CONQUEST BOOK LIES How Revolutionaries Learn From the Stalin Period

7/31/2019 CONQUEST BOOK LIES How Revolutionaries Learn From the Stalin Period

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How Revolutionaries Learn from the Stalin Period:

Never Believe What Bosses'Mouthpieces Say About the Fight for

Communism!

Sixth and last article in the series refuting the fascist, anti-communistlies in the film "Harvest of Despair" and the book Harvest of Sorrow.Originally published in Challenge-Desafio, newspaper of theProgressive Labor Party, in 1987.Gorbachev's glasnost' ("reforms") is speeding up the growth of capitalism in the Soviet Union [Note: these prophetic lines werepublished on April 1, 1987, in Challenge-Desafio!!]. Since Khrushchev,all Soviet leaders have plunged to the right, attacking the "excesses"

of the Stalin era. In this series of articles exposing the anti-communistlies around the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, we have shownhow Stalin was not the monster all bosses and right-wingers makehim out to be. The "mistakes" made by the Soviet government duringthe Stalin era were not that of a brutal dictator, but rather mistakesmade in the process of building a new society. In the following article,the last of the series, we criticize these mistakes from the left. The concept Stalin had of socialism tended to equate it with buildingthe economy using capitalist models and stressing production overideology. It also tended to build authoritarianism ("do what the bosssays") as an indispensable aspect of capitalist modes of production. Ittook years for this tendency to work to its full effect. Americanworkers who went to the USSR in the 1930s -- including the Reutherbrothers, later anti-communist bosses of the United Auto WorkersUnion -- testified to the much greater democracy and freedom fromforeman and boss harassment Soviet workers enjoyed as comparedto American workers (the Reuthers had worked in US auto plantsbefore going to the USSR).But capitalist ideas gradually won out. From being a voluntaryorganization of dedicated communists, the Party became essentiallya hierarchical organization whose leaders were economic managers.

By the early 1950s this transformation was complete. The SovietUnion was capitalist in all but name. The Bolshevik Party had been split by dissention and factionalismduring the 1920s, as the members struggled to learn how toconstruct the world's first workers' state. These disagreements werehandled very responsibly, according to the principles of democraticcentralism. The relatively few individualists who, like Leon Trotsky,continued to form factions to oppose carrying out the line of theParty, were expelled only after long, mass struggles had isolatedthem, and they had been given many chances to change themselves.By the late 1920s the party was more united than ever before.

The trauma of the collectivization movement changed all that. Calledby the Party a "revolution from above," it resembled a civil war in



some areas of the country, including Asia, where the Party wasespecially weak. It produced many disagreements. Under thesecircumstances old factions, as well as some new ones, emerged. Yet none of these factions or dissidents broke with the Party's line tothe left. None saw through the idea that "the material bases for

socialism must be built first." Virtually all the factions advocatedsome form or another of capitalism, some kind of return to NEP (theNew Economic Policy) which had proven unsuccessful in the 1920s.All of the "oppositionists" from Bukharin to Trotsky who are favoredamong "left"-wing anti-Stalinists today fit this description. The Bolshevik left wing, both in the USSR and around the world, stuckwith the Party's line. But due to the erroneous notion that the `forcesof production" had to be built to provide the "material basis" forsocialism, this contradictions with the Party were handled verydifferently from in the past.During the 1920s there was a Party Congress and a Party Conferencevirtually every year, and thousands of lower- level meetingsthroughout the USSR. During these meetings the Party's line wasthrashed out, debated fully, and decided upon. This is the way Trotsky and the other factionalists had been defeated. This processalso accounts for Stalin's great prestige in the party, since Stalinrepresented the left wing in all these debates. His works writtenduring the 20s, collected in his book On the Opposition, illustrate hisability to unmask revisionist ideas -- capitalism masquerading ascommunism -- and are still valuable reading for communists today.But the authoritarian style of work and of leadership that flowed from

the idea of putting economics ahead of politics made it impossible fordemocratic centralism to operate as before. An authoritariancentralism, or "commandism" -- the leadership giving orders -- tooover. "Material incentives" -- higher pay to some, lower pay to most --to increase production followed close behind. In 1932 the "PartyMaximum" was abolished. This was an important rule that stated thatcommunists could not make more than a certain modest wage.Communists were supposed to be examples of selfless working fortheir class, not for themselves. This "partymax" had been intended tofight careerism, and to make sure that communists were an examplefor others.

It was apparently abolished because it was thought to hinder therecruitment of technically-trained experts into the Party -- personswhose expertise was thought essential to the Five-Year Plan's crashindustrialization programs. From then on, getting into the Partybecame the only route to a high standard of living. so the fact thatcollectivization was, to a large extent, forced upon unwilling peasantswas a consequence of an incorrect idea of what communism was allabout. The experience of the Rural People's Commune movement in China in1955-56, which was a "revolution from below," from the peasant

masses, shows that peasants can be won to communism. But thereversal of the Chinese revolution during the 1960s shows that a



conception of communism that fails to eradicate capitalist differencesin pay and living standards among the population will lead to a returnof capitalist exploitation, regardless of the degree of mass support forthat concept. In this sense, the fact that Soviet collectivization waslargely forced is, finally, only a secondary factor in explaining the

reversal of workers' power in the USSR. Without a change in thefundamental concept of what socialism was -- of how to advance to aclassless, communist society -- a new capitalist, class society willevolve. The Chinese Communist Party's success in making communism amore mass goal did produce a huge and often violent rebellionagainst revisionist idea -- the Cultural Revolution. That experienceand our own struggles have made it possible for our Party, the PLP, toadvance our line and learn from the weaknesses of the Bolshevik andChinese revolutions.

