LENIN AND STALIN
ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONS
IN COLONIAL AND SEMICOLONIAL COUNTRIES
By Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman
Communist Party of the Philippines
Comrades and friends,
I wish to convey to all of you sincere greetings of solidarity on the occasion of this yearís Brussels International Seminar, which is sponsored by the Workersí Party of Belgium and has as its theme the road of the October revolution, in advance celebration of the 80th anniversary of this great socialist revolution.
I thank the Workersí Party of Belgium for inviting me to participate in this seminar and to deliver the main report on Lenin and Stalin and on the relationship of the democratic and socialist revolution in colonies and semicolonies.
My presentation covers the teachings of Lenin on the two stages of the Russian revolution, the implementation of these teachings by Lenin and Stalin, the extension and further development of these in colonies and semicolonies, the violation of these by the modern revisionists and the continuing validity of the Marxist-Leninist theory and practice of the two stages.
I. Introduction
Colonial and semicolonial countries have large survivals of feudalism. Thus, they are susceptible to imperialist domination. In countries where feudalism or semifeudalism reigns, there is categorically the need for a bourgeois-democratic revolution before there can be a socialist revolution. This is mainly in terms of taking into account the socioeconomic conditions in the revolutionary process and, as a matter of course, the antidemocratic character of the counterrevolutionary state.
Where there is a certain degree of industrial capitalist development as in the case of Germany during the time of Marx in 1856 or Russia during the time of Lenin in 1917 or due to imperialist domination as in the case of colonies and semicolonies, the industrial proletariat must forge an alliance with the peasantry to carry out an uninterrupted revolution from the stage of bourgeois-democratic revolution to that of socialist revolution.
At the end of the 1840ís, Marx put forward the thesis of such an uninterrupted revolution in the "Address to the Communist League"; and subsequently pointed out the necessity of combining the peasant revolutionary movement with the proletarian revolution in a letter to Engels in 1856 by stating: "the whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution, by some second edition of the Peasant War."
The foregoing ideas of Marx were not developed in the subsequent works of Marx and Engels. Neither did the theoreticians of the Second International and the West European social-democratic parties. They did their utmost to bury the ideas of Marx connecting the bourgeois-democratic revolution with the socialist revolution. They became obsessed with the Eurocentric notion of waiting for the industrial proletariat to become the majority of the population as the precondition to socialist revolution anywhere. They also took it for granted that after the bourgeois revolution the peasant masses would betray the revolution and a long "lull" of fifty or a hundred years would follow during which the proletariat would be "peacefully" and "lawfully" exploited by the bourgeoisie until the time came for the socialist revolution.
Lenin brought to light the forgotten ideas of Marx. He did not merely repeat them but developed them further. He molded them into a harmonious theory of socialist revolution by regarding the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry and other semiproletarian elements of town and country as an indispensable factor of socialist revolution and as a condition for the victory of the proletarian revolution.
Lenin guided the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in London in April 1905, to differentiate the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks, on the basic tactics and line of class leadership of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic and socialist stages of the Russian revolution and the necessity of the worker-peasant alliance. In their own rump congress, the Mensheviks conceded to the bourgeoisie the class leadership in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and wanted the proletariat to be a mere appendage of the liberal bourgeoisie and a mere beggar of economistic reforms in the course of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Subsequently, in June and July 1905, Lenin wrote Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution to clarify in a comprehensive, profound and thoroughgoing manner the bourgeois-democratic and socialist stages of the revolution and set forth the tactics of continuous proletarian class leadership through its revolutionary party, the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, the armed uprising for seizing political power, the provisional revolutionary government , the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, the confiscation of land from the landlords and the realization of the 8-hour day and other immediate demands of the working class.
Stalin immediately and consistently followed the Leninist theory and tactics of revolution, with such works as: "Armed Insurrection and Our Tactics", "The Provisional Revolutionary Government and Social Democracy" (1905), "Two Clashes," "The Present Situation and the Unity Congress of the Workersí Party" (1906), Preface to the Georgian edition of Karl Kautskyís Pamphlet, The Driving Forces and Prospects of the Russian Revolution" (February 1907).
II. The Precision of Leninís Work
Leninís Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution was precise in applying Marxism on the concrete conditions of Russia. It served as the programmatic guide of the Bolsheviks and the proletariat for the entire period from 1905 to their victory in the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917.
Within that period, Russia could be correctly described in several ways. It was a military-feudal imperialist power, especially in relation to the many nationalities that it oppressed and exploited. It had a few industrial enclaves, surrounded by an ocean of feudalism and medievalism. It could produce industrial fuel and basic metals and chemicals but not machine tools and was therefore a weak capitalist country. It was a semicolony of British, French and Belgian imperialism which provided the finance capital and capital equipment for the exploitation of the proletariat and the people.
