"The working class, its role and
its mission today.
The tasks and concrete experiences of the Communist Party in the working class
and the trade union."
Brussels, 16-18 May 2008
www.icsbrussels.org , ics@icsbrussels.org
Report to the International Communist Seminar
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Oleg S.Shenin
In theory the question is clear. The Soviet communists have discussed it in details four years ago on the first Plenum of the Central Committee after the XXXIII party congress called « The Revived CPSU, the modern working class and the working-class movement ».
More than one and a half century ago K.Marx, analysing in the XIV chapter of "The Capital" the concept of the collective worker, stated that the definition of productive work does not apply anymore to each of the workers taken separately. Thus this division is now, considering the present level of concentration, even more senseless, especially, when based on it some people are trying in vain to give new definitions of the working class.
The working class still plays the main role in production of goods. It sits nowadays behind the control panels, it has risen to virtual drawing boards of the new generation, it has turned to become the master of engineering, organizational and scientific tasks. Without any doubt, the modern proletariat is more and more based on computerized material and technical base.
The scientific, technical, and in particular, information revolution does not narrow, but expands the social base of the anti-imperialist forces. The capital has managed successfully to master a historically new form of exploitation - the extraction of a surplus value not from the physical, but from the intellectual energy of the worker, who has a high qualification and creative abilities. But despite that, the formulation of the dictatorship of proletariat as the form of state power during the transition from capitalism to socialism, still remains a scientifically established objective truth, only it has to be interpreted in a modern way.
However from the fact that modern productive work as a whole becomes more and more intellectual does not follow at all that any intellectual work becomes productive. An excessively wide interpretation of productive work devalues the concept of the working class. In fact to some extent both the teacher, and the physician, both the journalist, the writer, and the actor - they all are engaged into " investing into people " . But it does not mean at all, that all of them can be considered as a part of the progressive productive class.
In the approach to the modern working class it is necessary to base ourselves not on differentiation of different types of work, but on the classification of means of production by their way of use, by the organization of work, by the way of connection with the worker. According to historical logic the main mass of hired workers is concentrated in the material production, around the means of production, where collective usage and the collective organization of work are meant to be. These are the most high-efficient means of production.
« In 30 years the world will be gripped by the epidemic of Marxism » … This forecast was made by today's experts of the Centre of development, concepts and doctrines of the Ministry of Defence of Great Britain. It can be found in their 90-page report called « The future strategy of defence », where they analyse challenges, threats and risks, that mankind will face in the near future. In their opinion, Marxism will become by 2030 the basic ideology of the so-called middle class.
Theory is theory, but in practice our activities within the ranks of the working class meet huge difficulties. The oligarchic capital in Russia - USSR has crushed enormous masses of the Soviet industrial proletariat, turned them into lumpen and marginalized them, and now is trying to set up against each other the rests of working class not only of the different industries, but also inside one enterprise. Not just the "top" of trade unions is being bribed, but a whole wide group - the Federation of the Independent Trade Unions of Russia, that came to life out of the (former soviet) All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. The proletariat of the raw materials industries is also practically completely bought by the criminal bureaucratic bourgeoisie .
The corporate division and isolation of people, focused on personal or narrow group's, clan interest, is the biggest obstacle on the way of consolidation of forces of workers against capitalist oppression and for the revival of socialism.
The frightened autorities have nipped in the bud the possibility to return to the socialist way by information and elections. Therefore we will choose the way of taking power by force, organisation and upsurge of people to mass protest actions, using all possible forms of work among the working class and trade unions. We are planning not only to continue, but to strengthen more and more the coalition that was developed during the preparation of the presidential elections.
A big handicap for unification of our efforts is also the notorious « communistic multi-party system » and opportunism, growing as a result of this. Along with the bourgeois propaganda it tries to reduce the role of the working class to zero. It is done in the simple way. Marxism is proclaimed to be "out-of-date", and the present situation is being declared as « the post-industrial epoch », « the information era », in which there is no place for the industrial proletariat .
The last "discovery" belongs to the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, that is a ruling party since 2001, and which on March 15th has adopted its new program. In this document, the PCRM is rejecting the class approach, and declares itself to be the party of the perspective interests of the whole society. They include into the modern proletariat the scientists and the managers, the engineers, the workers and the peasants, the teachers and the doctors. After that the spiteful slander on the Soviet society does not look surprising anymore, as well as the call for the « market reforms » and the statement about "an unconditional legal protection of all kinds of the lawful property ».
