, parties, groups and organizations willing to fight the imperialists and their stooges and form a broad, nationwide united front led by the working class and its vanguard-the Communist Party… "A decisive condition for the victorious outcome of the national liberation struggle is the formation, when the necessary internal conditions permit, of people's liberation armies under the leadership of the Communist Party."
Thus, the universal applicability of the Marxist-Leninist theory developed by Mao-i.e., Mao Tse-tung Thought-was recognized and began to become the guideline for genuine revolutionaries throughout the world, especially in the colonies and semi-colonies.
Mao's formulation of the Chinese road to revolution had been developed in his numerous writings during the course of the revolution. Lenin had already pointed out that in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, it was the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie, that would lead the bourgeois democratic revolution. Mao further pointed out in his work On New Democracy that in this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism no longer belongs to the old category of bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but to a new category; it no longer belongs to the old bourgeois or capitalist world revolution, but to the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. Such revolutionary colonies and semi-colonies can no longer be considered allies of the counterrevolutionary front of world capitalism; they have become allies of the revolutionary front of world socialism. Thus, in order to distinguish the revolution in the colonies and semi-colonies from the old bourgeois democratic revolution, he called it the New Democratic Revolution. On this basis, he elaborated the politics, economy and culture of New Democracy.
Mao also developed the understanding of the united front given by Lenin and Stalin. He showed that the bourgeoisie in the colonies and semi-colonies was divided into two parts - the comprador bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The comprador bourgeoisie, which depended on imperialism for its existence and growth, was always an enemy of the revolution. The national bourgeoisie was a fickle ally, sometimes helping the revolution and sometimes joining its enemies. Thus, the united front led by the proletariat would consist of a four-class alliance-the proletariat, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The enemies of the revolution were imperialism, the comprador bourgeoisie and the landlords.
According to Mao, the revolution in the colonies and semi-colonies would not follow the path of insurrection followed by the Russian Revolution, which first captured the main cities and then took control of the countryside. He outlined the Chinese path of protracted people's warfare, involving the area-by-area seizure of power in the countryside, the establishment of guerrilla zones and bases, and the eventual encirclement and capture of the cities. To achieve this, Mao laid down the military principles of revolutionary war. He taught how to build the Red Army, an indispensable weapon of the revolution. Beginning with guerrilla warfare, then mobile warfare, and finally positional warfare, Mao showed how a small force could rely on the vast masses to build the forces necessary to defeat a formidable enemy.
Finally, based on the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, Mao elaborated the theory of the form of the state in the revolutions in the colonial countries. On the basis of the theory of New Democracy, he formulated the understanding of the New Democratic Republic.
This new democratic republic, he said, would be different from the old European-American form of capitalist republic under bourgeois dictatorship, which is the old democratic form and already outdated. On the other hand, it would also be different from the socialist republic of the Soviet type under the dictatorship of the proletariat. For a certain historical period, this form was also not suitable for the revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Therefore, in this period, a third form of state was necessary to be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely, the new democratic republic under the joint dictatorship of several anti-imperialist classes. Since this form is appropriate to a particular historical period, it is transitional. Nevertheless, according to Mao Zedong, it is a form that is necessary and cannot be dispensed with.
This state was established after the victory of the Chinese revolution in the form of the people's democratic dictatorship. Mao explained the essence of the People's Democratic Dictatorship as the combination of two aspects - democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries. The people are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism-the landlord class and the bureaucrat bourgeoisie-and their representatives.
Mao further pointed out that the Communist Party must lead the process of transforming the people's democratic dictatorship into a socialist state. The people's democratic dictatorship led by the proletariat and based on the worker-peasant alliance required that the Communist Party unite the entire working class, the entire peasantry and the broad masses of revolutionary intellectuals, who are the leading and fundamental forces of the dictatorship. Without this unity, the dictatorship cannot be consolidated. It is also necessary for the party to unite with as many as possible of the representatives of the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie who were willing to cooperate, as well as with their intellectuals and political groups. This was necessary in order to isolate the counterrevolutionary forces. If this were done, it would be possible, after the victory of the revolution, to rapidly restore and develop production, to cope with foreign imperialism, to steadily transform a backward semi-colonial agrarian economy into an industrial country and to build a socialist state.
Chapter 27-Mao on Philosophy
Mao's writings on philosophy are aimed at educating the Party cadres and the masses in Marxism-Leninism so as to change the way they think and practice. Mao himself was an avid student of philosophy. When he got hold of philosophical books, he would read them with intense concentration. Because of the earlier influence of the dogmatists who had returned from studying in Russia and could not relate their knowledge to reality, Mao was always anxious to link the Party's study and teaching to practice. He wanted to make Marxist philosophy, and especially the Marxist dialectical method, applicable to all Party cadres and activists and to the common masses.
The Theory of Knowledge: Of paramount importance was Mao's teaching on the theory of knowledge. An important work was his essay On Practice - On the Relationship Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing. Although it took only two hours to lecture, Mao said it took weeks to write. The central point Mao makes is that knowledge does not fall from the sky, but comes from social practice and only from social practice. True knowledge, or correct ideas, come from three kinds of social practice: the struggle for production, the class struggle, and scientific experimentation.
Theory depends on practice. It is unthinkable, Mao said, that it should not be measured and verified by practice. In turn, theory changes practice, changes the way we work and think. This brings about transformation and the acquisition of more knowledge. No one is born wise or stupid. Knowledge cannot come before material experience; no one can become an expert before doing something practically.
Mao explained the process of acquiring knowledge. It begins with perceptual knowledge, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions, where man first sees only the separate aspects, the external relations of things. As the social practice continues, the things that give rise to man's sense perceptions and impressions in the course of his practice are repeated many times; then a sudden change (leap) takes place in the brain in the process of understanding, and concepts are formed. Concepts are no longer the phenomena, separate aspects, and external relationships of things; they grasp the essence, totality, and internal relationships of things. There is not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference between concepts and sense perceptions. Conceptual or logical or rational knowledge is a higher level than the level of perceptual knowledge.
There are two important aspects here. One is that rational knowledge depends on perceptual knowledge. It is foolish to think that rational knowledge can be developed without someone first experiencing and acquiring perceptual knowledge. The second important aspect is that perceptual knowledge must be developed into rational knowledge. That is, perceptual knowledge should be deepened and developed to the level of rational knowledge.
However, the acquisition of rational knowledge is not an end in itself. As Marxism has always maintained, the essential point of all knowledge is to put it into practice. Thus, as Mao says, "Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start with perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start with rational knowledge and actively lead revolutionary practice to transform both the subjective and objective world. Practice, knowledge, more practice, and more knowledge. This form is repeated in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. This is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and this is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowledge and action.
On Contradictions: Mao's other major contribution to Marxist philosophy was in the area of dialectics and, in particular, the understanding and use of contradictions. The understanding and use of contradictions appears in various places and almost throughout Mao's analyses and writings. His main work is On Contradictions, a philosophical essay written by Mao in August 1937 after his essay "On Practice" and with the same aim of overcoming the serious error of dogmatic thinking found in the Party at that time. This essay was originally presented as two lectures at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yenan.