The industrial proletariat was a minority of the population and could not make revolution of any kind without the alliance with the small peasantry and other semiproletarian masses who composed the overwhelming majority of the people. It could not aim for the socialist revolution without passing through the bourgeois-democratic revolution and without seizing the initiative and leadership of the revolution from the liberal bourgeoisie who acted as the agents of the big bourgeoisie and who courted the support of the peasantry. The wisdom of Lenin was to declare forthrightly that the proletariat was to seize the leadership of the bourgeois-democratic revolution so that this could pass on to the socialist revolution.
It was of decisive importance to define the basic tactics of the Bolsheviks and the proletariat because the Russian situation and the Russian revolution were complex and they were confronted with several types of opponents: the tsarist autocracy, the big bourgeoisie, the liberal bourgeoisie and the opportunists in the Russian Social-Democratic Party and the "socialist revolutionary" descendants of the Narodniks.
The tsarist autocracy, together with the landed aristocracy, blew hot and cold in countering the revolution, at one time pretending to make reforms and another time unabashedly escalating brutal reaction. The big bourgeoisie used the liberal bourgeoisie, the constitutional democrats, in an attempt to outwit the Bolsheviks and dupe the people with the proposal of a constitutional monarchy and bourgeois-democratic reforms.
At the same time, there were the opportunists, the Mensheviks, who were avowedly for the overthrow of tsarism but who were open to compromise with the liberal bourgeoisie and who posed as Marxists but who wished the liberal bourgeoisie to lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution and make the proletariat its subsidiary. Further, there were the petty-bourgeois socialist revolutionaries, who advocated a populist nonclass kind of socialism and who were deeply hostile to the Bolsheviks and the proletariat.
While conducting ideological and political struggle against the Mensheviks, Lenin also resolutely conducted a parallel struggle against the opportunists and revisionists of other parties in the Second International on a comprehensive range of issues pertaining to imperialism and the proletarian revolution. He combated Kautskyís theory of "ultra imperialism" and the social-imperialist, social-chauvinist and social-pacifist position of the social-democratic parties, which collaborated with the blatantly bourgeois parties in supporting imperialism, increasing the war budget and the like.
The bankruptcy of the social democratic parties became exposed upon the outbreak of World War I. Leninís description of imperialism as the eve of socialist revolution and his call to turn the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war rang loud and clear. In 1916, he wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism to consolidate his theory on imperialism and proletarian revolution. This work reinforced his Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. Unfolding the theory of uneven development, he demonstrated that Russia was ripe for armed revolution for carrying out the consequent stages of bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolution, both under the leadership of the proletariat.
In the process of making the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917, there was basically an objective alliance of different political forces determined to overthrow tsarism, especially after it became culpable for the catastrophic involvement of Russia in World War I. The situation became undoubtedly ripe for armed revolution. At the same time, there was a life-and-death contest for hegemony in the revolution between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie had the initiative of forming the provisional revolutionary government under Kerensky. But Lenin recognized that there was already dual power in Russia, involving the power in the hands of the Kerensky regime and the other in the hands of the soviets of workers, soldiers and peasantsí deputies.
He upheld the independence of the revolutionary party of the proletariat and called for winning over the majority of the soviets in order to make the bourgeois-democratic revolution pass on to the socialist revolution in October. The linkage of the soviets of workersí deputies with those of the soldiersí deputies under Bolshevik leadership meant the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry because most of the soldiers were peasants. And when the Bolsheviks were able to win the majority of the soviets of peasant deputies, they were ready for the armed uprisings. The fate of the Kerensky regime was sealed.
With the slogan of bread and peace, the Bolsheviks were able to seize the initiative and galvanize the masses as the Kerenksy regime made grievous mistakes arising from its bourgeois class nature and its puppetry to the Western imperialist powers that dictated the continued involvement of Russia in World War I. They resolutely and militantly led the proletariat and the people against such further involvement in the interimperialist war and against the threats posed by the diehard tsarist forces and the imperialists. They won political power by storming the urban centers of bourgeois political power.
Upon establishment of soviet power or the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin immediately issued a decree on nationalization of the land, involving the confiscation of land from the landlords for the benefit of the peasant masses. This was to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution and to fulfill the longrunning peasant demand for land in keeping with the alliance of the working class and the peasantry. This also laid the ground for the subsequent victories of the Bolshevik in more extensive and intensive armed struggle.
The Bolsheviks were determined to withdraw Russia from the interimperialist war and proceeded to forge the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany in order to gain a breathing spell and consolidate the victory of the revolution. But the imperialists and the local reactionaries were hell-bent on recovering their lost power in Russia and launched the war of foreign military intervention and civil war, from 1918 to 1920.
The armed struggle was carried out mainly in the countryside. The Bolsheviks could win because of the basic tactic of worker-peasant alliance. The overwhelming support of the peasantry enabled the Bolshevik party and the Red Army to trounce the imperialists and the local reactionaries. In viewing the Russian revolution, it is incorrect to separate and isolate the urban armed uprisings from the subsequent armed struggle in the countryside.
