From: "George Pennefather" <poseidon-AT-eircom.net> Subject: AUT: The Communist Programme Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 06:31:29 +0100 Hi Folks The communist programme is central to communist politics. It is an expression of the theoretical and political character of communism at any given conjuncture or under any given epoch. The programme constitutes the essence of communism and is a summation of communism at any given conjuncture. The communist programme is an expression of the political strength of communism and is evidence that communism is not a mere exercise in theoretical activity. It is revolutionary practice. The communist programme is evidence of the inseparable unity between theory and politics. The programme is the element that brings theory and practice into an integrated unity. Communism, then, contains an inescapable programmatic character. The communist programme consists of a set of aims together with the strategy by which these aims can be achieved. All communist programmes, independently of any particular conjuncture in which they are lodged, have as their goal the establishment of communist relations. The strategy, together with its corresponding system of tactics, must correspond with the intricate combination of conditions that may prevail at any given conjuncture. Communism must inform the strategy employed. Consequently a particular strategy cannot be inconsistent with the ultimate aim of achieving communist relations of production. All strategic and tactical action cannot compromise principled communist politics. Various tactics such as the united front, strikes and picketing, rank and file opposition movements, popular militias, factory committees and workers' councils have been jointly deployed under many different circumstances as a means to promote and develop mass mobilization on a revolutionary basis. Such principled tactics are forms by which a correct internal relationship between communism and non-communism is established. This relationship implies that non-communism contains communism within it. The communist programme embodies the strategic goals of communism. The communist programme focuses on the practical tasks flowing from these fundamental principles based on the concrete historical conditions that obtain in capitalist society at any given time. It embodies the strategy and tactics to achieve the general goals and does not separate these questions off from the programme. There is no chinese wall between principles, strategy and tactics in the communist programme. The minimum-maximum programme The minimum-maximum programme was characterised by the rigid separation of the minimum demands (economic or political reforms achievable within the framework of capitalism) and the maximum goal of socialism. This separation of the two elements of the programme, enshrined in German Social Democracy's "Erfurt Programme", was the basis of the opportunist politics of the developing reformist wing of the Second International. Present day Social Democracy differs from its classical forebears only in the ever increasing feebleness of its pleadings for minimal reforms and in the ever decreasing use it has for holiday speechifying about socialism. In the epoch of classical liberal capitalism the working class, especially in Europe, fought for a series of economic and political rights as part of its struggle to organize and defend itself against the bourgeoisie. However, in this very process a reformist bureaucracy crystallised out of the labour aristocracy. For this bureaucracy selected elements of the minimum programme, achieved by purely peaceful, legal and parliamentary methods, were ends in themselves. This stood in sharp contrast to the position of revolutionary communism for which these demands were the forms by which the needs of the working class are met in the actual struggle for communism. In the course of the emergence of the imperialist epoch the reformist bureaucracy was strengthened considerably. The minimum-maximum programme was the programmatic basis for the reformist bureaucracy's enforcement of the rigid separation of the struggle for reforms from any revolutionary perspective for the overthrow of capitalism. The minimum-maximum programme, then, provided the ideological basis for Social Democracy's reformism and consequently invested it with a legitimacy. This rendered the task of combating reformist politics much more difficult. The minimum-maximum programme provided the reformists with a strategic goal to ensure a position of influence for itself within capitalism. To this end it attempted to limit the struggles of the working class by transforming parliamentary electoral tactics into a central strategy for obtaining reforms under capitalism. The significance of this development in the history of the working class is one that tends to be neglected. It was one that was to exercise an enormously significant impact on the character of the historical development of the working class. It was to modify the revolutionary character of the working class to such an extent that the prospects for the emergence of a confident and strong revolutionary working class movement was seriously impaired. As a result of this negative development the working class was infected, in an institutionalized way, with bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology and politics that was to render the development of a revolutionary culture and politics of the working class a much more daunting task. The inculcation of this reactionary reformist feature on the working class movement constituted one of the more serious defeats inflicted on the working class that has left a virtually permanent imprint on the character of the working class movement. Clearly a combination of objective and subjective factors explain this historic defeat. This defeat meant that the bourgeoisie, to a large extent, had succeeded in putting the working class in an ideological and political cage. Stalinism was to use a variation of the minimum-maximum programme to mislead the working class: the programme of