TRUTH AND LIES ABOUT SOCIALISM:
ON THE SOCIALIST POWER.
Central Council of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE).
Published by Synchroni Epochi, 2013.
PART I: THE PHONY DILEMMA: "DEMOCRACY" OR TOTALITARIANISM"?
INTRODUCTION.
A great part of anti-communist, anti-socialist
propaganda focuses on the issue of the
so called lack of “freedom and democracy”
during the construction of the new society, of
socialism-communism. The main focus of that
attack is the revolutionary workers’ power, the
state of the working class, the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the role of the Communist Party.
The capitalists cannot abide it; they tremble
before the idea that the working class will
emerge as the dominant class, and that they
will be thrown into the dustbin of history.
When someone reads the word “dictatorship”
they imagine many things, as it is
usually equated with harsh regimes, the authoritarian
imposition of the will of a minority
over a majority. However, if we examine
the issue more carefully we will realize that
the term dictatorship expresses the power of
one class over the others. When we refer to
the dictatorship of the bourgeois class and respectively
to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
we talk about the class that has the power.
In other words, the meaning of dictatorship is
not synonymous with the form of governance
of military imposition of the exploiting classes
(the slave owners, the feudalists, now the capitalists)
over the poor working class- popular
masses.
Dictatorship is also the power of one class
even when it guarantees formal political equality between the members of different
classes. Just as it occurs today in bourgeois
parliamentary democracy, which is none other
than the dictatorship of bourgeois class, as we
have everywhere the domination of the capital,
which is concealed and hidden behind
formal equality, formal equal political rights,
even though there is a whole legal “arsenal”
and the mechanisms of the bourgeois state are
ready to put aside any right if bourgeois’ power
is threatened.
In reality, the bourgeois classes’ power to
impose its will, to form its own institutions
and mechanisms that serve its interests, originates
from its economic power, the capitalist
ownership of the means of production. The
whole superstructure, the institutions and the
mechanisms exist to defend and assist the reproduction
of its domination.
Therefore, with the term “dictatorship of
proletariat”, Marxism scientifically refers to
the political domination of the working class.
The conquest of political power by the working
class is also a precondition for its economic
domination, for the overthrow of capitalist
relations and the socialization of the means
of production. The liberation of the working
class from the dictatorship of the capital, from
the yoke of the monopolies and its emergence
as a dominant class also liberates the rest of
the working people.
What is the state?
The state in capitalism.
The state did not always exist. The state is a
product of unresolved class contradictions that
are present in the society. The state appears
during the evolution of history in places when
the class contradictions objectively could not
be compromised. And vice-versa, the very
existence of the state demonstrates that class
contradictions cannot be resolved.
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| The birth of the Athenian State. (Click on the picture to read). |
In the primitive communal societies there
was no need for a state, because classes did
not exist. The state was born along with the
class society thousands of years ago. This
happened when the surplus product was
created thanks to the development of the
productive forces, meaning one part of the
produced product (from working the land,
livestock, etc.) which was not used for the
satisfaction of immediate needs of the community.
The appearance of the surplus product led, over the course of time to its private
appropriation ,and furthermore led to
the formation of private ownership over the
means of production, in other words, class
contradictions were born. The complete development
of these contradictions created
the exploitative distinction of society between
the slaves and the slave-owners. The first
state, in history, formed was the state of the
slave-owners in order to impose their power
on the slave class. Thereafter, during the evolution
of the society the exploitative relations
change according to the evolution of productive
forces. The distinction between slaves
and slave-owners was replaced by the serfs
and the feudalists and today by the workers
and the capitalists. In each corresponding
period, the state evolved and strengthened to
serve the specific exploitative relations.
The state consists of many institutions for
the systematic implementation of compulsion
against the exploited. It creates permanent,
specific mechanisms and it organizes the violence
of the dominant class, (army, police
etc.). Also, several functions existing (administrative,
defensive for the protection of the
community etc.) before the appearance of
state in the context of the primitive community
become detached and are exercised by
special institutions.
These transitions during the evolution of
humanity were hard but necessary, since the
relations of production must correspond to
the development of the productive forces that
has been achieved at a specific time. However,
today, the productive forces –that mark
huge progress and development– suffocate in
the context of exploitative relations. The abolition of the exploitation of man by man, a
great social leap, will contribute to a situation
where the productive forces will correspond
to the relations of production. The creation of
these social relations, along with the institutions
that emerged with them, was necessary
in the evolution of history, and to that extent
today their abolition is equally necessary for
the further evolution of the society.
Therefore, speaking of the state, we must
always have in mind that the main issue is
the issue of power of one class over the other.
The working class and
the bourgeois state.
The working class, as a direct producer that
does not have, however, ownership over the
means of production, as the exploited class in
capitalism, is placed in various ways under the
coercion of the bourgeois class and its state.
