Democracy: More Than Ever We can and Must Do Better Than That -- By Bob Avakian

By Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

This essay originally appeared in A World To Win magazine #17 in 1992. The CRC document "On Proletarian Democracy" which is criticized here in depth is also available on this site. The online location of this essay is rwor.org/bob_avakian/democracy/

Author’s Note

This critique of the document “On Proletarian Democracy” was written in the fall of 1991, as part of a book, Phony Communism Is Dead...Long Live Real Communism! As final preparations were being made for the publication of this book, the news was received that, according to a statement by the Central Reorganisation Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the decision had been made to “dissolve the all-India structure” of the CRC. As is also clear from this statement, this decision was taken on the initiative of K. Venu, the (former) Secretary of the CRC, who was also the principal author of “On Proletarian Democracy”.

This move to liquidate the CRC organizationally is clearly a further leap, backwards, and also is an extension of the political and ideological line that runs through “On Proletarian Democracy”. The attempt at liquidation of the CRC as an all-India organization and the rationalization given for this underline the importance of deepening the all-around criticism of the opportunist line and outlook that has increasingly characterized the leadership of the CRC, with K. Venu at the head.

In light of all this, it was decided, in consultation with the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, in which the CRC has been a participating party, to submit this article to A World To Win, to be published there along with the CRC document, “On Proletarian Democracy”. As stated in this critique, it was the hope in writing it that it would make a contribution to a struggle, on the part of comrades inside and outside the CRC, through which the CRC would reverse its course, repudiate “On Proletarian Democracy”, reclaim the great revolutionary heritage of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement in India, and both reaffirm and contribute to further developing the revolutionary principles on which the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was founded. Although the CRC leadership has, unfortunately, taken the opposite course and taken an even further leap into opportunism, this has brought forth open struggle from within the ranks of the CRC.

For many reasons, not the least of which is the immense importance of the revolution in India to the world proletarian revolution, it has been very encouraging to hear that struggle has broken out against the opportunist line that had brought the CRC to such a crisis. No doubt the struggle will be complex. This makes even clearer the decisive importance of carrying out deep-going and all-around criticism of the revisionist political line that is expressed in a concentrated way in “On Proletarian Democracy” and of searching out more fully the links between this line, with its underlying outlook and methodology, and the other lines put forward by its authors.

Once again, it is the hope that this critique of “On Proletarian Democracy” can make a contribution to that process. And, at the same time, as also stated at the beginning of this critique, it is aimed as well at contributing to the process whereby “the RIM overall will be further strengthened in its resolve to unite on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and to firmly uphold the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat while summing up deeply the errors of the international communist movement, as well as its great achievements, and advancing on that basis”.

Introduction

This heading deliberately recalls the title of the book I wrote on the question of democracy—its social and class content, its historical role and relation to the proletarian revolution and the goal of communism. The momentous events in the world in the few short years since that book was written—in particular the radical changes in the nature of bourgeois rule in the Soviet Union and what has been its bloc, along with the events focused in Tiananmen Square in China—have indeed made what was said in that book, on the possibility and necessity of doing much better than that, more relevant and important than ever. They have underscored the significance of the conclusion that, “Where it is possible to speak of democracy, of whatever kind, that is a sign that class distinctions and, in one form or another, social antagonisms—and with them dictatorship—are still to be found, indeed still characterize society. And when this is no longer the case, it will no longer be possible, or necessary, to speak of democracy.” (Bob Avakian, Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That?, Chicago: Banner Press, 1986, p. 261)

As we know, these earth-shaking events in countries commonly conceived of as “communist” have had major repercussions not only among the masses of people broadly but also among the conscious revolutionary forces, including within the ranks of those who have considered themselves revolutionary communists and have based themselves on the revolutionary line of Mao Tsetung and the whole history of the international communist movement identified with Marx, Lenin, and Mao. One of the sharpest examples of this is a document recently published by the Central Reorganisation Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (hereafter referred to as CRC), an organization that has been affiliated with the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). This CRC document, “On Proletarian Democracy”, represents a fundamental repudiation not only of the Declaration of the RIM itself but of the fundamental principles on which that document is founded and even more a repudiation of the entire experience of the international proletariat and the international communist movement in exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat and carrying out the socialist transformation of society.¹

To be more precise, this document upholds only the Paris Commune of 1871 as a legitimate exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat: it sets the very brief and limited experience of the Commune against the entire historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in socialist society beginning with the October 1917 Soviet Revolution. ²

The following is the basic argument of this CRC document: Although before the October Revolution Lenin upheld the Paris Commune as the model for the dictatorship of the proletariat (as can be seen in The State and Revolution, written by Lenin only a few months before the October Revolution), nevertheless, soon after the Bolshevik revolution seized power, Lenin put into practice a line of imposing a dictatorship of the communist party in place of the exercise of political power by the masses of working people themselves. And, as the saying goes, the rest is history. Stalin carried out and carried to further extreme this dictatorship of the party and even Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution did not break with this political system of party dictatorship. Thus, this whole historical experience, with its “monopoly of political power” by the party, must be repudiated and future socialist revolutions must revert back to a strict application of the Paris Commune model.

It is not hard to recognize that the line of this CRC document shares much in common with long-standing attacks on Leninism and with present-day assaults on communism in general.

For these reasons it is necessary to reply, publicly and in clear and forceful terms, to this document. There is no way to avoid it—this document constitutes a complete degeneration into rather classical social-democratic opposition to communism and the proletarian revolution. That may sound extreme, but it is no more extreme than the open assertion in this document that the entire experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, beginning with the Soviet Union, and the basic orientation guiding this experience—not only in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin as well as Stalin but also of China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung—that all this is fundamentally flawed and must be rejected and utilized as teaching material by negative example.

It is especially painful to see such a development because the CRC had set itself the task of defending and further developing a very positive and important revolutionary history—identified with the most advanced revolutionary experience and leadership within the international communist movement (from Marx, through Lenin, to Mao) and also with the whole experience of the armed struggle of peasant masses led by communist revolutionaries in the late 1960s-early 1970s in India (this was marked by the outbreak of this struggle in the village of Naxalbari in India’s state of West Bengal in the spring of 1967, which has been known as the “spring thunder”). This “spring thunder” and the revolutionary road associated with it was hailed at the time as a major development by the revolutionary leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and it remains true that, whatever mistakes and shortcomings may have been involved, this was a tremendously powerful and significant revolutionary development not only in that part of the world but for the world as a whole.

For these reasons the approach that must be taken in answering this document is what Mao described as “cure the sickness to save the patient”. But, as part of this, Mao insisted that sometimes it is necessary to administer a shock to someone in order to make them realize the seriousness of the “sickness” and to help them seek a cure. The CRC document is labeled a “draft”: hopefully, as a result of sharp struggle, on the part of comrades inside and outside the CRC, against the line contained in this draft, it will be thoroughly repudiated and the comrades of the CRC will once again retake the revolutionary road, and the RIM overall will be further strengthened in its resolve to unite on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and to firmly uphold the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat while summing up deeply the errors of the international communist movement, as well as its great achievements, and advancing on that basis. It is in that spirit, and with that goal in mind, that this critique of the CRC document is made.

To begin, and to give an overview, the following are some general conclusions that must be drawn from a critical reading of this document:

1. There is a stunning lack of materialism in this document. There is an absence of understanding of the fundamental contradictions, particularly in the economic base but also between the economic base and the superstructure, that mark socialist society as a transition. These are questions that Mao and his revolutionary headquarters identified as decisive for the struggle to not only uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat but to carry forward the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and combat revisionism and the rise to power of the bourgeoisie. But, in this CRC document, all this is rejected as off the mark, or not dealing with the essential questions!

More specifically, there is a lack of a sense of the existence of different classes (as well as advanced, intermediate, and backward) among the broad category of “the people” in socialist society. Or, more accurately, there is a refusal to recognize the crucial role of Marxist class analysis—such analysis is rejected in the name of opposing “class reductionism”!

Along with this, there is no serious attention paid—and apparently no real importance attached—to the very difficult problems that have confronted the socialist states as a consequence of their being in a position of being “encircled” by imperialism—existing in a world still dominated overall by imperialism. To attempt to discuss the questions of democracy and dictatorship apart from a serious examination of this problem betrays a lack of seriousness—and more specifically it betrays the classical bias and “blindspot” of social-democratic types who, with a typical bourgeois idealist outlook, purport to treat the question of democracy in some “pure” and “classless” way, in abstraction from its actual content and from the actual historical and social context.

2. The arguments made in this CRC document on the role of the party—or, as they would have it, the lack of an institutionalized vanguard role for the party in socialist society—lead toward a line of “peaceful transition”. The very logic of these arguments leads toward the conclusion that violent overthrow is itself “coercive” and “elitist” toward the masses (or at least toward sections of them who do not take part in this armed struggle) and is therefore fundamentally wrong.

