ON PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY
IN EASTERN EUROPE AND CHINA
A SELECTION OF ARTICLES AND SPEECHES
HILARY MINC
GEORGI DIMITROV
BOLESLAW BEIRUT
MATYAS RAKOSI
YU HUAI
Published by
The Communist Party
April 1951
Printed by Farleigh Press Ltd. Beechwood Rise, Watford
CONTENTS
People’s Democracy in Eastern Europe, Hilary Minc
The Fatherland Front and People’s Democracy, Georgi Dimitrov
People’s Poland, Boleslaw Bierut
Some Problems of People’s Democracy, Matyas Rakosi
First Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China
The National Bourgeoisie in the Chinese Revolution, Yu Huai
Suggestions for further reading
NOTE ON READING REFERENCES
The following abbreviations have been used:
L.L.L.: Little Lenin Library
L.S.W.: Lenin Selected Works
L.S.L.: Little Stalin Library
In addition to the 12 Volume Lenin Selected Works, there is now available a 2-volume edition of selections from Lenin’s writings, under the title Essentials of
Leninism.
Where references are made to the book Problems of Leninism, the name of the article from that volume has also been given, since most of these articles also appear in the earlier editions from Stalin’s writings and speeches which were published first in two volumes and later in one volume under the title Leninism.
PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY IN EASTERN EUROPE
by HILARY MINC
Member of the Political Bureau of the Polish United Workers’ Party
Reprinted from the Bulletin of the International Affairs, Department of the Polish United Workers’ Party, February-March 1950
The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental and central part of the science of Marxism-Leninism. Marx and Engels created the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, established theoretically the necessity of smashing the bourgeois state machine and showed that, as a result of the proletarian revolution, the proper content of the period of transition from capitalism to Communism can only be the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin fought mercilessly against revisionist and centrist attempts to distort and efface the Marxian theory of the State, the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
“The fundamental thing in Leninism is the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the elaboration of this problem, the substantiation and concretisation of this problem,” wrote Comrade Stalin. (Stalin, “On the Problems of Leninism”, Section 2, Problems of Leninism, English Edition, Moscow, 1947, p. 126.)
As Comrade Stalin indicated, the new elements which Lenin introduced into the teachings on the dictatorship of the proletariat consist in the fact that he:
(a) discovered the Soviet form of government as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat;
(b) developed the formula of the dictatorship of the proletariat, defining it as a special form of the class alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry with the proletariat playing the leading role in this alliance;
(c) elaborated the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the highest type of democracy in class society, expressing the interest of the majority (the exploited) as against bourgeois democracy which expresses the interest of the minority (the exploiters).
(See Stalin, “Interview given to the first American Labour Delegation” Essentials of Leninism, 2 volumes, English Edition, Moscow, 1947, vol. I, p.40)
Comrade Stalin, the co-creator and continuator of Lenin’s work, creatively developed further the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the State and the dictatorship of the proletariat, victoriously directed State and directs its realisation.
Just as Lenin, in the struggle against the revisionists and the centrists, safeguarded the Marxian theory of the State and the dictatorship of the proletariat from distortion and effacement and raised this theory to a new, level by generalising upon the historical experience of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, so Stalin, in the struggle against Trotskyites and right-wing deviationists, safeguarded Leninism from distortion and effacement, and generalising upon the historical experience of the period of the general crisis of capitalism and upon socialist construction, developed the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus developing the science of Marxism-Leninism creatively and universally. On the basis of Stalin’s teachings and under his leadership, the Soviet Socialist State developed into a mighty and invincible power, the building of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. was completed, and in the U.S.S.R. the period of a gradual transition towards Communism was commenced.
On the basis of Stalin’s teachings and under his leadership the mighty, invincible Soviet Socialist State smashed Hitlerite Germany. As a result of this victory, the world front of capitalism was broken in a number of new places and Stalin’s brilliant prophecy, made in 1934 was completely fulfilled:
“And let not Messieurs the bourgeoisie blame us if some of the governments so near and dear to them, which today rule happily ‘by the grace of God’ are missing on the to the morrow after such a war.” (Stalin, “Report to the Seventeenth Congress C.P.S.U.(B)”, Problems of Leninism, p.464.)
On the ruins of these governments “by the grace of God” the States of People’s Democracy have arisen.
The class nature of these States is the realisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat through the hegemony of the proletariat; their aim is the building of Socialism in their countries.
The States of People’s Democracy which arose as a result of the victory of the U.S.S.R. over Hitlerism, develop on the basis of the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist construction in the U.S.S.R., of the theoretical generalisation of this experience given by Comrade Stalin and of the invaluable direct indications and advice of the C.P.S.U.(B,) and Comrade Stalin personally.
“All nations”, wrote Lenin, “will come to Socialism-this is inevitable, but they will not all reach it in the same way, every one will contribute its specific nature in one or another form of democracy, in one or another variant of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in one or another tempo in the socialist transformation of the various aspects of social life.” (Lenin. A Caricature of Marxism, Collected Works, Fourth Russian Edition, vol. XXIII, p.58.)
The Communist and Workers’ Parties in the People’s Democracies, basing themselves on Stalin’s teachings, his indications and advice, have understood the particular traits of the international situation and the specific internal situation of their countries in the period after the Second World War, and on this basis they have determined their specific way of exercising the function of the dictatorship of the proletariat, forging a variant of it, People’s Democracy, and in this way they marked out the best and most advantageous road towards Socialism in their countries in the given historical conditions.
On the other hand, the science of Marxism-Leninism developed by Stalin was a weapon with the aid of which the Communist and Workers’ Parties in the People’s Democracies grasped the fact that the road of their countries towards Socialism is the result of the victorious path of the U.S.S.R., that their type of State is a variant of the dictatorship of the proletariat and that, as Lenin wrote:
“The transition from capitalism to Communism will certainly create a great variety and abundance of political forms, but their essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution: Essentials of Leninism, vol. II, p. 164; L.L.L. No, 14; L.S.W. vol 7.)
On the basis of this understanding, the right-wing and nationalist deviation which sought to present the road of People’s Democracy as a “third” road between Socialism and capitalism and to oppose the road of People’s Democracy to the Soviet road was overcome and smashed.
Therefore, the arising and successful development of the People’s Democratic States is not only yet one more proof of the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the State and the dictatorship of the proletariat developed by Stalin, it is the further development of this theory under new historical conditions, a development which took place on the basis of Stalin’s teachings and under the direct ideological influence of the C.P.S.U.(B.) and Comrade Stalin personally.
I
In the science of Marxism-Leninism the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is inseparably linked with the concept of the proletarian revolution. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the instrument and principal content of the proletarian revolution.
“The question of the proletarian dictatorship”, Comrade Stalin wrote, “is above all a question of the main content of the proletarian revolution. The proletarian revolution, its movement, its scope and its achievements, acquire flesh and blood only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the instrument of the proletarian revolution, its organ, its most important mainstay” (Stalin, “Foundations of Leninism”, Section 4, Problems of Leninism, English Edition, Moscow, 1947, p, 39; L.S.L. No. 1.)
The tremendous social upheaval which took place after the war in the countries of Southern and South-Eastern Europe, an upheaval which resulted in the consolidation in these countries of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of the People’s Democratic State, had the character of a proletarian revolution, of a socialist revolution. It was, however, a socialist revolution which was achieved in special historical conditions, differing from those in which the Great October Socialist Revolution occurred.
What did the difference of these conditions consist of?
1. The People’s Democracies were liberated by the Soviet Army. The coming of the Soviet Army made possible the growing of the national liberation struggle conducted by partisan forces into a national liberation war conducted in state form at the side of the Soviet Union by the entire nation and its regular army which arose with Soviet aid. The working class which led the struggle against the occupiers, now gained extensive possibilities of seizing political power and carrying out a broad struggle for the abolition of the rule of the capitalists and landowners.
]
“The working masses, the working class, and its political organisations had a class ally in the Soviet Army, an ally who liberated the nation from the yoke of Hitlerite slavery, an ally who by his very presence rendered powerless the camp of reaction and made it incapable of dealing by force of arms with the revolutionary government, an ally who guaranteed that the imperialist powers would not decide the fate of a given country against the interests of the people.” (Boleslaw Bierut: Speech delivered at the Unification Congress of the Polish Workers’ Party and the Polish Workers’ Party and the Polish Socialist Party on December 15, 1948.)
It is a historical fact that in the countries which were occupied by the imperialist Anglo-American armies, as for example France or Italy, the working class, in spite of the great scope of the national liberation struggle and the tremendous role and influence of the Communist Party in the struggle, was unable to seize power and these countries, under the influence of brutal imperialist force, were unable to depart from the road of capitalism.
In this way, in contradistinction from the Soviet Union, where the socialist proletarian revolution was carried out without any external aid and exclusively with internal forces, the socialist revolution in the People’s Democracies was based in its sources on the aid and power of the Soviet Union and its Army.
2. The revolutionary struggle of the masses under the leadership of the working class and its Communist and Workers’ Parties against the landowners and the capitalists was interwined in this upheaval with the national liberation war against the Hitlerite occupiers.
Rosa Luxemburg in her time, when formulating erroneous conceptions of the national question, which later were to be a burden upon the ideology of the Communist Party of Poland, advanced a thesis in her polemics with Lenin to the effect “there can be no more national wars”, understanding by this, that the epoch of national wars was past, due to the consolidation of imperialism and the imperialist division of the world between the great powers.
In answer to Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin in 1916 wrote the following on this question:
“One cannot maintain that such a transformation (of the imperialist war into a national one-H.M.) is impossible; if the proletariat of Europe were to prove itself impotent for some twenty years; if the given war (the imperialist war of 1914-H.M.) were to end in victorious like the Napoleonic ones and in the subjugation of a number of national States capable of existence; if some extra-European imperialism (above all Japanese and American) were to maintain itself also for some twenty years, without passing into Socialism –for example as a result of a Japanese-American war, then a great national war in Europe would be possible.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Fourth Russian Edition, vol XXII., p.296)
This brilliant hypothesis of Lenin’s was fully confirmed. During the Second World War, Europe was the arena of a great liberation struggle of a number of nations against the Hitlerite yoke. This struggle was closely connected with the great war of the Soviet nation in the defence of its homeland. The guiding force of the struggle against the German occupiers was the working class and its Communist and Workers’ Parties. The working class and its Communist parties closely linked’ the national liberation struggle with the struggle against the capitalists and landowners, discredited by capitulation to Hitlerite Germany or collaboration with it-and with the struggle for the overthrow of the rule of the capitalists and landowners.
In this way, at the sources of the socialist revolution in the People’s Democracies lies the intertwining, already during the period of the occupation, of the national liberation struggle with the revolutionary struggle against the capitalists and landowners.
