21st May 1998 (second draft)
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
1. Today, communists all over the world are summing up the first century of socialist revolution, in order to prepare for greater struggles to come and to achieve ever greater victories. They will exert every effort for the 21st century to become the century of victory on a world scale.
2. The bourgeoisie struggled during three centuries in order to triumph over the forces of feudalism. The socialist revolution aim is to put an end to the long reign of the exploiting classes and to eliminate all forms of exploitation of man by man. The final victory of socialism all over the world will take up a whole historical epoch.
3. The twentieth century has witnessed great feats of socialist revolution and construction, but also to treason and counter-revolution. The twentieth century has been one of dress rehearsal, during which the proletariat accumulated great positive experiences as well as negative and dramatic ones. As long as the communist parties remained loyal to the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism, the world socialist revolution followed an ascending course. As soon as the revisionists imposed themselves on a great number of communist parties, the revolution began its downfall.
A glorious experience
4. A hundred and fifty years ago, Marx and Engels published the "Manifesto of the Communist Party". The fundamental principles laid down by this great programmatic document remain valid for the proletariat of all countries.
5. Marx and Engels drew the lessons from the Paris Commune, the first revolution to take the path of socialist revolution, the path of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The different forms of power of the working class essentially correspond to the measures taken by the Paris Commune so as to allow the workers to become the effective rulers of society.
6. Struggling against social-democratic treason, Lenin defended Marxism and developed the strategy and tactics of the socialist revolution, leading the October uprising and wrenching the workers from the barbarism of imperialist war and interventions. Lenin formulated the general line for building socialism.
7. Neither the international bourgeoisie nor the opportunists in the Bolshevik Party believed that socialism could last in one backward country alone. Stalin put Lenin's political principles into practice and built a great socialist power.
8. The struggle for the industrialisation, that mobilised millions of young workers, transformed a backward and feudal country into an industrial power able to stand up to world imperialism. Middle-age agriculture was transformed into a mechanised, collective one. Thanks to the cultural revolution, the former country of illiterate moujiks became a country of scientists, engineers and technicians.
9. Stalin built the Red Army in a high spirit of initiative and heroism and he firged close links between the army and the popular masses. Pratically on its own, the Red Army defeated the Hitlerite armies.
10. The Soviet Union's victorious anti-fascist war stimulated the development of the communist movement on a world-wide scale, especially in Europe and Asia. The victory of the Soviet Union over German imperialism gave new impulse to the revolutionary anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement that shook imperialist domination in Asia and Africa. In several countries, peopleís democracy and socialism triumphed.
11. In the wake of World War II, the focus of the world proletarian revolution shifted to Asia, where the most heroic wars of liberation were waged and won under the leadership of the communist parties of China, Korea and Vietnam.
12. By developing the theory and practice of protracted peopleís war in the course of the anti-imperialist and democratic revolution in an immense Third World country, Mao Zedong has made a contribution of international importance. He proceeded to transform the democratic revolution into socialist revolution, undertook socialist construction, put forward the theory and practice of continuing revolution to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate the gains of socialism.
13. At the time of Stalin's death, the socialist camp and the forces of anti-imperialist revolution enjoyed unprecedented power and prestige. They were on the offensive, the oppressed all over the world could look to the future with optimism.
The rise of revisionism and the struggle against it
14. The advent of Krushchov at the head of the CPSU was a historical turning point. He set off his work of destruction by denigrating the revolutionary struggles led by Stalin in order to implement the principles and orientations bequeathed by Lenin.
15. It took revisionism, initiated by Krushchov, 35 years to completely destroy the work accomplished by Lenin, Stalin and three generations of Bolsheviks!
16. Today, it is quite clear why Stalin has been subjected to bitter slander and calumny by the enemies of socialism. Stalin remained loyal to Leninism. Under his leadership the Soviet people accomplished miracles. Krushchov, Brezhnev and Gorbachov rejected Leninist principles and went from failure to failure.
17. History proves that anti-Stalinism is equal to anti-communism.
18. The 21st and 22nd congresses of the CPSU were marked by the revision of Marxism-Leninism, setting off an ideological and political degeneration and the bureaucratisation at the head of the State and Party.