This document does not draw this conclusion—in fact it says that the violent overthrow of bourgeois rule is necessary—but that is only because this document does not pursue its own logic to its “logical conclusion”. In this sense, this document lags behind those social-democrats, anarchist-pacifists, et al., who have historically made such arguments in insisting that waging war, even a revolutionary war, itself fosters elitism and concentrates power in the hands of an apparatus—the party, at the core of the revolutionary armed force—that leads the revolutionary war and already, in so doing, forms the core of the new regime of power. Quite often this is linked by such people with a condemnation of Lenin’s basic orientation—particularly as concentrated in What Is To Be Done?—concerning the role of vanguard leadership in relation to the masses. It is here, such people often claim, that the origins of the “dictatorship of the party” lie. The CRC document picks up this “dictatorship of the party” distortion, but it does not include the “discovery” of its “origins” in What Is To Be Done? (here, again, this document is “lagging”).

This cry of “the dictatorship of the party” is inescapably linked with “they should not have taken to arms”—the refrain raised by counterrevolutionaries in condemnation of the Paris Commune as well as the Russian Revolution, as Lenin pointed out, and the common refrain of such people in opposition to all genuine revolutions, especially proletarian revolutions. Here it is important to recognize that all revolutionary armed struggles that have led to the seizure of power by the proletariat have so far started—and in the future are likely to start as well—with a minority. This is true whether these armed struggles have been protracted people’s war in a Third World country or urban insurrection in an imperialist country. Such armed struggles are begun before the majority of the people (even in the immediate areas where the armed struggle is started) have been won to support for them. And such armed struggles, however much they may fundamentally rely on the masses, do after all exert an element of coercion, not only against the enemy but also, in a qualitatively different but real way, even on the masses affected by them—in a real sense they force the masses, in particular those not already involved, to take a stand in relation to them.

This was certainly the case with the Bolshevik-led October Revolution in 1917. It is quite probably a fact that not even a majority of the workers in the Soviets, considering the country as whole, were yet won to the idea of launching the armed insurrection at that time. Certainly this was true of the peasants throughout the countryside. And even in the main cities where the armed insurrections were first carried out (in particular Petrograd and Moscow), the majority of the non-industrial workers among the people were certainly not consciously supporting the Bolshevik banner when the Bolsheviks launched these armed insurrections, yet these non-industrial workers must be considered among the broad category of “the people”. So, according to the logic of this CRC document, there is nothing left to conclude but “they should not have taken to arms”. You cannot “logically” argue that the vanguard must not impose its will on the people when it is in power but it may do so in coming to power in the first place. The contradictions involved here can be resolved through the application of materialist dialectics, but this cannot be done by applying the (bourgeois) logic that has been adopted in this CRC document.

Of course, it is true—and a profound truth—that the actions of the Bolsheviks in launching and leading these armed insurrections were in the interests of the majority of the masses—not only in some general and long-term historical sense but in terms of corresponding to the immediately and urgently felt needs of the masses and to their “political will”. But that is just the point: criteria like this are precisely what the CRC document is now rejecting and replacing with the logic and demands of formal (bourgeois) democracy, that is, the insistence on the forms of democracy without regard to the social and class content, or the raising of the form above the content.

3. The same logic will also lead to the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat itself as an “undemocratic” system of government. The dictatorship of the proletariat also involves an element of coercion, by the state, in relation not only to antagonistic classes but also to individuals among the (broad category of) the people. Basic policies—including everything from differential wage scales to such things as the sending of millions of educated youth to the countryside to integrate with the masses of peasants—all such things include an element of coercion.

Of course, coercion cannot be relied on in relation to the masses of people—education and struggle on the basis of a communist ideological and political line must be relied on—but this cannot eliminate altogether the element of coercion involved here. This is related to the underlying existence of inequalities left over from the old society—such as the differences between the city and the countryside, between the workers and the peasants, and between mental and manual labour. Lenin spoke of how the state was still necessary in socialist society (and he meant even after ownership of the means of production was completely socialized) because of the existence of such contradictions. This state is necessary, he said, in order to ensure that such contradictions were handled in a way consistent with the advance to communism, but at the same time the exercise of this state power—the dictatorship of the proletariat—includes the enforcement of “bourgeois right” (the expression in law and policy of relations that contain the elements of inequality left over from the old society). To drive his point home, in a somewhat provocative way, Lenin referred to this state as “the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie” (see Lenin, The State and Revolution, Collected Works [LCW], Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 25, p. 476).

The logic guiding this CRC document cannot provide an answer to the question posed, according to the same (bourgeois) logic: If socialism is really in the interests of the majority of the people, if it relies on the masses of people and corresponds with their interests, while the interests of only a small minority of exploiters lie in opposing socialism and restoring capitalism, then why is it necessary to have a dictatorship at all?

I spoke to this question at great length in Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That? (particularly chapter 7). There I quoted extensively from Lenin’s work “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”, which deals with this question in a very trenchant way. Lenin speaks to both the internal basis and the international connections of the bourgeoisie which give it real advantages over the proletariat which is newly risen to power and does not have historical experience of exercising power. He shows why, for all these reasons, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be necessary for a long period of time.

This same question was returned to repeatedly by Lenin during the early years of the Soviet Republic, and his works during that period give a very rich, if still beginning, analysis of why the dictatorship of the proletariat will be necessary for an entire period of transition from capitalism to a higher stage of society. And, as we know, Mao developed this analysis further and systematized it into the basic line that socialism constitutes a long historical period of transition from capitalism to communism, that all throughout this period there are classes and class struggle, and that it is necessary to combat capitalist restoration and continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the CRC document has lost sight of all this: with its logic, it cannot give a materialist explanation of why the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutely necessary throughout the stage of socialism and how this dictatorship is not in conflict with but consistent with the fact that socialism and the advance to communism conform to the fundamental interests of the proletariat and broad masses in opposition to a handful of exploiters.

Rather than continue with the discussion of general conclusions drawn from this CRC document, it would be better to turn now to an examination of some of the particular arguments made in this document. This will help to “flesh out” and to extend and deepen these basic conclusions.

On Recent Events in the Former Soviet Bloc and China

From the very start, the way things are formulated in this document reveals a tailing after petit-bourgeois democratic illusions—and a bourgeois-democratic conceptualization in general. In the first sentence, the events of the last few years “in former socialist countries such as China, the Soviet Union, and those in East Europe” are referred to simply as “democratic upsurges”. (paragraph 1.1—see CRC document starting p. 74)

First of all, these events, including the mass upheavals in such countries, have involved many different class forces, mobilized around a number of different programs, but the essential fact is that bourgeois ideology and politics have been in the lead. To describe these simply as “democratic upsurges” is to fail to make any serious class analysis—and to present democracy as it is presented by the bourgeoisie: as a “universal”, “classless” phenomenon. It is to tail petit-bourgeois spontaneity, and more to promote, indirectly at least, the bourgeois forces, outlooks and programs in the lead of these “democratic upsurges”.

And this is true, despite the fact that this document goes on to make general statements about how “M-L forces have cautioned them [the people] that bourgeois democracy or an unconcealed capitalism is not the solution”. (par. 1.2) For, once again, to simply characterize these upsurges as “democratic” is to cover over their bourgeois-democratic essence: the essence of a thing, as Mao made clear, is determined by its principal aspect, which in this case is the domination of bourgeois forces and outlooks within these “democratic upsurges”.

Further, it is important to take note of what might, at first, seem like a minor matter of formulation. At the beginning of the second paragraph we find the characterization of the regimes in “the former socialist countries” as “social fascist” (par. 1.2, emphasis added). This is a formulation that was used by Mao, and has been used by Maoists following him (including at times our Party, although we have more come to characterize the form of bourgeois rule in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and the like, as “revisionist democracy”). But the important point is that Maoists have always stressed the class content—the bourgeois essence—of this revisionist rule. Both in spontaneous popular consciousness and in the history of the international communist movement, fascism has tended to be treated as something virtually “above classes”, something which is “worse” than “normal” bourgeois dictatorship, something which justifies reducing the terms of struggle to fascism vs. bourgeois democracy. This is what is suggested in this CRC document as well: the use of “social fascist” to refer to revisionist regimes is repeated and consistent throughout this document, and when to this is contrasted “democratic upsurges” then there is the clear implication that democracy—what is in essence bourgeois democracy—is preferable to “social fascism” and to open dictatorship in general—including, as we shall see, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

But we do not have to rely on drawing inferences from seemingly subtle nuances. Soon enough this document openly repudiates the entire historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat beginning with the Soviet Revolution, and in opposition to this comes out with a call for what is barely disguised bourgeois democracy. When the document says, from the very first paragraph, that in response to the “repercussions of these developments” (“the recent wave of democratic upsurges in former socialist countries”) communists “have to grasp the depth of these problems and find out appropriate answers”, it is already becoming evident that this document regards the basic answers that have been given by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to be insufficient or incorrect and that what it intends is a fundamental re-evaluation—and rejection—of what is soon referred to as “the traditional Marxist-Leninist interpretation of capitalist restoration in the former socialist countries”. (par. 1.3)

First let’s begin with another quote from this document. Referring to “the traditional Marxist-Leninist interpretation of capitalist restoration”, the document says, “This explanation is basically correct in relation to the economic aspect of capitalist restoration. But it is not sufficient to answer the principal political issue raised by the masses in these countries. Their major demand is the dismantling of the existing political system which ensures the monopoly of the communist party.” (par. 1.3)

To begin with, this is a metaphysical separation of politics and economics—there cannot be an explanation that is correct in regard to the economic aspect but incorrect, or “insufficient” in fundamental terms, in regard to the political aspect. Further, referring, as the CRC document does, to “the masses” and “their major demand” obscures the fact that this “dismantling of the existing political system”, while it may have considerable mass support and express considerable mass sentiment, is above all the demand of certain bourgeois forces, both in the sense that they are the ones who have been the motive force in promoting it and, more fundamentally, in the sense that it corresponds to their particular interests and meets real needs of theirs in the present situation.