The bourgeois state, as a mechanism for the
domination of the capitalists over the workers,
is a mechanism of oppression, repression and
manipulation against the workers.
Nevertheless, the bourgeois class does only
not organize the brutal repression and the
exclusive practice of violence by the state
mechanisms (which is, however, a basic function
of the state), but it also exercises multifaceted
oppression. It organizes state judicial
institutions in order to implement the law,
which has as its core the defence of private
ownership. It creates laws, constitutions; it establishes
courts of justice and institutions to
enforce this law, which in fact is “unjust” for
the working class.
In modern capitalist societies, the state
also organizes the state educational system,
it builds schools and universities, i.e. it organizes the “consent” of the exploited working
class and organizes the health and welfare
system, guaranteeing the conditions for the
reproduction of the working class. Namely, it
guarantees a basic level of education, a basic
satisfaction of health etc., as well as the
reproduction of dominant ideology and politics
in order to obscure class exploitation.
Moreover, the bourgeois state intervenes in
the economy by passing measures facilitating
the reproduction of capital on an extensive
scale.
The duty of the proletariat is to overthrow
the bourgeois state as a precondition for the
construction of the new society. The bourgeois
state cannot change its class nature
and cannot be used in favour of the working
class and the poor popular strata. The
working class must take advantage of any
gains- democratic rights acquired as a result
of the class struggle- but not by restricting its
aims to the improvement and the democratization
of the bourgeois state, but in the direction
of organizing the struggle in order to
overthrow bourgeois power. The bourgeois
state is a state of the capitalists in order to
secure their interests. In its place the working
class must build its own state, the dictatorship
of the proletariat. And the overthrow
of the bourgeois state is not possible without
violence, without the proletarian, socialist
revolution.
The “withering away” of the state
in developed communism.
The communist socioeconomic formation
expresses the new leap in the evolution of human
society, on the basis of the development
of the means of production. Labour in capitalist
production acquires an increasingly social
character. There no longer exists the need for
a class – owner of the means of production, i.e.
the class of capitalists, who do not contribute
anything to production; they are parasites. At
one time, the division of society into classes
was a necessary step in human evolution. Today,
thanks to the development of the productive
forces, this division of society has become
an obstacle. The disappearance of classes is
inevitable, as inevitable as was their creation
during the past.
The socialization of the means of production
and central planning as the new social
relations eliminate, over a course of hard
struggle and contradictions, the root cause of
the existence of the class inequalities.
As during mankind’s past primitive societies
managed to live without a state, therefore, the
new, fully developed communist society will
no longer need a state, i.e. it will no longer
need a mechanism of coercion, of enforcement.
However, this not due to incomplete
development, but on the contrary is due to
the enormous development of the productive
forces, labour productivity and the new social
relations.Nevertheless, the state as a state
cannot be “abolished” all at once, because it
is not possible to eliminate at once the root
of class inequalities. Through the social revolution,
the bourgeois state is abolished and
is replaced by the state of the working class.
Bourgeois power, disorganized in conditions
of revolutionary situation by the decisive action
of the organized workers and their allies,
is crushed, destroyed, smashed. From the first
moment of its formation, the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the socialist state is a “semi-state”, according to Engels; it is not a “state
per se”. This occurs because its mission is not
the continuation of class exploitation, but the
abolishment of any source of class exploitation.
It is a state that is expected to abolish
itself, to wither away, because it is no longer
needed.
The state is withering away over the course
of development, during the passage from the
lower to the higher phase of the communist
society. The economic base for the complete
withering away of the state has to do with a
high development of communism that eradicates
the contradictions between intellectual
and manual labour, the submission to the
division of labour and transforms labour not
only into means of subsistence, but also into
a prime necessity of life, i.e. when the sources
of the appearance of social inequality disappear.
Advanced communism as a classless society
is a society without a state. The state
will be able to wither away completely only
when people have become so accustomed to
observing the basic rules of living and their
work is so productive that they are working
according to their abilities and the distribution
of products is carried out according to
their needs.
The state in socialism.
Socialism, as the first, the immature phase
of communism, is a society in which initially classes and class contradictions still exist,
while afterwards some class contradictions
and differences, potential class differences,
are still maintained, i.e. differences including
the potential of historical regression. Firstly,
there are the remnants of the defeated bourgeois
class, which will fight until the end in
order to take back the power that they lost. In
addition, several contradictions or differences
remain such as these between the people
of the city and the countryside, between manual
and intellectual labour, which have their
origin in the entire history of exploitative societies.
Moreover, there are contradictions originating
from the possibility that some sectors
of production are not socialized directly, at
once. These are differences resulting from the
division of labour. The historical experience
of the USSR showed that sections of agricultural
production etc. maintained commodity
relations. Commodity relations are a source
of class inequalities. In addition, the conscience
corresponding to the new, communist
relations, e. the communist conscience, the
Assembly of Petrograd’s soviet, 1918.
“Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development
and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for
the exploited and working people. (...)Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than
any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic
bourgeois republic.”
(V.I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution And the Renegade Kautsky,
Sinchroni Epochi, p. 31-33)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/
communist attitude towards labour, is not
shaped in a cohesive and “automatic” way
among all the sections of working class and
the people. Namely, there are still elements of
the past that struggle against the new society
that has been born. Historical experience has
highlighted that this kind of struggle continues
for a very long time.
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| Assembly of Petrograd’s soviet, 1918. “Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for the exploited and working people. (...)Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.” (V.I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution And the Renegade Kautsky, Sinchroni Epochi, p. 31-33) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/ |
Thus in socialism, the working class is
constituted as the dominant class by its
state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The
working class opposes the dictatorship of the
bourgeois class (regardless of the form that
it takes, e.g. parliamentary system, fascism,
military dictatorship etc.) with its own dictatorship,
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This is the democracy of workers who are
dominant since they overthrew the power of
the bourgeois class; they took the means of
production in their hands and are leading
the construction of the new society expressing
also the interests of the other exploited
strata by liberating them.
Consequently, the dictatorship of the proletariat
constitutes a means of continuing the
class struggle with other means and forms
under the conditions of the socialist construction.
The necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
of the socialist state arsies from the
basic revolutionary duty of the workers’ power,
namely the formation of the new communist
relations. A difficult task, since the
passage to communism is not just a passage
from one society to another; it is not a replacement
of one exploitative class by another, but
the definitive and complete abolition of any
form of private and group ownership over
the means and results of production, of every
exploitative class and every social inequality.
This necessity also arises from the continuation
of the class struggle internationally,
since the simultaneous passage socialism
at global level, in every country at the same
time, is impossible.
Only the vanguard social force, the working
class, which is the vehicle of the communist
relations, can accomplish this task with
the leading role of its Party, the Communist
Party.
The phony dilemma: "Democracy" or "Totalitarianism".
“One the opposite side of “democracy” lies “totalitarianism”. In this (socioeconomic) system only
one, the ruler, possesses absolute power and has the ability to control the society. Dictatorship
is one of the forms of totalitarianism, which constitutes an authoritarian system of governance
based on violence. The characteristics of totalitarianism are the following: imposition of a
particular ideology, the one – party system, existence of an organized plan of intimidation of the
citizens, absolute control of the army, absolute control of mass media, an economy controlled
and planned, by the state”
( “Sociology” Coursebook, 3rd grade of High School).
“Democracy” for whom?
For many centuries, beginning from ancient
times until the present day, the concept of
democracy has been the centre of numerous
discussions and written texts. Democracy has
existed as an ideal, as a political demand and
slogan for millions of militants, as well as a
deceptive ideological construct, a fraud.
The bourgeois and opportunists theoreticians
and propagandists do not understand
political history as a result of interchanges of
socioeconomic formations, as scientific communism
does (because they would be forced
to admit the inevitable overthrow of capitalism),
but as succession of regimes. Based on
that they distinguish regimes (democracy,
oligarchy, monarchy, etc.) concealing class
relations, the class essence of socioeconomic
formations and their respective state.
In general, they identify democracy with
bourgeois parliamentary democracy. They
claim that within the framework of the bourgeois
state ‘’all of us are equal citizens, we
have the right to vote and to be elected, we
have universal voting rights and trade union
rights, etc guaranteed by the Constitution”.
The political system, the administration
mechanisms, the Constitution, therefore, are
presented as “classless’’. But, behind the term
“citizens’’, the class division that exists in capitalism
and the division between the exploiters
and the exploited are being concealed.
Lenin noted that when someone hears the
words democracy and freedom he should ask:
“democracy and freedom for which class?”
Since the dawn of capitalism, when the
bourgeois class was still a revolutionary force,
it became clear that the slogan “equality, freedom,
brotherhood” of the bourgeois French
Revolution -that overthrew feudalism– had a
content that was expressing the interests of
the domination of bourgeois class. For example,
just two years after the victory of the
French Revolution, measures were taken in
order to dissolve all trade unions and to ban strikes. These were the so-called Le Chapelier
laws (after the French bourgeois judicial and
politician Isaac Rene Guy Le Chapelier), which
were in effect from June 14, 1791 until 1864, i.e.
they were applied for 73 years.
Bourgeois democracy is democracy within
the framework of capitalism. It is a form of
expression of the dictatorship of the bourgeois
class. Of course, bourgeois democracy
was progressive compared to feudal autocracy,
which was overthrown by the former.