19. Krushchov's theories about the "State of the whole people" and the " Party of the whole people" led to the liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the ceasing of class struggle against the bourgeois forces and influences. The theory of "the cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the struggle for peace" inflicted blows on the anti-imperialist struggle. The theory of "the peaceful and parliamentary paths towards socialism" strengthened the social-democratic currents in several communist parties.
20. Brezhnev never rejected the revisionist programmes of the 21st and 22nd Congresses, and he preached the end of classes and class struggle in the Soviet Union. He "developed" revisionism by declaring that the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union had become impossible. The new petty bourgeoisie, arising from the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia, was the largest social basis of revisionism. She encouraged the development of a "shadow" capitalist sector and stimulated a process of degeneration in the socialist enterprises.
21. Gorbachov's and Yeltsinís revisionism, ultimately taking outright anticommunist forms, completed the counter-revolutionary process in the Soviet Union and led to the complete restoration of capitalism in its crudest forms. Gorbachov and Yeltsin have been the executors of a triumph for the forces of imperialism and reaction of international importance.
22. Mao Zedong, Enver Hoxha and other eminent communist leaders, such as Kim Il Sung, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, struggled against Krushchovite, then Brezhnevite, revisionism, as well as against the political and economic impositions and sanctions against other parties. Their anti-revisionist struggle prepared the ground for a renewal of the communist movement on genuinely revolutionary foundations.
23. The complete restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union proves that revisionism effectively is the most dangerous enemy of Marxism-Leninism. Life has proven that revisionism introduces the bourgeoisie into the communist movement.
24. Ideological struggle against revisionism is a complex and arduous task. Revisionism, which has destroyed so many parties, will not wither away spontaneously. If revisionist ideas and theses were not criticised and analysed in depth, they will continue to survive and the liquidationist current will strike again, felling new victims.
25. All the opportunist currents active in the working-class movement, the social-democrats, revisionists and Trotskyites upheld the counter-revolutionary process in the Soviet union, going so far as to approve the extreme-right coup d'etat of Yeltsin and the CIA in August 1991. This is an irrefutable fact, that unmasks once and for all these agents of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Our cardinal principles
26. The victories in the era of Lenin and Stalin as well as the treacheries in the time of Krushchov, Brezhnev and Gorbachov corroborate seven essential theses of Marxism-Leninism.
27. Under capitalism, the State is an instrument of bourgeois domination against the workers. The socialist revolution must completely destroy this tool of bourgeois oppression and replace it with a new, proletarian State.
28. The bourgeois states applies a form of democracy in accord with their class nature. Liberals talk about democracy in the abstract to mask the class character of bourgeois democracy, but Marxists always insist upon the following question: "Democracy for which class?". If there is democracy for the exploiters, there can be no real democracy for the exploited.
29. Under the capitalist regime, the democratic Republic and general elections are instruments of the dictatorship of capital. Their aim is to give a democratic appearance to a system that is fundamentally built on the all-pervasive power of the dominant bourgeoisie and its forces of repression.
30. The parliament is never the real center of bourgeois power. The real power is in the hands of those who own the banks and the large companies. The parliament gives a democratic appearance to decisions which are taken in discreet bourgeois circles.
31. As soon as liberal capitalism transformed itself into monopoly capitalism, it entered the stage of imperialism. The bourgeois state has become more and more an appendix of the monopoles. The hideous character of the oppression of the working masses is reinforced.
32. Imperialism is the negation of democracy, it means reaction on all fronts. Fascisation and fascism are expressions of the inevitable degeneration of bourgeois democracy in the imperialist era.
33. In the field of foreign policy, imperialism leads to wars of conquest against the less developed countries and to world wars between imperialist powers. World War I initiated the historical era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.
34. By sharpening all contradictions of capitalism, imperialism demonstrates the necessity of socialist revolution. Under imperialism, the gigantic productive forces can only be maintained within the obsolete bounds of private property by means of oppression, terror and war. Only socialist revolution can allow the workers to avoid the barbarism of imperialist wars.
35. The great Revolution of October 1917 confirmed the truth of the Marxist-Leninist theory of socialist revolution, the only path leading to the victory of the proletariat in its struggle against capital. All the paths of gradual reform lead in the end to the strengthening of social inequality and the perfectioning of the means of exploitation.