Then the document goes on: “But so far as the masses of these countries are concerned, there is no difference between the essential structures of this social fascist political system and those which existed earlier when they were socialist.” (par. 1.3) And the document makes clear it agrees with this view: “Even in China, where the Cultural Revolution gave rise to a new political situation, the state structure under Deng is not essentially different from the one which existed previously.” (ibid)

What an astounding statement! No difference?! This amounts to tailing after the most backward among the masses and after the bourgeoisie, which has long run this line. This is ridiculous when applied to the Soviet Union—not only in the early years, in the time of Lenin’s leadership, but even as an assessment of the decades during which Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union. Let’s look at a few examples: the waging of the war against counterrevolutionary forces and imperialist invaders in the first years of the Soviet Republic; the lively struggles within the party throughout the ’20s (notwithstanding the fact that organized factions were outlawed in the party); the mobilization of class-conscious contingents and the mass upheavals that brought into being the collective farms in the early 1930s; the mobilizations of the masses to carry out socialist industrialization, despite certain definite erroneous tendencies involved with this—all this and countless other examples are clear evidence that there was a radical difference between the Soviet Union when it was socialist and then when the revisionists seized power and restored capitalism.

It is true that, especially after major transformations had been carried out in the economy of the Soviet Union (by the mid-1930s), there was a real tendency for the Soviet Party and Stalin as its leader to rely more on administrative measures, experts, and so on. Criticism of this can and must be made—and has been made by Maoists—and an understanding of the basis for these erroneous tendencies must be deepened. But this can only be done, correctly, on the basis of MLM principles and not those of bourgeois democracy. As a guideline in this, not the howls of Trotskyites, Mensheviks, Kautskyites and bourgeois democrats generally about the horrors of bureaucracy under Stalin (and Lenin) but the following from Mao Tsetung sets the correct orientation: “At that time Stalin had nothing else to rely on except the masses, so he demanded all-out mobilization of the party and the masses [Mao is referring to the period of the late 1920s and early ’30s]. Afterward, when they had realized some gains this way, they became less reliant on the masses.” (Mao Tsetung, A Critique of Soviet Economics, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977, p. 119) But it must be kept in mind, as Mao consistently did, that there is a world of difference between Marxists who err—even seriously err—in the direction of becoming less reliant on the masses and revisionists whose rule is based on the exploitation and oppression of the masses.

It is sheer idealism and metaphysics to argue that this radical difference was not reflected throughout the institutions of society—in what actually took place there and on what basis—and in the relation of the masses to all this and their attitude toward it.

This argument is shallow formalism. What it amounts to is saying that, because there was the institutionalized role of the communist party as the leader of all facets of political and economic life, therefore it made no essential difference whether this leadership represented the socialist or the capitalist road. And to justify this argument in the name of “classless” masses who see “no difference” between the “essential structures” of socialism and capitalism is, at best, to tail after those strata and ideas among the masses that are most in thrall to the outlook of the bourgeoisie.

And this is all the more patently ridiculous when applied to China. Have the authors of this CRC document “forgotten” the tremendous transformations that were carried out on all levels of Chinese society, first of all with the nationwide seizure of power and even more so through the Cultural Revolution? Apparently they have “forgotten” how the revisionists, having seized power after Mao’s death in 1976, set about systematically attacking and reversing all this, dismantling these “socialist new things”—things such as the revolutionary committees, from the basic levels on up, which combined the masses and leaders in actual forms of government and administration; the various 3-in-1 combinations, combining the masses, cadres and experts, and so on, on all levels of society; the participation of the workers in management and of managers as well as leading officials in productive labour as an official policy; the May 7 cadre schools where cadres of the party and state went to the countryside and took part in productive labour as well as study and ideological and political struggle; “open-door” education and science, mobilizing and relying on the masses and combining experts with the masses and practical experience with theoretical study; health care oriented toward the masses, and in particular toward the masses in the rural areas, and relying not simply on professional medical personnel but “barefoot doctors” throughout the countryside and so on.

Also, very decisively, the revisionists have made fundamental changes in the People’s Liberation Army, abolishing its character as a revolutionary army that relies on the conscious dynamic role of its soldiers and the support of the broad masses. The revisionists have replaced this with a “professionalized” bourgeois armed force. It is this “new” PLA that carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Along with this, the revisionists have reversed the earlier efforts, under revolutionary leadership, to build up the militia precisely as an expression of the broad masses themselves in arms, guided by a proletarian line (even while it remained the case that the standing army could not be abolished for some time, for all the reasons that will be discussed here).³

Do the authors of this CRC document really expect anyone who is familiar with all this to believe that this constitutes no real difference in the essential structures of society or that the masses—particularly the masses of workers and peasants—are unaware of these differences or consider them insignificant?! When, in accordance with the “essential structures” and the prevailing proletarian ideology in socialist China, the workers on the Shanghai docks raised the slogan “Be masters of the wharves, not slaves to tonnage”; when the workers in an enterprise marched into the management office, demanding of the management personnel, “Where are your hammers”—where is your participation, together with the workers, in productive labour?—was that not a radical difference from the situation in China today, and don’t the masses of workers know the difference? When the people’s communes in the countryside were broken up and rich-peasant farming promoted, while the policy of giving priority to agriculture in the national economy was undermined; when “serve the people” was replaced by “to get rich is glorious” as a guiding principle—did not all this represent a radical reversal which the masses of working people could not help but recognize? Once again, when this CRC document speaks of “the masses”, it apparently has in mind the most backward and above all those among the intellectuals and other privileged strata who are most influenced by “classical” bourgeois-democratic ideas and bourgeois ideology in general.

The Paris Commune in Perspective: The Bolshevik and Chinese Revolutions as its Continuation and Deepening

Next, let’s turn to the review in this CRC document of what Marx summed up from the Paris Commune^*, in his monumental work The Civil War in France, particularly regarding the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people themselves and the fact that all officials in the Commune were elected and could be recalled by the votes of the people, through universal suffrage. These sections of the CRC document also recall how Lenin upheld these essential lessons in The State and Revolution (and some other writings in the period just before and for a period after the October Revolution), but then, even under Lenin, the CRC document argues, there began a basic departure from this path (see paragraphs 2.1-6.6).

First, some “historical overview” is required. Here we have to call attention once more to the fact that in the experience of the Soviet Union (and of socialism generally so far), it has not proved possible to fully implement the policies adopted in the Paris Commune—and, to a large degree, in the very beginning of the Soviet Republic—policies to which Marx had attached decisive importance. To focus on a key aspect of this, it has not been possible to abolish the standing army as an institution and to replace it with the armed masses themselves. This is largely owing to what has been spoken to before: the fact that revolutions leading to socialism have taken place not in industrially developed capitalist countries where the proletariat is the majority of the population (or at least is the largest class), as Marx and Engels had foreseen, but in technologically backward countries with large peasant populations where the proletariat is a small minority; these revolutions have occurred not in a number of countries all at once, but more or less in one country at a time (leaving aside the experience of the Eastern European countries in the aftermath of World War 2, where there was some transformation in aspects of social relations but there was never a real socialist transformation of society); and socialist states have existed in a world still dominated by imperialism.

As for why it has not been possible so far—and is very unlikely to be possible for some time into the future—for socialist countries to abolish the standing army and replace it with the armed masses as a whole, it can be summarized this way: To do this will require an advancement in the transformation of production relations (and social relations generally), as well as in the development of the productive forces, to the point where the masses as a whole, and not just a small part of them, can be organized and trained in military affairs on a level that is really sufficient to deal not only with “domestic” counterrevolutionaries but beyond that the armed forces of the remaining imperialist powers and other reactionary states. When that point is reached, there will in fact no longer be a need for a section of the masses—a special body of armed people—who specialize in and devote their main activity to military affairs: the standing army can then be abolished and replaced with the armed masses. But, again, no socialist state that has so far existed has achieved or even come anywhere near that point.

Marx, in his writings on the Paris Commune (and Lenin when he wrote The State and Revolution before the October Revolution), did not have this experience to sum up. To a significant degree, while the fundamental orientation in these works concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat must be upheld, many particular aspects of their analysis reflect an insufficient understanding of the intensity, complexity, and duration of the struggle to carry out the communist transformation of society—and the world—after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established in one or a number of countries. After all, the Paris Commune only lasted two months and only in parts—though very important parts—of France, and not in the country as a whole.

To highlight, in a somewhat provocative way, the historical limitations of the Paris Commune, it is useful to repeat what I wrote in Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That?:

We cannot take an idealist and metaphysical approach of insisting that reality must be bent to conform to what was projected by Marx (and Lenin, before the October Revolution in particular) on the basis of this very significant but also very limited experience of the Paris Commune. If we are going to do that, we might as well insist that the proletariat leap immediately from capitalism to full-blown communism and thereby avoid all the contradictions involved in the socialist transition and the dictatorship of the proletariat! What we should insist on is evaluating the line and practice guiding the states where such revolutions have occurred to see whether in fact they are consistent with the fundamental orientation set forth by Marx through his summation on the Paris Commune—whether the lines, policies, institutions, and ideas that have characterized those societies have overall led in the direction of transforming society toward the abolition of classes and, with them, the state (and the party). On the basis of these criteria, we must once again reaffirm “the traditional Marxist-Leninist[-Maoist] interpretation” that the Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, and China under the leadership of Mao, represented the continuation of the Paris Commune.