Herein lies the second trait which differentiates the socialist revolution in the People’s Democracies from the October Revolution.
3. In the People’s Democracies the formation of the People’s Democratic State as the organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat took place as a long-term process. The bourgeoisie and the landowners as well as their political organisations were not smashed by a frontal attack of the working masses.
The political arena was not completely cleared. In the existing political system many organisations were active which not only vacillated in relation to the great tasks of the socialist revolution, but were thoroughly hostile toward them and aimed at the restoration of capitalism.
The concrete setting of internal and international circumstances often called for an at least partial sharing of the government, on the part of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, not only with their wavering allies but also with thoroughly bourgeois parties. Hence, the apparatus of bourgeois power was not broken fully or in all its sectors-and hence, the relatively slow tempo of great social transformations, etc. In the process of a long and stubborn class struggle, the discrediting and shattering of hostile political organisations, the overcoming of the vacillations of political allies, the forging-through the united front-of the organic unity of the working class; in the process of extending the foundations of a new system among the masses of the nation, the activisation of these masses in the ever growing conviction that the new system is their system; in the process of fortifying the apparatus of the new state power and purging it from bourgeois trash, deepening the social transformations, extending the front of the class struggle and directing the fire of this struggle not only against the village rich; in the process of a long series of difficult but victorious class battles-the new States of People’s Democracy fulfil the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in an ever greater scope and with ever greater effectiveness.
It is clear that boundaries in nature and society are “conventional” and “movable” as Lenin said. The process of the crystallisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the People’s Democracies occurred differently in various countries. The point of departure in respect to the composition of forces, the achieved degree of breaking the old apparatus, etc., also differed in these countries. In the view of long duration, complicated nature and difficulties of this process, it is clear and understandable why the formulation of the People’s Democracy as fulfilling effectively the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat-a formulation which called for the theoretical generalisation of the experiences of People’s Democracy-was given by Comrades Dimitrov and Bierut at the end of 1948.
Thus, in contradistinction from the Soviet Union, where the dictatorship of the proletariat was fixed in the form of Soviet power from the first days of the socialist revolution, the crystallisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the People’s Democracies took place as a long-lasting and difficult process.
Herein lies the third trait which differentiates the socialist revolution in the People’s Democracies from October Revolution.
Regardless of the divergence of the social upheaval in the People’s Democracies from the October Revolution, this upheaval accomplished the same historical tasks.
Political power was snatched from the hands of the bourgeoisie peasantry and passed into the hands of the working class and the working peasantry. Large and medium industry, banks and transport became the property of the State and the landowners were expropriated. The People’s Democracies left the capitalist world and ceased to be subject to capitalism’s laws of development, which gave them the possibility of entering on the road of Socialism.
Thus both in respect to the fulfilled historical tasks and in respect to the driving class forces, the socialist upheaval accomplished in the People’s Democracies is the same type as the October Revolution, and possesses all the traits of the proletarian socialist revolution.
The fact that the social upheaval in the People’s Democracies decided and solved a number of the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution (for example-the liquidation of feudal survivals in agriculture) does not in any case change its character as a socialist revolution, for the Great October Revolution also resolved “in passing” a number of tasks of this type.
There, is no doubt that the point of departure for the formation of right wing and nationalist deviations in the Communist and Workers’ Parties is precisely the denial of the fact that the great social upheaval that has been accomplished in the People’s Democracies has the character of a socialist revolution. The right-wing and nationalist deviationists do not wish to see the fundamental, revolutionary, socialist content of this upheaval-they bring to the forefront only the fact that the upheaval was closely connected with the war of national liberation. This is the source of opportunism in the treatment of the question of the question of the national front. Comrade Bierut, in unmasking the opportunist, right-wing and nationalist stand of Comrade Gomulka, characterised this opportunism as follows:
“What does opportunism in the question of the national front consist of? In the fact that it loses sight of the hegemony of the working class. Herein lay the error, the actual stand of opportunism.
“Similarly to all the revolutionary parties in the whole world, we have never put forth the slogan of the national front as anything else in which the working class and the worker’s party is the guide, leader and chief. Any other way of comprehending the national must be opportunist. This opportunism lay in the stand of a certain number of the comrades who later erred in a right-wing, opportunist and nationalist deviation on a number of other sectors of work. In their position the false approach to the national front was that trait which led them to errors.” (Boleslaw Bierut: Concluding speech at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, November 13, 1949.)
The negating of the hegemony of the proletariat and of its socialist aims in the national front is closely connected in the stand of the right-wing and nationalist deviationists with a narrowing of the tasks of the working class solely to the tasks of the war of liberation, of the bourgeois democratic revolution-it is closely connected with the negation of the fact that the upheaval which took place in the People’s Democracies is of the same class type as the Great October Socialist Revolution.
It is connected with the counterposing of the road of the People’s Democracies to the Soviet road, with acting against the deepening of the upheaval, the extension of the front of class struggle to embrace the kulaks, and the decisive entry upon the road of socialist construction in town and country. Finally, it is connected with the creation of radically false theories which regard the system of People’s Democracy as a third, intermediary road between the capitalist and tile Soviet roads.
The People’s Democratic States which arose as a result of a socialist revolution, and have crystallised into an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the span of a long and difficult process, are States which set for themselves the task of building a classless socialist society.
Therefore, although capitalist elements are still strong in many fields of the economy of these countries and the small-production economy which is still dominant in the villages is the foundation for the formation of these elements; although elements of the old bourgeois apparatus still rest in many of the sectors of the state apparatus of these States and the terrain has not yet been completely cleared of the remnants of the broken bourgeois state apparatus and the remnants of broken bourgeois political formations-the People’s Democracy States are States of a socialist type.
Lenin wrote in 1918 as follows:
“There has been no one as yet, who, if he asked himself a question regarding Russia’s economy, would deny that this economy is of a transitory nature. No Communist would deny, it seems, also the fact that the expression-Socialist Soviet Republic-signifies that the Soviet Power is determined to carry out the transition to Socialism, and that it does not in the least signify a recognition of the new economic order as a Socialist order,” (Lenin, Collected Works, Third Russian Edition, vol. XXII, p. 513.)
At the Third All-Union Congress of Soviets, Lenin said:
“We have never erred in this matter and we know how difficult is the road leading from capitalism to Socialism-but we are bound to state that our Soviet Republic is socialist because we have entered this road and these words will not be empty words.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Third Russian Edition, vol. XXII, p.213)
These words of Lenin can be applied in full to the People’s Democratic States. These are States in which Socialism has not conquered ultimately, but in spite of this, these are States which have set for themselves the decided task of building a socialist society and the successful course this construction indicates in full that this decision is not based on empty words. Thus, they are Socialist States, in their class nature of the same type as the Soviet State in that phase of its development when antagonistic social classes still existed in it. Thus, they are States of Socialism under construction, as was the U.S.S.R. in its first phase of development (before it became the State of victorious Socialism).
In the Socialist States of People’s Democracy, derived from a socialist revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat is exercised, as a result of different historical conditions, in a different form than the Soviet form.
“At the foundations of our difference from the Soviet road”, Comrade Bierut stated, “lies the all-sided aid of the Soviet Union and the help of the experiences and achievements of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R.” (B. Bierut, The Ideological Foundations of the Polish United Workers’ Party.)
Regardless of this difference, the People’s Democratic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat fulfils the same functions as the Soviet State in the first phase of its development. These functions include, primarily, the forcible suppression of the resistance of the over-thrown classes of the exploiters within the country. This suppression of the exploiters’ resistance takes place in our country often in different forms than in the Soviet Union during the first phase of its development. As is known, the bourgeoisie and other classes of exploiters were at that time deprived of the right to participate in the elections to the Soviets, which is not the case in the People’s Democracies where the universal right to vote exists. Lenin did not consider the limitation of the electoral rights of the bourgeoisie as an indispensable condition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, Lenin considered that these limitations arose in the setting of the specific conditions of the Russian Revolution and wrote that this limitation:
“… is not absolutely necessary for the exercise of the dictatorship. It is not an essential earmark of the logical concept ‘dictatorship’, it does not enter as an essential condition into the historical and class concept ‘dictatorship’.
“The necessary earmark, the essential condition of dictatorship, is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as, a class.” (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Essentials of Leninism, vol. II, p. 380; L.L.L. No. 18; L.S.W. vol. 7.)
In his article “Lenin and Stalin on the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat”, D.I. Chesnokov correctly writes:
“On the one hand, the peculiarities of the country’s internal development” the relation of class forces and tension of class conflicts-on the other hand, the specific nature of the international situation, determine the form, methods and scale of the force employed by the proletariat against the exploiters. For the working class, force is not the goal, but solely the means for suppressing the resistance of the bourgeoisie and consolidating the workers’ State. The ‘degree’ of force is determined mainly by the ‘degree’ of ,the bourgeoisie’s resistance and its ‘fury’ in the struggle with the proletariat and the working classes in general” (Problems of Philosophy, November 3, 1948.)
Historical conditions have caused the dictatorship of the proletariat to be realised in the People’s Democracies in a different form than the Soviet. This form is the most advantageous, best and most adapted to the conditions of these countries, and is for them the most suitable road’ for the transition to Socialism.
One must be, however, fully aware of the fact that this most advantageous, in given historical conditions, form, has also a number of negative aspects and dangers connected with them. The dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet form arose as a result of the frontal attack of the working masses led by the working class on the exploiters’ class and its state apparatus. It swept away and shattered rapidly and radically the machine of the bourgeois State, bourgeois political formations, bourgeois norms and legal regulations, the privileged positions of the church hierarchy, etc., etc.
In his work, The Foundations of Leninism, Comrade Stalin particularly emphasises Lenin’s statement in which Lenin affirms that:
“The Soviet organisation of the State alone is capable of immediately and effectively smashing and finally destroying the old, i.e., the bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial apparatus.” (My italics-H.M.) (Stalin, “Foundations of Leninism”, Section 4, Problems of Leninism, p.48; L.S.L. No.1.)
It is clear that the People’s Democratic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, due to the circumstances of its development and of formation, cannot accomplish “immediately” and “finally” these tasks of clearing the terrain for socialist construction with the same sweep and consistency.
Therefore, even at present, after years of a long and difficult process of the crystallisation of the People’s Democratic State as a variant of the dictatorship of the proletariat which retains the fundamental levers of power-the People’s Democracies still trail behind themselves long “tails”, made up of obsolete institutions and norms of the past period-and at times, even of particular elements of the old bourgeois state apparatus which have not been subjected to revolutionary transformation. This hampers the development of socialist construction and creates certain dangers, for, in definite circumstances, the “tails” from the preceding period become advantageous points of entrenchment for the class enemy.
