By
Albert Weisbord
(From the Magazine "La Parola del Popolo" January/February 1974)
I
President Truman: Sovietism Must Be Contained! What followed? Tremendous explosion of
communistic China pushing the U.S. entirely out of the Far East Mainland, except for South
Korea.
President Eisenhower: Sovietism Must Be Rolled Back! What followed?
1. Soviet-China success in Indo-china;
2. Soviet success in Bangladesh;
3. Soviet success in India;
4. Soviet domination of the Indian Ocean;
5. Soviet domination of the Near East;
6. Soviet spread in the Eastern Mediterranean;
7. Soviet paralysis of its enemy, Turkey;
8. World recognition of East Germany;
9. Soviet domination of Cuba; etc.
Nixon: We are the strongest economy in the world! BUT:
1. There is no international speculation in the Soviet Ruble;
2. There is no wild stock-market gambling in the Soviet Union;
3. There is no inflation there;
4. Production increases have averaged 8-10 per cent annually;
5. Real wages of the workers have advanced 5 per cent in the past year;
6. There has been no rise in consumer prices in the Soviet Union, say, in bread, in milk, in meat, in gasoline, etc., nor rise in rents;
7. There is no 6 per cent of the working population unemployed, as in the United States;
8. There are no privately owned multi-national corporations dominating the Soviet Union.
9. For a whole generation, now, the Soviet Union has been in peace.
The "Goulash Communism" of Russia seems to be producing the goulash; the "Chop-suey
Communism" of China, the chop-suey!
II
Question: What kind of a Party governs Russia?
Answer: A Nationalist Technocratic Socialist party.
1. It is not a Communist Party since it does not stand for, or work for, an international proletarian revolution.
2. It is not an international party, since its primary interest is in strengthening Great Russian chauvinism and in expanding the gains of imperialist Czardom.
3. It is a socialist party, since it has carried out in part the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and circulation of commodities.
4. It is a technocratic party since managerial bureaucrats completely control it and lead the country.
5. It is a counter-revolutionary party since it uses its power to destroy whatever genuine
communist movements that may arise throughout the world, at times joining with world
imperialists to do so.
Question: What kind of a State is the Russian State?
Answer: The Russian State is a degenerated workers and peasants State dominated by technocratic nationalists unable to restore capitalism.
1. Russia was never a one-class workers State but, as Lenin said, a two-class State of workers and peasants.
a. In its early days the Russian Revolution strove to bring about a workers victory in the western industrial countries so as to be able to transform Russia into a workers' State, but it failed to accomplish that goal.
b. As the workers revolution was defeated, the peasants were able to force the continuation of private production on the land in retaining private plots for their own use and for commercial exploitation.
c. As the workers revolution was defeated, it could only express itself through managerial dictatorial spokesmen, so ably represented by that villain Stalin.
2. The Russian State is not a socialist State, since the State and socialism are two mutually destructive term.
3. The Russian State is not the same as the Nazi State since the Nazis never overthrew capitalism
but were its modern representatives. In the Russian State the technocratic bureaucrats are still the
prisoners of the Russian Revolution, while the workers are the prisoners of the nationalist
technocratic socialist Party.
Question: Is a new violent revolution necessary for the workers alone to take power in Russia?
Answer: Not if the workers of the industrial countries (say in Europe) take power.
1. The workers in Russia never had the power alone, it was always a two-class State, even under Lenin, not a dictatorship of the proletariat.
2. It is for this reason that the agents of the workers in Russia, the bureaucrats, could turn into their enemies, gradually, without an open civil war.
3. An international working class revolution can disarm the Russian army in the same way as the working class, in case of a crisis, can clean out the labor fakers in the unions.