But bourgeois democracy defends capitalist
exploitation. The democratic rights and
freedoms, existing in most of the bourgeois
Constitutions, reflect the victory of the bourgeois
class against feudalism, they weren’t
generously granted by the bourgeois class to
the working class but only after a tough class
struggle and only when the bourgeois class
acquired the ability to assimilate wider workers’
and people’s masses due to these concessions.
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| (Click on the picture to read). |
During the era of bourgeois revolutions,
the bourgeois class consisted of a large mass
of small and big owners of means of production.
In order to overthrow feudalism, they attracted
to the political struggle large popular
masses of farmers and proletarians, the ancestors
of contemporary working class. On this
basis, the democratic and political freedoms
were established on the terrain of capitalism.
The bourgeois class didn’t hesitate to restrict
or ban these freedoms when it considered it
necessary for the stabilisation of the capitalist
system. In conditions of contemporary capitalism,
the imperialist stage of its development,
where the bourgeois class has the place once
held by feudalism, the rise of reactionary influences,
the restriction of rights and freedoms
and the manipulation of people’s protest, is
the general tendency.
In our country we have certain examples
proving that the bourgeois class takes action
as soon as it becomes aware that its profitability
and power can be negatively affected. For
example, there were certain moments during
the 20th century when the bourgeois class
suppressed strikes, even though the strikes
were for economic demands only, without disputing
bourgeois power and these strikes resulted
in harsh conflicts between the working
class and the mechanisms of bourgeois state,
with many dead militant workers as a result.
Although, even those who claim that “the
above mentioned events happened years ago,
now democracy is consolidated and t things
have changed” conceal the fact that bourgeois
class imposes itself using its own power
over the popular masses with multifaceted
mechanisms that combine manipulation and
repression. Let’s remember the tremendous
persecution of the monumental students’ demonstrations
struggling against the so-called
Arsenis – law (High school educational reform
1998), or even the repression against struggles
in the following years. At that time the
government applied the despicable Legislative
Act (implemented by the subsequent governments)
which considered that student protests
were a “statutory offense” and brought district
attorneys to schools in order to terrorize the
school students. Hundreds of school students
across Greece were tried on charges such as
“disruption of domestic peace”, “occupation
of public areas”, etc.
The bourgeois governments
tried more than 10,000 farmers across
the country on the charge of ‘’obstruction
of transportation’’, during the period of the
monumental agricultural protests. Do not forget the dozens of strikes and workers’ protests
declared illegal by civil courts. Based on the
data of the First Instance Court of Athens relating
to the period 1999-2008, 215 out of the
248 employers’ appeals against strikes were
accepted. In other words 9 out of 10 strikes
were deemed illegal .The bourgeois governments
attacked large demonstrations of seafarers,
having the bourgeois courts and their
court rulings as their weapon and at the same
time using brutal repression in order to impose
“civil mobilization” of the workers and
use savage means of repression. Recently, the
bourgeois governments the magnificent strike
of the steelworkers in Aspropyrgos declared illegal
and deployed riot police at the factory
in order to break the strike. Additionally, the
state utilizes against the organized class-oriented
movement and the Communist Party, a
complex of mechanisms of provocation, thugs,
various agencies - operating in cooperation
with the ‘’official’’ repressive forces – in order
to strike against the struggles. Provocation was
always a powerful weapon in the hands of the
bourgeois class against the working class and
its Party.
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| "Greek steelworks", Aspropyrgos, July 2012. The Constitution and the laws of bourgeois state exist only to ensure the capitalist ownership over the means of production. The attitude of bourgeois state against the heroic struggle of the steelworkers was characteristic. Complete support for the capitalist Manesis, court rulings and persecution, brutal repression against the strike. |
The bourgeois parliament, the multi
– party system and the bourgeois
elections are the ‘zenith of the Democracy’’.
We face the argument that capitalism has
a multi – party system, many different parties
can express their views and can participate in
elections, that even the enemies of capitalism,
even the Communist Parties, have the potential
to exist and act. On the other hand they
say that in socialism there is no parliament
and multiparty system, so there is ‘’totalitarianism’’.
First, the bourgeoisie conceals a fact that
applies first of all to themselves, namely
that the classes form political parties with
the aim of serving their interests. This also
applies to their own parties, which serve the
interests of the bourgeois class. However,
the bourgeois class is expressed by more than one party. These parties are formed
on the basis of historical, ideological differences
that concern the management of
capitalism, express intra-bourgeois contradictions.
The differences between bourgeois
parties guarantee the alternation in the
formation of bourgeois governments; reproduce
the support of the workers’- people’s
strata through the universal right to vote.
This is the essence of the multi-party system.
Namely, these are parties that don’t
express something different taking into
consideration their class essence, because
they agree on the perpetuation of capitalist
exploitation over the working class and any
differences concern the different “formulas”
for the workers’ exploitation.
The myth of ‘’Totalitarianism’’.