Historical development has shown, in accord with the science of Marxism-Leninism, that the existence of two forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet and People’s Democratic forms, is possible.
The People’s Democratic form has proved itself, in the special historical conditions which arose in a number of countries after the Second World War, to be vital and effective.
It is a fact that a new chapter, rich in content, on the People’s Democracy has been contributed to the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the State, the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is a fact that this new chapter has been contributed on the basis of Stalin’s teachings and under his direct ideological influence and leadership.
II
In developing the Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Comrade Stalin elaborated in detail the problem of the system of functioning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the problem of its “mechanism”, i.e., the problem of the Bolshevik Party as the leading force of the Soviet State and the “transmission” of the Party to the masses: the trade unions, Soviets, co-operatives, Young Communist League, etc.
“The Party is the organised detachment of the working class but the Party is Party is not, the only organisation of, the working class. The proletariat has also a number of other organisations, without which it cannot properly wage the struggle against capital: trade unions, co-operative societies, factory and works organisations, parliamentary groups, non-Party women’s associations, the Press, cultural and educational organisations, youth leagues, revolutionary fighting organisations (in times of open revolutionary action), Soviets of deputies as the form of state organisation (if, the proletariat, is in power), etc. The overwhelming majority of these organisations are non-Party, and only a certain part of them adhere directly to the Party, or represent its offshoots,” (Stalin, “Foundations of Leninism”, Section 8, Problems of Leninism, p.86; L.S.L. No.1.)
And further on Comrade Stalin writes:
“... all these organisations should work in one direction for they serve one class, the class of the proletarians. The question then arises; who is to determine the line, the general direction, along which the work of all these organisations is to be conducted? Where is that central organisation which is not only able, because it has the necessary experience, to work out such a general line, but, in addition, is in a position because it has sufficient prestige for that, to induce all these organisations to carry out this line, so as to attain unity of leadership and to preclude the possibility of working at cross purposes?” (ibid, p. 86.)
Such an organisation is the Party of the proletariat.
Does this “mechanism” of the dictatorship of the proletariat function” and in what fashion, in the conditions of its People’s Democratic form?
It is clear that it functions fully, for without this mechanism, whose core is the leading role of the workers’ party, there is no, and can be no, dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the People’s Democracies the Communist and Workers’ Parties were “an instrument in the hands of the proletariat for the conquest of the dictatorship” (Stalin), they elaborated the general line which led to the conquest of this dictatorship, and now, when the dictatorship of the proletariat is already achieved, they are the instrument “for the strengthening and extension of the dictatorship” (Stalin).
The Communist and Workers’ Parties elaborate the general line, which aims at, the most rapid and effective building of Socialism, and, having sufficient authority, they stimulate to action on this line the central and local government organs, the trade unions, youth organisations, the Co-operative movement, press, etc.
Without this leading role of the Party as the highest form of the class union of proletarians, without the coherence and discipline of the Party and without the confidence in it of the broad masses, the dictatorship of the proletariat not only would not be able to strengthen and extend itself, in order to lead to the complete victory of Socialism, but it would not be able even to maintain itself.
In 1920 Lenin wrote:
“Certainly, almost everyone now realises that the Bolsheviks could not have maintained themselves in power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, unless the strictest, truly iron discipline had prevailed in our Party, and unless the latter had been rendered the fullest and unreserved support of the ,whole mass of the working class, that is, of all its thinking, honest, self-sacrificing and influential elements who are capable of leading or of carrying with them the backward strata.” (Lenin, Left-wing Communism; L.S.W., vol. 10; Essentials of Lenin, vol. 2, p. 573; L.L.L. No. 16.)
These words of Lenin can be applied in full to the historic role which the Communist Parties played in the achievement and maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and play in its extension and strengthening.
Although there is a complete, fundamental harmony in the functioning of the mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on the leading role of the Party, in both the Soviet and People's Democratic form of dictatorship, a certain specific nature does exist, however, at the present stage of development of the People's Democratic form. This specific nature lies in the existence of not only one single party, the party of the proletariat, but also of other political organisations and parties, which function mainly in the field of the peasant and petty bourgeois strata.
It must, however, be stated distinctly that these parties do not possess any more the character of political organisations representing the interests of “antagonistic classes whose interests are hostile and cannot be reconciled” (Stalin).
A number of these political organisations and parties are derived historically from the era of the bourgeois State. In the period after the Second World War, when the socialist revolution was developing in the People's Democracies and an arduous struggle was being waged for the consolidation “and crystallisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, some of these parties were the more or less wavering allies of the Communist and Workers' Parties while some of them held openly hostile positions in relation to them.
However, in the process of the great class battles which took place in the People’s Democracies-in the process of smashing and liquidating the hostile bourgeois-landowner political formations, in the process of detaching the toiling and exploited masses from the bourgeoisie, the overcoming of the vacillations of the masses of middle peasants and the fortifying of the worker-peasant alliance as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat-these parties changed their class nature. In this period a thorough revision of their ideology, a thorough cleansing of their leadership and apparatus took place. At present these parties recognise the general political line, worked out by the Communist and Workers’ Parties, which aims at the building of Socialism, as binding for them and corresponding to the interest of the social strata amongst which they function. These parties develop their practical activity along this line. These parties recognise also, both in theory and in practice, the leading role of the Communist and Workers’ Parties.
In these circumstances the class nature of these parties and their function must be, and is, fundamentally different from the class nature and function of parties of the bourgeois State. In the present stage of development of the People’s Democracies these parties are fulfilling in reality the function of special ally formations, a special bridge for the leading detachment of the working class to a part of the working masses, especially to the peasants. Hence entrance of the representatives of these parties into the government does not in any case endow the governments in the People’s Democracies with the character of coalition governments in the bourgeois meaning of the word, does not deprive them of coherence and compactness, does not infringe in principle their unity of action and does not undermine the stability and durability of the people’s power.
It should not be forgotten, however, that the existence of these parties, while historically justified, necessary and purposeful in the present stage of development of People’s Democracy, can, in certain circumstances, be connected with definite dangers, derived from the fact that the class enemy attempts to entrench himself in some of the sectors of these parties.
There is no doubt that the further development of People’s Democracy will consolidate, deepen and extend the leading role of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in the entirety of the country’s political life, in forms that correspond for each country and each period.
In any case it is clear that the prediction formulated by Comrade Dimitrov in 1948 to the effect that progressive social development “does not lead to a multitude of parties and small groups” has been already confirmed by the uniting of particular parties, which has taken place in some of the People’s Democracies.
In developing the theory of Marxism-Leninism, Comrade Stalin made a great, new contribution to the teachings on the Party of the proletariat. For the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the People’s Democracies, that part of the Leninist-Stalinist teachings which deals with the problem of the Party as the vanguard of the working class is especially timely.
Here is what Comrade Stalin writes on this problem:
“But in order that it may really be the vanguard, the Party must be armed with revolutionary theory, with a knowledge of the laws of the movement, with a knowledge of the laws of the revolution. Without this it will be incapable of directing the struggle of the proletariat, of leading the proletariat. The Party cannot be a real Party, if it limits itself to registering what the masses of the working class feel and think, if it drags at the tail of the spontaneous movement, if it is unable to overcome the inertness and political indifference of the spontaneous movement, if it is unable to rise above the momentary interests of the proletariat, if it is unable to elevate the masses to the level of the class interests of the proletariat. The Party must stand at the head of the working class; it must see further, than the working class; it must lead the proletariat, and not allow in the tail of the spontaneous movement.” (Stalin, “Foundations of Leninism”; Problems of Leninism, p.81, 82; L.S.L. No.1.)
Without the Party as the vanguard of the working class, without the Party as the “political leader of the working class” (Stalin), there is, and can be, no dictatorship of the proletariat capable of consolidating, developing and strengthening itself.
It is understandable, therefore, that the traitors and spies of the Tito clique, preparing since long ago a counter-revolutionary coup in Yugoslavia at the behest of American imperialism, recognised as the fundamental element of their traitorous work the deprivation of the Communist Party of its role as the vanguard of the working class by detaching it from the working class and dissolving it in the so-called National Front.
It is also not a matter of accident that the bearers of the right wing and nationalist deviation, led by Comrade Gomulka, wanted to deprive our Party of the role of the vanguard of the working class by detaching it from revolutionary traditions, by uniting with the Polish Socialist Party without first shattering the right wing-of the P.S.P., and not on the platform of Marxism-Leninism.
The Communist and Workers' Parties in the People’s Democracies, due to the specific conditions in which they arose and developed, do not as yet possess in full the traits of a Bolshevik Party, although they fulfil in principle the functions of the leading detachment of the working class.
Hence the immense and intensive organisational work that is being carried out at present by the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the People’s Democracies, in order to make up for the delay, in order to assimilate in full Bolshevik methods of organisational work, in order to purge themselves of hostile and foreign elements, to prevent the effacement of the line between the Party and the class and in order to perform the function of the political leader of the working class, completely, universally and in a Bolshevik manner
In developing the Leninist teaching on the Patty, Comrade Stalin formulated as a law of the development of the Party the strengthening of the Party by the purging of opportunist elements.
“Our Party”, Comrade Stalin writes, “succeeded in creating internal unity and unexampled cohesion of its ranks primarily because it was able in good time to purge itself of the opportunist pollution, because it was able to rid its ranks of the liquidators, the Mensheviks.” (ibid, p.91).
During the period when the direct task facing the People’s Democracies was only the struggle for the consolidation of regained State-hood and the reconstruction of national economy, the opportunist elements in the parties did not as yet reveal themselves fully.
When, however, a new stage of development began, when the building of the foundations of Socialism and the sharp struggle against the capitalist elements in town and country became a direct task, in the period which coincided with an ever more acute division of the world into the camp of imperialism and the camp of peace, in this period the opportunist elements in the parties revealed their features and sought to turn the parties from their proper road.
We know from our own experience that the routing of the right wing and nationalist deviation in our Party fortified it, and armed it for the accomplishment of the tasks of the leading detachment of the working class, the directing force of the dictatorship of the proletariat, carrying out the transition to Socialism.
Basing itself on Stalin’s teachings and his ideological influence, the dictatorship of the proletariat in the People’s Democracies develops and strengthens itself-the Communist and Workers’ Parties directing it-and develops on the road of Bolshevik theory and practice.
The experience of the State and Party building in these countries is a further splendid confirmation and development of the Leninist-Stalinist teachings on the “mechanism” of the functioning of the dictatorship of the proletariat and on the guiding role of the Party as the vanguard of the working class.
III
In 1939, at the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Comrade Stalin presented a profound, thorough analysis of the development of the Soviet Socialist State and determined two phases of this development: the first the period from the October Revolution to the liquidation of the exploiting classes, and the second the period from the liquidation of the capitalist elements of town and country to the complete victory of the Socialist system of economy and the enactment of the new Constitution.