Mao's work was, in a sense, the continuation of Lenin's work, who made a particularly deep study of contradictions. Lenin called contradiction "the salt of dialectics" and stated that "the division of the One and the knowledge of its contradictory parts is the essence of dialectics." Lenin further stated in his Philosophical Notebooks, "In short, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This is the essence of dialectics, but it needs explanation and development."
This "explanation and development" was done some twenty years later by Mao. Mao's work was a leap in the understanding of contradictions. He studied the issue of contradictions in great detail and clarified them in such a way that they could be easily understood and used by everyone.
First, he asserted that the law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of nature and society, and therefore the fundamental law of thought.
Then he explained the principle of the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. According to this principle, contradiction is present in all processes of every object and every thought, and exists in all these processes from the beginning to the end.
Next, he gives the principle of the particularity and relativity of contradiction. According to this principle, each contradiction and each of its aspects has its own characteristics.
A very important concept given by Mao in this regard is that of the unity and struggle between the opposites in a contradiction. Mao points out that the unity or identity of the opposites is conditional; that is, it is always temporary and relative. On the other hand, the struggle of opposites is infinite; it is universal and absolute.
Another important principle that Mao gave and used very often in his analysis was the understanding of the main contradiction and the main aspect of a contradiction. According to this principle, there are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the main contradiction, whose existence and development determines or influences the existence and development of the other contradictions. Therefore, if there are a number of contradictions in a process, one of them must be the main contradiction, which plays the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, when studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must make every effort to find its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be easily solved.
Similarly, in any contradiction, the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they appear to be in equilibrium, but this is only temporary and relative, while the unevenness is fundamental. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be primary and the other secondary. The main aspect is the one that plays the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is mainly determined by the main aspect of a contradiction, the aspect that has gained the dominant position.
Mao always placed the understanding of the principal contradiction at the center of his analysis. Thus, he always analyzed the main contradiction in his analysis of Chinese society. This was an advance over the earlier Marxist-Leninist analysis, which did not particularly go into an analysis of the main contradiction in a country or a revolution. Mao maintained, however, that if we do not study two aspects-the principal and non-principal contradictions in a process, and the principal and non-principal aspects of a contradiction-we will get bogged down in abstractions, be unable to understand the contradiction concretely, and consequently be unable to find the correct method of resolving it. The importance of understanding the main contradiction and the main aspect of a contradiction is that they represent the unevenness of the opposing forces. Nothing in this world develops absolutely evenly, so it was necessary to understand the change in position of the main and subordinate contradictions and the main and subordinate aspects of a contradiction. It is only by understanding the various stages of unevenness in contradictions and the process of change in these contradictions that a revolutionary party can decide on its strategy and tactics in both political and military affairs.
Finally, Mao clarified the question of antagonism in a contradiction. According to Mao, antagonism is a form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites; therefore, the formula of antagonism cannot be applied arbitrarily everywhere. Some contradictions are characterized by open antagonism, others are not. According to the concrete development of things, some contradictions that were originally non-antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones, while others that were originally antagonistic develop into non-antagonistic ones. The forms of struggle differ according to the differences in the nature of the contradictions. Non-antagonistic contradictions can be resolved by peaceful and friendly means. Antagonistic contradictions require non-peaceful means.
Mao returned to the question of antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions during the period of socialist construction and the Cultural Revolution. He stressed that despite the victory of the revolution, it was wrong to think that contradictions no longer existed in Chinese society. He pointed out that there are still two kinds of contradictions: contradictions with the enemy and contradictions among the people. The contradictions with the enemy were antagonistic and had to be dealt with by repression. On the other hand, the contradictions among the people, which are not antagonistic, had to be dealt with in such a way that they did not become antagonistic. Mao always stressed the need to handle contradictions correctly. He pointed out that if contradictions are not understood and handled correctly, there is always the danger of the restoration of capitalism.
Chapter 28-Mao on The Party
From the time Mao took over the leadership of the CPC, he made every effort to develop the Party along the lines of true Leninism. Due to the dominance of the earlier false lines, especially the Third "Left" Line of Wang Ming, there were many deviations in the Party's functioning. Because of the sectarian understanding, there were no proper norms of democratic centralist functioning and a totally wrong approach to the two-line struggle. Decisions were made without consulting and involving the party cadres and by manipulating the holding of plenums and other meetings. The two-line struggle was not conducted openly, and the representatives of a different point of view were harassed and punished. There was also a lack of implementation of the mass line because of dogmatism. Mao made every effort to rectify these deviations and to establish proper forums and organs. Mao also clarified and developed many organizational concepts. He also tried to correct certain misunderstandings that had grown in the international communist movement and also in the CPSU under the leadership of Stalin.
Democratic centralism: Mao's attempt to correct sectarian and bureaucratic aberrations is seen in his explanation of democratic centralism. Mao's understanding of democratic centralism is clearly "first democracy, then centralism." He explained this in many ways - 'if there is no democracy, there won't be any centralism', 'centralism is centralism built on the foundation of democracy'. Proletarian centralism with a broad democratic base.
This view of Mao's was based on his understanding that centralism meant, first of all, the centralization of correct ideas. For this to happen, it was necessary for all comrades to express their views and opinions and not keep them bottled up inside. This would only be possible if there was the greatest possible democracy, where comrades felt free to say what they wanted to say and even to vent their anger. Without democracy, therefore, it would be impossible to summarize the experience properly. Without democracy, without ideas coming from the masses, it is impossible to formulate good lines, principles, policies or methods. But with proletarian democracy it was possible to achieve unity of understanding, unity of policy, unity of plan, unity of command and unity of action on the basis of the concentration of correct ideas. This is unity through centralism.
Mao did not limit the understanding of democratic centralism to the functioning of the Party. He extended the understanding to the question of running the proletarian state and building the socialist economy. Mao believed that without democratic centralism, the dictatorship of the proletariat could not be consolidated. Without broad popular democracy, it was impossible to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or to stabilize political power. Without democracy, without arousing the masses and without supervision by the masses, it would be impossible to exercise an effective dictatorship over the reactionaries and bad elements or to transform them effectively. Mao made these observations after the rise of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union and saw that the masses had not been mobilized to exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat. He also saw the rise of revisionist tendencies within the CPC at the highest levels and realized that the only safeguard against such tendencies was the initiative and vigilance of the lower-level cadres and the masses.
As Mao said in his January 1962 speech, "Unless we fully promote people's democracy and intra-Party democracy, and unless we fully implement proletarian democracy, it will be impossible for China to have genuine proletarian centralism. Without a high degree of democracy it is impossible to have a high degree of centralism, and without a high degree of centralism it is impossible to build a socialist economy. And what will happen to our country if we fail to establish a socialist economy? It will become a revisionist state, a bourgeois state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat will become a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and a reactionary, fascist dictatorship at that. This is a question that very much deserves our vigilance, and I hope that our comrades will give it a lot of thought".