The Importance of a Communist Standpoint

We have seen through the lies about he "Ukrainian holocaust" withthe help of recent research on the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Theseresearchers wish to make good careers for themselves by applying toresearch on the Soviet Union the same standards of sources andevidence that most bourgeois scholars use about other periods of history. In addition, many of them are animated by a hostility for theCold War and a desire for "detente" with the USSR. This is useful, but it is far from enough. These researchers are not

interested in learning where the Soviets went wrong, from theviewpoint of learning how to build a communist society the right waythe next time. Since they don't ask this question, they can hardlycome to the right answer to it! Since their research serves theinterest only of the diminishing sing of the capitalist class that holdsout promise for detente, it doesn't gain much support or prominence. They have little impact.Until the late 1970s none of these researchers were around. Supposethe "Ukrainian holocaust" story had been pushed more vigorously atthat time? A series of articles like this one, with detailed refutations of the dishonest sources used by the anti-communists and illustrated bythe research of thorough bourgeois scholars, would not have beenpossible. The point here is, we cannot rely on bourgeois scholars, howeverwell-intentioned, to refute anti-communist lies. The ruling class hasthousands of "experts" like Conquest who can turn out anti-Communist slander far faster than we can hoe to refute them. The fatthat, in the case of the "Ukrainian famine," we were able to do so islargely a matter of historical accident.Conquest can help us here. In the course of defending the USimperialist invasion of Vietnam, he once wrote as follows:



• The Vietcong lobby [he means the anti-war movement - ed.]do not, as a rule,

believe (or at any rate expect other people to believe) such Vietcong allegations

as that made by its official representative at a Stockholm communist women's

conference last year, of children "gunned down in their thousands, beheaded,

buried alive, quartered and thrown into the flames" by the Americans (The

Times [London, England], 4 October 1966). But they do not draw the obviousconclusion that no information emanating directly or indirectly from such a

source deserves credit. 1

Ironically, the My Lai massacre and many other atrocities by US troops later showed

Conquest was wrong about this particular case. But his general point is valid.

"Researchers" like Conquest and the sources he uses or like Mace and the Ukrainian

nationalists, have been exposed time and time again. Anti-Communists like Conquest

have been proven to lie shamelessly to advance their goals. Nothing any anti-

Communist sources write about the history of the Communist movement should be

believed.

We ought to promote among workers and among our friends -- and,first of all, within ourselves -- certain fundamental truths which arebeyond question:

• The fight for communism in the USSR was a wonderful chapter in the struggle

for a world of justice and equality that has animated most of humankind since

the days of the slave empires of antiquity. The October Revolution of 1917 and

the struggle to build communism is a great source of inspiration for the

oppressed of the world. It proved for all time that the working class can and will

overthrow the capitalists. It struck terror into the hearts of ruling classes

everywhere, and it still does.

• It was inevitable that the first workers' state would eventually fail. The

Bolsheviks' errors were made in an inspiring struggle to learn how to construct a

communist society on the ruins of capitalism. Most of these errors were

unavoidable. History proceeds by zigs and zags, never in a straight line of

upward progress.

• The tremendous successes and errors of the Bolshevik Party are largely

identified with the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Only those who, like we in the

PLP, are striving to learn from the mistakes of our predecessors in the

communist movement how to succeed where they ultimately failed, have the

correct standpoint from which to objectively evaluate what is positive in their

experience and what must be rejected. Capitalists and their "scholars" likeConquest or the Ukrainian nationalists are always attacking Stalin. As we've

seen in this essay, they do so dishonestly.

This is because they are not interested in the truth. They are interested in preserving

capitalism, and will tell whatever lies are necessary to persuade workers, students,

intellectuals and others not to fight for a communist society. The truth -- that the

Bolsheviks achieved much, and that future communists will inevitably succeed where

they failed -- is completely unacceptable to the capitalists. Regardless of the evidence,

they will never acknowledge this. For this reason, all attacks upon the USSR under

Stalin as "horrible," "totalitarian," and upon Stalin himself as a "power-hungry

murderer," etc., must be seen for the lies they are. This is not a matter of personalities.

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Stalin had the loyalty of the working class of the USSR and of tens of millions of other

workers around the world.

As the leader of the world communist movement during most of itsrevolutionary history, Stalin was responsible for its successes andfailures more than any other single individual. We should study and

learn from them, but always with respect. There is no reason for usever to apologize for them. Stalin and the Bolshevik workers he ledfought the Revolution and built the world's first working class state.Under them the ideas of communism spread throughout the world. Astheir heir, we must go farther towards communism. This meansbuilding a mass movement for communism along the lines of Road toRevolution IV . That movement itself will be the only valid "criticism"of the period of Stalin's leadership.

Notes

1. Conquest, "Arguing about Vietnam," Encounter , 30, No. 2(February, 1968), p. 92. Characteristically, Encounter magazine wasrevealed during the `60s to have receive CIA funding, and itcontinues to receive it. Its main editor resigned as a result. Conquestworked for the British anti-Communist propaganda bureau; see partone of this series. Back.Back to The Progressive Labor Party Home Page.

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CONQUEST BOOK LIES How Revolutionaries Learn From the Stalin Period