The identification of the former socialist societies and socialism in general with so called totalitarianism is one of the new-old ideological constructs re-emerging in the political analysis of the bourgeois mass media, public interventions of governmental cadres and cadres of bourgeois political parties, but also in the curricula of higher education institutions. Most often, the concept of totalitarianism, the totalitarian phenomenon, totalitarian ideologies (...) is mentioned in newspaper articles and magazines artfully and uncritically. They never give a definition of this phenomenon, and it is presented as something well-known and obvious. (...) Substantial emphasis is given to the identification of fascism, especially Nazism, with existing socialism and respectively fascist with communist ideology. (...) The concept of totalitarianism first appeared in the "Times» in 1929 and described as totalitarian a type of state that is "cohesive», with a oneparty system either communist or fascist, generally it appears as a reaction against the state of parliamentary democracy. The equation of this two incompatible phenomena, namely the fascist and socialist, state and society ,aims to impose the political forms of the state as the main criterion and characteristic based on which we can compare different types of society without any further analysis (on the contrary, it aims to obscure) over the content of state power and its relations with the structure of society, i.e. the social classes and the struggle waging between them. Bourgeois ideology, since defends the capitalist system and generally chooses to face the world in that way, presents the world as the embodiment and struggle of some ideas and ideals, the most important of which is (bourgeois) "democracy».
The theoreticians that “confront totalitarianism” perceive man and “human nature” as something static and metaphysical, they cannot see the possibility of the change of social relations and they perceive it as destruction of humanity and abolition of freedom. Socialism does not aim to turn people into “servants of the State” and spineless beings, as these theoreticians claim. This duty belongs to the daily tasks of the capitalist system (either fascist or “liberal”), which we are experiencing today intensively. Socialism aims to construct a new civilization, a new type of social relations (that means a “new human’’, not to uproot all human qualities, as these theoreticians claim!), which will release the creative capabilities of people in order to be able handle collectively and to develop further the tremendous forces and potential accumulated in the current stage of mankind’s development.
Kommounistiki Epitheorisi, issue 2/2000 "”Totalitarianism”, the return of Cold War mythology».
The differences
developed during the previous years
are significant, not only among the Greek
bourgeois parties, but at a European and
international level, in relation to the variations
of crisis management. There are different
tendencies and intra-bourgeois contradictions,
however what all of them have
as common ground is the attempt to exit the
capitalist crisis at the expense of the working
class and the popular strata, and these
are not differences in favour of the people’s
interests. The working class has nothing to
expect from such ‘’polyphony’’, besides it has important acquired experience. Basically,
for decades two parties were alternating
in government, the bourgeois social-democratic
party and the bourgeois liberal party,
however now we have a period of rotation
between alliance governments. now of the
‘’centre-right’’, tomorrow of the ‘’centreleft’’,
without excluding other forms. History
has shown that when the rule of bourgeoisie
is questioned then the differences between
bourgeois parties “disappear” and united
as a fist they struggle for their class. In our
country for example
during the period of the
armed class confrontation,
in 1946-1949, all
the bourgeois parties
were united to face the
Communist Party and
the Democratic Army
of Greece. It is significant
the example of
the so-called ‘’seven-headed’’ government
formed in 1947, named as such because of
the participation of all the political leaders
from the whole range of the bourgeois political
system (C. Tsaldaris, G.Papandreou,
S.Venizelos, P.Canellopoulos, N.Zervas,
etc). Also, more recently, under the present
conditions of the economic capitalist crisis,
New Democracy and PASOK (old social
democratic party) put aside their differences
and formed anti-popular governments
under the Prime Minister L.Papademos
and A.Samaras later: The former with the
support of ‘’extreme-right’’ party LAOS, the
later with the support of the ‘’centre-left’’
party DIMAR.
The bourgeois parliament and elections express
the ‘’popular will’’ determined by the
influence of employers’ intimidation, threat
of unemployment, mechanisms that buy the
workers’ consciousness off, anticommunism,
fear before the revolutionary perspective,
bourgeois ideology fostered through education
and so many other factors that form attitude
of assimilation and submission to the system
among the larger part of popular strata and
their families. Only when the above factors
are secured firmly, then the bourgeois class
allows the realization of universal right to vote
that operates as an assimilation
tool. Besides,
the universal right to vote
presented as the “cornerstone”
of bourgeois
democracy, was neither
established at once, nor
was truly universal. During
the period of bourgeois
revolutions the
right to vote initially was connected to class
criteria, such as the possession of land, property,
wealth, etc. It didn’t concern everyone.
The same happened with the right to vote of
women, of black people, etc. In our country
the right to vote for women was established
in 1952 by the bourgeois laws [while they had
voted for the first time in the areas freed by
the National Liberation Front (EAM) – Greek
People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) in 1944].
In Switzerland, presented as a particularly
democratic country, women gained the right
to vote in 1971! In the US, the right to vote for
black people was acquired in 1965.