The Two-Line Struggle is another aspect of the party's organizing principles on which Mao developed Marxist understanding and theory. Mao's approach, based on dialectical materialism, was to see wrong opinions within the Communist Party as a reflection of alien classes in society. Thus, as long as the class struggle continued in society, it was bound to be reflected in the ideological struggle within the Party. His approach to these contradictions was also different. He first saw them as non-antagonistic contradictions that we should try to rectify through "serious struggle. We should give ample opportunity for rectification, and only if the people committing errors "persist" or "aggravate" then there was a possibility of the contradiction becoming antagonistic.
This was a correction of Stalin's understanding presented in The Foundations of Leninism. Stalin was opposed to any attempt to correct wrong trends through internal party struggle. He called such attempts a "theory of 'defeating' opportunist elements through ideological struggle within the party," which he said was "a rotten and dangerous theory that threatens to condemn the party to paralysis and chronic infirmity. Such an account refused to accept the possibility of non-antagonistic contradiction and treated the struggle against opportunism as an antagonistic contradiction from the outset.
Drawing lessons from the same historical experience, Mao expounded the methods of intra-Party struggle as follows. "All leading members of the Party must promote democracy within the Party and let the people have their say. What are the limits? One is that Party discipline must be observed, with the minority subordinate to the majority and the entire membership subordinate to the Central Committee. Another limit is that no secret faction may be organized. We are not afraid of open opponents, but only of secret opponents. Such people do not tell the truth to your face; what they say is only lies and deceit. They don't express their true intentions. As long as a person doesn't violate discipline and doesn't engage in secret factional activities, we should allow him to speak and not punish him if he says wrong things. If people say wrong things, they can be criticized, but we should convince them with reason. What if they are still not convinced? As long as they abide by the resolutions and decisions of the majority, the minority can reserve their opinions.
Thus, Mao's understanding was based on the clear principle that as long as there was a class struggle in society, there was bound to be a class struggle in the Party-that is, a two-line struggle. Therefore, it was only right that this struggle should be conducted openly according to the principles of democratic centralism. Thus, through his understanding and implementation of the concept of the two-line struggle, Mao sought to bring about a correct dialectical approach to classes, class struggle and the struggle within the Party.
Mass Line: Another area in which Mao advanced Marxism was in relation to the mass line. Starting from the basic Marxist-Leninist understanding that the party should maintain the closest possible ties with the masses, Mao developed the concept of the mass line to a qualitatively new level. On the philosophical level, he showed how it is an essential aspect of Marxist epistemology. On the political and organizational level, he showed how it was the basis of a correct political line and also the essential organizational line of intra-party relations.
Mao explains that in the practical work of the Party, all correct leadership is necessarily "from the masses to the masses. This means: taking the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrating them (turning them into concentrated and systematic ideas through study), then going to the masses and propagating and explaining these ideas until the masses take them as their own, hold on to them and put them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then concentrate the ideas of the masses again, and go to the masses again, so that the ideas are persevered in and carried out. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. This, as Mao says, is the Marxist theory of knowledge.
In order to put the principle of "from the masses to the masses" into practice, Mao explains that it is necessary to have a correct relationship between the leading group and the masses in an organization or in a struggle. It is necessary for the party to gather the activists into a nucleus of leadership and to connect this nucleus of leadership closely with the masses. If this is not done, the leadership of the party becomes bureaucratic and separated from the masses. It is also necessary for the leadership not to be content with making general calls. General calls must be followed by specific and concrete guidance if they are to be properly implemented. "Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persist in the ideas and carry them out to form correct ideas of leadership-this is the basic method of leadership. In this way, Mao explains the mass line as the basic method of the Party's leadership over the masses.
Finally, Mao says that the mass line should not be seen only in the context of the Party's leadership over the masses. In fact, Mao emphasized the application of the mass line to internal party relations as well. In other words, he saw it as an organizational line. Mao points out that in order to ensure that the line really comes from the masses, and especially that it really returns to the masses, there must be close relations not only between the Party and the masses outside the Party (between the class and the people), but above all between the Party's leading organs and the masses inside the Party (between the cadres and the rank and file). In this way, Mao shows that it is crucial to maintain close ties between the higher and lower levels of the Party. Any break in the ties within the Party would lead to a gap in the relationship between the Party leadership and the masses. It would be contrary to the implementation of the mass line.
Chapter 29-Socialist Construction and The Chinese Experience
The implementation of the new democratic economic program began even before the nationwide victory of the revolution. Soon after the Red Army and the Chinese Revolution launched the strategic offensive in 1947, Mao announced and began implementing what he called the three major economic policies of the new democratic revolution. These were 1) the confiscation of the land of the feudal class and its distribution among the peasantry, 2) the confiscation of the capital of the comprador bourgeoisie, and 3) the protection of the industry and commerce of the national bourgeoisie. These policies were immediately implemented in the vast areas of northern China under revolutionary control, and agrarian reform was completed there by mid-1950. Subsequently, the agrarian reform program was completed in the rest of the country.
General line and gradual collectivization: In 1951, the Party adopted the so-called General Line of Socialist Construction for the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. The basic goal set for this period was to complete the industrialization of China along with the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce. The target set for completing this process was about eighteen years. This was divided into three years of rehabilitation to recover from the damage and destruction of the civil war and fifteen years covering three five-year plans for planned economic development.
In accordance with this general line, a "step-by-step" plan was drawn up for the socialist transformation of agriculture. The first step was to call on the peasants to organize mutual aid teams of agricultural producers, each consisting of only a few to a dozen households. These teams had only certain basic elements of socialism, such as help and cooperation among team members. The second step was to call on the peasants to organize small agricultural producers' cooperatives on the basis of these mutual aid teams. These cooperatives were semi-socialist in nature and characterized by the pooling of land in shares and unified management. The third step was to call on the peasants to unite further on the basis of these small semi-socialist cooperatives and to organize large fully socialist agricultural producers' cooperatives. The basic principles of this step-by-step plan were voluntary participation and mutual benefit. The peasants were to be persuaded to participate voluntarily in this process of collectivization.
The first step of the mutual aid teams had already begun in the revolutionary bases before the nationwide victory of the revolution. The second step to the elementary cooperatives took place in 1953-55. The third step of transition to advanced cooperatives took place in 1956. The socialist transformation in the countryside literally took off. At the same time, in the early months of 1956, a related movement rapidly advanced and completed the process of nationalizing enterprises. Thus, China's industry and commerce were transferred from private ownership to the ownership of the entire people well ahead of schedule.
Mao's dialectical approach to the process of socialist construction: The general line was basically based on the Soviet model of socialist construction. The emphasis on industry, especially heavy industry, was the central thrust of the First Five-Year Plan of 1953-57. There was also a tendency to adopt all Soviet policies uncritically. With the rise of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union (and especially after the revisionist 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956), the revisionist tendencies in the CPC were immediately strengthened. In 1956, a campaign was launched from within the party to "oppose rash advances"-that is, to stop the process of socialization. At the same time, the revisionist theory of the productive forces was gaining ground in the Party, with Party General Secretary Liu Shiao-chi as its chief exponent. The proponents of this trend supported the Krusevites, negated class struggle and focused attention on building modern productive forces, primarily through heavy industry. Their argument was that the productive forces were the main engine of change, and that the backward productive forces in China were the main factor holding back the country's development. Changes in production relations should wait until the productive forces were sufficiently developed. The cooperativization of agriculture should wait until industry had developed sufficiently to provide machinery for rural mechanization. All these proposals negated the importance of the relations of production and the class struggle. They would lead to the growth of revisionist and bureaucratic tendencies and the growth of a new exploiting class.
