The two faces of Stalinism in the U.S. Can the Committees of Correspondence learn from the past?

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SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1992 13 RT FORTH (This is the last of a four-part series on the split within the Communist Party, USA.)

For the past 35 years or so, my father, who was a lifelong member and then sympathizer of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), insisted virtually every time we discussed the question that, "There is no such thing as Stalinism. Stalin is dead," he said. "Stalin died a long time ago."

This has been the refrain of the Communist Party USA since 1956, when the then Soviet head of state and party, Nikita Khrushchev opened but a few pages of the book on Stalin the man. The CPUSA and its top Stalinist leader, Gus Hall, lockstep with their Soviet mentors, also took some distance from the person of Stalin.

The man who led in the physical annihilation of the central leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, who presided over the murder of tens of thousands of Soviet communists and millions of others who resisted his counterrevolution, was said to have made some "mistakes."

The difference between Stalin and Stalinism, the central subject of this final article on the CPUSA and on its offspring, the Committees of Correspondence (COC), is vitally important to all those who struggle for socialism.

What is the difference between Stalin the man and Stalinism?

It is now freely admitted by his former adulators that Stalin was the central person responsible for mass murder, for the subjugation and repression of the national minorities in the USSR, for the destruction of the democratic soviet system of government established by the 1917 revolution, for anti-semitism, sexism, homophobia, and great Russian chauvinism, and for many other crimes against humanity.

But what of Stalinism? Isn't there some truth to the argument that these crimes died with the man?

It would be useful in answering this question to outline the basic features of Stalinism so that readers can come to their own conclusion.

A counterrevolutionaty current 1) Stalinism was and remains a counterrevolutionary current in world politics. It is based on the subordination of the interests of the Soviet masses and the world's working class to the privileges of the middle class Stalinist bureaucracy.

The "ideology" of Stalinism was based on the "theory" of "socialism in one country" according to which "defense of the USSR," in reality defense of the privileges of the bureaucracy, was the paramount concern of the Soviet state.

2) Anything which threatened the privileges and stability of the bureaucracy, from opposition by the working class and oppressed nationalities in the USSR, to revolutionary developments outside its borders that threatened to interfere with the status quo the Stalinists had established with world imperialism, was to be sharply opposed.

3) By the middle to late 1920s, the Stalinist bureaucracy smashed workers democracy in the soviets and in the workplaces of the USSR. It usurped political power.

After the soviets established by the 1917 revolution were destroyed, their central leaders were murdered along with virtually the entire leadership of the Communist Party. All power was vested in Stalin's person and in a bureaucratic caste of privileged functionaries who administered the state, party, police, and army.

4) Lacking a social base in the working class or among the vast peasantry, and having only a parasitic relationship to the progressive nationalized economy, the bureaucracy was compelled to institutionalize a system of mass repression to preserve its rule.

5) The international policy of Stalinism was dictated by the need to defend the conservative bureaucracy. In practice, this meant almost 70 years of negotiated deals with world imperialism. The interests of those struggling against capitalist exploitation and national oppression were traded by the Stalinists in exchange for concessions by imperialism to strengthen the Soviet bureaucracy.

This is the origin of the "two-stage" theory of revolution according to which a "national democratic" stage in underdeveloped nations had to precede a socialist revolution.

In reality the so-called national democratic revolution was based on the formation of coalition capitalist governments where economic and political power remained in the hands of the ruling rich. Local Stalinist parties and their supporters were allocated governmental posts, and sometimes great influence, provided only that capitalism was not challenged at any "stage."

6) In the advanced capitalist nations, Stalinists promoted a policy of class collaboration, supporting the "lesser evil" candidates of the liberal wing of competing capitalist parties, or, where there were mass working-class based Communist parties, as CAPITALISM in France and Italy, tying these parties to the political and economic policies of capital.

In every instance, the policy of Stalinism was reformist, not revolutionary. Its essence was an alliance with "progressive" capitalists to preserve the capitalist state.

7) Stalinism differs from social democracy, another reformist current in the workers' movement, to the extent that it gives political support to and is dependent on this or that wing of the world Stalinist movement. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for example, looks to its own and to world capitalism for its political ideology and practice as opposed to the Soviet bureaucracy.

With this brief summary of Stalinisni, an assessment of the CPUSA and the Committees of Correspondence (COC) will become clearer.

