CHAPTER TEN

 The Lesson for Socialists

 The long years of Communist Party government in Russia and other countries of Eastern Europe have witnessed the descent from the early idealistic proclamations of human brotherhood and socialism to the present reality of a powerful capitalist group
armed with the latest instruments of destruction and facing with suspicion the rest of the capitalist world – including now China: the descent from the first declaration of the Communist International in 1919 – “end the domination of capital, make war
impossible, wipe out state boundaries, transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and freedom” – down to the police and censor-ridden capitalist dictatorships, the Hydrogen bomb and
the ‘Berlin Wall’.

Some of those who at first blindly worshipped the Russian Communist Party leaders and later turned against them, have learned nothing from the course of events. Ignoring the lessons of history and the Marxian interpretation of it they have
hypnotised themselves with the empty explanation that the failure was one of leadership – Stalin was the wrong man! They overlook that Russia was set on the  same course before the Stalin era and that a world wide socialist working class, which
alone could achieve Socialism, would have no need of leadership. Above all they ignore the fact that in the conditions that existed in Russia and the absence of a strong world socialist movement no other development was possible, Russia had to go
through the stage of capitalism.

From the Marxist standpoint the capitalist development of Russia was foreseen in 1874 when Engels (at Marx’s request) rebutted the utopian views of the Russian insurrectionary Tkachoff. Engels, in his ‘Social Problems in Russia’, wrote:
    “Only when the social forces of production have reached a very high degree of development does it become possible to increase production to such an extent that the abolition of classes represents a real and durable progress without causing stagnation, or even a regression in the mode of social production. This has only been reached by the productive forces when in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Consequently, the existence of the bourgeoisie is from this point of view also as necessary a condition for the Socialist revolution as the proletariat. A person who maintains that this revolution could be carried out more easily in his country because it neither has a proletariat nor bourgeoisie proves by his statement that he has understood nothing of Socialism.”(Reproduced in ‘Marx and Soviet Reality’ by Daniel Norman, 1955, page 39.)

That Russia had to follow the capitalist road and employ capitalist methods was inevitable: only utopians could have supposed otherwise. When faced with the reality that they could not by-pass capitalism the Communist Party covered its failure by
labelling State capitalism ‘Socialism’.

This was their great crime against the socialist movement. They enabled the opponents of Socialism to point to all the sufferings and acts of suppression and violence in Russia as proof of the evils and inadequacies of Socialism thus confusing the workers of other countries and multiplying the difficulties faced by the socialist movement in winning over the workers to Socialism.

 Of course the capitalist enemies of Socialism were glad to seize on this stick with which to beat the socialist movement, but one of the striking features of the situation has been that, with few exceptions, the capitalist politicians and business men really
believed that Russia was socialist.
 
One of the few occasions on which a spokesman of capitalism recognised the existence of State capitalism in Russia was in 1959, at the end of a visit to the United States by a Russian trade mission led by the Deputy Prime Minister A. I. Mikoyan.
The late John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration sent a telegram to Mikoyan:
   “The President is aware that you operate under s system of State capitalism, and he hopes that it has been useful to you to have seen the progress of our people under our system of individual capitalism. We are sure that you have found this experience interesting.”(Daily Telegraph, London, 21 January 1959.)

However, such is the quality of the education provided by capitalism even to its own ruling class groups that most of them did not recognise their own capitalist system when it was presented to them in Russia in somewhat different trappings!

The misrepresentation surrounding the Russian revolution and subsequent events has been catastrophic for the working class of the world. It has obscured the true nature of Socialism and caused incalculable waste of effort leading to frustration and cynicism.

The lesson is plain for all to see. Events have completely vindicated the stand of the Socialist Party of Great Britain against the travesty of Marxism propagated by the Communist parties of the world.