After the war, the Bolsheviks had to restore the economy as soon as possible. To continue with "war communism" would be untenable and intolerable, especially to the peasantry from whom a tremendous amount of supplies had been requisitioned for the war effort. Thus, Lenin put forward the New Economic Policy (NEP)as a transitory measure, giving concessions even to the rich peasants, small traders and entrepreneurs, from 1921 onward. At the same time, Bolsheviks continued to hold on to the commanding heights of the economy, the industries, the means of transport and communications, the banks and other major assets confiscated from the enemy.
After Leninís death in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership of the Party, the state and the revolution. He comprehensively summed up and defended Leninism in his Foundations of Leninism, which was issued in the same year, against the anti-Leninist elements who had wished to take advantage of the illness and death of Lenin. This work defined Marxism-Leninism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.
He continued to implement the NEP. He fought and defeated Trotsky and his ilk who wished to terminate it prematurely. The objective of these "Left" opportunist scoundrels was to break up the worker-peasant alliance, subject the peasantry to intolerable exploitation and fulfill their prophecy that socialism in the Soviet Union was impossible.
From 1926 onward, Stalin vigorously pushed the line of socialist industrialization and from 1930 onward, the collectivization of agriculture in conjunction with socialist industry. He fought and defeated Bukharin and his Right opportunist ilk who wished to indefinitely prolong the temporary concessions given to the rural and urban bourgeoisie under the NEP. The Bolsheviks aroused, organized and mobilized the masses of small peasants against the rich peasants who carried out sabotage and other forms of violent resistance.
Under the leadership of Stalin, the worker-peasant alliance among the various nationalities in the Soviet Union was maintained through varied phases and in varied conditions. The workers in socialist industry needed the food and raw materials and the peasants in the collectives received in return the agricultural machinery, agrochemical and consumer manufactures from the workers. There was a dialectical and spiraling interaction of the two toiling classes in a series of five year plans which created a powerful socialist economic base and superstructure.
III. The Two Stages in the Colonies and Semicolonies in the East
In tracing the historical destiny of the doctrine of Karl Marx in 1913, Lenin marked three periods: the first, from the revolution of 1848 to the Paris Commune of 1871; the second, from the Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the third, since the Russian revolution.
In the first period, the doctrine of Marx was proclaimed by the Communist Manifesto. It started out as only one of the numerous trends of socialism. The revolutionary storms revealed the various classes in action and established the fact that the proletariat alone could lead the socialist revolution. Bourgeois society took shape. Liberalism was exposed as a tool of reaction. Pre-Marxian utopian trends of socialism were swept away. Independent proletarian parties were born: the First International (1864-72) and the German Social-Democratic Party.
In the second period (1872-1904), there were generally no revolutionary storms in the West inasmuch as in the main it had finished with bourgeois revolutions. Socialist parties, basically proletarian, were organized on a wide scale. The Marxian doctrine spread and was so predominant in the working class movement that liberalism tried to revitalize itself in the form of socialist opportunism.
In the third period, the East opened up in a big way as the source of great revolutionary storms. The bourgeois democratic revolutions in Russia, Turkey, Persia and China broke out one after another. And may I point out that the pioneer of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Asia was the Philippine revolution of 1896.
Lenin criticized the opportunists for singing without cease the praises of "social peace" and the nonnecessity of storms under "democracy" in the face of the revolutionary storms in Asia. He saw the Asian revolutions as revealing the spinelessness and baseness of liberalism and at the same time the sharp demarcation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
At the same time, he saw the high cost of living and the oppression perpetrated by the trusts, engendering an intensification of the class struggle in Europe. He pointed to the feverish arming and the policy of imperialism turning the so-called social peace of Europe into a barrel of gunpowder more than anything else.
He recognized the growing importance of the East as the battlefield between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He pointed out the potential dialectical interaction between the revolutionary movement in the East and that in the West. He was on the road of extending and further developing Marxism of 19th century free-competition capitalism to the stage of Leninism in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution.
The opportunists and revisionists of the Second International acted as the social chauvinist and social pacifist tail of the direct parliamentary agents of the monopoly bourgeoisie in exploiting the proletariat in Europe, in raising war budgets and in encouraging imperialist policy and projects. Kautskyís theory of ultra-imperialism went so far as to presume that imperialism is benign and progressive because it is supposed to break down precapitalist formations and open the way to capitalist development and the growth of the proletariat in colonies and semicolonies.
Lenin categorically described imperialism as moribund capitalism and as the eve of socialist revolution. He put forward the theory of uneven development in order to demonstrate that imperialism involves the spasmodic and uneven expansion of capital and at the same time in a bigger way the destruction of productive forces in the wake of taking superprofits from the colonies, semicolonies and the dependent countries; and that where the oppression and exploitation is most intense on a wide scale revolutionary resistance arises. Thus, in addition to the slogan "workers of all countries, unite!", he issued the slogan for the oppressed peoples and nations to unite against imperialism and local reaction.