One other point must be addressed here—another way in which the expectations of Lenin with regard to the character of the proletarian revolution have not been fully borne out. In the first year after the October Revolution, Lenin wrote that:

Here Lenin was contrasting a revolution led by the proletariat with earlier revolutions in which the proletariat was not able to win leadership and carry the struggle as far as the overthrow of capitalism. But, in certain significant aspects, what Lenin says here—concerning the difficulty of maintaining the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses—has also proven to apply to the proletarian revolution itself.

This is linked to what has been the actual process of the proletarian revolution so far in the world (discussed above) and the related fact that the transition from capitalism to communism has proven to be a much more long-term, complex, and tortuous process than had been previously envisioned, not only by Marx and Engels but also by Lenin himself before the October Revolution and in the period immediately afterward (it was in the early 1920s, in the last few years of his life, that Lenin more fully confronted the fact that the Soviet Revolution would very probably have to “go it alone” for a period of time).

All this, in turn, is bound up with the fact that there is a wave-like character to the class struggle under socialism and in particular a wave-like character to mass upsurges to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat and carry the revolution forward under this dictatorship. To return to Lenin’s statement about maintaining the revolutionary energy and enthusiasm of the masses, the point can be put this way: as it has turned out, with the socialist transition period and the dictatorship of the proletariat lasting much longer than expected, and with the initial socialist revolutions not being closely followed by other revolutions in more technologically advanced societies; with the socialist states continuing to exist in a situation of being encircled by imperialism—with all of these factors that have been discussed, it is not realistic to expect nor has it been the case that the masses have been able to maintain a high pitch and intensity of revolutionary enthusiasm and energy on a continual basis. In fact, the expectation that they could is contradicted not only by experience but also by the principles of dialectics.

It is because of, and as part of, this contradictory nature of the whole process of transition from capitalism to communism, worldwide, that the role of the masses as rulers of society and owners of the means of production under socialism is real but is not absolute—it is relative and sharply contradictory—and is both expressed directly through their own involvement in all spheres of society and is mediated through a number of instrumentalities, above all the state and the vanguard party.

Once again, no formalistic approach—no insistence on formal democracy as the essence of the matter—can even seriously address, let alone resolve, this contradiction. And to insist on such an approach is in fact to act in accordance with the principles of bourgeois democracy and with the interests of the bourgeoisie in attacking and undermining the dictatorship of the proletariat precisely on the basis that, because it does not conform in every important respect to the principles of formal democracy, it therefore represents a negation of democracy, even for those in whose name it is exercised.

The document says: “This overall programme for seizure of power was implemented by the second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies held on October 25-26, 1917.” (par. 5.2)

But, it is important to note, the Bolsheviks did not wait for this Congress to seize power—they initiated the armed insurrection before this Congress. As is recounted in the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), this All-Russia Congress of Soviets opened “when the uprising in Petrograd was already in the full flush of victory and the power in the capital [Petrograd] had actually passed into the hands of the Petrograd Soviet”. (HCPSU, Moscow, 1939, Chapter Seven, part 6) Trotsky, among others, opposed this, standing on the formality that the armed insurrection should be declared by this All-Russia Congress of Soviets. All this is linked with the point made earlier (in the summary of general conclusions) about how the insistence on formal democracy that marks the CRC document would lead logically to declaring the Bolshevik-led armed insurrection to be a violation of democracy and a failure to rely on the masses, through their representative institutions, to carry out the seizure of power. This is very much in line with the arguments Trotsky made at the time; and if such arguments had been listened to, that would very probably have killed the armed insurrection, and then there never would have been an October Revolution to argue about.

The CRC document allows that the Bolshevik decision to withdraw from the Constituent Assembly “was justifiable in the sense that the power of the Soviets which had emerged through revolution was really representing the political will of the vast majority of the people”. And the document seems to say it was justified for the Constituent Assembly to then be dissolved, through an act of the Central Committee of the All-Russia Soviet—an act taken on the initiative of the Bolsheviks (see par. 5.4).

Note well: “was really representing the political will of the vast majority of the people”. This is correct—and, as stressed before, this also applied to the carrying out of the armed insurrection, even though that was not strictly done through the decision of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets or with the formal approval of the majority of the masses, through their elected organs. In fact this criterion—whether or not something conforms to the basic interests but also to the “political will” of the masses of people—is the essence of the matter and far more decisive than questions of formal democracy. But it is precisely this criterion that this document “forgets”—abandons and replaces with criteria of formal democracy—in its “re-examination” of the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat—no, more, of “the whole history of the communist movement and the basic concepts we had held aloft so far”.

Then the document says: “But, what was developing...[was that] the new political system was gradually coming under the control of the communist party.” (par. 5.7) Here is where the argument about “the dictatorship of the party” begins to become more full-blown. The document goes on to assert that:

Quite a few assertions, and distortions, are made here, touching on fundamental questions, so it is necessary to go into them in some depth. First, we cannot let pass the seemingly innocent clause “Even though Kautsky’s criticism was coming from the angle of bourgeois parliamentarism”. In fact the “even though” here is just the point—Kautsky’s objection to the dictatorship of the proletariat as practised under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, from the time of Lenin on, was completely bound up with “bourgeois parliamentarism”—it was precisely the standpoint of such “parliamentarism” that caused Kautsky to distort what this dictatorship of the proletariat was and to oppose it. And it is fundamentally the same standpoint that informs (or misinforms) the distortion and repudiation of the whole historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in this document. In fact, this document is marked by Kautskyite logic throughout, “even though” it does not openly, fully, embrace Kautsky.

This is reflected in the distorted and tortured use of the quotes from Lenin and Stalin in this section of the CRC document. First, let’s look at this document’s treatment of the statements by Lenin on the essential point that, as Lenin plainly puts it, the dictatorship of the proletariat will not work without the leading role of the communist party.

In the very same work of Lenin’s (and on the very same page) from which the CRC document quotes, Lenin makes clear that this does not mean that the party exercises dictatorship instead of the proletariat, or that the party is somehow separated from the proletariat in the exercise of this dictatorship. He makes clear that it is the proletariat that exercises dictatorship, but that it cannot do this without the leadership of the party. Again, on the very page cited, and throughout this work (Lenin’s speeches at the 10th Party Congress in March 1921), Lenin stresses that it is an anarchist and syndicalist tendency which cannot see the unity between the leadership of the party and the exercise of dictatorship by the masses of proletarians; and that accusations about party dictatorship are arising in the context of and to a considerable degree because of the influence of the atmosphere of petit-bourgeois disintegration that then existed in the Soviet Republic as a result of the long civil war and the massive dislocations and economic ruin that resulted from that war and in its wake (the class position and outlook of many workers was being undermined in these conditions; masses of peasants were being ruined; and the economic links between workers and peasants, city and countryside, had not yet been firmly re-established and recast along new lines). This reply of Lenin to his critics at that time stands very well as the answer to the authors of this CRC document, some 70 years later.

As for the statement that “the Soviets became mere cogwheels in the machine”, apparently the authors of this document think they have made a profound point by adding the word “mere” here. But, as Lenin explains it, there is nothing “mere” about it. He makes clear that while, on the one hand, “the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat”, at the same time, the functions of government “have to be performed through the medium of special institutions which are also of a new type, namely, the Soviets”. (“The Trade Unions, the Present Situation and Trotsky’s Mistakes”, LCW, vol. 32, p. 20) The authors of this document actually quote this statement from Lenin, but they do not grasp its significance—apparently they are so put off by the use of the metaphor “cogwheels” that to them it is of little importance that Lenin says that the Soviets perform the functions of government and that these Soviets are “special institutions” and are “of a new type” (note: they are not the same old institutions of bourgeois society but represent a radically new form of state power and are performing the functions of government). How, and with what outlook, is it possible to miss the historic significance of this?

Yes, Lenin does frankly discuss the fact that “in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat [here Lenin is referring to the trade unions in particular] cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class.” (ibid, p. 21) And then Lenin goes on to make the infamous statement that, “The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels”, and, “It cannot work without a number of ‘transmission belts’ running from the vanguard to the mass of the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people.” (ibid)

One can only ask here: what is wrong with this? Where, in any of this, is there the notion that the party exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat and the functions of government in place of the masses? The only objection that can be raised—and the one that is in fact being raised in this CRC document—is that Lenin insists on the leading role of the party. You may object to that if you wish—and certainly the bourgeoisie, and various Mensheviks, social-democrats and so on, from the time of Lenin on down, have strenuously objected to it—but anyone claiming to be a communist and to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat in principle must show how the masses can in fact exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat and prevent the restoration of capitalism without the leading role of the party that is, without the institutionalized leading role of the party. The one is the same as the other: recognizing this leading role in words while insisting it not be an institutionalized leading role amounts in reality to the same thing as negating this leading role altogether. We shall see how this CRC document aims to show precisely that the masses would be better off without the (institutionalized) leading role of the party under socialism, and how the document fails miserably—as it must—to show this.