As long as the working class and the popular
strata believe that through the elections
they will serve their own interests, they will remain chained of the bourgeois
class, their political emancipation will be
blocked. Of course the Communist Parties
are “obliged” to work in parliaments
in order to uncover exactly their bourgeois
exploitative character. But only when the
working masses believe in their power, in
their ability that they have to get organized
and rule themselves, only when they overcome
their parliamentary illusions, they
will be able to enforce radical changes for
their profit. In parliament, decisions that in
reality are taken elsewhere, outside of it,
that are based on the economic domination
of the bourgeois, are simply validated.
The bourgeois state has at its disposal institutions
and mechanisms of enforcing the
domination of the bourgeois class (judges,
police officers, army etc.) that their class
orientation is not affected from the correlations
in parliament.
Besides, historically it has been proved that
within the bourgeois parliament, there cannot
be formed political correlation that will
express the general interests of working class
and popular strata. Even in the theoretical
occasion that something like that happens,
the bourgeois class will not stay with crossed
arms). History has shown examples that even
reformist majorities got violently overthrown
(e.g. Allende in Chile).
Some present the argument that, like in
capitalism that the lawful action of the Communist
Parties is permitted, in socialism the
action of parties that express capitalists or
other defenders of “open market” should be
permitted.
This comparison cannot be, because the
historical role of working class in relation
to the bourgeois’ role, concerning the social
progress, is different. With the consolidation
of capitalism and the domination of bourgeois,
this class ceases to be pioneer and
emerging. It becomes reactionary, it survives
only because it exploits the working class.
It has a parasitic role in social production
because it does not produce anything, but
because it owns the means of production, it
usurps the wealth that the workers produce.
The pioneer social force is the working class
because it is the conveyor of the new productive
relations, the communist ones. It is the
class that produces the biggest part of social
wealth, that in capitalism it does not own any
means of production and that in its struggle
for its own domination, it has nothing to lose,
but its chains. In Socialism it’s not just one
party in power, but the working class organized
as the dominating class, led by its party.
 |
| Sunday 3rd of December 1944. When the bourgeois power is in danger the bourgeois class does not hesitate to drown the people in blood. “The struggle of KKE during the decade 1940-1949, with the armed fight of EAM-ELAS on December of 1944 and DSE (1946-1949), constitutes the biggest offer of our Party to the working class and the poor popular strata, as well as its biggest contribution to the action of the international communist movement during the 20th century”. (From the introduction of the History Essay of KKE, Volume 2, 1946-1968). |
The bourgeois “forget” that when bourgeois
class took power it did not leave the feudal
lords-aristocrats that it overthrew, safe and
sound. Not only did it not permit them to form
parties, but it also it also sent them the guillotine.
The defense of the open, public action of
the Communist Parties in capitalism by the
working class and the people, is in essence
the defense of the political expression of the
pioneer social force. In contrary, the defense
of the existence of capitalist parties in Socialism,
in a society that exploitation is abolished,
and as a result the class that represents it, can
only be realized as a setback and an obstacle
of social development. As in capitalism today,
not only is it not permitted but it would seem
unheard of for parties that support the totalitarian
(slavery) or the partial (serfdom) ownership of people by other people, to exist, i.e.
the previous productive relations, in socialism
it will be unheard of for parties that support
and propagandize the exploitation of people
by other people, the exploitive relations, to
exist. This is how the comparison should be.
The position
of the bourgeois democracy against
the Communist Parties.
The working class is expressed by its own
party, the Communist Party, that its own formation
is a result of the maturing of the working
class. The CP struggles for the working
class to gain conscience of its historical mission,
which is to abolish all kinds of exploitation
and oppression and to lead the way into
a classless society.
It is a lie that the bourgeois class generally
lets the Communist Partiess to act undisturbed.
It knows that they fight to overthrow
it and when its domination is in danger, it
takes harder measures against the Communist
Parties. The history of the global communist
movement and of KKE in Greece is full of persecutions
against communists. Lawful, public
action of the Communist Party is a conquest.
of the working class. In our country the democratic
government of El.Venizelos in 1929 declared
communism as a statutory offense and
criminalized the communist ideology. KKE
remained illegal for 27 years (1947-1974), the
20 of which were not during facist or dictatorship
governments, but during “bourgeoisdemocratic”
governments, years that were
accompanied by terrorism, tortures, exiles,
executions.
Bourgeois state against KKE.
