The Strategy of Socialist Revolution in the Imperialist Countries—Part 2

From La Voce n. 43 of the (new)Italian Communist Party;

March 2013

Socialist revolution is not a popular insurrection (a revolt, an uprising, turning tables or something like this) that sooner or later will break out, that the Party hastens with its propaganda and fostering the popular struggles, preparing itself to head it. Socialist revolution is a war that the Party promotes and during which it builds the New Power.

The lesson we have to draw is not to “do without leaders, because leaders are inherently bad” (that is the lesson drawn by comrades with anarchist leanings, individualist, simplistic): without communist leaders there is no revolution as it is with leaders who mimic the bourgeoisie. The right lesson is that the selection and training of leaders of the Communist Parties is the most difficult part of the communist movement: it is a question of training and selecting people having the most advanced intellectual tools developed by bourgeois society, exercising to the masses and also in the Party tasks of orientation and direction in many ways similar to those the bourgeois exercises in society and who at the same time serve with devotion the cause of revolutionary socialism. The best examples are people like Lenin, Stalin, Gramsci, Mao Tse-tung. The two lines struggle in the Party (one of the main contributions of Maoism to the communist conception of the world) is the method found to cope with this task (the method of the Control Commissions, no matter how they may be independent from the Party Central Committee, adopted still today for example by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) to cope with this task, it would be ridiculous if it were not a matter of great importance and where the errors and deviations have tragic consequences).

The backward positions of parties, currents, groups and people who claim to be communists, about the form of the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries today.

1. The followers of sterile deviations from the communist movement that occurred during the first wave of proletarian revolution (“left communism”, Bordiga, Trotskyism, the like & derivatives) are standing still into pre Leninist positions of the Second International: sooner or later the  socialist revolution will break out, and in meanwhile, we have to get ready for take direction of it when this will happen and hasten this outbreak with propaganda and possibly with the struggles of claims and acting in the ambit of the political struggles of the bourgeois democratic society. Typical representative in Italy of this position is the Communist Party of Workers (Ferrando’s PCL).

2. The followers of the modern revisionists, in so far they are not completely confused with the bourgeois left, persist in peaceful and democratic parliamentary way to socialism. Typical representatives of this position are the Party of Italian Communists (Diliberto’s PDCI) and the Party of Communist Refoundation (Ferrero’s PRC – former Secretary Bertinotti was already a left bourgeois, in addition viscerally anti communist: according to him, the communist movement has been a path of “errors and horrors”).

3. Marxist-Leninists (those who have rebelled against the abandonment of principles of Leninism made by modern revisionists in 1956) adopt in an incomplete way the position held by the communist parties of the first IC in the imperialist countries: to wait until the socialist revolution breaks out, hasten the outbreak of the revolution with propaganda and prepare themselves spearheading the masses, promoting struggles for claims and intervening in the ambit of bourgeois political struggle. Outstanding representative of this position is the MLPD (see the theory of the three stages of the proletarian class struggle in W. Dickhut Strategy and Tactics in the class struggle (English edition, 2000, pp. 68 ff.) and confirmed by Stefan Engel Dawn of the international socialist revolution (2011, pp. 317 ff.). This is also the position of the Greek Communist Party and the Portuguese Communist Party.

4. Among the Communists who declare themselves Maoists there are exponents of two backward positions:

1. those who proclaim rhetorically (in the sense that their ones are statements from which no consequential political or organizational line ensues) that the revolutionary people’s war is the universal form of the socialist revolution. In Italy representative of this position is Proletari Comunisti - Maoist Party of Italy;

2. those who say that the RPW, intending it reductively as armed struggle, is good only for the semi-feudal countries, while in the imperialist countries we must wait for the development of a revolutionary situation and the formation of the revolutionary masses, promoting the process. Exponents of this position are among others the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA (RCP, USA by Bob Avakian). The position of the RCP, USA is clearly expressed in his Manifesto - Communism: The beginning of a New Stage, September 2008, Chapter The basic approach to revolution.

The question of the form of socialist revolution is one of the main problems that parties, groups and people in the imperialist countries who want to be communists must solve. The general crisis of capitalism makes the establishment of socialism in the imperialist countries a matter of life or death for humanity. The general conditions are favorable as they ever were: the communists must make the step on indicated in the elaboration of the communist conception of the world.

The (new) Italian Communist Party to contribute to the resolution of this problem combines two paths.

The principal is to carry out the Revolutionary People’s War in Italy. The first imperialist country that will break the chains of the International Community of the Europeans, Americans and Zionists imperialist groups will show and will open the way for the masses of the other imperialist countries, too. The success of our work in Italy will be a stimulus to the Communists around the world.

The second is to actively lead the ideological struggle in the international communist movement. In order to do it, the party has drawn up in late 2010 and published in several languages the pamphlet The four main issues to be debated in the International Communist Movement and deals with the problem in international meetings and in bilateral contacts with groups, parties and personalities. The Party asks readers of the magazine to promote the study and discussion of the booklet among the comrades of other countries with which they are in contact.

Umberto C.

http://www.nuovopci.it/corrisp/risp03.html