To put this whole question of the role of the Soviets (and other mass organizations) in relation to the Communist Party in broader, and more historical, perspective, it is necessary to “demystify” this whole thing a bit. In the first place, although in a real and profound sense the Soviets were the creation of the masses, this was never a question of some “pure” or purely “spontaneous” creation of the masses. The Soviets were the product of the class struggle, in which the masses were influenced by a number of different political forces, including the Bolsheviks and also the Mensheviks and a number of others. And within the Soviets, from their inception, there was continual and often fierce struggle between representatives of different trends, ultimately representing different class interests.

A concentrated focus of this struggle was the question of what, after all, was the political role of the Soviets and what process they were to be part of. To put it simply, the Bolsheviks saw in the Soviets a means for the masses to be organized for the overthrow of the old order, the smashing of the old state machinery and the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat; the Mensheviks and others rejected and resisted this—their view of the Soviets flowed from their petit-bourgeois outlook—and when and to the degree that they led or influenced the Soviets, this was in the direction of turning them into mass organizations oriented toward social-democratic and/or anarchist programs, in opposition to the seizure and exercise of state power by the proletariat. Struggle over these fundamental differences went on within the Soviets before and right up to the October insurrection; and it went on, in different forms, after power was seized.

It is true that, not long after the seizure of power, Lenin recognized the need for an adjustment in the role of the Soviets and the relation of the Party to them, which is reflected in the statements by Lenin that the CRC document cites. But this has to be understood in the context of the concrete events of the time as well as in a larger historical perspective. As noted earlier, this was a situation of desperate civil war and then, even with victory in that war, of massive disruption, dislocation, and disintegration, economically and politically. In these circumstances, many of the most advanced elements within the Soviets had volunteered to become leaders and commissars of a Red Army that had to be created, almost literally, overnight and hurled into decisive battle. Others were mobilized on different but also decisive fronts of struggle: on trouble-shooting missions where crises of various kinds had erupted; to help in the suppression of counterrevolutionaries; to help staff the food administration, factory management, etc.; and to join and build up the Party.

The fact is that, by the end of the civil war, tens of thousands of workers, soldiers, and sailors held responsible administrative positions (and this policy of absorbing advanced masses into the governing apparatus would continue with the collectivization and industrialization drives later, under Stalin’s leadership). But it was also a fact that, as a result of all this, many of the best and most far-sighted leaders of the proletariat were enlisted not in the Soviets but in other institutions. And, along with this, there was a shift in the relative weight of the Soviets, as compared to these other institutions, including especially the Party, in the actual administration of society and the overall exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This is what Lenin is speaking to with his much-maligned analogy about cogwheels, conveyor belts, and so on, and his more general statement about the leading role of the party in the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat: Lenin is summing up, from the actual experience of that crucial period, that it is not possible to exercise this dictatorship simply through the Soviets or without systematic (institutionalized) party leadership of the Soviets (and other institutions and mass organizations). But he is not saying that the Soviets will no longer play a decisive role—he makes clear that they will continue to be relied on to perform the functions of government. He is not saying the party can replace the Soviets (or those other institutions and mass organizations) in the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He is not saying the leaders, rather than the masses, are decisive in the exercise of this dictatorship.⁴

Here it seems important to speak to another practice of the Paris Commune that Marx identified as a matter of decisive importance: the “replaceability” or “revocability” of leaders. Once again the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat has shown that it has not been possible to apply this principle in the strict sense in which Marx spoke of it, drawing from the Paris Commune, where officials were elected by the masses and subject to recall by them at any time.

It must be said straight-up that it does not get to the essence of things if the masses have the formal right to replace leaders, when the social conditions (contradictions) are such that some people are less “replaceable” than others. To give an extreme example, if the masses in socialist China had had the right to vote Mao out of office, and if they had exercised that right foolishly and voted him out, they would have been confronted with the stark fact that there wouldn’t have been another Mao to take his place. In reality, they would find themselves in a situation where someone would have to play a role which, from a formal standpoint, would be the same as that of Mao; that is, someone would have to occupy leading positions like that, and the division of labour in society—in particular between mental and manual labour—would mean that only a small section of people would then be capable of playing such a role. Voting Mao out of office would only mean that somebody less qualified—or, even worse, someone representing the bourgeoisie instead of the proletariat—would be playing that leadership role. You can’t get around this, and adhering to the strictures of formal democracy would be no help at all.⁵

This, of course, does not mean that the division between masses and leaders should be made into an absolute, rather than being restricted and finally overcome; nor still less does it mean that the leaders and not the masses should be seen as the real masters of socialist society. In revolutionary China great emphasis was given to the role of the masses in criticizing and in an overall sense supervising the leaders. And this found expression on a whole new level through the Cultural Revolution, which, Mao stressed, represented something radically new—“a form, a method, to arouse the broad masses to expose our dark aspect openly, in an all-round way and from below”. (Mao, cited in Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Peking: Foreign Languages Press [FLP], p. 27) Yet, as important and pathbreaking as this was, the fact remains that throughout the socialist transition there will not only be the need for leaders—and an objective contradiction between leaders and led—but there will be the possibility for this to be transformed into relations of exploitation and oppression.

Given the contradictions that characterize the transition from capitalism to communism, worldwide, if the party did not play the leading role that it has within the proletarian state, that role would be played by other organized groups—bourgeois cliques—and soon enough the state would no longer be proletarian, but bourgeois. It must be said bluntly that, from the point of view of the proletariat, the problem with the ruling parties in the revisionist countries is not that they have had a “monopoly” of political power but that they have exercised that political power to restore and maintain capitalism. The problem is that they are not revolutionary, not really communist—and therefore they do not rely on and mobilize the masses to exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, and to continue the revolution under this dictatorship.

As spoken to above, through the Cultural Revolution in China new means and methods were developed for attacking the differences and inequalities left over from the old society—means and methods for restricting bourgeois right to the greatest degree possible at any given time in accordance with the material and ideological conditions. Yet it will remain a fundamental contradiction throughout the socialist transition period that there are these underlying differences and inequalities and their expression in bourgeois right, which constitute the material basis for classes, class struggle and the danger of capitalist restoration. This is a problem that cannot even be fundamentally addressed, let alone solved, by a formalistic approach. It has to be addressed through waging class struggle under the leadership of revolutionary communists—making this the key link—and in no other way. And this is exactly how it was approached under Mao’s leadership.

Specifically with regard to income distribution, through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution a basic orientation and, flowing from it, concrete policies were adopted to gradually narrow wage differentials—in accordance with the development of common affluence and mainly by raising the bottom levels up. As an important part of this, there was an orientation of keeping the difference in pay between government officials and ordinary workers as little as possible—the fundamental spirit of the Paris Commune on this was proclaimed and upheld in practice—although such pay differences still existed and were viewed as something that had to be further reduced. But, once again, as important as it was to apply such principles, in correspondence with the actual conditions at any given time, this could not change the essential fact that, for a long historical period, there will persist differences and inequalities in socialist society which contain within them the potential to develop into class antagonism if a proletarian line is not in command in dealing with them.

The Exercise of Power in Socialist Society:
Leadership, the Masses and Proletarian Dictatorship

With this in mind, let’s return to the question of the “dictatorship of the party”. The CRC document goes on to say that, “The position taken by Lenin in relation to the party and the dictatorship of the proletariat is not very different from the position Stalin adopted and implemented.” (par. 5.9) This is essentially true—although this involves sharp contradiction, it is true in its principal aspect that Stalin upheld and applied Leninist principle in leading the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union—and this is to the credit of Stalin. But to cast Stalin, and Lenin, in a bad light and buttress its accusations against “the dictatorship of the party”, the document says that, “Stalin argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat is ‘in essence’ the dictatorship of the party. And in exercising this dictatorship, the party uses the Soviets as mere transition belts like the trade unions, Youth league, etc.” (par. 5.9)

It is remarkable how the CRC document quotes this one phrase from Stalin, but it does not quote what he says, at great length, before and after it. First, here is the immediate context in which Stalin uses this phrase:

Stalin then goes on to discuss, for literally page, after page, after page, how this must not be taken to mean that “a sign of equality can be put between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading role of the Party (the ‘dictatorship’ of the Party), that the former can be identified with the latter, that the latter [the Party] can be substituted for the former [the proletariat]”. (ibid, emphasis in original) He explicitly argues that, “To say ‘in essence’ does not mean ‘wholly’” (ibid, p. 185), and he discusses in some detail why this is so. He not only polemicizes at length against a line of attempting to substitute the Party for the masses in the exercise of this dictatorship but specifically says that, “whoever identifies the leading role of the Party with the dictatorship of the proletariat substitutes the Party for the Soviets, i.e., for the state power”. (ibid, p. 189, emphasis added)

Stalin stresses the importance of applying the mass line. He insists that the Party must maintain correct “mutual relations” with the masses, relations of “mutual confidence”, and this means “that the Party must closely heed the voice of the masses; that it must pay careful attention to the revolutionary instinct of the masses; that it must study the practice of the struggle of the masses and on this basis test the correctness of its own policy; that, consequently, it must not only teach the masses, but also learn from them”. (ibid, pp. 190-91) He warns against any tendency to turn the leading role of the party into a dictatorship over the masses and emphatically states:

And so on—once again for page, after page, after page, Stalin elaborates these decisive points in opposition to the notion that the Party can substitute for the masses in the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat or even exercise dictatorship against the will and interests of the masses, by imposing its leadership on them through force.