Since its primary years of existence, KKE faced persecutions, class hatred of the bourgeois state. State violence does not only show its superiority in the correlation of forces, it mainly shows the fear of the bourgeois against the working class, the people. The bourgeois legislative grid against the workers movement is dated before the founding of KKE, when the socialist ideas started being appealing. It is constantly strengthened after the founding of the party in 1918.The law on the constitution of Committees on Public Security in each Region” ” of the government of Al. Papanastasiou in 1924,that the dictatorship of Pangalos in 1926 modified and used, the concentration camp of communist soldiers in Kalpaki, the “Idionym” of Venizelos in order to “Protect for now, but mainly for the future the social regime“, the forbiddance of the circulation of “Rizospastis” are characteristic examples. Thousands of communists convicted, martyred in prisons and exile of bourgeois government parliamentary or of dictatorship. KKE during the king’s and Metaxas dictatorship of the 4th of August 1936 took a big blow. State security could constitute the squealer “Temporary Leadership ” in the role of the leading body of the party that issued a “Rizospastis”with a content directed thereby. KKE was deprived of the important service of hundreds of cadres that the government of Metaxas gave to the Germans, even its general secretary of the Central Council Nikos Zahariadis.
After the liberation of Greece in 1944, the bourgeois forces resorted to murderous violence, they chose the bloodshed of the struggling people that were united around KKE, EAM and ELAS. During the armed struggle of KKE in 1946-1949, the state repression was shielded even more with the “3rd decree” in June 1946 and the voting of O.L.. 509/1947. The armed struggle highlighted the ethical greatness, the heroism, the contribution and sacrifice of thousands of communists, popular fighters. After the civil war, new heroic pages were written at the jails and exiles, the Military Courts, the firing squads, cladestinity and political refuge. New persecutions and sacrifices for thousands of communists at the purgatories of the soldier dictatorship in 1967-1974, at the dungeons of EAT-ESA, at the places of exile. But even after the junta, in times of democracy and legality, KKE faced employer violence and terrorism by the bourgeois democracy. A martyr of this struggle, Sotiria Vasilakopoulou, member of KNE, was murdered at the gates of the ETMA factory at 28/7/1980. KKE follows that road today, the one of class struggle, with consequences such as layoffs, persecutions and trials of communists and other fighters. Against the violence of the bourgeois class today the answer is: “We never did and we never will sign a declaration of repentance to the national and international bourgeois class”.
Let us not forget though that the defenders
of parliamentarism and multiparty system,
that until recently hypocritically presented EU
as the apogee of democracy, hide that in a
number of countries of the EU, Communist
Parties and Youths, the communist symbols
are forbidden by law. In Czech Republic, the
Communist Youth was until recently illegal
because, as the bourgeois court judged: “At
its program it expresses the necessity to replace
the private ownership at the means of
production with social ownership” and that is
a “crime” for capitalists! In Poland and elsewhere
the use of communist symbols is forbidden,
in Germany there is a law that forbids
hiring communists to work for the bourgeois
state, at the Baltics they forbid Communist
Parties and praise the Nazi SS. EU has made
its formal ideology the historically inaccurate
and provocative identification of fascism and
communism, the anti-communism.
But even in the occasion that the Communist
Parties are legal, bourgeois class puts
a lot of obstacles to the spread and promotion
of their ideas and of course under no
circumstances are they allowed to implement
them. It is clear that for the bourgeois
political system, the bourgeois state, the
Communist Parties are their “Number One”
opponent. For example, how many times
has the KKE been attacked for its slogans,
that compact political ideas, as “law is the
right of the workers” but also its actions to
defend the popular interests (strikes, organization
of disobedience and indiscipline
against the bourgeois poltcy etc) are at the
verge of legality and ask from KKE to take
oaths of submission to the bourgeois state?
Besides, these are not just a matter of declarations
for the bourgeoisie. How many times
have we seen efforts to legally restrict and
supress communist action (e.g. dismissal
of members of KKE and KNE and pioneer
fighters because they were ay the frontline
of strikes. persecutions against members
of KNE because they lead students’ mobilizations,
persecutions of communists and
other fighters for various mobilizations.
Besides the above, let us not forget that in
the conditions of bourgeois democracy, the
massive projection of the positions of the
communists is objectively limited by socioeconomic
conditions, as large-type complexes,
electronic and printed media, publishers,
internet etc. are under the control of the monopolies
and the bourgeois state. Whatever means the KKE has (“Rizospastis”,
“90.2”, etc.) to project its positions, the
struggle of the labor movement are struck
from every side from the bourgeois in order
to be silenced (politically, economically, judicially
with lawsuits etc.).
The screams that are occasionally heard on
“KKE’s immunity” that it “moves on the limits
of legality” and the like, prove that the constant
aim of the bourgeois class is to achieve
a crushing blow on the party of the working
class by putting obstacles in on its relatively legal action, without leaving out the aim to
integrate it on the bourgeois political system.
Even the formal rights stop for the
workers in the workplaces.
The right of the working class to organize, although
it is formally established, practically is
blocked, while it is also limited institutionally.