The principal task in the first place, Comrade Stalin writes:
“Was to suppress the resistance of the overthrown classes, to organise the defence of the country against the attack of the interventionists, to restore industry and agriculture and to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the capitalist elements. Accordingly, in this period our State performed two main functions.”
And further on, characterising these two main functions, Comrade Stalin writes:
“The first function was to suppress the overthrown classes inside the country.
“The second function was to defend the country from foreign attack. “Our State had yet a third function: this was the work of economic organisation and cultural education performed by our State bodies with the purpose of developing the infant shoots of the new, socialist economic system and re-educating the people in the spirit of Socialism. But this new function did not attain to any considerable development in that period.” (My italics-H.M.) (Stalin, Problems of Leninism, pp.636-637.)
In regard to the second phase, the principal task of this period, as Comrade Stalin stated, lay in the organisation of the socialist economy, corresponding to which the functions of the Socialist State also changed.
The function of suppressing resistance inside the country fell and died away. In its place arose the function of safeguarding of the socialist property. The function of armed defence of the country from external attack was completely preserved' and, as Comrade Stalin writes:
“The function of economic organisation and cultural education by the state organs also remained, and was developed to the full. Now the main task of our State inside the country is the work of peaceful economic organisation and cultural education. As for our army, punitive organs and intelligence service, their edge is no longer turned to the inside of the country but to the outside, against the external enemies.
“As you see, we now have an entirely new, Socialist State, without precedent in history and differing considerably in form and functions from the Socialist State .of the first phase.” (ibid, p, 633.)
In the light of Comrade Stalin's analysis of the development of the Socialist State and the determined two phases of its development, it should be clear that the People's Democracies are in the first phase, in the period when the main task is the breaking of the resistance of the overthrown classes and the preparation of conditions for the liquidation of the capitalist classes. However, in new historical conditions, this first phase of development of the Socialist State takes 'a somewhat different course in the People's Democracies than took place in the U.S.S.R.
Wherein does this difference chiefly rest?
It rests in the fact that, due to basing themselves on the U.S.S.R., the People's Democracies were able to approach relatively faster the realisation of the economic-organisational and cultural-educational functions of the Socialist State. This was caused by the following circumstances:
1. Due to the support of the might and aid of the U.S.S.R., the People's Democracies avoided armed imperialist intervention. It is true that the overthrown classes of exploiters benefited and benefit from the close aid of the imperialists, and here and there, on the basis of this aid, attempts at armed resistance arose-as, for example, in Poland during a certain period of the activities of the bands and the underground which had even some elements of a civil war-but all these attempts of resistance cannot be compared in their destructive results with the burdens, devastations and tension o forces brought about by the armed imperialist intervention in the U.S.S.R., and the long-lasting civil war which grew on its soil. As is known, the rebuilding of the country in the U.S.S.R. was able to begin, due to the armed imperialist intervention, only four to five years after the October Revolution. In Poland, on the other hand, where the armed resistance of the overthrown classes had relatively the greatest scope and lasted the longest, it was unable to halt for an instant the work of rebuilding the country.
Therefore, in the People's Democracies, industry and agriculture were restored already in the first phase of the development of the Socialist State and already in the first phase of development, production, especially in industry, has very considerably surpassed the pre-war level.
2. The People's Democracies benefited from the very first instant of their formation from the all-sided aid of the Soviet Union in the form of deliveries of goods, food, commodity and investment credits, technical aid, cultural assistance, etc.
In the recent past the mutual aid of the People’s Democracies carried out on the basis of the Mutual Economic Aid Council has begun to play an ever more important role.
3. The People's Democracies have the possibility of benefiting, and benefit, from the experiences of the Soviet Union, of marching along the path it has cleared. This saves them many vain efforts, many unsuccessful attempts and pursuits, much national energy, labour and material costs which otherwise would be expended without the proper effect.
These are the circumstances which cause a relatively more rapid development of the economic-organisational work in the People’s Democracies than in the U.S.S.R. in the first phase of its development. This has, of course, a highly positive bearing on the whole of the development of these countries.
Having avoided, due to basing themselves on the strength and aid of the U.S.S.R., imperialist intervention, the People’s Democracies also did not have to pass through the stage of War Communism in their economy, the necessity of which in the U.S.S.R. was primarily caused precisely by the imperialist intervention.
The economy of the People’s Democracies was, and is, based up to the present on the taking over by the State of the principal economic positions (large and medium industry, the banks, transport, etc.), on the permitting within definite limits and utilisation of market relations, and on such a planned direction of economic life on the basis of the principal economic positions, as to cause the growth of the socialist sector and development in the direction of Socialism.
Comrade Stalin foresaw brilliantly already in 1928 that:
“The new economic policy with its market relations and the utilisation of the market relations is absolutely necessary for every capitalist country in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Stalin, Collected Works, Russian Edition, vol. XI, p.145.)
This brilliant prediction of Comrade Stalin was completely confirmed by the development of the economy of the People’s Democracies, which at present are in a period having many common practical traits and many analogies with the Soviet N.E.P. (New Economic Policy) period.
But the N.E.P. is not only the permitting on definite conditions and utilisation of market relations.
“The N.E.P.,” Comrade Stalin states, “is the Party’s policy which permits of the struggle between the socialist and capitalist elements, and is calculated to bring about the victory of the Socialist elements over the capitalist elements. In actual fact N.E.P. only began as a retreat; but the calculation was that in the course of this retreat our forces would be regrouped and we would launch an offensive. As a matter of fact, we have been pursuing the offensive for several years now, and are doing so successfully, developing our industries, developing Soviet trade, and pressing hard. upon private capital” (Stalin, “On the Problems of Leninism”, Section 7, Problems of Leninism, p. 172.)
In the People’s Democracies, where the permitting and utilisation of market relations was not a period of retreat because there had been no period of War Communism which eliminated these market conditions, the offensive against the limitation and gradual dislodging of capitalist elements is taking place. As a result of this development the perspective of the total liquidation of capitalist elements becomes ever more clearly apparent, similarly to the plan outlined and accomplished in the U.S.S.R. under Stalin’s leadership -i.e., through the industrialisation of the country and the gradual collectivisation of agriculture. It is precisely this perspective, formulated in the resolution of the Information Bureau on the issue of the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which caused in our Party, amongst others, the complete unmasking of the rightwing and nationalist group, led by Comrade Gomulka, and the unsuccessful attempt to turn back our Party from the road leading to the realisation of Socialism.
The right-wing and nationalist group in our Party was thoroughly routed, and the attempt to turn our Party back from its road towards the realisation of Socialism ended in infamous disaster and bankruptcy.
There is no doubt as well that our country, like all the other People’s Democracies, suppressing the resistance of the bourgeoisie, developing its defensive power on the support of the U.S.S.R., will extend ever more., the economic-organisational and cultural-educational function of the Socialist State so that, as a result of the liquidation of the capitalist elements, the liquidation of antagonistic social classes and the victorious building of Socialism, this function becomes the principal and fundamental function of our Socialist State.
IV
Comrade Stalin, in developing the theory of the State and in particular the theory of the Socialist State, has contributed a new chapter to this theory, dealing with the question of the State in the period of Communism.
This is what Comrade Stalin stated on this question in 1939 in the report to the Eighteenth Party Congress:
“We are going ahead, towards Communism. Will our State remain in the period of Communism also?
“Yes, it will, unless the capitalist encirclement is liquidated, and unless the danger of foreign military attack has disappeared. Naturally, of course, the forms of our State will again change in conformity with the change in the situation at home and abroad.
“No, it will not remain and will atrophy if the capitalist encirclement is liquidated and a Socialist encirclement takes its place.” (Stalin, Problems of Leninism. p. 637-638.).
This extension and deepening of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the State was based on a profound elaboration of the problem of the internal and external functions of the State and on a thorough definition and determination of the consequences and dangers deriving from the existence of the capitalist encirclement.
In this same report to the Eighteenth Party Congress, which contributed a new chapter to the theory of the State, Comrade Stalin, raising an objection to those who considered that since there were no more antagonistic classes in the U.S.S.R. then the State was also unnecessary, stated
“These questions not only betray an underestimation of the capitalist encirclement, but also an underestimation of the role and significance of the bourgeois States and their organs, which send in spies, assassins, and wreckers into our country and are waiting for a favourable moment to attack it by armed force.” (ibid, p. 632.)
And further on Comrade Stalin says:
“Is it not surprising that we learned about the espionage and conspiratorial activities of the Trotskyite and Bukharinite leaders only quite recently, in 1937 and 1938, although, as the evidence shows, these gentry were in the service of foreign espionage organisations and carried on conspiratorial activities from the very first days of the October Revolution?
“This blunder is to be explained by an underestimation of the strength and consequence of the mechanism of the bourgeois States surrounding us and of their espionage organs which endeavour to take advantage of people's weaknesses, their vanity, their slackness of will, to enmesh them in their espionage nets and use them to surround the organs of the Soviet Stat~.” (ibid, p. 632-633.)
The People's Democracies are not in a capitalist encirclement in the sense that the U.S.S.R. was when it was the only Socialist State in the world.
The People's Democracies find a powerful support in the mighty Soviet Union.
But the People's Democracies, along with the Soviet Union, face an imperialist camp armed to the teeth and led by the American warmongers.
In the great anti-imperialist camp of peace and Socialism the People’s Democracies are less strong links than the U.S.S.R. In their countries there are still remnants of the routed classes of exploiters, and especially the class of the village rich, remnants of the bourgeois state apparatus and bourgeois political formations. The connections of some strata with native and foreign capitalism are still fresh; a broad stratum of people's intelligentsia has not yet emerged, the organs of justice and the organs of struggle with foreign intelligence services have not yet grown firm and acquired sufficient experience;” the Communist and Workers' Parties do not possess as yet the Bolshevik characteristics in full.
Therefore it is understandable that the imperialists direct their blows and attacks at the People's Democracies and that for a long time already they have been setting up long-range plans, aimed at, detaching these countries from the U.S.S.R. and guiding them on to the road to capitalism.
The provocation of many years standing of the spying Tito band for the benefit of the imperialists, the provocation; diversion and espionage of many years standing of the Rajk and Kostov bands and of the Titoite band in Hungary and Bulgaria, the provocation of many years standing of the pre-war Polish counter-intelligence agents in our Party, which spread on the ground of the opportunism and absolute lack of revolutionary vigilance on the part of Comrades Gomulka and Spychalski-all this shows how dangerous is the underestimation of the mechanism of the internal and external action of the class enemy.