Under the theory of uneven development, Russia was the weakest link in the chain of imperialist countries and was where the proletarian revolution was most likely to win, provided the subjective forces were developed to take advantage of the ripening revolutionary situation. The economic and technological conditions in the stronger imperialist countries are more apt for socialism than those in the less-developed countries but their social and military power at home plus the superprofits taken from colonies and semicolonies provide the imperialists with more resources to preempt, crush or derail the proletarian revolution.
Lenin estimated that workersí uprisings in the West, especially in Germany would be helpful to the Russian revolution. But when these failed, he became even more determined to encourage the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in the East and place them within the framework of the world proletarian revolution. Thus, soon after the victory of the October revolution, he proceeded to form the Third International in 1919 in order to promote the building of proletarian revolutionary parties in both the imperialist countries and the dominated countries.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Third International at a meeting of the Moscow soviet in 1920, Lenin said,
In the early period of the revolution many entertained the hope that the socialist revolution would begin in Western Europe immediately when the imperialist war ended; at the same time when the masses were armed there could have been a successful revolution in some of the Western countries as well. It could have taken place had it not been for the split within the proletariat of Western Europe being deeper and the treachery of the former socialist leaders greater than had been imagined.
Lenin wrote the preliminary draft theses on the national and colonial questions and on the agrarian question for the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. At the Congress, he delivered the report on the national and colonial questions, where he made the following important points:
1. It is beyond doubt that any national movement can only be a bourgeois-democratic movement, since the overwhelming mass of the population in the backward countries consists of peasants who represent bourgeois-capitalist relations. It would be utopian to believe that proletarian parties in these backward countries, if indeed they can emerge from them, can pursue communist tactics and a communist policy, without establishing definite relations with the peasant movement and without giving it effective support.
2. It will readily be understood that peasants living in conditions of semifeudal dependence can easily assimilate and give effect to the idea of Soviet organization. It is also clear that the oppressed masses, those who are exploited, not only by merchant capital but also by the feudalists, and by a state based on feudalism, can apply this weapon, this type of organization, in their conditions too. The idea of Soviet organization is a simple one and is applicable, not only to proletarian, but also to peasant feudal and semifeudal relations.
3. The question was posed as follows: are we to consider as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic development is inevitable for backward nations now on the road to emancipation and among whom a certain advance towards progress is to be seen since the war. We replied in the negative. If the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic propaganda among them, and the Soviet governments come to their aid with all the means at their disposal--in that event it will be erroneous to assume that the backward peoples must inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development.
Trotsky betrayed the Bolshevik revolution by stubbornly seeking to make it dependent on the workersí uprisings in Germany and in other imperialist countries, and by being contemptible of the oppressed nations and peoples, especially the peasantry in Russia and other backward countries and by failing to understand and attacking the theory and practice of the two-stage revolution.
Faithful to the legacy of Lenin, Stalin stood forthrightly for socialism in one country, availing of every possible support not only from the proletariat in imperialist countries but also from the oppressed peoples and nations outside the imperialist countries. And he paid close attention to the work of the Third International.
The propagation of the two-stage revolution by Lenin and Stalin would bear abundant fruit in the form of peopleís democracies in Asia and Eastern Europe after World War II. The colonies and semicolonies proved to be the more fertile ground for the victory of the armed revolution led by the proletariat than in the imperialist countries.
The peopleís democracy in China was the most important of the revolutionary crop because of the huge population and size of the country and more importantly because here was to be seen the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to socialism and the heroic effort to consolidate socialism against revisionism and the danger of capitalist restoration. The Chinese revolution under Mao Zedongís leadership grew in importance as modern revisionism took hold of the Soviet Union starting in 1956.
IV. Further development of the two-stage revolution
The salvoes of the October Revolution and the work of the Third International inspired and caused the establishment of the Communist Party of China (CPC)in 1921. In leading the CPC and the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong learned from Leninís theory and practice of the two-stage revolution under proletarian dictatorship and further developed it by making his own unique contributions.
He made concrete analysis of the concrete conditions of semicolonial and semifeudal China. He characterized the first stage of the Chinese revolution as bourgeois-democratic of the new type or new-democratic revolution against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
He identified the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class as the class enemy within Chinese society and, among the motive forces of the revolution, the proletariat as the leading class, the peasantry as the main force and the worker-peasant alliance as the foundation of the revolutionary united front.
To come to the second stage of the Chinese revolution, which is socialist, the new-democratic revolution must be basically completed through the nationwide armed overthrow of the joint class dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class and the establishment of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry which is at the core and in essence the class dictatorship of the proletariat.
Mao regarded the new-democratic revolution through protracted peopleís war as the preparation for the socialist revolution. He pointed out that the new-democratic revolution was distinguishable from but continuous with the socialist revolution because both stages were led by the revolutionary proletariat and were within the framework of the world proletarian-socialist revolution. As Lenin taught, he asserted that there was no need to pass the stage of capitalist development.