But none of this is dealt with in this CRC document, which quotes the “in essence” phrase, adds a statement about how Stalin said the Soviets were used by the Party “as mere transmission belts” and leaves it at that. It is difficult to believe that the authors of this document did not even bother to read the whole passage in question—and still more difficult to believe that, if they did, they willfully chose to ignore all that Stalin goes on to say about this question. But, once again, these are the typical methods of those who oppose the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the standpoint of bourgeois democracy—even of a radical or “socialist” variety—these are the methods one is forced to adopt once one repudiates “the basic concepts we had held aloft so far” and succumbs instead to bourgeois logic.

It could be argued that, even with everything Stalin says about this question, along the lines I have cited here, still the formulation that the dictatorship of the proletariat is “in essence” the dictatorship of the party is a rather unfortunate one. There is, I believe, some truth to this: ironically, this formulation itself can be interpreted as cutting against the very relationship that Stalin was insisting on—the relationship in which the masses exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of the party. It could be further argued that this formulation can reflect, or at least encourage, a tendency toward not relying on the masses, toward a “top-down” orientation. And, especially in light of experience—positive as well as negative—since that time, it must be said that there is some truth to this as well. Such a tendency did become rather pronounced in Stalin. This, however, was not a straight-line process but one in which a more correct orientation on Stalin’s part was, in certain significant aspects, turned into its opposite, as Mao pointed out.

But the CRC document treats this as if, from the start, Stalin had an orientation of not relying on the masses; as if, following in Lenin’s footsteps, Stalin was advocating and carrying out a line of replacing the dictatorship of the masses with the dictatorship of the party. In fact, this is a line Lenin firmly opposed; it is a line Stalin rejected—explicitly, emphatically, and with extensive argumentation—in the very work the CRC document cites. In that work Stalin, following Lenin, puts forward the correct, dialectical view of the relation between the party and the masses, a relation in which the party is the leading force and the masses are the motive force.

The CRC document takes off from its distorted use of Stalin’s “in essence” statement to draw this conclusion:

This is opposed to the analysis Lenin made of the basis for “the emergence of new classes”, and in particular the bourgeoisie, under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin pointed to Soviet government employees and the strata of intellectual workers in general, as well as to the persistence of small-scale production, as main sources of a new bourgeoisie; but his analysis was rooted in a materialist estimate of the social and class contradictions remaining in socialist society—it did not look for the source or origins of the new bourgeoisie in “the bureaucracy” as such. Lenin was right—on the right track—the CRC document is completely off.

As noted earlier, Mao developed Lenin’s beginning analysis of this problem more fully, into a comprehensive line. The CRC document puts forward an “inversion” of this line—and of reality. It does not proceed from the underlying contradictions in the economic base (the remaining differences and inequalities, the persistence of commodity relations, etc.)—in the context of the international situation—and then examine the superstructure (in particular the governing institutions and ideas) in that light, but in fact proceeds from a distorted analysis of contradictions in the superstructure and superimposes this on the economic base. It reverses the relation of politics and economics, the relation between the superstructure and the economic base. It may seem superficially similar to the Maoist analysis but is actually the opposite of it: it is idealist while the Maoist method is materialist. It makes bureaucratic deviations—some real, many invented in this document—the basis for, or the essential factor in creating, the “economic foundation” of “bureaucratic capitalism”.

This idealist viewpoint on the basis for the engendering of the new bourgeoisie in socialist society and the danger of capitalist restoration is repeated a number of times in the CRC document, including in the remarkable assertion that:

Here it can be seen even more clearly how the CRC document treats the superstructure—actually a distorted view of the superstructure in socialist society—as the decisive element in “the emergence and strengthening of a new ruling class”.

Mao rejected the mechanical materialist “theory of productive forces”, which sees the productive forces and the economic base of society as determinant in some kind of absolute way—which does not recognize the dynamic role of the superstructure in reacting back upon the economic base nor the role of revolution in the superstructure and the relations of production in unleashing and developing the productive forces. But Mao opposed this mechanical materialism with dialectical materialism—not with idealism⁶—not with a line that denies the ultimately decisive role of material reality and specifically of the economic base in relation to the superstructure in society. The CRC document, however, under the banner of opposing “the economic reductionist position” (par. 7.4), misconstrues Mao’s line and in fact denies the decisive role of economics in relation to politics (and we shall also see later how the CRC document further repudiates Marxist materialism in the name of rejecting “class reductionism”).

Again, the Maoist line identifies the essential material basis for capitalist restoration as residing in the remaining contradictions in the social relations, above all the production relations, within socialist society, as well as the international relations. It focuses on the superstructure fundamentally in relation to these contradictions. The line of this CRC document makes such contradictions in the economic base a secondary matter, subordinate to the supposedly decisive element: the existence of “such a political structure”, i.e., a dictatorship of the proletariat which is not based on formal democracy.

Next let’s turn to the discussion in the CRC document about the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin and how Trotsky’s criticisms failed to “answer any of the basic questions faced by the dictatorship of the proletariat” but incidentally—and it is treated as incidentally—Stalin was right in the “major controversy” with Trotsky about the possibility of building socialism in one country. (See par. 5.10)

But how could Stalin have been correct—how could he have led in the building of socialism in the Soviet Union—if he was responsible (more than anyone else) for imposing a dictatorship of the party over the masses? What kind of socialism can be built under such a dictatorship? Or perhaps there never was any socialist society established in the Soviet Union? Or in China either, following the same logic. Then what was the economic base of these countries? Capitalist all along? Or something else—in which case you end up with the same basic analysis of Trotsky after all.

Once again, this whole line of argument metaphysically treats the relation of economics and politics, the base and the superstructure, although there is a certain “consistency” to it: if this line were applied, it would lead to both the economic base and the superstructure being dominated by the bourgeoisie. Perhaps ironically, this line seeks to replace the basic revisionist formula—state ownership plus the institutionalized leading role of the party guarantees or equals socialism—with the formula: mass democracy, on the strict Paris Commune model, plus the “traditional Marxist-Leninist” approach to socialist economics, is the basis for preventing capitalist restoration. Neither of these formulas is “better” than the other—they are both wrong.

For all the reasons that have been previously discussed, the abandonment of the institutionalized leading role of the party will lead to capitalist restoration just as much as the insistence that this institutionalized leading role will in and of itself guarantee against capitalist restoration, regardless of the line of the party in relation to the actual material contradictions faced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, both within the particular country and internationally. Here it is important to recall what was said earlier: if the party does not play such an institutionalized leading role, some other force will, in fact bourgeois cliques, and they will institutionalize the rule of the bourgeoisie. This is owing to the underlying contradictions of socialist society, and under these kinds of conditions it is not possible for the formal structures of the Paris Commune to be implemented in every detail, and if they are, as Mao said, it will make too much room for the bourgeoisie, which will come to dominate them and dominate all of society.

Let’s move on to this document’s summation of what it calls Rosa Luxemburg’s “piercing criticism” of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union (see section 6). According to Luxemburg, the Bolsheviks were fundamentally wrong, because like Kautsky, they “‘oppose dictatorship to democracy’”. And, argues Luxemburg, the Bolshevik position is “‘far removed from a genuine socialist policy’”—she actually says that the Bolsheviks “‘decide in favour of dictatorship in contradistinction to democracy, and thereby in favour of dictatorship of a handful of persons, that is, in favour of dictatorship on the bourgeois model’”. (Luxemburg, as cited in the CRC document, par. 6.1, from Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, New York, 1970, p. 393, emphasis added) This is yet again the “classical outlook” of the petit bourgeois who stands midway between the bourgeois and the proletarian and recognizes in the dictatorship of both a subordination of petit-bourgeois interest to the interests of the ruling class, but who does not readily recognize the fundamental difference between these two dictatorships.

The CRC document continues with its presentation of Luxemburg’s “piercing criticism” as follows:

This is a social-democratic line which—despite Luxemburg’s attempt to distinguish her position from bourgeois democracy—perfectly exposes the fact that such a position conforms to the bourgeois-democratic outlook. The masses of people in the Soviet Union, at that time especially—the early years of the Soviet Republic—were certainly energetically, actively, and consciously involved in political life, on a broader and deeper scale than anything history had witnessed up to that time. And Luxemburg’s argument is in no way a refutation of Lenin’s assessment that the dictatorship of the proletariat, as it was practised in the Soviet Republic, was “a million times more democratic”—for the masses of people—than any bourgeois-democratic state. To argue otherwise, as Luxemburg does, and to declare that the Bolsheviks were seeking to stifle the political activism of the masses and to eliminate “democracy as such”, betrays an outlook that identifies the political activism of the masses with the strictures of bourgeois-democratic formalism and identifies “democracy as such” with democracy as practised according to bourgeois-democratic principles. And this is precisely what Luxemburg does with her emphasis on “representative bodies created by general popular elections”—in opposition, let it be noted, to “the Soviets as the only true representation of the labouring masses”—and her calls for “unrestricted” freedom of press and assembly.