“We cannot for an instant,” said Comrade Bierut, “lose sight of the class enemy and his cunning and insidious moves. Be vigilant! This is an order which should accompany every one of us constantly, in every moment of our Party’s professional and social work, as well as at every step of our collective and personal life. As long as the class enemy exists and acts-we must be, vigilant. To be vigilant, means to hasten the destruction of the imperialists, to fortify the foundations of socialist construction.” (B. Bierut. Report delivered at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the P.U.W.P., November II, 1949.)
There is no doubt that, basing themselves on Stalin’s teachings and the experiences of the C.P.S.U.(B), the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the People’s Democracies will be able to intensify their revolutionary vigilance and frustrate even the most satanic’ provocations of the foreign imperialists and of the native bourgeoisie and landowners.
V
The People’s Democracies arose as the result of a socialist revolution, occurring in special historical conditions. This revolution was of the same type, in class nature, as the Great October Socialist Revolution. The State in, the People’s Democracies is a State of the socialist type, of the same type in class nature as the Soviet State. The Soviet and People’s Democratic form of the State are variants of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Socialist State in the People’s Democracies differs from the contemporary Soviet State:
1. In the difference of historical conditions and the difference derived therefrom in the forms of exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat.
2. In the different phase of development in which it rests, the different stage of historical development: in the People’s Democracies, antagonistic social classes still exist, capitalism has not been completely liquidated and Socialism is only being boot. In the U.S.S.R., there are no antagonistic social classes, capitalism bas been totally liquidated, Socialism has been built and a Communist society is being boot.
Under these circumstances, what is and what can be the tendency of development of the People s Democracies?
This tendency can only be, and is, to make up for the historical delay, to build Socialism on the basis of the experience of the U.S.S.R. It is clear that as the People’s Democracies pass over from the first phase of development of the Socialist State to the second the divergences of system in relation to the U.S.S.R. will decrease.
The line of development of the U.S.S.R. and the line of the People’s Democracy are not in any case parallel lines, which if they intersect anywhere then only at infinity. On the contrary, the line of development of the People’s Democracies tends sharply towards the second phase of development of the Socialist State, towards a socialist society.
What does the direction of this line signify?
It signifies nothing else but the striving towards making up the historical delay, catching up with the U.S.S.R., and marching together with it and under its leadership towards Communism. Armed with Stalin’s teaching we shall reach this goal.
THE FATHERLAND FRONT AND PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY
by GEORGI DIMI1ROV
Extracts from Report to the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party
on December 19, 1948.
On September 9, 1944, political power in our country was wrested from the hands of the capitalist bourgeois and. the monarcho-fascist minority of exploiters and passed. into the hands of the vast majority, the working people from towns and villages, under the guidance of the working class and its vanguard-the Communist Party. Having triumphed with the decisive aid of the heroic Red Army, the September 9 uprising cleared the road for building Socialism in our country.
The combination of the September 9, 1944, people’s anti-fascist uprising and the victorious advance of the Soviet Army in the Balkans ensured the triumph of the uprising and gave it great impetus. The hatred against fascism accumulated in the course of two decades, and the determination of the working people to do away with it, burst forth irrepressibly and swept away the fascist regime at one blow. The anti-popular bourgeois-fascist police apparatus was smashed to pieces and a people’s militia was formed to crush the opposition of the fascist elements and to defend the people’s uprising. Power was wrested from the capitalist class, united around the monarchy and closely allied with German imperialism. It passed into the hands of the militant alliance of workers, peasants, artisans and intellectuals united in the Fatherland Front, under the leadership of our Party. The state power radically changed in character: the instrument for the oppression and exploitation of the masses in the interests of the capitalists was dismantled and a people’s government was created, as an instrument for the annihilation of capitalism and for the gradual liberation of the working people from exploitation of all kinds.
True, the old bourgeois state machine was not completely smashed on September 9. The Communists were still a minority in the newly formed Cabinet. Many key posts were still in the hands of individuals, some of whom later proved unstable and even hostile to the people’s regime. It was the Party, however, which animated the anti-fascist movement: the Party was, as it were, its sparking plug. In many localities power was actually in the hands of the Fatherland Front Committees. Our Party held the Ministry of the Interior as well as the newly created Institute for Assistant Commanders in the Army. This was in the interest of the people, because only our Party could organise the suppression of the defeated monarcho-fascist clique, ensure internal order and the successful participation of the reorganised army in the war against Hitler Germany. The Party’s great power and influence among the people, as well as its position in the Fatherland Front Committees, enabled it to assume in practice a leading role in the Government and to wage a successful fight against the fascist reactionaries and their stooges within the ranks of the Fatherland Front.
New people, springing up from the midst of the working class, came to the fore. Vast masses of people, long oppressed under the jack-boot of fascist dictatorship, awoke to active political life and, under the leadership of the Party, played their part in various administrative bodies. A new type of people’s democratic government was created and perfected.
Although its immediate tasks were of a democratic character, the September 9 uprising could not but shake the capitalist system in our country to its very foundation, thus transcending the limits of bourgeois democracy.
This, then, was the salient feature of the September 9 uprising. You cannot eliminate fascism, grant democratic rights to the working masses, consolidate and develop these rights without challenging the very rule of capitalism, for fascism is nothing but the ruthless, terrorist dictatorship of big business. The eradication of fascism cannot be completed without challenging big business. Democratic rights cannot be granted to the working people if big business preserves its political and economic power. The September 9 uprising, therefore, undertaking the solution of problems of a democratic character together with the great national problem of our people’s participation in the war for the final destruction of Hitlerism, could not but turn subsequently against the domination of big business, deal it further serious blows and prepare the ground for its abolition, for the abolition of the entire capitalist system and the transition to Socialism.
Laying the Foundations of Socialism in Bulgaria
The victory of the people under the guidance of our Party over the attempt of capitalist reaction to set back the clock of history created the conditions for speeding up the political and economic development of our country, for proceeding to bring about basic transformations and carry out constructive tasks of our people’s regime.
Under the conditions created by the elections to the Grand National Assembly and the formation of a government under the direct leadership of our Party, there could be no further development of the productive forces, of the national economy and of the well-being of the working people without a radical encroachment on the economic basis of the capitalist class. Bulgaria’s experience confirmed the thesis of Lenin and Stalin that under decaying capitalism, when the inherent insoluble crisis of bourgeois democracy gives birth to fascism, no serious and lasting democratic changes are possible, no progress is feasible, without attacking the very foundations of capitalism, without taking steps in the direction of Socialism. In this our country’s task was greatly eased by the fraternal aid received from a strong Socialist State-the U.S.S.R.
The way was open for the full unfolding of the constructive tasks of the People’s Government, for revolutionary changes in our national economy, for the elimination of the economic basis of capitalist reaction, for the transition from capitalism to Socialism, which, of course, cannot be realised without waging an uncompromising class struggle against the capitalist elements.
In this situation the Party had to formulate new tasks in order to arm its own cadres, the Fatherland Front and the working people with a clear perspective. There was, however, a certain lag. After the chief tasks’ of the preceding period were in the main solved, the Party by and large continued to be guided by its old slogans. We permitted a certain delay in the destruction of the reactionary opposition. We continued to speak of the possibility of coordinating the interests of private industrialists and merchants with the general interests of the State at a time when the whole situation made it possible to take radical measures for the elimination of the rule of big business in the national economy, and when factors had emerged which enabled us to advance resolutely towards laying the foundations of Socialism in our country.
We have never lost track of the general perspective of our development towards Socialism. We have always clearly realised that the destruction of fascism and the realisation of the many reforms which figured in the Fatherland Front programme of July 17, 1942, was intimately tied up with our ultimate goal-Socialism and Communism. We have said again and again that, from the viewpoint of our Party as the vanguard of the working class, the Complete realisation of the Fatherland Front programme meant the creation of the necessary conditions for our people to advance to Socialism. We always stressed that there was no contradiction between our Fatherland Front policy and the struggle to unite all democratic and progressive forces, in the Fatherland Front for the realisation of its programme, on the one hand, and the struggle for Socialism, on the other. But at that time the transition to Socialism still seemed to us a question for the comparatively distant future and the international and domestic situation seemed to us not yet suitable for the application of such radical measures.
Meanwhile, the Fatherland Front programme, as proclaimed in 1942 and specified after September 9 in the declaration of the first Fatherland Front government, had by the end of 1946 already been in the main fulfilled. What is more, with the proclamation of the People’s Republic and the elaboration of the Two-Year Plan, we had already gone beyond the first Fatherland Front programme. The development of the revolutionary process started on September 9 made it indispensable to take decisive measures for the liquidation of large capitalist private property, for starting a consistent policy of muzzling !he kulak elements in the village, for radically overhauling the entire state apparatus and for working out anew Fatherland Front programme with clearly formulated perspectives of the movement towards Socialism, for a corresponding reconstruction of the Fatherland Front, for a further consolidation of the dominant role of the Party.
The lag in the rate of the economic and political development of our country shows that our Party temporarily underestimated its own forces and those of the working class and working people, and overestimated the forces of reaction. As the Sixteenth Plenum of the Central Committee stated, our Party “lacked the necessary clarity regarding the perspectives and the pace of our movement towards Socialism”. It was not armed with a consistent Marxist-Leninist analysis of the September 9 turning-point and of the ensuing possibilities and failed to understand at the proper time the different stages of our development. Fortunately however the Party, although with a certain lag and with an insufficient theoretical examination of the problems, did manage to take action and ensure the solution of the new tasks arising from the changed conditions.
This example confirms once again the old truth that it is easier to learn by heart the principles of Marxism-Leninism than to apply them in practice as a guide to action, correctly and in time, at every stage of social development. For the mastery of this art, the Party leaders, at the top and at the bottom, must work tirelessly and study diligently so that the Party shall neither fall behind and be late in taking necessary action nor rush ahead too far.
We shall never forget the invaluable and timely aid which we received from the great Bolshevik Party and in particular from Stalin personally, through advice and explanation on matters of our Party’s policy as a leading force of the People’s Democracy, which enabled us quickly to correct our mistakes.
During the past year and half, under the leadership of our Party, a series of momentous and fundamental measures were carried out which completely consolidated the People’s Democracy and prepared the ground for laying the economic foundations of Socialism in Bulgaria.
The new Republican Constitution was adopted, which legally consolidated the historic gains of the September 9 uprising and of the people’s democratic form of government and opened up prospects for the country’s further development.
On the initiative and under the leadership of our Party, industry, private banks, foreign trade, domestic wholesale trade, large urban property and forests were socialised, while farm machinery and implements were bought up from the farmers. The bulk of the means of production and exchange have thus passed into public ownership.