Seeing the Soviet experience and realizing the revisionist danger, Mao immediately launched a struggle to defeat these trends that controlled the Party at that time. His first step in this struggle was his April 1956 speech, On the Ten Major Relationships. In this speech, Mao for the first time offered a clear critique of the Soviet pattern of socialist economic construction. Referring to the relationship between heavy industry on the one hand and light industry and agriculture on the other, Mao insisted: "We have done better than the Soviet Union and a number of Eastern European countries. …Their one-sided emphasis on heavy industry to the neglect of agriculture and light industry results in a shortage of goods on the market and an unstable currency. Similarly, he criticized the Soviet policy of "squeezing the peasants too hard". He also attacked the dogmatists within the CPC who "indiscriminately copy and mechanically transplant everything" while learning from the experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. He also criticized those who followed Kruschev's example in indiscriminately criticizing Stalin. He defended Stalin as a great Marxist with 70% achievements. Thus, through this comprehensive criticism of the Soviet revisionists and the errors in Soviet socialist construction, Mao led the struggle against the then dominant revisionist line of the productive forces within the CPC.
However, the greatest contribution of Mao's speech was that it greatly advanced the understanding of the process of socialist construction and socialist planning. By presenting the problems of socialist construction as ten major relations, Mao brought dialectics and contradictions to the center of the process of building socialist society. He showed that socialist construction involves not only the mechanical implementation of the goals of production and distribution, but also a dialectical understanding of the major contradictions in the process and the mobilization of all positive forces to achieve socialism. As he said, "It is to concentrate on one basic policy that these ten problems are raised, the basic policy of mobilizing all positive factors, internal and external, to serve the cause of socialism… These ten relations are all contradictions. The world is made of contradictions. Without contradictions, the world would cease to exist. Our task is to handle these contradictions correctly."
Mao followed up the next year with his work On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People. In it, he continued to develop the dialectical understanding of the process of socialist construction. Most importantly, he placed the class struggle at the center of the process. He asserted that "the class struggle is by no means over…the question of which will prevail, socialism or capitalism, is not really settled." With this, he began the struggle against the revisionist sections in the party who said that class struggle no longer existed under socialism. This was the beginning of a nationwide rectification movement, the Anti-Rightist Movement. During this period, many high-ranking cadres had to present their self-criticism to the masses, millions of students participated in manual labor to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants, all party cadres in the factories and agricultural cooperatives had to participate in manual labor, workers began to participate in decision-making in their factories, a socialist education campaign began among the peasantry. This process brought the Party closer to the people and checked the growing right-wing tendencies both inside and outside the Party.
The Great Leap Forward and the Birth of the People's Communes With the progress of the rectification movement, the rightists in the Party were put on the defensive. This led in 1958 to a rectification of the erroneous productive forces theory that had dominated the Eighth Party Congress in 1956. The main proponent of this theory, Liu Shiao-chi, was forced to admit before the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress in May 1958 that during the whole period before the completion of the construction of a socialist society, the main contradiction was between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the socialist road and the capitalist road. His report also mentioned the Great Leap Forward that had begun at that time. Great progress had been made on all fronts of socialist construction. Industry, agriculture and all other fields of activity had experienced greater and faster growth.
In addition to rapid growth, however, the Great Leap Forward represented a major change in the priorities of the previous plans and the general line. The general line of the Great Leap Forward was formulated at a meeting of the Central Committee held at the end of November 1957. It shifted the emphasis from heavy industry to the simultaneous development of agriculture, heavy industry and light industry. It aimed at narrowing the gap between the city and the countryside, between workers and peasants, and between workers and peasants on the one hand and intellectuals and managers on the other. It aimed not only at an economic revolution, but also at a technological, political, social and cultural revolution to transform the city and the countryside.
The construction of people's communes began in 1958. The process began spontaneously when neighboring peasant associations in a drought-stricken area made a plan to pool their labor and other resources to carry out an irrigation project. Their association was given the name commune by Mao. Mao encouraged such formation, and this immediately led to a rapid spread of communes throughout the country. They were formed by merging neighboring cooperatives to undertake large-scale projects such as flood control, water conservancy, reforestation, fisheries, and transportation. In addition, many communes set up their own factories to produce tractors, chemical fertilizers and other means of production. The people's commune movement grew rapidly. The CC of the CPC announced in its famous Wuhan Resolution of December 1958: "Within a few months from the summer of 1958, all the more than 740,000 agricultural producers' cooperatives in the country reorganized themselves into over 26,000 people's communes in response to the enthusiastic demand of the masses of peasants. More than 120 million households, or more than 99 percent of all peasant households of various nationalities in China, have joined the people's communes." Summing up the political essence, the CC went on to say: "The people's commune is the basic unit of the socialist social structure of our country, uniting industry, agriculture, trade, education and military affairs; at the same time, it is the basic organization of the socialist state power. The Marxist-Leninist theory and the initial experience of the people's communes in our country make it possible for us now to foresee that the people's communes will accelerate the pace of our socialist construction and constitute the best form for realizing the following two transitions in our country."
"First, the transition from collective ownership to ownership by all the people in the countryside; and second, the transition from socialist society to communist society. It can also be foreseen that in the future communist society the people's commune will remain the basic unit of our social structure".
Thus, the commune movement was a tremendous advance that basically completed the process of collectivizing agriculture. However, the expectation that the commune would advance the process of transition to full public ownership and communism could not be fulfilled to this extent. The attempts to establish urban communes were also not consolidated.
In the early period of the commune movement during the Great Leap, there were certain "leftist" mistakes. Mao Zedong called them "communist wind" in his speech in February 1959. These "leftist" errors that Mao identified were mainly of three kinds. The first was the levelling of the poor and rich brigades within the commune by making the whole commune an accounting unit. This meant that the shares of the peasant members of the richer brigades (the former advanced cooperative) would be smaller than the share they would receive soon after the commune was formed. Thus, they would resent the formation of the commune and their participation would not be voluntary. The second mistake was that the commune's capital accumulation was too great and the commune's demand for uncompensated labor was too great. When larger amounts are set aside for capital accumulation, the share that the peasants get is smaller. Similarly, more unpaid labor can only come where consciousness has been raised to that extent. The third mistake was the "communization" of all kinds of "property". In some areas, attempts were made to bring even the peasant's small property, such as chickens and pigs, under the commune. This too was resisted.
These mistakes were soon corrected. The production brigade (formerly the advanced cooperative) was retained as the basic accounting unit, and in 1962 it was brought down to an even lower level, that of the production team. However, although the perspective of raising the level of ownership and accounting to higher levels as a process of greater socialization and transition to communism always remained, it did not succeed. The basic unit of accounting and ownership remained at the lowest level - the production team - until 1976.