He repudiated the Trotskyite view, expressed most prominently by Chen Duxiu, the founding secretary of the Communist Party of China, that there was a separation of the bourgeois-democratic and socialist stages of the revolution and that the Chinese proletariat could only be an appendage of the Guomindang (GMD) because the proletariat was supposedly incapable of leading the bourgeois-democratic revolution. In fact, Chen Duxiu merged the CPP with the GMD and subordinated it to the latter in the 1924-27 period.
Mao pointed out that the proletariat could lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution and maintain its independence and initiative by strengthening itself ideologically, politically and organizationally as the advanced detachment of the proletariat; by having the peasantry for its main ally and by fulfilling the peasant demand for land as the main content of the democratic revolution. He was responsible for the establishment of the rural base areas, the first soviets of workers and peasants, which served the CPC in good stead after Chiang Kaishekís betrayal.
Regarding Party-building, Mao introduced the rectification campaign as the principle and method for confronting subjectivism, opportunism and other errors. He consistently espoused the line of trusting the masses, relying on them and mobilizing them as the way for carrying out and raising the revolutionary struggle from one level to a new and higher level.
He upheld the armed revolution as the main form of revolutionary struggle because the central task of the revolution is the seizure of political power. He was inspired by the declaration of Stalin that continuous armed struggle in China was an advantage of the Chinese revolution.
To this day, Mao is recognized as the master strategist and tactician with his theory and strategic line of peopleís war, involving the encirclement of the cities from the countryside over a protracted period of time in order to accumulate strength through tactical offensives until sufficient strength is built to seize the cities on a nationwide scale.
This theory and strategic line integrates the armed struggle, the agrarian revolution and the building of political power and the mass base. Mao demonstrated that in the course of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of the new type it was possible to respond to the peasant demand for land and to create Red political power based in the countryside even while the power of the reactionaries is still entrenched in the cities. In the Russian experience, dual political power arose only in the February revolution.
Mao made a continuous class analysis of Chinese society in accordance with Marxism-Leninism to guide Party building, the armed struggle and united front work. Insofar as it had the support of the peasant masses and had absolute leadership over the peopleís army, whichever was the main enemy at a given time, the CPC could maintain its independence and initiative and at the same time handle correctly its other allies and range the broadest possible united front to isolate and destroy the enemy.
After nationwide victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution under its leadership in 1949, the Chinese proletariat could commence the socialist revolution. The state that was established took the form of a peopleís democratic republic. At the core was the proletarian dictatorship. The main component of state power, the peopleís army, was under the absolute leadership of the proletariat through the CPC.
Mao basically followed the teachings and example of Lenin and Stalin in nationalizing the land and carrying out land reform as a bourgeois-democratic measure to satisfy the land hunger of the poor and lower middle peasants, in capturing the commanding heights of the economy for socialism by confiscating the productive assets of the imperialists and the domestic big bourgeoisie and in adopting the transitory measures for reviving the war-ravaged economy and realizing the basic socialist transformation of the entire economy. Under the leadership of Stalin, the Soviet Union assisted China.
In 1955 the peasants began to move towards cooperativization from the level of mutual aid teams. In 1956 the basic socialist transformation of the Chinese economy was accomplished. The Right opportunists and revisionists began overtly and covertly to oppose the proletarian revolutionary line of Mao.
They wanted to perpetuate the concessions previously granted to the patriotic bourgeoisie and rich peasants and opposed the restriction of bourgeois rights. They prated about the consolidation of the national-democratic revolution and yet self-contradictorily about the dying out of the class struggle. They insisted that the main contradiction was between the backward forces of production and the advanced relations of production and that socialist progress was simply a matter of promoting the forces of production.
Mao upheld the line of socialist revolution and construction. He pointed out that the main contradiction in socialist society is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He followed Leninís dictum that socialism would take a whole historical epoch and that the defeated bourgeoisie would continue to resist socialism in so many ways.
He defined the correct handling of contradictions among the people and those between the people and the enemy. Thus, the middle and petty-bourgeoisie as well as the rich peasants could be subordinated to the socialist policy of the state and violent counterrevolution could be averted. He also adopted the policy of making heavy and basic industries as the leading factor, agriculture as the basis of the economy and bridging the two with light industry in order to accelerate delivery of producer and consumer goods to the peasant masses and thereby lighten their burden in the process of economic development.
He put forward the policy of the Great Leap Forward along the general line of socialist revolution and construction, involving "walking on two legs" and building the peopleís communes. The policy overcame the imperialist blockade, the natural calamities and the sabotage by the Soviet revisionist renegades as well as the Bukharinite Right opportunist opposition and "Left" opportunist "communist wind".
Following the resounding success of the Great Leap Forward and bountiful harvests from the communes, Mao launched a counteroffensive against the Right opportunists. He stressed that the key link to grasp in the class struggle and directed the socialist education movement against the Party bureaucrats taking the capitalist road.
He made a comprehensive critique of modern revisionism and engaged the Soviet revisionist party in an ideological debate. Taking into account the phenomenon of modern revisionism and the two-line struggle between the proletarian revolutionaries and the bourgeois renegades within the CPC, he subsequently put forward the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship in order to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism.