36. The bourgeoisie has always used the most ferocious violence each time the toiling masses wanted to overthrow their unjust and cruel reign. Revolution implies revolutionary violence, the midwife of the new society. Without violent revolution, it is impossible for the proletarian state to replace the bourgeois state.
37. Lenin stressed the fact that revolutionaries must be ready to make the most important sacrifices, to go through the test of civil war, lest they go over to Menshevik positions.
38. The socialist state may assume various forms, but, as for its class nature, it will be the revolutionary power of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
39. Under socialism, class struggle does not come to a halt, but changes its forms of expression. The remnants and influences of capitalism will remain during a relatively long period. Even after the construction of the foundations of socialism and the abolition of capitalist property, there will be an objective, material basis for the sharpening of former conflicts and the appearance of new ones. The underestimation of these contradictions can transform them into antagonisms, undermining the socialist structure, strengthening the counter-revolutionary elements and allowing the return to capitalism.
40. Lenin said that the dictatorship of the proletariat had to be maintained in the Soviet Union as long as there existed bourgeois and petit-bourgeois forces, bureaucratism, bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideological currents; as long as international capitalism could find support, and the differences between manual and intellectual work, between country and town remained.
41. The proletariat needs the State of the dictatorship of the proletariat to destroy its class enemies. The revolution therefore is accomplished only when the communists have realised their final objective: the classless society, where the menace of capitalism, coming from the inside as well as the outside, has disappeared, when the State progressively withers away, when the construction of communism takes place.
42. Experience has convincingly demonstrated that the economic base for the dictatorship of the proletariat is the collective ownership of the means of production and the planned production of goods directly in the service of society. The production of consumer goods aims to satisfy the material and cultural needs of the workers.
43. The objective of capitalist production is to increase the surplus value wrested from the workers by the capitalists, maximum profit for each individual capitalist. The aim of socialist production is the well-being and full developement of all members of society.
44. Thanks to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist planned economy, the Soviet Union was able to solve many fundamental problems that no capitalist country will ever be able to solve. The Soviet Union was able to bring about the equality and fraternal cooperation of more than 100 nationalities, and solved the problems of full employment, free schooling and medical care, access to science and culture, practically free housing, social services and public transportation. No capitalist country has ever been able to guarantee its population the security offered by the Soviet Union under socialism.
45. The Soviet Union's experience demonstrates the essential role of the revolutionary party of the proletariat as the leading core of the revolution and the construction of the new socialist society.
46. The Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin was a revolutionary party in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Lenin's theory concerning the Bolshevik-type of party, the vanguard detachment, the organised and disciplined detachment of the working class and the toiling masses, remains valid today.
47. To work out its line, the Party analyses class struggles at the national and international levels in the light of Marxism-Leninism. It maintains its revolutionary spirit by putting into practice the principles of democratic centralism, control and verification of tasks accomplished, criticism and self-criticism and struggle against opportunism. Its strength resides in its strong bonds with the masses.
48. Proletarian internationalism is a fundamental element that distinguishes the communist parties from all others. In the national struggles of the workers, the communists set forth and promote their interests independent of nationality and shared by the proletariat as a whole.
49. Marx stated: "The emancipation of the proletariat cannot but be an international fact; attempting to make it a purely national fact is rendering it impossible". The revolution may be national in its form, the proletariat can overthrow the bourgeoisie in one country. But in its content, the revolution is always international, forming part of the world movement for the emancipation of the working class.
50. Lenin and Stalin have always considered the building and defense of socialism in the Soviet Union as an integral part of the historical struggle for the triumph of the workers' cause all over the world.
The current offensive of imperialism and reaction
51. On the eve of the third millenium, we are confonted with the imperialist desire to enforce its barbaric and inhuman "new world order" on all the peoples.
52. Monopoly capital is creating a new wave of multinational and transnational concentration and is spreading its web to the farthest territories.
53. The monopolies impose their economic dictatorship through the instruments they have created for themselves, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. By imposing policies of liberalisation and privatisation, they carry out the economic recolonisation of almost the entire globe.