Struggle against the capitalist roaders: Although the "leftist" mistakes were soon corrected, the influence of the capitalist roaders, led by Liu Shiao-chi, remained strong in the higher levels of the party. The two-line struggle was carried out in both direct and indirect ways. In July 1959, Peng The-huai, then minister of defense, launched a direct attack on the Great Leap Forward, criticizing what he called its "petty-bourgeois fanaticism" and its desire to "enter communism in one step." But even though Peng was defeated, the other capitalist roaders continued their attacks by indirect means.
One method was through veiled defenses of Peng and attacks on Mao in the media. This was done through articles and also through theatrical and cultural performances aimed at showing that Peng was an upright comrade who had been victimized. The other method was to delay or divert the implementation of key policies decided at the highest levels. A prime example was the sabotage of the program of socialist education and the decision to launch a cultural revolution taken by the Tenth Plenum of the CPC in 1962. Although this was formally approved by the capitalist roaders, they made sure through their control within the party structure that there was no mass mobilization. They tried to steer the Cultural Revolution toward academic and ideological debate rather than class struggle.
Throughout this period (1959-65), Mao fought the battle on several levels. On the basis of the Russian experience, he recognized the very real danger of the restoration of capitalism. Therefore, on the basis of a comprehensive study of the politics and economics of Kruschevite revisionism, he drew the theoretical lessons of this experience for the education of the Chinese and international proletariat. Through the struggle of the Great Debate against Kruschev's modern revisionism, Mao tried to rally the revolutionaries around the world and in China. Through his works such as Critique of the Soviet Economy and the CPC's Analysis of Kruschev's Fake Communism and its Historical Lessons for the World, he tried to provide the party cadres with the theoretical basis for the struggle against revisionism and restoration.
But above all, he tried to draw the masses into the struggle to defend and develop socialism and prevent the restoration of capitalism. In addition to his above-mentioned program for socialist education, he also put forward slogans for socialist emulation of the Tachai and Tach'ing experiences as model experiences for building socialism. But when all attempts to mobilize the masses were thwarted by the party bureaucracy, Mao succeeded, after tremendous efforts, in unleashing the energies of the masses through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It was the culmination in practice of Mao's development of the Marxist principles of socialist construction.
Chapter 30-The Great Debate – Mao’s Fight Against Kruschev’s Modern Revisionism
In 1953, after the death of Stalin, a revisionist clique led by Kruschev staged a coup and took control of the CPSU, then the leading party of the international proletariat. They threw out or killed the revolutionaries in the party, began the process of restoring capitalism in the first country of socialism and continued to develop relations with the imperialist camp, especially U.S. imperialism. In 1956, after securing a firm control over the CPSU, they started to spread their revisionist poison among other communist parties at the 20th Congress of the CPSU. At the same time, they attacked the so-called Stalin personality cult and introduced their revisionist theory of the three peaces-peaceful transition, peaceful coexistence and peaceful competition.
Peaceful transition meant peaceful transition to socialism through the parliamentary way. Kruschev proposed that in the present era it was possible to achieve socialism by peacefully winning a majority in parliament and then carrying out reforms to introduce socialism. He thus denied the necessity of revolution. This theory was thus a repetition of the revisionism of Bernstein and other social democrats.
Peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems was proposed by Kruschev as the general line of the socialist state's foreign policy. He thus distorted Lenin's policy of peaceful coexistence with capitalist states, which was only one aspect of the socialist state's foreign policy of proletarian internationalism. Kruschev subordinated everything else to his desire for peaceful coexistence with imperialism. He made relations with and aid to other socialist countries and the policy of supporting the struggles of the oppressed nations dependent on the requirements of peaceful coexistence with the imperialist powers. This was nothing but a policy of collaboration with imperialism.
Peaceful competition was the theory that the contradiction between imperialism and socialism would be resolved through economic competition between the capitalist and socialist systems. This theory thus refused to recognize the reactionary and belligerent character of imperialism. It created the illusion that the contradiction between the socialist and imperialist camps was a non-antagonistic contradiction that would be resolved through peaceful forms of struggle.
Thus, Kruschev's theory of the three peacefuls was a full-fledged revisionist theory that he wanted to impose on the international communist movement. It was aimed at establishing close relations with imperialism. In order to realize his plans and to gain the acceptance of the imperialist powers, Kruschev at the same time launched a vicious attack on Stalin in the name of the cult of personality. In order to destroy the revolutionary principles for which Stalin had stood and fought, it was first necessary to destroy the image of Stalin among the revolutionaries and the masses throughout the world. This was done through a campaign of lies and degenerate propaganda.
Many of the leaderships of the communist parties of the world supported the revisionist Kruschevite line. Many prominent leaders and parties had already begun to take the revisionist line in their own countries. Browder in the U.S. had already put forward theories of collaboration between socialism and capitalism and had left the international communist movement; Thorez, the former leader of the Third International from France, who had developed close relations with the bourgeoisie after the period in the anti-fascist front, had taken national chauvinist positions against the peoples of the French colonies in the postwar years and had become a servant of the French imperialist bourgeoisie; Togliatti of Italy, another important leader of the Third International, had wanted to "reform" and "restructure" capitalism into socialism through "structural reforms" by the bourgeois parliament; the leadership of the Communist Party of India had already changed its tactical line and recognized the peaceful road. Thus, these revisionist forces, which had not been sufficiently criticized and defeated in the earlier period, were quite happy to collaborate with Kruschev.
However, where such parties seriously tried to implement a "peaceful transition" through the electoral system, and where such efforts sufficiently threatened the social order, they were eliminated by military coups and brutal repression, as in Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965) and Chile (1973).
Among the newly formed people's democracies, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, led by Tito, had already embarked on a revisionist course in 1948, breaking away from the socialist camp. Kruschev, however, soon began to make friends with him. Most of the remaining leaderships also aligned themselves with Kruschev. Within the socialist camp, only the CPC and the Party of Labour of Albania recognized and recognized Kruschevite revisionism and defended Marxism-Leninism with courage and determination.
The CPC, under Mao's leadership, was in the vanguard of this struggle. Within two months of the 20th CPSU Congress, the CPC published an article, On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which upheld Stalin as an outstanding Marxist-Leninist. This was followed in December 1956 by another article, More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which insisted that the socialist camp should clearly demarcate who its friends and enemies were. This was combined with a seven-year attempt to struggle with and defeat the Kruschevite revisionist line in party forums, especially at the meetings of 60 fraternal parties in 1957 and 81 fraternal parties in 1960, and at meetings with the CPSU leadership.
As the struggle intensified, the Soviet revisionists withdrew technical assistance in the field of defense in June 1959 and suddenly withdrew all Soviet technical experts working in China in July 1960. The same was done in Albania. In April 1960, the CPC published Long Live Leninism and two other articles upholding the basic principles of Leninism on imperialism, war and peace, proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. These articles opposed the revisionist positions of the CPSU without mentioning it by name.