He put the theory into practice through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). This involved the all-round dialectical revolutionization of both the mode of production and the superstructure of socialist society.
It surpassed the widespread notion that dissolving the exploiting classes was merely a matter of doing so economically, legally and administratively and that building socialism was merely a matter of developing the productive forces and the technical expertise.
V. Antisocialist policy in agriculture
So far, in the history of the world proletarian revolution, socialism has arisen in countries where feudal and semifeudal relations in agriculture exist to a significant extent. The backward conditions in agriculture necessitate the bourgeois-democratic revolution, involving the completion of land reform and building the worker-peasant alliance. The question of social relations in agriculture is of fundamental importance in the transition from the bourgeois democratic revolution to the socialist revolution. Failure to complete land reform and advance from one stage of cooperativization to a higher one is fatal to the socialist revolution.
Excluded from the discussion are national liberation movements that were helpful to the anti-imperialist movement on a global scale but were essentially anticolonial, antiracist or antidespotic and came to power through neocolonial compromise or insurrection (e.g., several liberation fronts in Africa and the FSLN in Nicaragua) and confined themselves within the framework of an uncompleted bourgeois-democratic revolution of the old type. Some of them have not even tried to carry out genuine and thoroughgoing land reform and others have tried but have failed because of the lack of genuine proletarian class leadership and because of the lack of complementation by basic industrialization.
In all the peopleís democracies established after World War II, there was the debate between the proletarian revolutionaries and the Right opportunists concerning the social conditions and relations and the socialist path to be followed in agriculture. The teachings of Lenin and Stalin regarding measures of transition from the bourgeois-democratic to the socialist revolution in agriculture and collectivization of agriculture in connection with socialist industrialization guided the proletarian revolutionaries.
Tito of Yugoslavia, as pioneer of modern revisionism, abandoned land reform and collectivization in 1948 and allowed the rich peasants to persist. The question of agriculture was a pivot point for him in his overall antisocialist position of denying the necessity of central economic planning, atomizing the economy under the pretext of workersí self-management and raising the flag of bourgeois nationalism against the Cominform.
In most of the peopleís democracies in Eastern Europe, land reform and collectivization were either frustrated or delayed, reflecting the strength of the Right opportunist current in the ruling parties which were typically mergers of communists and social-democrats who posed overnight as communists. When modern revisionism prevailed in the Soviet Union and spread in Eastern Europe, starting in 1956, land reform and collectivization were either put off completely or tokens of these were undercut by the persistence of rich peasants, farm capitalists and merchants.
The revisionists in Eastern Europe underestimated the peasant question as something to be solved automatically by the expansion of socialist industry and farm mechanization. The peasantry is supposed to be dissolved by employment generated by socialist industry and only a small number of farm workers is supposed to be needed to operate the farms.
But long before the promise in their argument is realized, the revisionists also use the backward conditions in agriculture as the factual basis for their argument for the retention or revival of the capitalist law of value, for the bourgeois freedom of dealing with labor power and means of production as commodities and for all related notions and practices of so-called market socialism.
In the Soviet Union, Khrushchovís drive to undo the socialist work of Lenin and Stalin included undermining and discrediting socialist agriculture in a series of clever moves. As first secretary of the Party, he pushed Malenkov the prime minister to plant the wrong crops on vast areas in order to discredit the latter as well as socialist agriculture. After taking all power into his hands, he broke the alliance of the working class and the peasantry. He dissolved the machine and tractor stations run by the proletariat, allowed the collectives to individually own, buy and sell farm machines and spare parts, expanded the private plots and the free markets and encouraged the reemergence of the rich peasants.
Soviet agriculture went into shambles before Khrushchov fell from power. This was one of the major reasons for his ouster. But his successors did not reverse his agricultural policy but continued to praise the supposedly higher productivity in the private plots than in the collective farms from which the rich peasants and free traders stole products.
With their "new economic system", Brezhnev and Kosygin expanded and aggravated the antisocialist policies initiated by Khrushchov in both industry and agriculture. The principal reason why Kremlinologists called the Brezhnev regime neo-Stalinist was that Brezhnev made a sham rehabilitation of Stalin and recentralized certain strategic industries to get revenues for the all-union bureaucracy and the arms race.
By the time Gorbachov came to power, the Soviet economy had become so depressed and bankrupted that he could easily disorganize and discredit it completely. He continued to misrepresent monopoly bureaucrat capitalism as socialism and moved towards his ultimate goal of open privatization of public productive assets. Finally, he called for "land reform" which meant the retrogression to private farming and the dissolution of state farms and collectives.
In a certain sense, the rise of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union in 1956 overtook the Chinese revolution. The right opportunists in the CPC became heavily influenced by Soviet revisionist ideas, including the economic ideas of the late Nicolai Voznesensky and E. Lieberman, because of the continuing close Sino-Soviet relations then and the flow of Chinese students and trainees.