The nationalisation of industry was the most important revolutionary measure in our economy. It consolidated our planned development on the road toward Socialism. In industry, credit and transport, the public sector has come to occupy an almost monopolistic position. The same is true in foreign trade and wholesale domestic trade. In our retail domestic trade the public sector already outweighs the private sector. In agriculture and handicraft industry the public sector has grown firm roots which are becoming ever stronger through the creation of more than 70 machine and tractor stations, of over 1,000 co-operative farms with some 300,000 hectares of arable land, of state farms with almost 100,000 hectares of land, of new artisans’ co-operatives and through the rapid rise of the co-operative movement in towns and villages.
Hand in hand with these radical changes and in conformity with our people’s constitution, our entire state apparatus was thoroughly overhauled, and, in spite of some defects, it continues to improve as an apparatus of People’s Democracy.
Our Party took the initiative in reorganising the Fatherland Front under its own guidance into a unified political organisation with its own rules and a revised programme formulating the new tasks of transforming the country with a view to its forward march toward Socialism. Thus, as a result of the Party’s steadfast work, the coalition elements- in the Fatherland Front were completely done away with. It has now become an organisation of the militant alliance of the working people of town land countryside under the generally accepted leadership of the working class, headed by our Party. All parties and public organisations composing the Fatherland Front recognise today the necessity of building Socialism.
The Second Congress of the Fatherland Front marked a very important stage in its development. The hostile, vacillating and unstable elements which had infiltrated into the Fatherland Front with the aim of disintegrating it and undermining it from within dropped out or were expelled. The Fatherland Front only gained from that. In their place, after the Second Congress, new forces came m from the ranks of the working people and their mass organisations. The Fatherland Front as a mass political organisation of the militant alliance of the working people of town and countryside, under the leadership of the proletarian class, is now stronger and more united than ever. Favourable conditions exist for closer collaboration between the Fatherland Front parties. Applying different methods of persuasion, agitation and propaganda, depending on the peculiarities of those sections wherein each is mainly working, the Fatherland Front parties are contributing to rallying as many people as possible for the common goal-the construction of the foundations of Socialism by way of the People’s Democracy.
Today the Fatherland Front embodies the ever-increasing moral and political unity of the working people of our country-a basic condition for bringing to a successful end the fight against the capitalist elements and the building of the foundations of Socialism.
The transformation of the Fatherland Front into a unified political organisation with a common programme socialist in essence, with strict discipline and the recognised leading role of the Communist Party, is undoubtedly a great achievement. It is for this reason that we condemn every underestimation of its significance and role. It was and continues to be a vital necessity for our country. We cannot but call to account those Communists whose scornful attitude toward the Fatherland. Front brings grist to the mill of our class enemies, who are principally interested in discrediting it.
It goes without saying that within the framework of the Fatherland Front some of the component parties may prefer to merge or to discontinue their independent organisational existence, whenever they consider this timely and useful. But that is their own affair.
These profound transformations and the changed correlation of the class and political forces in our country, together with the active support of the Soviet Union, paved the way for the building of the foundations of Socialism in our country as an urgent, vital and practical task. This is now the general policy of our Party. At the head of the working class, closely allied to all the working people of town and countryside, it will carry out this correct general policy firmly and unflinchingly, with unshakable confidence in victory, notwithstanding all internal and especially external difficulties and obstacles.
The Essence of a People’s Democracy
The character of a People’s Democracy is determined by four major factors:
(1) The People’s Democracy represents the power of the working people-of the overwhelming majority of the people, under the leadership of the working class.
That means, firstly, that the rule of the capitalists and landlords is overthrown and the rule of the working people from the towns and villages, under the leadership of the working class, established, that the working class as the most progressive class in contemporary society is playing the principal role in State and public life. Secondly, that the State serves as an instrument in the fight of the working people against the exploiters, against all efforts and tendencies aimed at re-establishing the capitalist order and bourgeois rule.
(2) The People’s Democracy is a State in the transitional period, destined to ensure the development of the State on the path to Socialism.
That means that although the rule of the capitalists and landlords is overthrown and their property handed over to the people, the economic roots of capitalism are not yet extirpated; capitalist vestiges still persist and develop, trying to restore their rule. Therefore, the onward march towards Socialism is possible only by waging a relentless class struggle against the capitalist elements and for their liquidation.
Only by advancing directly on the road to the achievement of Socialism can the People’s Democracy stabilise itself and fulfil its historic mission. Should it cease to fight against the exploiting classes and to eliminate them, the latter would inevitably gain the upper hand and would bring about its downfall.
(3) The People’s Democracy is built in collaboration and friendship with the Soviet Union.
Just as the liberation of our country from the fetters of imperialism and the establishment of People’s Democracy were made possible by the aid and liberating role of the U.S.S.R. in the fight against fascist Germany and its satellites, so the further development of our People’s Democracy presupposes the safeguarding and further promotion of close relations and sincere collaboration, mutual aid and friendship between our State and the Soviet State. Any tendency toward weakening this collaboration with the U.S.S.R. is directed against the very existence of the People’s Democracy in our country.
(4) The People’s Democracy belongs to the democratic anti-imperialist camp.
(a) Only by joining in the united democratic anti-imperialist camp, headed by the mighty Soviet State, can every People’s Democracy ensure its independence, sovereignty and safety against the aggression of the imperialist forces.
(b) Under the conditions of the military collapse of the fascist aggressor States, of the abrupt sharpening of the general capitalist crisis, of the immense strengthening of the power of the Soviet Union and of the existing close collaboration with the U.S.S.R. and the New Democracies, our country and the other New Democracies were enabled to realise the transition from capitalism to Socialism without the establishment of a Soviet order; through the regime of People’s Democracy, on the condition that that regime was consolidated and developed, and by leaning on the U.S.S.R. and the other New Democracies.
(c) Embodying the rule of the working people under the leadership of the working class, the People’s Democracy, in the existing historical situation, as is already proved by experience, can and must successfully perform the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the liquidation of the capitalist elements and the organisation of a socialist economy. It can crush the resistance of the overthrown capitalists and landowners, crush their attempts to restore the rule of capital, and organise the building of industry on the basis of public ownership and planned economy. The regime of the People’s Democracy will succeed in overcoming the vacillations of the urban petty-bourgeoisie and middle-class peasantry, in neutralising the capitalist elements in the villages and in rallying all the working people around the working class for the onward march toward Socialism.
The regime of the People’s Democracy will not change its character during the carrying out of this policy, which aims at eliminating the capitalist elements from the national economy. The key positions of the working class in all spheres of public life must continuously be strengthened and all village elements rallied who might become allies of the workers during the period of sharp struggles against the kulaks and their hangers-on. The People’s Democratic regime must be strengthened and improved in order to render powerless and liquidate the class enemies.
(d) The New Democracies, including Bulgaria, are already marching towards Socialism, in ceaseless struggle against all domestic, and especially foreign, enemies. They are now creating the conditions necessary for the building of Socialism, the economic and cultural basis for a future socialist society.
This is the central task today facing the New Democracies and, consequently, the working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party.
This task embraces the following important aspects:
(a) Consolidation of the key positions held by the working class, headed by the Communist Party, in all spheres of political, economic and cultural life.
(b) Strengthening the alliance between the working class and the working peasants under the leadership of the working class.
(c) Speeding up the development of the public sector of national economy and, in particular, of heavy industry.
(d) Creating the conditions for liquidating the capitalist elements in village economy by a consistent policy aiming at their isolation and subsequent annihilation.
(e) All-round development of producers’ co-operatives among the peasants, giving state assistance to the poor and middle peasants through machine and tractor stations, agricultural machines, credit, seed loans, etc., intensifying their interest in the alliance with the working class, persuading them by the example of the co-operative farms of the advantages of that system, and re-educating them in a spirit of intolerance toward capitalist elements.
So far as the nationalisation of the land is concerned, we consider that in our situation and with the development of the co-operative farms, this question has no practical importance, i.e. we think that the nationalisation of the land is not a necessary condition for the development and mechanisation of our rural economy.
(f) The People’s Democracy stands for internationalism. Nationalism is incompatible with the People’s Democracy. Our Party sees in internationalism, i.e. international collaboration under Comrade Stalin, a guarantee of our country’s independent existence, prosperity and progress towards Socialism. We think that nationalism, under no matter what guise, is an enemy of Communism. This wag clearly demonstrated by the anti-Communist actions of Tito’s group in Yugoslavia. Hence the fight against nationalism is a primary duty of Communists.
Fighting ail manifestations of nationalism, we must re-educate the working people in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and devotion to their country, i.e. in a spirit of genuine patriotism.
Education in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and devotion to one’s country means, above all, to make people fully conscious of the unique importance of a firm united front of the new democracies and the U.S.S.R. in the struggle against the aggressive forces of international, reaction and imperialism. The entire future of our people depends, on the one hand, on the power of the Soviet Union, and, on the other, on their readiness and ability, in case of capitalist aggression, honourably to fulfil their duty in the common fight.
At the same time, education in the spirit of proletarian internationalism means to render people fully aware of the importance of complete co-ordination of the activities of the Communist Parties, and of the leading role of the Bolshevik Party, For there exists for the Communist Parties one and only one theory as a guide to action-the theory of Marxism-Leninism; one and, only one aim in their policy; and there exists the great party of Lenin an-d Stalin, as the leading party of the’ international labour movement.
It is essential that we educate in this spirit the Party, the working class, the working peasantry and intelligentsia.
From concluding speech at the Fifth Congress
THE second remark refers to the definition of the People’s Democracy given in my report. Some comrades who in their discussions touched on this problem were inclined to put the emphasis mainly on that which distinguishes the People’s Democracy from the Soviet regime, something which may lead to incorrect and harmful deductions.
According to the Marxist-Leninist principles, the Soviet regime and the People’s Democracy are two forms of one and the same rule-the rule of the working class in alliance with and at the head of the toilers from towns and villages. They are two forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The particular form of transition from capitalism to Socialism in Bulgaria does not and cannot alter the basic laws on the transition period from capitalism to Socialism which are valid for all countries. The transition to Socialism cannot be carried out without the dictatorship of the proletariat against the capitalist elements and for the organisation of socialist economy.
But whereas bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of capital, of an exploiting big-business minority over, the great majority of working people, peoples Democracy fulfils the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the interests of the overwhelming majority of working people and realises the widest and most complete democracy-socialist democracy.
From the fact that People’s Democracy and the Soviet regime coincide in the most important and decisive respect, that is, that they both represent the rule of the working class in alliance with and at the head of the working people, there follow some highly essential deductions on the necessity of making the most thorough study and widest application of the great experiment of socialist construction in the U.S.S:R. And this experiment, adapted to our conditions, is the only and best model for the construction of Socialism in Bulgaria, as well as in the other People’s Democracies.