However, the revisionists continued their attempts to further systematize their revisionist positions. Thus, at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU held in 1961, the program adopted there revised the essence of Marxism-Leninism, namely the teachings on the proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party of the proletariat. It declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer needed in the Soviet Union and that the nature of the CPSU as the vanguard of the proletariat had changed. The Congress advanced the absurd theories of a "state of the whole people" and a "party of the whole people. At the congress, Kruschev launched an open and public attack on the Albanian Party and even called for the overthrow of its leader, Enver Hoxha. This was opposed by the CPC delegation led by Chou En-lai.
Kruschev also began to encourage other Communist parties to launch public attacks on the CPC. Numerous articles in the Soviet also attacked the Chinese leadership. The CPC finally began to respond to some of the attacks by Togliatti of the Italian Party, Thorez of the French Party, Gus Hall of the CPUSA, and others in a series of seven articles published in late 1962 and early 1963.
A summary of the main views of the CPC was set down in the famous June 14, 1963 letter entitled "A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement." The CPSU responded with an Open Letter to the CPC. Since the whole issue was now in the open, the CPC decided to conduct the debate through the open press. It published nine commentaries on the CPSU's open letter and clarified all the issues before the masses.
This struggle, which began in 1963 and continued in 1964, became known as the Great Debate. The Great Debate was of immense historical significance. It was a principled and comprehensive struggle against modern revisionism. It was a rallying point for all proletarian revolutionary forces around the world. It was also a scientific development of Marxism-Leninism, which gave the international communist movement its revolutionary general line for that period. Mao was the driving force behind this struggle. It was through the Great Debate that Mao advanced the science of Marxism-Leninism by providing the answers to the most important questions facing the international proletariat - the fundamental contradictions in the world, who are the friends and enemies, the goals of the movement and the way to achieve the victory of the world socialist revolution. These formulations were mainly contained in the June 14 Letter. The nine commentaries outlined and elaborated the revolutionary position on various crucial issues facing the international communist movement after World War II-neocolonialism, war and peace, peaceful existence, Yugoslavia, Kruschev's revisionism and the historical lessons to be drawn from it. It was through the Great Debate that Mao Tse-tung Thought gained further acceptance as the guiding ideology of the revolutionary sections of the international proletariat.
Chapter 31-The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) was Marxism's answer to the obstacles and sabotage of the process of socialist construction created by the Kruschevites and the capitalist roaders. Especially after the rise of revisionism in the Soviet Union, Mao had realized that one of the greatest dangers to the restoration of capitalism came from within the Party itself. Throughout the Great Debate, while fighting revisionism, Mao tried to find the answer to the question of how to prevent the restoration of capitalism. At the same time, he was deeply involved in the struggle against the Chinese Kruschevites, such as Liu Shiao-chi and Deng Tsiao-ping. Thus, in the conclusion of the Great Debate in the last document of the CPC, entitled On Kruschev's False Communism and its Historical Lessons for the World, Mao emphasized certain points on the question of preventing the restoration of capitalism.
First, Mao stressed the recognition of the need to continue the class struggle throughout the period of socialist society, to the end. He explained that a change in the ownership of the means of production, i.e., a socialist revolution on the economic front, is not enough by itself. He insisted that we must have a thorough socialist revolution on the political and ideological front in order to consolidate the revolution. And this revolution must continue under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Another point that Mao repeatedly emphasized was that in order to carry out this revolution, it was necessary to adhere to the mass line and boldly arouse the masses and carry out mass movements on a large scale. To do this, the Party would have to rely on the masses, who constitute 95 percent of the population, to win them over and unite them in a common struggle against the enemies of socialism. Mao also emphasized the need to "repeatedly conduct extensive socialist education movements in the cities and the countryside. In these continuous movements to educate the people, Mao again stressed the need to organize the revolutionary class forces and "wage a sharp, tit-for-tat struggle against the anti-socialist, capitalist and feudal forces. Thus, Mao clearly saw that the full participation of the masses was an essential condition for preventing the restoration of capitalism. This was based on Mao's experience of how the revisionists within the leadership of the Party itself were the main elements bringing about the restoration of capitalism.
Within the CCP itself, however, there was strong resistance from the highest levels, led by Liu Shiao-chi, to the implementation of these theories and the concrete program proposed by Mao. Thus, although the "socialist cultural revolution" was officially adopted at the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee in 1962, its implementation was half-hearted and in a direction contrary to the line set by Mao. In fact, the party bureaucracy under Liu's control began to criticize Mao for the actions he was trying to take and to oppose the actions taken against capitalist roaders like Peng Te-huai. They made this criticism through articles in the press and through drama and other cultural forums that were under their full control. Their control was such that Mao could not even get an article defending himself printed in the Beijing press. Such an article defending Mao and his policies was finally published in November 1965 in the Shanghai press, which was a much more radical center than Beijing. This was what Mao later called "the signal" for the GPCR, which began a stream of criticism of the party bureaucracy and support for Mao's line in the media and in the cultural sphere. There were also calls for self-criticism by the main culprits. The party bureaucracy, however, did everything in its power to prevent this movement from taking on a mass character. The Cultural Revolution Group, which was supposed to initiate and direct it, actually tried to control dissent and channel it along academic lines.
Finally, on May 16, 1966, the CC, under Mao's leadership, issued a circular dissolving the "Group of Five" that had been sabotaging the Cultural Revolution and establishing a new "Cultural Revolution Group" directly under the Politburo Standing Committee. The May 16 Circular called for criticizing and smashing the resistance of the capitalist roaders, especially those within the Party. This action led to the actual launch of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and made it a mass phenomenon involving millions of people.
On May 25, the first large character poster was put up at Peking University criticizing the vice-chancellor and the education system. This was only the first of thousands of such giant posters put up by students and the masses throughout the country to express their opinions and criticize what they felt was wrong in society. Demonstrations and mass criticisms were held to criticize professors, party bureaucrats and others for their wrong policies. Soon there was a demand from some students for the abolition of entrance examinations. In June, the Central Committee issued an order suspending new admissions to colleges and universities for six months so that students and young people could participate more fully in the GPCR. The six-month period proved too short, however, and universities did not reopen for another four years.
Mao also began to participate personally in the GPCR. On July 17, he joined tens of thousands of other swimmers in a mile-long swim across the Yangtze River. This was his symbolic act of participating in the flowing current of the GPCR. Again on August 5, during the Eleventh Plenum of the CPC, Mao gave a much more direct signal. He put up his own large character poster. Its main slogan was "Bomb the Headquarters!" This was a clear call to attack the capitalist headquarters of the capitalist roaders in the party led by Liu Shiao-chi. Mao's call gave further impetus to the actions and militancy of the movement.
On August 18, Mao was present at the first rally of the Red Guards in Beijing, which was one million strong. The Red Guards were members of the thousands of mass organizations that had sprung up throughout the country to participate in the GPCR. The first mass organizations were composed mainly of students and youth, but as the movement grew, such organizations grew among workers, peasants and office workers. The August 18 rally was the first of many such rallies. At one point, more than two million Red Guards from all over the country gathered in the capital.