54. The different imperialist powers all defend the capitalism of multinationals.
55. They have transformed the United Nations into an agency that executes their will, carrying out their political dictatorship over other nations.
56. They sweep aside national sovereignty and independence, openly interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, cynically invoke "democracy, freedom, peace, multi-partyism, free elections and human rights".
57. The imperialist powers that have committed in the past and continue to commit the worst crimes against humanity, wish to create a permanent international tribunal as an instrument of terror against all leaders who defend national independence and socialism.
58. To impose their international economic dictatorship, the multinationals must destroy the international solidarity of the working class and the anti-imperialist unity of the oppressed peoples. They spread and use racism, reactionary nationalism, separatism, religious fanaticism, irrationalism and mysticism, ethnicism and fascism to divide, fragment and stultify the popular forces, so as to plunge them into barbaric killings and destroy all capacity of resistance to imperialism and capitalism.
59. To sustain their political dictatorship by military means, the United States are enlarging the agressive NATO pact to the whole world, notably in Europe (extension towards Central Europe, links with the Ukraine, occupation of the Balkans), in the Middle East (war against Iraq, alliance between Turkey and Israel), in Asia (links with Azerbeijan, with the Republics of Central Asia, some of whom have borders with China) and in Africa (military maneuvres in Kenya).
60. In Asia, the United States is preparing war against China by adopting a new "security treaty" with Japan, maintaining 35,000 soldiers and 1000 nuclear weapons in South Korea and keeping their control over the Chinese province of Taiwan.
61. The creation of a European army under German leadership is used to uphold European imperialism's plans of domination over Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasian region and Africa.
62. As soon as socialism was completely destroyed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, all global contradictions suddenly and dramatically worsened.
63. The new dominant bourgeoisie has brought Russia down to a state of dependence on US and European imperialism. Capitalism has beset the peoples of the former Soviet Union with mind-boggling catastrophes, misery, unemployment, ethnic conflicts, civil wars. The "independent" republics have become US and German neo-colonies dominated by the compradore bourgeoisie.
64. No sooner had the Soviet Union disappeared that imperialism started to openly recolonise the Third World, emasculating national states, dictating their economic policies, preying on productive forces and openly intervening in their internal affairs.
65. In the capitalist countries, the bourgeoisie has taken back all the concessions it had been forced to make after the anti-fascist war, confronted with the rising socialist revolution. Racism, nationalism and fascism are propagated to destroy the anticapitalist forces. Spying on the workers through ever more sophisticated means of surveillance is generalised. The suppression of popular movements has become ever more violent.
66. Imperialism actively prepares for war against all the countries that try to escape its domination, amongst others China, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Lybia, Iran, Serbia. But also against Russia, in case real communists should come to power again.
67. The economic contradictions between the United States, Japan and Europe have become more acute, as they scramble for raw materials, investments and markets.
68. The general crisis of imperialism deepens. In the capitalist countries, exploitation of the workers dramatically worsens. In certain regions, unemployment affects up to30% of the workers. The social gains are progressively dismantled. In the Third World countries, foreign debt, privatisations and the dismantling of the State institutions make the survival of billions of people precarious. In Russia, industrial production plunged by 55%. Between 1991 and 1994, the country suffered an excess mortality of 1,700,000 people. From now on, capitalism in crisis makes life impossible for the great majority of humankind. This barbaric and criminal system is condamned to disappear.
69. The militarisation of international relations, the arms race and produce and the sharp contradictions among and between the imperialist powers, produce and reproduce violence and war, increase instability and create the risk of generalised military conflicts. The danger of a third World War can only be averted by a general offensive of the workers and the oppressed peoples against capitalism and imperialism.
The forces of world socialist revolution
70. Against the bourgeois phrase of "democracy and freedom on a world level", the communists openly declare to the world: only the struggle against imperialism, with the end in view of building socialism and communism, only the road of the October Revolution, is the road to the liberation of humanity, the road to equality, fraternity and happiness for all the workers of the world.
71. Confronted with the international dictatorship of the dominant bourgeoisie and her multinationals, only the international working class, united against its common enemy, united by the same socialist ideal, is able to guide the workers towards national and social liberation. Only the international working class can put forward and develop a programme capable of ending the exploitation, oppression, terror and barbarism that imperialism enforces on the peoples of the world.