For the bourgeois, even this formal democracy
has no power in the workplace,
inside the factory gate and company. The
worker within the framework of parliamentarianism
is “free” to vote for any party they
want, to have any opinion they wish, formally
they have the right to strike, but as
soon as they stands up for themselves in the
workplace, the employer is ready to crush
them. There are maybe laws that allow the
existence and action of trade unions and
workers’ organizations, but these are only
tolerable to the extent that they are manipulated
and part of the network of assimilation
of the working masses. In addition,
there are laws that ensure labor rights, however,
they are not actually applied or they
are easily utilized to limit working rights to
something “realistic” or “achievable” that is
always determined by capitalist profitability.
However, the moment that the working
class fights for the contemporary workingpeoples’
needs that come into conflict with
capitalist profitability, they are confronted
by the multipronged attack of the employers
and the bourgeois state. Besides, when the
class struggle sharpens, when the workers’
struggles acquire tendencies to come into
conflict with bourgeois domination, even
minimal labor rights are abolished at once.
At the same time, the bourgeoisie also uses
other methods in order to undermine the labor
movement and to ensure the desired “class
peace” in the workplaces. It forms a whole
bribed stratum of workers, the labor aristocracy,
representatives of which are promoted to
the leadership of the labor movement. When
needed, the bourgeoisie can also accomplish
it by trampling upon the formal, legally protected
correlation of forces in the trade union
movement (e.g. deposing the elected leaderships
etc.). In that way, the workers’ organizations
are converted from defenders of the
workers’ interests to defenders of the interests
of the bourgeoisie, they become enemies of
the workers, traitors inside the working class.
 |
| The parliamentary group of the Nazi party in the German Parliament in 1930. The bourgeois pretend to “forget” that fascism arose from the bourgeois parliament. Hitler was elected to the Parliament, with the support and tolerance of the bourgeois political world. He was supported financially and politically not only by the German bourgeoisie, but also by American monopolies and British interests that sought profitable transactions and support from Germany against the USSR. |
Regimes that suppress bourgeois democracy- the other side of bourgeois power.
However, bourgeois parliamentary democracy
may not be in all the phases the
“appropriate” form of management of bourgeois
power. In times of difficulties, crises,
fissures in the bourgeois system, there are
many historical examples, as well as contemporary,
when the bourgeoisie puts aside
its “angelic face” and chooses to exercise its
power through non-parliamentary regimes.
Military dictatorships, fascism are all in the
service of the capital and are just different
forms of management. The changes and
the differences in the mode of governance
do not change neither the class nature of
the economic relations or the class essence
of the state. Namely, regimes presented as
“anti-democratic” or as “democratic” serve
the same class, the same system, that of the capitalist exploitative relations. For example,
behind the “anti-parliamentary” rhetoric of
the Nazi and fascist parties basically lies the
need to confront more decisively the workers’
and people’s movement, to ensure order
and stability in order to safeguard capitalist
domination and the profitability of the monopolies.
These regimes suspend a wide range the
formerly established freedoms and rights,
which for the workers are rights won through
blood, the product of hard class struggles.
For the working class and its Party it means
a wave of repression, a possible passage to
illegality, imprisonments and persecutions,
murders of militants, prohibition and restriction
of workers’ demands and trade-union
action etc. Their class nature cannot be obscured
by the fact that within the framework
of intra-bourgeois conflicts there is a restriction
of rights for sections of the bourgeoisie,
e.g. for political opponents, rival bourgeois
parties etc. Intra-bourgeois conflicts can be
savage when the contradictions of the bourgeois
are very sharp. In Greece, and even
within the framework of parliamentary governance,
there have been times when the
intra-bourgeois conflicts were so intense
that there was bloodshed. For example, the
conflict between the pro-venizelist and the anti-venizelist, in the 1910’s, or the “Trial of
the Six” (1922), when the liberal group sent
6 prominent officials of the Popular Party,
former prime ministers and ministers, to
the firing squad in order to put the blame
on them for the defeat in the Asia Minor in
1922. Global history is full of examples of
anti-people regimes that were characterized
by “emergency” measures to enforce order.
Those kinds of regimes are usually temporary,
and most of the times the transition
to bourgeois parliamentary democracy is
smooth and without serious consequences
for a large number of their officials, which
also proves the continuity of bourgeois
power regardless of the form of governance.
Those kinds of regimes have even been supported
by other capitalist “democratic” states
around the world. The example of the USA is
characteristic. The country that is presented
as the “land of the free”, a state-zenith of democracy,
has in its record hundreds of antidemocratic
actions, imperialist interventions,
imposition and support of dictatorships, attempts
to overthrow governments etc., actions
that served its interests. This is the democracy
of the capitalists.
However, even if the bourgeois liberties
existed and were “fully” functioning, they
would still be historically outdated. A chasm
is separating them from worker’s democracy,
the liberties and the rights under the conditions
of the abolition of exploitation of man
by man.