It is to the credit of Mao that he was able to stand up victoriously against Soviet modern revisionists and the domestic revisionists, who tried but failed to overthrow him, from 1956 to 1976. He was able to carry out socialist revolution and construction, build socialist industry and the peopleís communes, make a comprehensive critique and repudiation of modern revisionism and carry out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
But it should not be surprising that after his death his proletarian revolutionary line could be defeated. He himself was aware of the tremendous odds, involving the objective conditions and subjective factors. For him to move from one victory to another, he had to overcome the powerful opposition of the capitalist-roaders.
In Chinese agriculture, Mao put forward the line that agricultural cooperation could be realized, with mechanization progressively coming in as socialist industry could provide. The point was to preempt the further growth of the rural bourgeoisie, which had been tolerated in the period of transition. But Liu Xiaoqi pushed the Bukharinite rich peasant line that cooperativization should always be preceded by mechanization or else it should not be undertaken at all.
They fielded "work" teams to nitpick and dissolve the cooperatives initiated by the peasant masses in 1955 in answer to Maoís call for these to be established wherever possible on the basis of the mutual aid teams. To oppose the building of the peopleís communes during the Great Leap Forward, they alternated between Right opportunism and whipping up the "communist wind". Up to the early ë60s, they pushed the four big freedoms of the rich peasants--to hire labor, trade, lend money and rent out land.
After the death of Mao, the top Chinese revisionists or capitalist-roaders headed by Deng Xiaoping pushed their plan of big-comprador "modernization" and whipped up their line of capitalist reforms and opening up to foreign monopoly capitalism. They had as initial social base the national capitalists to whom they returned capital by redeeming the government bonds previously given in exchange for expropriated assets and the petty-bourgeoisified sections of the Party and state bureaucracy who were itching to have their revenge on Mao for the cultural revolution.
They proceeded to break up the peopleís communes, which by implication they derided as a system of collective irresponsibility, and revived the pre-revolutionary system of individual farming which they described as the individual household responsibility system. The local Party cadres who complied with the new line rewarded their own families and friends with the choicest portions of land, including orchards and fishponds. The rich peasants were resurrected overnight and became the biggest social base of the Dengist counterrevolution.
The rural industries built on a widescale during the cultural revolution were privatized under the legal fiction of management lease. At the municipal, provincial and national levels, the bourgeoisie reemerged rapidly. As in the old days of the Guomindang, the biggest Chinese bourgeois are the bureaucrat capitalists, with the difference that they masquerade as communist to legitimize their rule. They retain the state enterprises as milking cows and at the same time run the most profitable private enterprises, in combination with the foreign monopolies.
Maoís thesis that as soon as the revisionists come to power they restore capitalism and become social fascist has been proven correct. They have deprived the workers of the right to strike and other democratic rights and subject them to severe exploitation and oppression under the pretext of "socialist labor discipline".
The myth is being spread that because of capitalist reforms and opening up to foreign monopoly capitalism, China has developed rapidly and that, good for socialism, the Chinese proletariat has increased in number. The truth is that the proletariat previously generated by a self-reliant socialist industry has been eroded and replaced by untenured cheap labor for sweatshops. Coolie labor of pre-revolutionary times has come back with a vengeance.
There is an explosive social polarization in China, with less than ten percent of the population getting high income and more than 90 percent reduced to a miserable level of subsistence and subjected to job insecurity and growing unemployment. While the imperialist and big-comprador enclaves of export-oriented manufacturing glisten in the coastal provinces, the west and central regions of China are rapidly plunging into lower levels of stagnation, depression and refeudalization.
V. The continuing validity of the two stages
The most important fact to recognize about the character of monopoly capitalism today is that it is destructive to productive forces and harmful to the well-being of the proletariat and people to an extent and in a manner unprecedented in the entire history of capitalism. As we enter the 21st century under the shadow of imperialist "globalization" and neocolonialism, the overwhelming majority of the people of the world (up to 80 percent) suffer from semicolonial and semifeudal conditions. More than ever before, we are still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, as Lenin described.
1. At the very global centers of capitalism, the United States, the European Union and Japan, there is a rapid rise in the organic composition of capital. The monopoly firms which are ahead in the competition are rapidly concentrating and centralizing capital, putting more capital into reequipment and retooling and reducing the wage fund through downsizing of labor and use of part-time and short-term contract workers in order to extract superprofits.
The result is the stagnant and recessive tendency of national productivity and profitability rates. The United States is economically strongest among the monopoly capitalist powers because it is using its technological lead to manufacture goods for export and pushing its export drive at the expense of the other monopoly capitalist powers. The unemployment rate is made to appear relatively low because temporary part-time jobs in the service sector are being generated and misrepresented as regular employment.
The handful of so-called newly-industrialized economies like South Korea and Taiwan are reeling from increasing economic difficulties because the capitalist crisis of overproduction has extended to export-oriented manufacturing, previously conceded to them since the ë70s. US monopoly capitalism wishes to exploit its own domestic consumer market and is pushing the export of its own products to these economies under the slogan of trade and investment liberalization.