72. The 20th century has been marked by the struggle against imperialist wars, by the struggle of the working class against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and by the struggle of the oppressed peoples against imperialist domination. These three struggles have given birth to the socialist revolutions.
73. As, at the end of our century, the contradictions of the imperialist world are much deeper and sharper than in 1900, these three revolutionary struggles will develop in the future with unsurpassed scope and intensity.
74. Imperialism has become a far more criminal, barbaric, inhuman and destructive system than in 1914 or 1939, when it set off the two World Wars. The destructive impact of its arms has been multiplied a thousand-fold, and so has its disregard for the lives of the popular masses.
75. To rid humanity of this criminal system, we must build an international anti-imperialist front based on the working class and the toiling masses and clearly striving to achieve socialism worldwide.
76. The international anti-imperialist front is made up of different forces.
77. There are the socialist countries that, faced with particularly difficult international conditions, lead very complex struggles to maintain their independence and the essential elements of socialism.
78. There are the exploited and oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America who struggle against the economic, political, military and cultural domination of imperialism, for a national and scientific development in the interest of the popular masses. They struggle courageously for national liberation and aim for socialism. Their vanguard is composed of Marxist-Leninist parties who address the central question of revolution through protracted peopleís war, thus constituting examples in the current transition period from defeat to a new period of great revolutions under the leadership of the proletariat.
79. There are the suffering toiling masses of the former Soviet Union that are struggling to reestablish the Soviet Union and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The communists of the former Soviet Union have declared that never the bourgeoisie, this last exploiting class of history, and also the most cruel one, will be able to finally vanquish the socialist revolution. In the former Soviet Union, behind the counter-revolution, the tide of the revolution is already rising! The potential of the revolution knows no limit.
80. There is the working class of the capitalist countries, struggling against the dictates that the monopolies impose on the economic and social life, against the repressive forces of the bourgeois State that serves the monopolies, against the military acts intervention aimed at other countries and against the preparation of large-scale wars of agression. She has launched general strikes and numerous other mass movements.
For the unity of the Marxist-Leninists
81. The struggle against imperialism and for socialism cannot achieve lasting victories if the communist movement is divided in the ideological and organisational fields. Only the communists, united on an international level in the great party of the proletariat, can become the locomotive that will guide the train of humanity towards peopleís democracy, socialism and communism.
82. The reconstruction of the international communist movement, leaving behind its actual state of crisis and retreat, reestablishing its unity on the grounds of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, is the most urgent task.
83. Since forty years ago, due to the rise of revisionism, the international communist movement has been divided into different tendencies. It is natural that different opinions exist concerning different leaders of the international communist movement. These differences of opinion can be debated scientifically to overcome prejudices and subjectivism and reach scientific conclusions.
84. When parties differ ideologically on various questions, they can gradually surmount them in a process that strengthens confidence in the noblest ideals of humanity and eliminates all forms of opportunism, liberalism and dogmatism.
85. Relations between parties must be founded on the principles of proletarian internationalism, friendship, equality, non-interference and mutually beneficial cooperation.
86. Each party applies the principles of Marxism-Leninism to present reality according to its own conceptions. Simultaneously, each party must maintain the unity of the communist movement, which is essentially internationalist.
87. Confronted with the offensive set off by reaction, the communist parties that are loyal to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, that organise the working class and other toiling masses and that develop a principled struggle against revisionism and reformism, feel the necessity to unite.
88. In this perspective, we can and must go forward in different fields: exchange of experiences and analyses, coordination and common action, dialogue and discussion on our ideological identity and on the strategy of anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle.
The 21st century will be the century of socialism
89. To the toiling masses of the world, imperialism has nothing to offer but exploitation, oppression, obscurantism, fascism and war.
90. The communists firmly intend to remain loyal to Marxism-Leninism, to organise the popular masses in view of the bloody battles that the people will have to face, to demonstrate determination and a spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice, and they will make the 21st century the century of national and social liberation, the century of the triumph of socialism.
91. May the idea and the cause of the great October Revolution live through the centuries to come!