The CRC document even goes so far as to say that, “The basic defect of the Soviet system”—note well: the “basic defect”—“is exposed by Rosa in this way: ‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party, however, numerous they may be—is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for one who thinks differently.’” (par. 6.3., citing Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, pp. 389-90)

First, it is distortion and slander to say that there was freedom only for those who supported the government and the Bolsheviks. It is true—and it is right—that counterrevolutionary forces were suppressed, particularly when they rose in arms against the Soviet government. There was, for example, the famous incident of the Kronstadt rebellion in which, as Lenin frankly acknowledged, there were masses involved; but, as he put it, before long the intrigues of the old whiteguard generals (that is, the old generals of the counterrevolutionary army that had waged the civil war against the proletarian regime) came out into the open in relation to the Kronstadt events, as did the imperialist connections of these whiteguard generals. It became clear that the Kronstadt revolt represented an attempt to overthrow the proletarian regime and restore the old order. So, naturally and correctly, people participating in such reactionary revolts were suppressed. (See “Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. (B.), March 8-16, 1921”, part 2, “Report on the Political Work of the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), March 8”, LCW, vol. 32, pp. 183-85)

But there was plenty of criticism raised, and “allowed”, of the government and the Party. This is very clear, among other things, in reading Lenin’s writings and speeches from these years of the new Soviet Republic. Lenin talks openly about how they are existing in a petit-bourgeois atmosphere, and that they have to learn how to find some form of accommodation with the petit-bourgeois strata, particularly among the peasantry, without compromising away the basic interests of the proletariat. He discusses the whole problem in historical terms—how you can expropriate and crush the resistance of the big bourgeoisie and landlords relatively quickly once you’ve seized power, but you have to carry out a policy of long-term co-existence and struggle with all the small-scale producers and generally with the petite bourgeoisie—as he puts it, you have to both live with and transform the petite bourgeoisie, in its material conditions and in its outlook, as part of advancing toward the elimination of class distinctions (such a discussion can be found, for example, in Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, which was written in the first few years of the Soviet Republic). So Lenin’s writings and speeches from those years—including, incidentally, some that are quoted, in a distorted way, in this CRC document itself—make very clear what Lenin’s basic approach was, and that his was not an orientation that anyone who raised criticism of the government and the Bolsheviks should be suppressed and denied political rights.

Instead of seriously grappling with what Lenin has to say about these difficult contradictions, the CRC document looks to Rosa Luxemburg’s misguided criticisms for guidance. Much of what is mistaken about these criticisms, and their underlying orientation, is revealed in the statement by Luxemburg that freedom is “always and exclusively freedom for one who thinks differently”. This, of course, is linked to Luxemburg’s call for “unrestricted” freedom of press and assembly, etc. And this is in line with classical bourgeois democracy, which identifies freedom with the rights of the minority against “the tyranny of the majority”. For example, this is very similar to the formulations of people like John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville in their writings on democracy and on individual liberty. In response to this, the question must be posed: who is it that, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, “thinks differently” most of all—if not the bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionaries? I am not being facetious: the “logical conclusion of the logic” of Luxemburg here is that they, above all, should be granted freedom, full political rights. And then where is the dictatorship of the proletariat?⁷

It is very instructive to contrast Rosa Luxemburg’s statements on what freedom is, “always and exclusively”, with the profound statements of Mao Tsetung on what constitutes the freedom, or the fundamental rights, of the labouring people in a socialist society: the right to control society, the right to be masters of the economy, the right to control and suppress the antagonistic forces that are trying to restore capitalism, the right to exercise their rule in all spheres of the superstructure. Everything flows from this freedom, or these fundamental rights, as discussed by Mao. This represents something much more profound and correct than Luxemburg’s definition of freedom—in fact it is the opposite of Luxemburg’s democratic formalism—it speaks to the essence of the matter:

Here Mao, like Lenin before him, puts forward the correct, the materialist and dialectical, view of the relationship between the exercise by the masses of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of their communist vanguard.

Let’s move on to the next point that needs to be addressed in this CRC document: “But in spite of all these major breakthroughs, it can be seen now, that the New Democratic Peoples Dictatorship established immediately after the completion of revolution in China or the dictatorship of the proletariat which followed, did not mark any significant advancement from the basic framework developed by Lenin and Stalin.” (par. 7.2)

To this, considering the spirit and thrust of the CRC document, one can only respond: “Thank god!” By now it should be clear that the “significant advancement” the authors of this document find lacking is in fact the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the adoption in its place of models based on the “piercing criticism” of people like Luxemburg and her exposure of the “basic defect of the Soviet system” in its departure from bourgeois-democratic formalism.

Class Struggle Under Socialism and Forms of Mass Rule

Having already spoken a number of times and from various angles to this document’s fundamentally wrong analysis of the political system and its relation to the economic system in the Soviet Union (and socialist society generally), I will only call attention here to the word “Hence” that begins the last sentence above. This “Hence” represents the continuation of the idealist and metaphysical treatment of the relation of economics and politics that was pointed to earlier, particularly in criticizing the CRC document’s “inverted analysis” of the basis for capitalist restoration. Once again, this “Hence” is hardly how Mao identified the basis and process of the engendering of the bourgeoisie in socialist society and the danger of capitalist restoration.

Indeed, another expression of the idealism reflected in the use here of “Hence” is its implication that capitalist restoration resulted primarily from the mistaken orientation and policies of the revolutionaries, in China as well as in the Soviet Union; whereas, in reality, the danger of capitalist restoration was rooted in the underlying contradictions marking socialism as a transition from capitalism to communism, worldwide, and the triumph of the capitalist-roaders was the outcome of the class struggle, both within the socialist countries themselves and internationally. The viewpoint of the CRC document on this decisive question echoes the loud proclamations these days about the “failure” of communism, rather than recognizing that what has happened in the Soviet Union and China represents, in its essence, defeats inflicted on the international proletariat by the international bourgeoisie, and that the mistakes of the revolutionaries were secondary and mainly mistakes in dealing with the very real problems and dangers caused primarily by imperialism and its still dominant position in the world.⁸ Such defeats are, from the standpoint of historical materialism, not surprising, particularly in the early stages of the conflict between proletarian revolution and bourgeois counterrevolution; the point is to learn from all such defeats—to learn well the real lessons—in order to be able, time and again, to turn temporary setbacks into new and still greater breakthroughs, and to advance through the course of the ongoing historic battle to final victory.

But this cannot be done if the real terms of the struggle are not understood and an idealist interpretation is imposed on reality, as the CRC document does in the following:

Wrong! Mao recognized and said that important parts of the superstructure were not in the hands of the masses, and he called on them to seize back those portions of power that had been usurped by capitalist-roaders. But he never said that these capitalist-roaders had usurped supreme power, that political power over society as a whole was not in the hands of the proletariat. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a revolution carried out in a situation where the proletariat held state power but faced a life-and-death struggle to prevent the rise to power of revisionism and capitalist restoration—it was the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The “16-Point Decision” issued in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution as a general guideline for carrying out this revolutionary struggle makes this very clear. It says the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution “constitutes a new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country”; that, “Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a come-back” and that the proletariat must meet this challenge head-on. And what is identified as the objective of this Cultural Revolution? It is not to deal with a situation where the masses do not have political power but “to struggle against and overthrow those persons in power taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the bourgeois reactionary academic ‘authorities’ and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system”. (“Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, [“16-Point Decision”], August 8, 1966, Peking: FLP, point 1, p. 1, emphasis added)

And, in important discussions with Chang Chun-chiao during the height of the Cultural Revolution (discussions quoted from in this CRC document, in fact), Mao himself makes clear that:

This CRC document is doing a “two into one” here. It is trying to combine its wrong-headed line on “the dictatorship of the party” with Mao’s qualitatively different, and correct, analysis of the bourgeoisie within the party (the capitalist-roaders) and the need to wage struggle against these capitalist-roaders and to further revolutionize the party itself as part of the overall struggle to remain on the socialist road and continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.⁹

But this CRC document continues on superimposing its idealist vision on reality. It makes this assessment of the Cultural Revolution:

Wrong again—incredibly wrong. To begin with, this is tailist and a worshipping of spontaneity. Ironically, this is the “flip side” (or “mirror opposite”) of the argument that is frequently made that all the Cultural Revolution represented was power struggles among elite cliques with the masses used as pawns. The Cultural Revolution was not “spontaneous”—the Cultural Revolution, like all great revolutionary undertakings, was in a fundamental sense the creation of the masses, but the masses were given leadership in this by a communist vanguard (recall how Mao says that “we have launched it ourselves”, referring to the proletarian headquarters in the Communist Party). Without this leadership there would not have been a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution—it would have been rather quickly suppressed, if it got off the ground at all, and certainly it would not have reached the heights and achieved the great transformations it did. The Cultural Revolution was the combination of the initiative of the masses with the leadership of a communist vanguard.

The authors of the CRC document don’t want to recognize this because it doesn’t fit in with their line of pitting the masses against the party—their line of declaring the party’s leadership in the dictatorship of the proletariat to be nothing but “the dictatorship of the party” over the masses. Hence their statement that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was “actually a struggle against the structures of the bureaucratisation existing under the dictatorship of the proletariat”. No, it was not “actually” that. It was actually what Mao said it was—a revolutionary struggle whose target was the Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road.