The Eleventh Plenum defined the GPCR as "a new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country, a deeper and broader stage. In his closing speech at the plenum, Mao said, "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is essentially a great political revolution under socialist conditions waged by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. It is the continuation of the long struggle waged by the CPC and the broad revolutionary masses under its leadership against the Kuomintang reactionaries. It is the continuation of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie."
The Eleventh Plenum adopted the so-called Sixteen Articles of the Cultural Revolution. They reiterated what had been said in the May 16 Circular, that the current revolution is to touch people's souls, to change people. The old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes still shape public opinion and provide fertile ground for the restoration of the past. The mental outlook must be transformed and new values created.
It identified the main target as "those within the party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road". It identified the main forces of the revolution as "the masses of workers, peasants, soldiers, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary cadres.
The aim of the revolution was "to fight against and smash those in authority who take the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic 'authorities' and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, and to transform education, art and literature and all other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system". The form of the revolution was to arouse the masses in their hundreds of millions to freely express their views, write large posters, and hold great debates so that the capitalist roaders in power could be exposed and their plans to restore capitalism smashed.
The essential aspect of the Cultural Revolution was the development and practical implementation of Mao's mass line. It aimed not only to eliminate the elements hostile to socialism, but also to enable the working class to "take the lead in everything," to "put politics at the head of administration," and to ensure that everyone who served as an official "remained one of the common people. In order to achieve these goals, it was necessary to launch an all-out offensive against bourgeois ideology in such a way that the masses would be actively involved."
Thus, the Eleventh Plenum resolution instructed, "In the great proletarian cultural revolution, the only method is for the masses to liberate themselves, and no method of doing things on their behalf must be used."
"Trust the masses, rely on them, and respect their initiative. Cast out fear. Don't be afraid of disorder. … Let the masses educate themselves in this great revolutionary and learn to distinguish between right and wrong and between right and wrong ways of doing things."
As the masses entered the revolution in full force, they even created a new form of organization-the Revolutionary Committee. It was based on the "three-in-one" combination: that is, its members, who were elected, subject to recall, and directly responsible to the people, were drawn from the Party, the People's Liberation Army, and the mass organizations (the Red Guards, whose membership reached thirty million). They sprang up at all levels, from the factory or commune to the organs of provincial and regional government, and their function was to provide the link through which the masses could participate directly in the running of the country.
This three-in-one organ of power enabled proletarian political power to take deep roots among the masses. The direct participation of the revolutionary masses in the running of the country and the enforcement of revolutionary supervision from below over the organs of political power at various levels played a very important role in ensuring that the leading groups at all levels adhered to the mass line. Thus, this strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat was also the broadest and deepest exercise in proletarian democracy yet achieved in the world.
In the initial sweep of the Cultural Revolution in 1966-67, the bourgeois headquarters within the party was effectively smashed, and most of the leading capitalist roaders, such as Liu Shiao-chi and Deng Hsiao-ping, and their supporters were stripped of their party posts and forced to make self-criticisms before the masses. It was a great victory that not only inspired the Chinese masses but also created a wave of revolutionary enthusiasm among communist revolutionaries all over the world.
During the Great Debate, many revolutionary forces had rallied around the revolutionary line of the CPC led by Mao, but it was mainly during the Cultural Revolution that these forces around the world came to accept that it was Mao Tse-tung's thought that could provide the answers to the problems of the world socialist revolution. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had shown that Marxism had an answer to the enemy of capitalist restoration. This advance of Marxism led to the consolidation of numerous revolutionary groups and parties around the world on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and the launching of revolutionary struggles under their leadership.
However, Mao warned, "The present Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is only the first; there will inevitably be many more in the future. The question of who will win the revolution can only be settled over a long historical period. If things are not handled properly, it is possible that capitalist restoration will take place at any time in the future."
He also recalled the Ninth Party Congress in 1969: "We have won a great victory. But the defeated class will continue to fight. Its members are still around and it still exists, so we cannot speak of a final victory, not for decades. We must not lose our vigilance." From the Leninist point of view, the final victory in a socialist country requires not only the efforts of the proletariat and the broad masses at home, but also depends on the victory of the world revolution and the abolition of the system of exploitation of man by man on this earth, so that all humanity will be emancipated. Therefore, it is wrong to talk lightly about the final victory of the revolution in our country; it is contrary to Leninism and does not correspond to the facts.
Mao's words soon proved true. First, in 1971, then-Vice Chairman Lin Piao, who had been appointed Mao's successor at the Ninth CPC Congress, conspired to seize power by assassinating Mao and staging a military coup. This was thwarted by the vigilance of revolutionaries in the party.
In the aftermath, however, arch-revisionists like Deng were rehabilitated into high positions within the party and state apparatus. During the final period of the Cultural Revolution, there was a renewed struggle against these capitalist roaders, and Deng was again criticized and removed from all posts a few months before Mao's death on September 9, 1976. However, he had many of his agents in positions of power. It was these renegades who engineered the coup to take over the party and set it on the path of capitalist restoration very soon after Mao's death. It was they who sabotaged the Cultural Revolution and then formally announced its end in 1976.
However, this coup and capitalist restoration cannot deny the validity of the truth of the Cultural Revolution. Rather, it in a sense confirms Mao's teachings on the nature of socialist society and the need to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Cultural Revolution is a scientific tool developed in the struggle against capitalist restoration and in the theoretical struggle to develop Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. Its scientific validity was established in the practical test of the Chinese revolution. Its effectiveness as a weapon for mobilizing the vast masses in the struggle against the danger of capitalist restoration in a socialist country has also been proved. However, as Mao himself pointed out, no weapon can guarantee final victory. Therefore, the fact that the capitalist roaders have won a temporary victory in no way diminishes the objective truth of the necessity and effectiveness of this weapon in the struggle for socialist construction and the defense of socialism.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is one of the most important contributions of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought to the arsenal of the international proletariat. It represents the practical implementation of Mao's greatest contribution to Marxism-the theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat to consolidate socialism, combat modern revisionism and prevent the restoration of capitalism. Its importance for the international proletariat is immeasurable in today's world, where all socialist foundations have been lost due to the manipulative schemes of the bourgeoisie within the Communist Party itself. Therefore, it is time to revise Lenin's definition of a Marxist.
Lenin, in defining a Marxist, had said that it was not enough to accept class struggle to be called a Marxist. He said that only those who recognize both the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat can be called Marxists. Today it is not enough to recognize only the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat to be a Marxist. A Marxist must accept the basic understanding of the GPCR. Thus, only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat to the recognition of the continuous revolution in the superstructure with the aim of completing the world revolution and building the communist society as soon as possible.