stages based on the theory of socialism in one country. This programme and theory was fashioned by the conservative bureaucracy of the USSR in the 1920s during the period of its political counter-revolution against the working class. According to the programme of stages, the existence of the Soviet Union means that it is possible for revolutions to pass through a democratic stage prior to a transition towards socialism. The theory argues that this democratic stage (variously called advanced democracy, people's democracy, anti-imperialist democracy) is rigidly separated from a socialist stage. Capitalism must be preserved during the democratic stage and socialism can then gradually and peacefully evolve according to the unique laws operating in each country. The programme was a cynical policy by the bureaucracy to limit the struggles against capitalism. This variation of the minimum-maximum programme, even in its most "left" form, which argues that the implementation of the democratic stage cannot be left to the bourgeoisie but must be realised by Stalinism. The consequence of this "democratic stage" is always counter-revolution either by a capitalist class able to regroup during the "democratic stage" (Chile, Portugal, Iran) or by a Stalinist force that can only defend itself, and ultimately world capitalism, by liquidating capitalism in a form meant to contain the scale and quality of the revolutionary process by the political expropriation of the working class-as in Eastern Europe, China, Indo-China, and Cuba. The Stalinist or Social Democratic version of the minimum-maximum programme is a means for obstructing not only the fight for socialism, but even an effective fight to win or defend reforms. Capitalism can provide neither permanent systematic social reforms nor lasting and fully-fledged bourgeois democracy. To solve recurrent economic crises the bourgeoisie is obliged to attack the political rights of the working class in its struggle to undermine the living standards of the working class. The trade union bureaucracy's accommodation to such a system can only mean sacrificing even the minimum programme to the needs of the profit system. The defence of the class interests of the working class demands economic and political warfare against capitalism, even to achieve a decent wage or to secure a job. The limits of the minimum-maximum programme are felt over the entire globe. Imperialism is incapable of overseeing radical and consistent agrarian reform or sustaining parliamentary democracy in much of the neo-colonial world. To confine the struggle to minimum demands is to suppress the demand for communism that lies concealed within minimum demands. To suppress this implicit aspect of the minimum demands is to, in effect, fail to fight for the minimum demands. The only real way to fight for and defend the minimum demands is by conducting a struggle that entails fighting for the maximum demands. In effect there is no essential difference between minimum and maximum demands within the programmatic content of communism. To fight for minimum demands is to fight for maximum demands. This is the dialectical character of the communist programme. To fight for minimum demands is to fight for maximum demands. This is because to fight for minimum demands entails particular methods of organizing and struggling in order to achieve these demands. But this particular form of struggle is a form is one that implicitly entails the struggle for maximum demands. In contrast to the trotskyist programme we do not draw such distinctions. The trotskyist programme is a disguised version of the Stalinist minimum-maximum programme. The distinction between these two programmes is that trotskyism includes what are called transitional demands. Consequently Trotskyists, in contrast to the Stalinists, set up three programmatic layers. Both programmes entail the separation and thereby limitation of the class struggle. They both conceive struggle as divided into stages. In the case of Trotskyism there are as much as three stages. The stage of minimum demands, the stage of transitional demands and the stage of socialist demands. The three stages are externally linked to each other. Trotskyism's essential criticism of the stalininst programme is really a derivative one. It is really a criticism of the Stalinist programme from within the Stalinist programme. Both programme lack a dialectical character unlike the communist programme. Communists must regularly in the light of experience and changing conditions refine and re-elaborate its programme. They must produce a sharply focused action programme addressing the key questions of the day in the context of the struggle for communism. Our programme must stand on the shoulders of the preceding gains of the revolutionary working class movement. It forms the only basis from which to build action programmes for particular countries, situations or sections in struggle. Such action programmes contain all of the key elements of the general programme itself but will sharply focus them to a particular situation or country. Our programme is a world programme for the world party of communist revolution, focused towards the burning problems characteristic of the imperialist epoch. It is a programme of transition towards communist revolution and as such applies with full force to imperialist and non-imperialist countries alike. It is a programme that can pave the way to a society based on the satisfaction of human need, not one based on either the lust for profit or the satisfaction of the needs of a parasitic bureaucracy. This programme, which in its method, its analysis, its demands and its tactics and strategy, embodies the living spirit of revolutionary communism and lays the basis for the re-establishment of authentic revolutionary communism on a world scale. -- Comradely regards George Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Subscribe to Revcommy Mailing Community at rev-commies-subscribe-AT-eGroups.com --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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