Let’s move on to how this CRC document characterizes Mao’s discussions with Chang Chun-chiao regarding the Shanghai Commune. The document says that, “As can be seen in Mao’s discussions with Chang Chun-chiao with regard to the Shanghai Commune, he had no new answer to the basic question which confronted them during the Cultural Revolution. Instead he went back to the theme of the party’s ultimate authority to safeguard the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (par. 7.5)

Here the CRC document misses the whole point. The problem is not that Mao “had no new answer”—the problem is that the authors of this document don’t “get” Mao’s answer. Mao’s essential point was that under the conditions then prevailing in China, and with the international context in mind, the commune form that had been developed during the upsurge of the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai was not an appropriate form for the dictatorship of the proletariat at that point—it did not conform to the material conditions and in particular the relative strength of the opposing classes under the existing conditions. In other words, if they attempted to maintain the Shanghai Commune (and implement it throughout China), including a rather strict adherence to the model of the Paris Commune of 1871, then the counterrevolutionaries would be able either to outright overthrow proletarian rule or else make use of the commune form and turn it into its opposite, using it to actually usurp power from the masses and then suppress them. Again, this is because of the underlying contradictions in socialist society and because of the international situation.

This is the point of Mao’s analogy to the Paris Commune itself. He said that if the Paris Commune had not been crushed, it would have become a bourgeois commune. In other words, given the actual situation at that time, if the Paris Commune had lasted and the attempt had been made to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat in that form, it would have been taken over from within by bourgeois forces.

Mao emphasizes, tellingly, that the essence of the matter lies not with the form but with the content. And he applies this to the experience of the Soviet Union:

Here again, the authors of this CRC document actually quote this but they miss the whole point—they dismiss Mao’s profound historical observations as “Mao’s confusion”! (par. 7.5) It is not Mao but the authors of this CRC document who are, profoundly, confused. It seems they have become so blinded with bourgeois-democratic formalism, and bourgeois-democratic prejudice and illusions in general, that they really don’t understand that Mao is summing up the overall lesson that, so long as classes, and in particular the bourgeoisie, are around, then there is no form that, in itself, can constitute an impenetrable barrier against capitalist restoration. That the bourgeoisie can take over, and use for its own purposes, forms developed in the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This is why the essence (the principal aspect) of the matter is the content, not the form. This understanding of Mao’s is also reflected in his, unfortunately, prophetic observation: “If we should be overthrown and the bourgeoisie came to power, they would have no need to change the name, but would still call it the People’s Republic of China. The main thing is which class seizes political power. That is the fundamental question, not what its name is.” (Mao Miscellany, vol.2, p. 453)

These were the key points Mao was making in his discussions with Chang Chun-chiao: he was calling attention to the fact that both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can make use of the formal structures created under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that attention must be focused on the content—the class content—not the form; and, more specifically, he was saying that, under the conditions of that time, the adoption of the commune form would actually be more favourable for the bourgeoisie than the proletariat—it would weaken the proletariat in exercising its dictatorship and strengthen the hand of the bourgeoisie in overthrowing that dictatorship, or subverting it from within and turning it into its opposite. As a key part of this analysis, Mao particularly stressed that there has to be a vanguard leadership. He says, I don’t care if you call it a communist party, or by some other name, you’re still going to have a core of leadership.

This is not because Mao was determined to impose “the dictatorship of the party”, but fundamentally because of all the things that have been said here about the underlying contradictions involved in the transition from capitalism to communism worldwide and how the revolutionary energy and enthusiasm of the masses and the class struggle overall proceeds in waves, or through spirals, and not in a straight line. To reiterate this crucial point: these underlying contradictions in socialist society—particularly between mental and manual labour, but also between the city and countryside, and workers and peasants, and other such major social contradictions—will express themselves in the fact that there will be an objective difference between the advanced section of the class and the class as a whole. This, in turn, will express itself in the fact that there will be some kind or other of leading core—and if it is not a proletarian leading core, it will be a bourgeois one, whether openly or in “socialist” guise. This is related to the basic point that if a correct line is not in command, an incorrect line will be. And a correct line has to be consciously struggled for and applied. If you try to go about spontaneously exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat, you will hand things over to the bourgeoisie.

All this is why, as Mao says, there has to be a party as the leading core. And this is one of the essential reasons why, under the conditions of the time, the commune form would not work—would weaken the proletarian dictatorship and aid the bourgeoisie in outright overthrowing this dictatorship or taking it over from within.

To all this must be added the whole international situation: what institutions and measures are necessary to deal with the threat of imperialist attack, and how that interrelates with the existence of classes and class struggle within the socialist society and all the contradictions that have been talked about in this connection. Mao’s discussion of this question is based on a profound grasp of, and represents a profound grappling with, these questions. But the CRC document has “missed” all this and instead applies a shallow formalistic approach.

So, it is simplistic and misses the essence of the matter to say that Mao “went back to the theme of the Party’s ultimate authority to safeguard the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Mao definitely did continue to uphold the overall leading role of the Party, but at the same time he insisted that the Party itself had to be revolutionized as part of revolutionizing society as a whole. Even the way in which the Communist Party was reconstituted as a result of the upsurge of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shows that Mao was striving to apply as far as possible the basic principles and spirit of the Paris Commune while recognizing that it was not possible to strictly apply many of the specific forms and policies of the Commune. The Party was reconstituted, from the basic levels on up, in an open-door way, through open mass meetings where people in the Party units to be reconstituted were subjected to the criticism and overall supervision of the masses. Once again, this was an application of the basic principles and spirit of the Paris Commune; it was an expression of the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat was being exercised by the masses with the leadership of the party.

As for mass forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Mao supported and popularized the revolutionary committee as the form most appropriate for leadership under the conditions of the time—and the revolutionary committees too, it should be pointed out, were fundamentally the creation of the masses, with the leadership of the proletarian headquarters in the Party. This form first arose out of the mass upsurge in the Northeast of China, particularly in Heilungkiang (Heilong Jiang) Province, and then this was summed up and popularized—and, yes, institutionalized—throughout society, on all levels. This was a “new thing” of great significance created through the Cultural Revolution: a way, as mentioned earlier, of combining the masses with leading cadres of the Party and state in actual forms of government and administration on all levels of Chinese society.

The conclusion the CRC document draws on this point reflects no understanding of all this. The document simply says:

Shows this to whom?! It does not show this at all. Yet one more time, the authors of this CRC document have read (and even quoted) but not understood. On the contrary, what this experience really shows is that Mao in particular paid great attention to this question. While stressing that form in itself is not the essence of the matter, Mao at the same time paid great attention to the unity of the form and content of the dictatorship of the proletariat, especially to the development of new forms which increasingly enabled the masses to strengthen their rule in society—to exercise all-around dictatorship over the bourgeoisie and be the masters of the socialist economy.

It was Mao who earlier had led and supported the masses in the creation of the rural people’s communes, in the face of bitter opposition from the revisionists in Party leadership. The people’s communes, while not strictly following the Paris Commune model in every respect, applied basic principles of the Paris Commune. They were new forms of socialist production and social relations, and new transformations in the superstructure, which combined a further advance in public ownership in the economy with more advanced forms of administration involving the broad masses. More generally, Mao also summed up and popularized advanced experience in establishing, in both industry and agriculture, new forms of more advanced socialist production relations, new means of breaking down the old division of labour and involving the masses in management and administration while involving managers, administrators, and intellectual workers generally in productive labour together with the masses of working people. And, of course, all this took a still greater leap forward through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Ignoring this rich historical experience, the CRC document persists with its idealist formalism. A few pages later, it returns to and extends its misunderstanding, or misrepresentation, of the profound point Mao is actually making—the real lesson he is drawing—concerning the historical fact that Lenin’s Soviets were transformed into Khrushchev’s Soviets. The document actually argues that, “Mao had also not grasped the importance of a new political organisational structure” and that, in Mao’s view, “the discovery of Soviets was of no significance”. (par. 8.11)

This is unbelievable! As we have seen, this is not Mao’s point at all. And it is an irony worth noting that earlier the CRC document argued that the Soviets, once they came under institutionalized Party leadership, represented nothing qualitatively new, even though Lenin stressed that it was the Soviets, not the Party itself, that performed the functions of government and that the Soviets were “special institutions” of a “new type” (see CRC document, pars. 5.7-5.8). Now this CRC document attributes to Mao the argument that the Soviets represented nothing qualitatively new, when Mao is not saying anything of the kind and is making a completely different point.

Let’s look at the CRC document’s further evaluation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution:

This is yet more idealism and metaphysics. Given all that has been said here about the contradictory character of socialist society, how could there be such a “guarantee”—what formal institutions or procedures could “ensure” Cultural Revolutions, let alone their success? And we must ask: appeared “only more authoritarian” to whom—to which class? Here once again this document reveals its consistent tendency to tail after the most backward and particularly to pander to bourgeois-democratic prejudices and the bourgeois outlook generally—including, frankly, crude anti-communism. In fact, here this document more or less openly takes up the standpoint of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois intellectuals whom this authority was directed against and who chafed under this authority. In this context it is worth repeating Engels’s comments ridiculing the anarchis

Democracy: More Than Ever We can and Must Do Better Than That