Chapter 32-After The Death of Mao
The late 1960s-the period of the GPCR and the establishment of Mao Zedong Thought as a new stage of Marxism-Leninism-was a period of revolutionary ferment in many parts of the world. The revolutionary war in Indochina (the area encompassing Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos) dealt serious blows to the enormous military might of the U.S. imperialists. At the same time, revolutionaries who broke away from the grip of the modern revisionists launched armed struggles under the guidance of Mao Tse-tung Thought in many parts of the Third World during this period-the ongoing armed struggles in the Philippines and India are a continuation since then. National liberation struggles waging guerrilla warfare also raged in various parts, as did armed struggles under the Guevarist ideology (ideology following the views and practices of Che Guevara, who played a leading role in the revolutionary struggles in Cuba and Bolivia) in parts of Latin America.
The Indo-China war, the intensification of struggles in the Third World and the GPCR were among the major factors in the huge outbreak of student and anti-war movements throughout the capitalist world at the end of the 1960s. The Paris student revolt of May 1968 was the most significant, but only one of a wave of student revolts that stretched from the U.S. to Italy and even to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. It also had its impact on student movements in various parts of the Third World. At the same time, the anti-Vietnam war protests in the U.S. and other parts of the world began to grow, with massive peace movements against the war and the nuclear arms race in the major cities of Europe. The U.S. imperialists were effectively isolated as not even one of their allies agreed to send troops to fight in Vietnam. Following the student movement, there was also a great increase in the struggles of the industrial working class in the countries of Western Europe, especially in Italy and France, though largely over economic demands. Huge waves of strikes with major wage demands often paralyzed entire economies of the imperialist countries.
The mid-1970s saw the final overthrow of many long-standing colonial regimes after long guerrilla wars. For example, the U.S. and its puppets were thrown out of Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos in 1975. In Africa, the republics of Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Congo and Benin were formed during this period. However, most of these countries were taken over by puppets or satellites of the new imperialism-Soviet social imperialism. A prominent exception was Kampuchea, where genuine communist revolutionaries-the Khmer Rouge-remained independent until they were invaded by Vietnam in 1978 at the behest of the Soviet imperialists.
In the period that followed, the revolutionary situation continued to be excellent, with the sharpening of all the fundamental contradictions and the further weakening of imperialism. Especially the colonies and semi-colonies continued to be the storm centers of the world revolution. At the beginning of this period, guerrilla struggles continued in Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Eritrea and other countries. The People's War began in Peru in 1980 under communist revolutionary leadership. The Shah of Iran was overthrown and an anti-American Islamic Republic was established. The national liberation war broke out in Afghanistan after the installation of a Soviet puppet regime in 1978 and the occupation by the Soviet social imperialist army in 1979. The heroic struggle of the Afghan people dealt a severe deathblow to the Soviet regime and proved to be an important factor in the final collapse of the USSR.
The epochal significance of the struggles of the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies was that they forever changed the nature of relations between imperialism and the oppressed nations. Both the Vietnam and Afghan wars proved that even a superpower cannot occupy a small and weak country. This truth became even clearer in the 1990s in the many places where UN peacekeepers tried to intervene. Somaliland, which had been controlled by British and Italian colonialists for many years without much difficulty, had become Somalia in the 1990s, where thousands of American and other troops were forced to retreat in disgrace when attacked by the people. Even the large-scale and continuous bombing of Iraq and Yugoslavia without the use of ground troops is imperialism's recognition that no country, nation or people would be willing to accept an occupying army at this time.
Since the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes in Eastern Europe and the various republics of the former Soviet Union, there has been a continuous revolutionary crisis there as well. Even in the Western imperialist countries, the deepening crisis has led to an intensification of the contradiction between labor and capital and repeated waves of strikes by the industrial working class. After Mao's death in 1976, the capitalist roaders who had remained in the party staged a coup led by the arch-revisionist Deng Tsiao-ping and took control of the party under the nominal leadership of Hua Kuo-feng, a so-called centrist. As Mao had often taught, with political control in the hands of the revisionists, the socialist base had been taken out of the hands of the proletariat. At the same time, the leadership of the Albanian Workers Party switched to an opportunist line, attacking Mao Tse-tung's thought and portraying Mao as a petty-bourgeois revolutionary. Although the Khmer Rouge continued to hold power in Kampuchea, they waged a constant struggle against the internal and external enemies of the revolution and were still recovering from the economic devastation of the war and consolidating their rule when they were defeated by the Soviet-backed Vietnamese army. Thus, there was no country in the world where the proletariat had consolidated its hold on state power and could play the role of a socialist base for the international proletariat.
In the years immediately after Mao's death, there was a considerable amount of ideological confusion in the international communist movement, with the Deng revisionists, through Hua Kuo-feng, attempting to project themselves as the upholders of Mao Tse-tung thought. In particular, they falsely peddled the revisionist Three World Theory as Mao's general line for the international proletariat. Many revolutionary sections accepted these positions, and it was only after the very openly revisionist history resolution of the CPC in 1981 and the Twelfth Congress in 1982 that most revolutionary forces around the world began to openly oppose Deng revisionism. However, some sections continued to follow the Dengist revisionist line and abandoned Mao's revolutionary teachings. Some other sections allied themselves with the opportunist attack on Mao Tse-tung thought by the Albanian Party of Labor. However, these parties later either disintegrated or openly revealed their revisionist nature.
However, those who resolutely opposed Deng's revisionism and upheld Mao Zedong Thought in practice were able to make considerable progress. Today, these forces form the nucleus of the revolutionary international proletariat. They are waging armed struggles in Peru, the Philippines, Turkey, Nepal and India. Although these forces are still very weak organizationally, they continue to grow in strength.
The main source of their growing strength is the correctness of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. The chain of major historical events in the last twenty-odd years has confirmed most of the assessments of Mao's thought. In particular, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its retreat from superpower status in the face of the people's struggles and the serious weakening of the American superpower in the face of the struggles of the oppressed peoples of the world have confirmed Mao's assessment that these imperialists were only paper tigers who would be taught a lesson by the people.
Similarly, Mao's thought has remained the best tool in the hands of the international proletariat and oppressed peoples to formulate and implement the program of revolution in their respective countries. It has also had a great influence on the armed struggles for national liberation waged in different parts of the world. Although there have been no major or significant developments in Marxist science and theory during this period, MLM thought continues to be adaptable to changing conditions in the world. It still provides the only scientific and correct theory for the international proletariat.
The international communist movement is going through the process of victory-defeat-victory on the way to the final victory of the world socialist revolution. For those who would be discouraged by the ups and downs of this process, it would be helpful to recall the understanding given by Mao during the Great Debate and also during the Cultural Revolution: Even the bourgeois revolution that replaced one exploiting class with another had to undergo repeated reversals and witness many struggles-revolution, then restoration, and then the overthrow of the restoration. Many European countries took hundreds of years to complete their bourgeois revolutions from the beginning of ideological preparations to the final conquest of state power. Since the proletarian revolution is a revolution aimed at the complete end of all systems of exploitation, it is even less permissible to imagine that the exploiting classes will meekly allow the proletariat to deprive them of all their privileges without seeking to "restore" their rule.
Temporary defeats are therefore only to be expected on the long and tortuous road of the world socialist revolution. However, the history of 150 years of development of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought has conclusively proved that it is the historical destiny of this doctrine alone to lead and guide the international proletariat to final victory.