One thing is incomprehensible. Why while speaking about «the radical changes of all social and economic conditions in the country, and of the international position of Moldova, its public and state development », the authors of this program are silent about the fact that the gross national product of Moldova today on 37 % consists of money transfers sent by the Moldavian migrants working in Russia ?
Abundantly clearly that there is not a drop of either Marxism, or communism at the Moldavian "communists". Even more so because they proudly inform of their full membership since 2007 in the Party of the European Left, which is sharply criticized at each of our meetings.
It is not a coincidence that the scientific "aristocracy", that is serving bourgeoisie, has met the adoption of this "program" with enthusiastic cheering: « it is one of the most significant and bright documents of the modern communist movement »; « I could not even imagine that a political party can have such a deep and wide program »; « it is the party of the future, equipped with all the best from past », etc., etc.
But one of these men of science has accidentally told the truth: « The only enemy of the modern Moldavian communists are also communists, but only the communists of the Soviet type. They have no other enemies. ».
V.I.Lenin wrote on this occasion : « Not only the Russian bourgeois democrats welcome every single, even the finest and temporary, turn to opportunism in all social-democratic parties. There is seldom a misunderstanding in the judgment of our clever enemies: tell to me who praises you, and I will tell you in what you were mistaken ».
Another way of deceit is the antiglobalism, which stems from eurocommunism, and that is quite natural. It is based on emptying the revolutionary essence of Marxism and on the adaptation of it to the realities and needs of the capitalist society. First of all, it is the result of the smoothing of class contradictions in the "advanced" countries at the cost of the superexploitation of " the Third World », of the creation of relatively high living standards and a « working aristocracy » in the top of trade unions.
Mass "antiglobalist" movement is not anti-capitalist by its nature. Its leaders are trying to convince their militants that the anticapitalist movement should be not ideological. It has a number of negative consequences, first of all, the absence of discussions about the nature of modern imperialism, about importance of the anti-war movement. In the West we seldom hear the demand to stop the expansion of NATO and to disband this aggressive alliance. In our countries the anti-NATO protests develop widely, for example, in Crimea where we have our structures operating actively.
The internationalism of the antiglobalists is far from proletarian in Lenin's meaning of the word, and it is aimed mainly at supporting the Western population against the negative consequences of the globabist offensive on the rights of workers and their standard of living. "Globalism" itself in class terms means "neo-fascism".
More and more the mutual relations between the indigenous population and the migrants are sharpening. Everywhere, - and the territory of the USSR is not an exception, - neo-fascism uses the ancient old recipe to hide the real (and insolvable within the framework of capitalism) contradictions, spreading national and religious hatred.
In our opinion, the centre of the revolutionary struggle moves to « the Third World », to Latin America in particular.
The Communist International, as Lenin wrote, put for the first time in history openly the question on the agenda of Marxism of the role of peoples of the colonial countries in their struggle against capitalism and of the realisation of the socialist revolution. "The movement in the colonial countries, - said Lenin in his speech on the third congress of the Comintern, - is still considered to be an insignificant national and completely peaceful movement. But it is not so. From the beginning of the 20th century there were big changes, namely: millions and hundreds of millions, - actually the enormous majority of the population of our planet - now act as independent revolutionary factors. And it obvious that in the upcoming decisive battles of the world revolution the movement of the majority of the population of the globe, that was originally aimed at national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism, and maybe will play a much bigger role than we expect ".
This thesis was developed by J.V.Stalin, the true pupil of V.I.Lenin, in his short speech - his last will - at the 19th congress of the CPSU. He put forward the importance of the struggle for democracy and for national liberation during the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale .
The leadership of the CPSU has always considered, and considers, as the main task of the international communist and working class movement the organizational unification on the basis of an adjusted ideological and political basis, the consecutive forming of a new Komintern and the resolving of the question of its economic independence. It is necessary to establish a close interaction with the national liberation movements. On must begin with the creation of a single coordination centre, based on one of the parties. Perhaps, this work could be undertaken by the Belgian Workers Party ?
Then we can count that the actual international truly communist, working and national-liberation movements will rally around themselves all the anti-imperialist forces of the world.