Stalinists - or national Chinese and Vietnamese CPs E 1 S communists? ST A L the world keeps changing (Gorbachev, The last issue of Socialist Outlook published a lengthy reply from Phil Hearse and Dave Packer to my short let- ter on the question of what constitutes a Stalinist party. The debate has been going on in the Trotskyist movement for decades, and needs to continue because
Dave and Phil argue that those Communist Parties that have led successful revolutions have opposed revolutions elsewhere in the world, and have become ar burcaucratic and manipulative towards the masses as the Soviet Union if not more, Lagree. But that is not an ur- We need different definitions for different bureaucracy, we could call Maoists all those suhordinate to the Chinese burcaucracy. Such definitions will be independent of what the of gument for defining all tiese parties as Stalinist. categories of parties, simply to avoid confusion. If we reserve the term Stalinism to those suh- ordinate to the interests of the Soviel geoisie refused to play the role of Stalin may be dead - but his methods live on. our relations with such parties. counter-revolutionary ally in the popular front" laboration of the Communist Parties. But more revolutions (led by communist parties) in China, Yugoslavia and Vietnam by the refusal of the national bourgeoisie to play the role of sacrifices in 40 years of war by their inability to -they did not want to collaborate with the Com- That has been the case in a lot of countries, without bringing any change in the class col- important: you cannot explain the successful How can you explain the Vietnamese CP's revolutionary popular front? They could have counter-revolutionary ally in the popular front". involve the national bourgeoisic in a counter- found. They mention 'third world" countries like Yugoslavia and China where all sections of the national bour- munist Party in modernising capitalism. In the debate berween Dave/Phil and I there is a lot of common ground: on the roots for the growth of the bureaucratic power in the Soviet Union and other workers' wates; on the need for lish a socialist democracy; and on the spread of the Stalinist influence to Conimunist Purties across the world and therefore the need to build new revolutionary parties. We also agree that rome of these Communist Parties actually lead successful revolutions in opposition to the line of the Soviet Union, because these parties The debate started in the last issue of wanted to abolish capitalism in their own country, but that the majority of the Communist Parties were and still are opposed to proletarian Socialist Outlook is on whether one should call. political revolutions in those countries to estab- Euro-Communism, and so on). revolutions.
ficial idcology of those parties may be. The CPs in these two categories will all be counter- revolutionary, because they subordinate their activities to the interests of a bureaucracy rather than to the interests of the world proletariat. We a foreign bureaucracy, but which still have a In order to distinguish the above reformist parties from the revnit- bonary parties (in "third world" countries) which are engaged in a cancallthose CPs which have broken links with struggle to take power, one could call the latter national communists. The national communists do not have a full programme for the liberation of the working class in the world (particularly for a politi- cal revolution in the bureaucratised workers" retormist linc, Euro Communisti. the Chinese CP in 1935 against those counter-revolutionary popular front." "Mao won a bitter faction fight inside established such a popular front in South Viet- nam when they look power in Saigon (it would have delighted the national and international bourgeoisie). But instead they started building Mao won a bitter faction-fight inside the Chinese CP in 1935 against those who wanted (Mao also continued for diplomatic reasons to to have a counter revolutionary popular front. pay lip service to the official Stalin line on who wanted to have a a workers' state in South Vietnam. Stalinist those Communist Parties which have actually taken power or which are actually *Stalinism, surely, is that group of move- ments and parties which are subordinated to the interests of the bureaucracy of a workers state, or have their origins in such a subordination and implications nf such a definition are quite clear: Communist Parties, whether they are pro- Dave and Phil define Stalinism this way: bureaucratic and manipulative today retain the characteristic fusion it can raise by defining. Stalinism by the "thoories and practicesol Stalinists" (which doea deline what a Stalinist in) then the theories and practices of the Apart from the possible con- not clarily anything unless you trying to do so.
states). Their progrumme is often national or regional. But despite their limitations in progrimme and tactics (some of them have rather advanced tactics) we should develop revolutionary parties once they have achieved power, as we have seen in China, Yugoslavia etc. Wecan do nur best to avoid such a process by getting involved in solidarity work today countries. Just renouncing tiese national.com- Some of them might become counter- with the revolutionary struggles in those munists as petty-bourgeoisnationalists will not be of any help and will only place us on the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 12 February: 1989 comradely contacts with such revolutionaries. What is important to understand is that al- hough all Communist Partiex coming out of the Cominter (3rd International) tradition became influenced by Stalinist theories and practices, they did not all become counter-revolutionary parties. One has to make a concrete analysis of each of them in order to judge whether they are That work has already been done on the CP's in the imperialist countries and the workers" states, But there are a lew CPs in the third pines and South Africa) that need to be studied in more detail. The conclusions of such studies will obviously have political consequences for world' countries (like El Salvador, the Philip- popular froets, but that is another matter). reformist or revolutionary. Soviet, pro-China, pro-Vietnam etc, whether their own country by revolutionary methods or The main weakness with Dave and Phil's they are actually trying to abolish capitaliom in delinition is that it puts into the same category parties that are bighting to achieve a revolution (al least in their own country) and parties which are willing to do almost everything to avoid a proletarian revolution. In other words it calls But in Marxism the question of class power party is of great significance. According to 'Stalinist' revolutionary as well as counter- whether a party is a refurnist or a revolutionary is the most important of all questions. revolutionary parties. not, are all Stalinists. Page 28
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