PEOPLE’S POLAND
by BOLESLAW BIERUT
Extracts from a speech at the Unification Congress of the Polish Workers’ and Socialist Parties, December 1948
Can one conceive People’s Democracy as a combination of two opposed social regimes, as a permanent static mixture of socialist and capitalist elements living peacefully side by side?
It is evident that such a representation of the problems of the People’s Democracy is entirely erroneous. The co-existence of opposed regimes without friction between them is not known in the history of social development. Inside the framework of a given social regime there can exist, and there do exist temporarily, side by side, various forms of production. In our country the basic form of production is the nationalised state industry, socialist industry....
The fact that the old dominating classes-the big capitalists and landowners-were fully eliminated from influencing the state interests and that their factories and estates have become the property of the whole nation, that the land formerly belonging, to the landowners has become the property of peasants, that the banks were nationalised-all this defines the people’s character of our regime.
This means that all the economic and political positions of the big capitalists and landowners were once and forever broken down. But there can be no question of any “freezing” of the existing economic relations, of the inviolability of the parallel positions of the various economic sectors, for at least this reason, that our economy does not stay in one place, it develops and grows’ at a speedier rate than in any of the preceding periods. . . .
Certain representatives of capitalist circles, and certainly all kinds of parasites, do not like the present relations, they disagree with the policy of a People’s Democratic State. They endeavour to undermine the confidence of the masses in the People’s Government; they endeavour to harm them and create confusion in our life by spreading absurd gossip, by spreading panic, or in some other way render difficult the life and work of the toiling masses.
It is obvious that our Party must fight these detrimental influences, must eradicate all destructive forms of their activity. A State defending the rights of the working people must counteract excessive profits by taking appropriate economic, legal, and administrative measures. Under these conditions the sharpening of the class struggle cannot be avoided in a State of People’s Democracy, and all theories of avoiding and stopping such struggles, of closing our eyes to the exploitation and social harm inflicted on the working class by the capitalist elements, are detrimental and erroneous.
Under the regime of People’s Democracy there exist many millions of small producers, small and medium farmers. These are the allies of the working class and the support of the People’s Authority. One of the chief tasks of the People’s Democratic regime is to assist these peasant groups to raise their economy and the general culture in the country. The task of the working class, building the foundations of a new social regime, is to strengthen and deepen the alliance between workers and peasants, which is the basis of the People’s Authority.
As long as capitalist elements exist and develop and the small production economy is dependent on the elemental law of exchange of goods, as long as the economic roots of the capitalist system can send out new shoots, the capitalist system has the possibility of reviving. Without eradicating the roots of economic capitalist exploitation, capitalist elements will endeavour at all cost to restore the old capitalist system. For this reason the working class must carry on a ruthless struggle against capitalist elements, must aim at the complete elimination of all forms and sources of economic exploitation.
From the above considerations, it follows that the People’s Democracy is not a synthesis or a stabilised form of co-existence of two different social systems, but is a form of pushing out and gradual elimination of capitalist elements. At the same time it is a form which develops and strengthens the future social economy.
SOME PROBLEMS OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY by MATYAS RAKOSI
General Secretary of the Hungarian Working People’s Party
Hungary is the youngest of the People’s Democracies. Essentially, this is due to the same reasons that made Hungary Hitler’s last satellite, but it is also because for a long time after the liberation we underestimated the strength of the enemy. Here it was only after two and a half years of hard work that the Communist Party could win the backing, not only of the industrial workers, but of the majority of the working peasants, the progressive intellectuals and the small businessmen.
Until we had, with three years of hard and bitter work, convinced the working people of the truth of our cause, until we had exposed the attempts of the old capitalist order to climb back into the saddle, the question was not decided whether the country would go on the road of the People’s Democracy or of bourgeois democracy. The liberating supporting arm of the Soviet people is not enough in itself. It is also necessary-as with the proletarian dictatorship-that the Communist Party should be acknowledged as their leader, not only by the class of industrial workers, but also by its allies, the working peasants, small craftsmen, small shopkeepers, and progressive intellectuals. We expressed this at the tune by saying that the Soviet Union had struck the chains from our hands, but that she could not build democracy in place of us. We would have to do that ourselves.
And, until we won the great majority of the working people, there was in our country, too, a sort of “dual power”, as there was in 1917 in Kerensky’s time: there stood one beside the other, interwoven and struggling with the other, the old that pulled towards capitalism, and the new that strove for Socialism. The struggle was decided for Socialism, for People’s Democracy, but we shall need many years’ hard work yet, much help and mutual aid from the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, finally to consolidate the results we have achieved.
The People’s Democracies came into being with the help and support of the Soviet Union; their strength was increased by mutual aid. They can only secure their continued existence and further development in the face of threatening, sabre-rattling imperialism, if they rely on the Soviet Union and on each other. Anyone who leaves this community has, by this step in itself, ceased to be a State of the People’s Democracy and a builder of Socialism, and inevitably crashes back into the camp of the capitalists and the imperialists. The six months’ history of the treachery of the Yugoslav leaders provides spectacular proof of this.
FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
From “For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy”, organ of the Communist Information Bureau, September 29, 1950
International imperialism received a crushing blow as a result of the victory of the Chinese’ people. China, the imperialists’ greatest colonial centre, yielded them billions in profits annually. The victory of the 475 million people made a breach in the imperialist colonial system, shook to the foundations this rotten system which is heading to its doom under the blows of the national liberation movement of the colonial peoples.
The victory of the Chinese revolution revealed the tremendous influence exercised by the Great October Socialist Revolution, which opened a new era in the history of mankind. It revealed the attractive force of the Soviet Union, which set an example to all the oppressed and exploited how to build their life without exploiters, how to advance-toward Communism; toward a happy, joyous life.
The victory of the Chinese revolution was made possible by the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.; it was the -result of the destruction of Hitlerite fascism and Japanese imperialism by the Soviet Army. The establishment of the Chinese People’s Republic has, in its turn, strengthened considerably the forces of the anti-imperialist, democratic camp, has paved the way for breaches in the colonial chain of imperialism on other sectors. Therein lies the great historical significance of the victory of the Chinese people. Within a year the Chinese People’s Republic, relying on the fraternal aid of the Soviet Union, has succeeded in stabilising economic life; inflation has been ended (a few days ago, the exchange rate of the yuan again rose in relation to the dollar and sterling), thousands of enterprises and railways have been restored and the foundations of planned economy are being laid. The position of the working class has improved considerably. Emulation is developing in many industrial enterprises and productivity of labour is increasing steadily. Agriculture is advancing. Large-scale irrigation work is under way and a successful struggle begun to combat natural calamities. The harvest this year is much better than last year’s. This is due to the fact that on a territory with a rural population of approximately 145 million, agrarian reform has already been carried out, and on the remaining territory the people’s administration is rendering every possible assistance to the poor and middle peasants by reducing taxes and land rent. In the provinces liberated last year, careful preparations are under way for agrarian reform.
Agrarian reform abolishes the landlords as a class, abolishes the system of feudal landownership and introduces the system of peasant landownership. The great significance of agrarian reform in China becomes particularly clear if we consider that until recently the landlords possessed 70-80 per cent of all the cultivated land. Feudalism is a brake on the development of China, and the feudal landlords are the main support of the imperialists. To open the way for the broad development of the productive forces and to consolidate the cause of national independence it is necessary to carry out a deep-going agrarian revolution which would radically change the balance of political forces in China in favour of democracy and would strengthen the militant alliance of the working class and the peasantry, under the leadership of the working class.
The most important instrument for economic restoration, cultural revolution and social reform in China is the State of People’s Democracy. This State differs in principle from the bourgeois state, where democracy exists for the exploiting minority. Comrade Stalin, with brilliant foresight, pointed out that the future revolutionary power in China would, in general, resemble in character that power of which we spoke in 1905, i.e., something in the nature of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry with this difference, however, that it would in the main, be an anti-imperialist power.
It would be a transition to a non-capitalist power, or, to be more precise, to the socialist development of China, said Comrade Stalin. State power in China is not the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in this it differs from the state power in the European countries of People’s Democracy where this democracy fulfils the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the People’s Democracy in China is the state power of the People’s Democratic United Front of the working class, peasants, petty-bourgeoisie, national-bourgeoisie and other patriotic democratic elements based on the alliance of workers and peasants and led by the working class. The task of the People’s Democracy in China at this stage is to carry out agrarian reform, to consolidate the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, to draw into active political life hundreds of millions of people, economic rehabilitation, and industrialisation of the country, to strengthen and broaden the foundation of public property, to restore and develop the economy, to raise the living standard of the working people and to effect the cultural revolution. The Central People’s Government of China is building up the defence of the country against imperialist aggression.
The nature of the people’s democratic state power in China is defined by the conditions in this recently colonial country. At present the working people of China are not confronted directly with the task of building Socialism, the instrument of which is the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Mao Tse-tung said: “When we have created a flowering national economy and culture, when all the conditions are ripe and when this will be approved by the whole country, we, in our steady advance, shall enter the new era of Socialism.”
THE NATIONAL BOURGEOISIE IN THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
by YU HUAI
From “People’s China”, Peking, January 1950
As is well known, the political line of the Chinese Communist Party in the present people’s democratic revolution of China has been based on a People’s Democratic United Front composed of the Chinese working class, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and other patriotic democratic elements, based on the alliance of workers and peasants and led by the working class.
We are going to discuss in this article: Firstly, why is the national bourgeoisie at the present stage to be united with, but not to be exterminated by, the Chinese working class? Secondly, what is the policy being adopted by the Chinese working class in dealing with the national bourgeoisie, and on what basis is this policy formulated?
The Bourgeoisie in Colonial Countries
As China was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, long under the yoke of imperialism, her revolution could not but take up the fight against imperialism as one of its main tasks. This characteristic determined the series of strategies and tactics of the Chinese revolution.
In his report on the national and colonial questions at the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin emphasised the paramount importance of making “the distinction between oppressed nations and oppressing nations”, He believed that in this lay the fundamental difference between the Communist International on the one hand and the Second International and bourgeois democracy on the other. Viewed from this angle, Lenin pointed out: “The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in colonial and backward countries, but must not merge with it, and must unconditionally preserve the independence of the proletarian movement, even in its most rudimentary form.” (Lenin: Preliminary Draft of Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions.)
Stalin has developed this brilliant theory of Lenin’s on the peculiarities of the revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries. He has clearly pointed out the double task of opposing feudalism and opposing imperialism in the revolutionary movement of the Chinese people, with emphasis on “the sharpening of struggle against imperialism”. (Stalin: Chinese Revolution and Tasks of the Communist International.) He has thus concluded that an alliance with the national bourgeoisie was permissible under certain conditions.
