We are witnessing a massive turn to right-wing, anti-worker, racist, and sexist onslaughts not just in the U.S. but all over the world. Even the bourgeois (pro-ruling class) mass media openly discuss it. Why is this happening?
This worldwide turn is due to the betrayal of the USSR as the vanguard of the world’s working class. The USSR was once the inspiration for and major supporter of socialist revolution.
Liberating workers from capitalism
The Bolshevik (Russian) Revolution of 1917 was the central event of world history! For the first time ever, the exploited and oppressed – workers and peasants – took state power from the exploiters, and held onto it!
The Bolsheviks created the Third Communist International – the “Comintern” — and it spread communist parties in every country and colony. Headquartered in Moscow the Comintern inspired, organized, and supported workers’ struggles for reforms, against colonialism, and for revolution against capitalism.
The world’s capitalists hated the Soviet Union and the Comintern. They worried that revolution would spread. They feared their own working classes! So they aided the Italian fascists and the German Nazis, encouraging Adolf Hitler to attack the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin had led the USSR and the world communist movement through its heroic era. Under Bolshevik leadership the USSR:
collectivized agriculture, abolishing the feudal small-peasant farming that caused devastating famines every 3 – 5 years (4 famines in the 1920s alone) led a crash program of industrialization that transformed the devastated Russia of the 1920s into the industrial powerhouse of the 1930s, making possible the defeat of the Nazis armies during World War II
It was the Red Army of the Soviet Union that smashed the racist, fascist hordes of Hitler and his allies during World War II. In countries under fascist occupation communists were the biggest force in the underground resistance movements for freedom.
By the post-war period of 1945 – 1953 the working classes, poor peasants, and many others throughout the world looked to the Soviet Union and the world communist movement to build a socialist world and lead them to communism in the near future. Then the advance of communism stopped.
Revisionists betray the revolution
The open betrayal began during the 1950s, when Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader after the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953. Khrushchev stated that revolution by the working class was no longer the program of the CPSU and whatever world communist movement it was still leading.
This turn towards nationalism and reform and away from internationalism and revolution was sharply criticized by the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong in the famous Sino-Soviet dispute. During the mid-60s a huge mass movement in China called the Great Proletarian Communist Revolution attacked reformists inside the Chinese Communist Party.
But by 1969 this left movement had been defeated. Since then there has been no international movement organizing workers and others for communist revolution – except for our party, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
For the past 55 years the capitalist class has been free to attack the working class in every country. Labor unions and workers’ organizations have become totally reformist and politically pro-capitalist.
At the same time the capitalist class, all over the world, has stepped up its violence and exploitation. Gone are the days of the 1930s and ‘40s when capitalists, fearful of the communist example, grudgingly allowed concessions to workers and gave in to antiracist and anti-sexist demands.
Therefore, the worldwide anti-working-class turn is due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement as inspiration and example of struggle against capitalist exploitation in the short run and for communist revolution in the long run.
The most important question facing the working class of the world is this: WHY did the glorious communist movement of the 20th century turn into its opposite?
Assessing what worked and what didn’t
We in PLP have evaluated the successes and the failures of the world communist movement of the 20th century. We continue to do so, basing our analysis on study and on our own experience in the fight for revolution.
We fight for communism immediately, according to Karl Marx’s stirring words: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
No privileges for anyone. In particular, no privileges for communist party members – a concession to capitalism that undermined the Soviet and Chinese struggles for communism.
Everyone must work for the welfare of the whole class, not for themselves and family only.
Everyone must fight racism, sexism, anti-gay discrimination, and any and all ideas that divide or harm the working class.
We embrace internationalism, the fight of all workers in all countries. We fight for communist revolution everywhere.
No borders: We welcome all who are willing to join the struggle for communism.
Here are some of our key documents. All available at http://plp.org
Road to Revolution III (1971). Here we summarize the great achievements of the communist movement and analyze the reasons for its tragic collapse.
Road to Revolution IV (1982). We set forth PLP’s outline of how we must organize communist society differently.
For Communist Economics and Communist Power (1982) is a discussion document that expands on Road to Revolution IV.
Dark Night Shall Have Its End (2015) Here we outline the crisis facing the world’s working class and how we must have the courage and tenacity to struggle and overcome it no matter how long it takes.
We are confident that the working class will win and build communism. Join us!