2. In the past, notwithstanding the Comecon, the bureaucrat monopoly capitalists in the former Soviet bloc countries put their economies within the world capitalist system, competed and colluded with the traditional industrial capitalist countries for a while and ultimately` their revisionist regimes could not survive under the weight of the rapacity of the new bourgeoisie, the arms race and the huge debt from Western creditors.
Now, the former Soviet bloc countries are generally in an ever-worsening state of compradorization and economic devastation. The industrial and agricultural system of the former Soviet Union has broken down and its production has continuously plunged. It sells its natural resources cheaply to pay for the consumer manufactures being dumped on it from the West. Most of the republics of Russia and most of the former Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe are flagrantly in economic and social conditions similar to those of the third world.
All the former Soviet bloc countries are dependent on loans and manufactured supplies from the Western monopolies and are trapped in the web of such multilateral agencies as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (IBRD), World Trade Organization (WTO) and the EBRD. They are being reduced to the status of semicolonial and semifeudal countries ruled by the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord class.
3. Since the overproduction of raw materials in the ë70s, the third world countries have continuously plunged from one level of economic degradation to a lower one. Without exception, they have become neocolonial debt vassals of the imperialist countries and dependents on manufactured imports. Africa today presents the bleakest scene of misery and turbulence. But many countries in Asia and Latin America are basically in the same bleak situation.
In the notable case of China, the self-reliant industrial foundation previously established under socialism has been undermined. Export-oriented manufacturing and high consumption by the new bourgeoisie is bringing about the compradorization and refeudalization of China. The rapidly growing foreign debt and domestic public debt manifest the dismal neocolonial direction of China. The United States is pressing for extension of the bourgeois liberalization of the economy to that of the political system, i.e., discarding the signboard of the CPC and socialism, as in the Soviet Union.
The basic industries established in the past in some other third world countries like India and Brazil, have also been phased out or bankrupted due to the trade and investment liberalization enjoyed by the multinational corporations. The imperialists extend their direct investments and loans up to a certain point, where the compradorization as well as refeudalization of the economy can be generated.
In view of the massive retrogression of social economies in the third world and former Soviet bloc countries as a result of the depredations of monopoly capitalism, the theory and practice of the two stages of revolution remain valid and applicable in most countries of the world.
Now and for quite some time to come, the bourgeois-democratic revolution of the new type, under the leadership of the proletariat, is necessary in order to confront and defeat the imperialists and the local exploiting classes and overcome semicolonial and semifeudal conditions that afflict more countries than ever before and to prepare the way for the socialist stage of the revolution.
It is completely untrue that mankind is already beyond the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, that bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the new type have become outdated and unnecessary, that the immediate political line everywhere is socialism and that pursuing the socialist revolution is merely a matter of raising similar economic demands everywhere, like equal pay for equal work and six-hour work day without reduction of pay.
The appropriate economic demands, which are internationally and nationally applicable must be made by the proletarian revolutionary parties. And they must be mentioned in the proper order in a particular country because a communist would look silly in the Philippines if he missed the immediate problems of mass unemployment and the actual low-wage levels and demanded first of all that the Filipino worker should get the same amount of wages as the workers in industrial capitalist countries.
More important than making economic demands, as if the imperialists were kindhearted, is undertaking the workers strikes and the protest mass actions on the basis of concrete conditions in various countries in order to condemn the imperialist policies that oppress and exploit the proletariat and the broad masses of the people.
In the imperialist countries, the most important tasks are to build, expand and consolidate the revolutionary parties of the proletariat, generate workersí strikes and mass protest actions, raise economic demands but not be limited by them and prepare for the overthrow of the monopoly bourgeoisie. Socialist demands are made in order to raise the level of consciousness and militancy of the proletariat and the people and not really to expect mercy from the monopoly bourgeoisie.
In the third world and former Soviet-bloc countries, which are suffering from basically semicolonial and semifeudal conditions, it is possible and necessary to build revolutionary parties of the proletariat that can lead the broad masses of the people in the new-democratic and socialist stages of the revolution. In these countries, the people are now far more predisposed than those in the imperialist countries to wage armed revolution. The resurgence of the armed revolutionary movement in these countries can stimulate the forces of proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries.
The new world disorder that has arisen in the wake of the end of the Cold War provides favorable conditions for the resurgence of revolutionary movement led by the proletariat in the imperialist and dominated countries. The violent conflict in many parts of the world due to the bitter rivalries of reactionary factions under worsening socioeconomic conditions, the growing military interventions of imperialist powers and the sharpening competition of the imperialist powers themselves as a result of the crisis of overproduction are preparing the stage for interimperialist war as well as for revolutionary wars on an unprecedentedly wide scale in the forthcoming century. Pax Americana is not forever.
If something bigger like the October Revolution of 1917 came after the Paris Commune of 1871 and still something bigger like several socialist countries and a great wave of national liberation movements came after the October Revolution, then something much bigger is forthcoming in the 21st century. The historical epoch of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is far from over. Let us look forward to the next peak of the world proletarian revolution.