In uniting the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the actual practice of the Chinese revolution, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has succeeded in concretely applying the theory advanced by Lenin and Stalin regarding the role played by the national bourgeoisie in the revolution of colonial and semi-colonial countries.
The Bureaucratic Bourgeoisie and the National Bourgeoisie
Since the component groups of the Chinese bourgeoisie have different relationships with imperialism and feudalism, they should not be treated as a homogeneous mass, but should be differentiated from each other. There are two main groups within the Chinese bourgeoisie, namely the big bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The economic interests of these two groups are in conflict with one another. They therefore have played different roles in the Chinese people’s democratic revolution.
The distinction between the big bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie in China was made clear by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, when he wrote in 1939:
“The bourgeoisie is divided into two different groups. One is the big bourgeoisie which is compradore in nature, and the other is the national bourgeoisie.
“The compradore big bourgeoisie directly serves the imperialistic foreign capitalists who, in turn, support and nurture this class. Hence it is closely related to the semi-feudal elements in the rural districts. Therefore, in the history of the Chinese revolution, the big bourgeoisie has never been a force of the Chinese revolution, but remains its enemy. . . .
“... since the national bourgeoisie is oppressed by imperialism, and restricted by the remaining feudal elements, thus it clashes with imperialism and the remaining feudal elements. In this sense, it is a part of the revolutionary forces. During the history of the Chinese revolution, they have shown their vigour in the struggle against imperialism, and the government dominated by bureaucrats and warlords.” (Mao Tse-tung: The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China.)
Who are the Chinese big bourgeoisie?
“... The Four Big Families-Chiang, Soong, Kung, and Chen during their twenty years in power have amassed enormous capital worth ten to twenty billion American dollars and have monopolised the economic life-lines of the entire country. This monopoly capital, merged with state power, becomes state-monopoly capitalism. Monopoly capitalism intimately merged with foreign imperialism and the domestic landlord class and old-type rich peasants, becomes compradore, feudal, state monopoly capitalism. This is the economic foundation of Chiang Kaishek’s reactionary regime. This state-monopoly capitalism not only oppresses workers’ and peasants, but also oppresses the petty bourgeoisie and injures the middle bourgeoisie (i.e. the national bourgeoisie-Y.H.). This state-monopoly capitalism reached its highest peak during the anti-Japanese war and after the Japanese surrender. It prepared adequate material conditions for the new democratic revolution. This capital is popularly called bureaucratic capital in China. This bourgeoisie is called the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, i.e. China’s big bourgeoisie, Apart from doing away with the special privileges of imperialism in China, the object of the new democratic revolution within the country is to eliminate the exploitation and oppression of the landlord class and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie (the big bourgeoisie)....” (Mao Tse-tung: Present Situation and our Task.)
It should be emphasised that without the fulfilment of the task of opposing bureaucratic capitalism, and without the carrying out of its accompanying concrete programme for the confiscation of the property of the big bourgeoisie by the people’s State, the content of the Chinese people’s democratic revolution could not be considered complete.
The process by which this unique bureaucratic capitalism was expanding under the reactionary Kuomintang regime was the same process by which the Chinese national bourgeoisie was being oppressed and its .private enterprises crippled. The bureaucratic capitalists, as represented by the Four Big Families of Chiang, Soong, Kung, and Chen, never developed any industry of their own. They appropriated the property of the labouring people, and in part of the national bourgeoisie, to swell up their ill-gotten capital, chiefly by means of their traitorous collaboration with foreign imperialists, by means of the state apparatus under their control, especially their extensive network of financial organisations, and also by means of an openly predatory policy. During the war against Japanese aggression, the Kuomintang bureaucratic capitalist bloc accelerated this process of plundering and concentration of capital by instituting various war-time economic controls and by permitting a runaway inflation. After the Japanese surrender, this bloc, in the name of “taking over” the properties of the Japanese and their puppets, privately pocketed the assets which originally and rightfully belonged to the Chinese people. In this way, the Japanese imperialist aggressors and their lackeys served no more than as a tool in the conversion of the wealth of the Chinese people, including that of the national bourgeoisie, into the private property of the bureaucratic capitalists, which means, in the end, into the private property of the American imperialists. It is therefore nothing strange that the more the bureaucratic capitalists expanded, the more the national bourgeoisie contracted Thus, the bureaucratic capitalists became the big bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie assumed the position of the middle bourgeoisie. The former were oppressors and exploiters of the Chinese people, and the latter, while exploiting the Chinese working class, were themselves ruthlessly oppressed, by imperialism and its agents, the big bourgeoisie.
Viewed from all these economic factors, it is not difficult to understand the changes in political attitude of the Chinese national bourgeoisie at various historical stages. Although during the period after 1927 and before the Mukden Incident of 1931, it co-operated with the big land-owning class and the big bourgeoisie in opposing the revolution, nevertheless, it has never been in power. That is not all. After the Mukden Incident, which heralded the Japanese imperialists’ all-out invasion of China, certain representatives of the national bourgeoisie, prodded by the masses, took an active part in the anti-imperialist movement, at that time directed against the Japanese imperialism. This movement was banned by the Kuomintang which was then in power. After the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war, owing to the intensification of various reactionary political and economic measures, certain representatives of this class sympathised with and even supported, in varying degree, the democratic movement in China.
After the Japanese surrender, the people throughout China all yearned for peace and opposed the impending civil war. This could not but force the Kuomintang government, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, to convene the “Political Consultative Conference” proposed by the Chinese Communist Party. The representatives of the Chinese national bourgeoisie participated in this Conference which had as its aim the striving for democracy and peace at home, and their attitude on the whole was sympathetic towards the progressive demands of the Chinese people. Following the abortive peace parley, a full-scale civil war was launched by the Kuomintang reactionaries. Then basic victory was won by the Chinese people in the revolutionary war. During this series of vital changes, although the national bourgeoisie displayed at times a wavering and wait-and-see attitude, yet it had not surrendered to the Kuomintang reactionaries. What was more, with the changes in the situation, its representatives at last took part in the recently held People’s Political Consultative Conference, which symbolised the great revolutionary unity of the Chinese people.
Dual Nature of the National Bourgeoisie
As stated above, because there are certain contradictions between the Chinese national bourgeoisie on the one hand, and foreign imperialism and the domestic bureaucratic capitalism on the other, consequently it is either sympathetic towards or remains neutral in the Chinese people’s democratic revolution-this is one aspect of its nature. But also because there are contradictions between the Chinese national bourgeoisie’ on the one hand and the working class and the peasantry on the other, consequently it has a dual nature in the Chinese people’s democratic revolution.
“From this dual nature of the national bourgeoisie, we can conclude that at a certain period and under certain circumstances, it can take part in revolution against imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and warlordism, and it can become a part of the revolutionary forces. But at other times, it may serve the big bourgeoisie by assisting the counterrevolutionary forces.” (Mao Tse-tung: The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China.)
It is exactly because of this fact that struggle must necessarily be conducted in an appropriate manner against the national bourgeoisie, while uniting with it.
In December 1947, on the eve of the victory of the Chinese’ people’s revolution, Comrade Mao Tse-tung pointed out:
“In areas ruled by Chiang Kai-shek, there is a section of the upper petty bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie (i.e. the national bourgeoisie-Y.H.), who, though small in number, have reactionary political tendencies-these are the rightist elements among these classes. They disseminate illusions about American imperialism and Chiang Kai-shek’s reactionary bloc. They oppose the people’s democratic revolution. As long as their reactionary tendencies can still influence the masses, we should carry on the work of exposing such tendencies among the masses who have been under their influence. Blows should be delivered at their political influence among the masses, so as to liberate the masses from their influence.” (Mao Tse-tung: Present Situation and Own Task.)
In July 1949, after the basic victory of the Chinese people’s revolution was won, Comrade Mao Tse-tung again pointed out:
“As for the national bourgeoisie, a great deal of suitable educational work can be done among them at the present stage. When the time comes to realise Socialism, that is, to nationalise private enterprise, we will go a step further in our work of educating and reforming them. The people have a strong State apparatus in their hands, and they do not fear rebellion on the part of the national bourgeoisie.” (Mao Tse-tung: On People’s Democratic Dictatorship.).
Blows at the reactionary political tendencies on the part of the rightist elements of the national bourgeoisie, and adequate educational and reforming work among the national bourgeoisie-all these compose the content of the struggle against the national bourgeoisie at various stages and in various periods of the revolution.
The National Bourgeoisie and Economic Reconstruction
The national bourgeoisie is called upon to play its part in the people’s democratic revolution. This is because the people’s democratic revolution in China is directed against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, while the national bourgeoisie might) and did participate in the movement against imperialism, feudalism), and bureaucratic capitalism. This is not all. China is a very backward country in so far as modern industries are concerned, and the imperialist countries will continue to be hostile, even after complete victory has been won in the Chinese revolution.
Therefore it becomes necessary to draw the national bourgeoisie into the common struggle to resist imperialist oppression and to improve China’s backward economic status.
However, this policy of integrating the national bourgeoisie into the common effort to improve the economic position of China does not at all mean the unlimited expansion of private capital which would lead China to develop in the direction of capitalism. In the first place, having a state-owned economy of a socialist nature occupying a predominant position in China’s modern industry makes it impossible for the private capital of the national bourgeoisie to lead China in the direction of capitalism. In the second place, the people’s Government adopts the policy of encouraging and assisting the active operation of all private economic enterprises beneficial to the national welfare and the people’s livelihood”. (Article 30 of the Common Programme”.) The new government also encourages their development “in the direction of state capitalism in such ways as processing for state-owned enterprises and exploiting state-owned resources in the form of concessions”. (Article 31 of the “Common Programme”.) This means that the existence of the private capital of the national bourgeoisie and its development under proper control of a State led by the Chinese working class will in reality serve to promote Socialism instead of capitalism in China.
Of course, this is not to say that there exist no contradictions and consequently no struggle, between the state-owned economy of a socialist nature and the private-operated economy of a capitalist nature. No, contradictions do exist, and so struggle is inevitable, and it will be further sharpened.
But since tremendous changes have already taken place in the relative strength of the various classes in China, and since the powerful state apparatus is now in the hands of the people, and since the growing state-owned economy having a socialist nature together with the co-operative economy having a semi-socialist nature will become the leading components of China’s economy, this kind of contradiction and struggle need not be solved by further bloodshed, but can be solved, to a considerable extent by means of education and reform.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
ON PEOPLES DEMOCRACY
G. DIMITROV
Georgi Dimitrov: Selected Articles and Speeches
MAO TSE-TUNG
On People’s Democracy
M. RAKOSI
Report to the Hungarian Working People’s Party (February 1951)
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Frequent articles on the current developments People’s Democracy in Eastern Europe and China, by leading members of the Communist Parties of those countries, are published in
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