Reliance on the Democratic Party The newly-organized Committees of Correspondence is planning its first National Conference for Berkeley, Calif., July 17-19. The conference call is titled, "Perspectives for Democracy and Socialisin in the '90s." Its first paragraph states:

"The choices and actions socialists and others on the left make have the potential to influence the course of the 1992 elections and to help shape the social and political movements in our country for decades to come."

On this central issue, the 1992 elections and capitalist politics in general, both the CPUSA and the Committees of Correspondence are in essential agreement. Both advocate and practice a strategy of support to the Democratic Party, a capitalist party of war, racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty and environmental destruction.

Members of the CPUSA and the COC do not limit their support to the Democratic Party to mere admonitions to vote. They are often active participants in this party, taking on major responsibilities.

In the case of the CPUSA, the party has not deviated from support to the Democratic Party since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Not a single article in the ongoing discussion pieces published by the COC in preparation for their national conference questions support to the Democratic Party from the level of national politics down to local candidates.

The press and publications of the COC and the CPUSA insist that the defeat of George Bush must be the number one political priority of the American left. As the primaries have proceeded, their preferences have shifted from Harkin, to Brown, to Clinton, all the time bemoaning the absence of Jesse Jackson as a candidate.

Relations with the former USSR Prior to the August 1991 failed coup in the USSR, the still-united CPUSA had two contending currents. The Hall wing favored, and still does, a return to power of the neo-Stalinist bureaucracy which led the coup.

The forces that split some six months later to become the COC, preferred the other wing of the bureaucracy; the wing, then in power, led by Mikhail Gorbachev. It mattered little that both components of the bureaucracy favored the restoration of capitalism.

Equally important, the fact that the conlending elements within the Soviet bureaucracy spent the past five years in a stepped up frenzy of negotiated deals with world imperialism, was of little concern to the CPUSA and the forces that were to become the COC.

The imposed settlements in Namibia, in Angola, the cutting of aid to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba, and the abject alliance with U.S. imperialism during the genocidal Gulf War, were not factors to consider. Whatever the Soviet bureaucracy decided, the American party supported.

Today, the COC is presently, perhaps temporarily, without a visible current in the former USSR to look to for political guidance. The CPUSA seeks a return to power of the old-guard Stalinist hardliners, by force if necessary.

The COC does support several Stalinist formations still struggling for accommodation with their national capitalist classes.

In El Salvador, for example, the COC looks to the FMILN, especially to the wing led by Salvadoran CP head Shafik Handel. The latter seeks to establish a coalition capitalist government with the Christian Democratic Party.

In South Africa, the COC supports the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC) position in favor of a coalition capitalist government with the De Klerk regime.

The SACP and the ANC, despite the fact that the Black population represents the overwhelming majority of South Africa, seek a settlement which fundamentally preserves white power and privilege.

The SACP is fully aware that a challenge to white capitalist rule would require the revolutionary mobilization of the South African masses.

The same was the case with Nicaragua, and, in fact, in every nation on earth where the rule of capital prevails, including in the United States.

In each of these nations the working class and its allies among the oppressed represent the great majority. They possess the power to change their lives and, in the course of their struggle to change the world, to begin the construction of socialism worldwide.

The central tenet of revolutionary socialism is the establishment of the democratic rule of the majority everywhere.

The history of this planet has demonstrated that no ruling class has ever abandoned its power and wealth without using all the force and violence at its disposal to block majority rule. Hence, the task of genuine socialist revolutionists is to mobilize the great majority in opposition to capitalist rule.

The worldwide Stalinist movement stands in first place as "the gravedigger of revolution." Understanding this historically-established fact is the prerequisite to the further advance of the revolutionary movement.

The COC has embarked upon a period of conscious self-criticism, having discarded some of the backward and reactionary Stalinist positions of the past, including rejection of the struggle for the democratic rights of gay men and lesbian women, and rejecting the environmental movement. It has also rejected its past opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

But it has yet to even consider a fundamental balance sheet of the experience of American and world Stalinism. Until this task is put on the agenda for discussion, debate, and resolution, no lasting progress will be registered by those who seek to reclaim the banner of Marxism and renew the struggle to build the mass revolutionary socialist party.

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STALINISM ELTSINS SOCIAL