There has Never Been a “Socialist” Bloc. In the East as In the West, there is Only Capitalism

Perhaps the most harmful ideological legacy of the Stalinist wave of opportunism that we must combat is the notion that there are or have been countries that have achieved socialism or, even by that extent, communism- the notion of so-called “socialism in one country” or “real socialism”.

The reality is that the October Revolution in Russia, remained isolated and failed to spread to the industrial powers of the world, becoming incapable of fulfilling it’s original task of transforming society from capitalism to socialism. This mainly due to the revolutionary’s defeat in Germany and Italy. This is, of course, the result of complex socio-political factors that can never be attributed to any singular individual.

Stalinism personified the counter-revolution at the international level, with its violent repression within the Russian party and the communist parties that had joined the Communist International. Stalinism is certainly not the cause of the defeat of the revolution in the last century, but it is the means by which the International degenerated, abandoning the revolutionary perspective. And, the Russian party under Stalinist leadership, instead of admitting with dignity the temporary defeat of the proletarian movement and calling for its regrouping and the continuation of the struggle, boasted of having supposedly achieved socialism in Russia. The Russian Party, in doing so, denied one of the fundamental principles of communist doctrine that had been laid out in Principles of Communism by Marx and Engels in 1847: Communism cannot exist in a single country. Capitalism is global, as such, the destruction of capitalism must also be global, along with the establishment of communist society.

The state organs of both the “Socialist countries” and the classical bourgeois countries have used their superstructures to wage relentless propaganda in order to instill in the masses the idea that socialism has, in fact, been realized, to the point that this has become the generally accepted understanding. The consequence of this is that we as proletariat are faced with two main attitudes of socialism, both equally harmful and paralyzing for the proletariat movement. The first being, that socialism has been achieved by Stalin, Ceaușescu, Tito, Mao, or any other regime of the “socialist” bloc, and that this “socialism” is positive and should be replicated. The second, being, that socialism as it has been realized has in fact proved to be an affront to human freedom and civilization, and therefore any reference to this perspective should be silenced without hesitation. A variation of this second position is the admission that the “communist” regimes of the 20^th century were not actually communist, but communism, as stated in Marxism, is a utopian idea that is impossible to achieve in the ‘real world’.

As a result, we are faced with the enormous challenge of showing workers the deceptive nature of such notions and combating the false belief that communism has been ‘put to the test’ and that the struggle for actual real communism must be abandoned. Our party has always strongly refuted these claims and, as long as necessary, will continue to repeat our arguments. The correct approach is to reaffirm what communism means in the Marxist conception and to show how this definition cannot in any way be applied to any of the nations that have ever claimed the title of communist. We quote from The Principals of Communism by Engels in 1847

By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.
(Engels, 1847)

Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished.

There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone.
(Engels, 1847)

In regards to the form of the proletarian state, which will ensure the transition to socialism and communism, Marx clearly states that the dictatorship of the proletariat is mandatory, it will come to an end with the extinction of classes and the political state, the organ of the dictatorship of one class over another.

My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society’ (Marx to Weydemeyer, 5 March 1852)

Although the entire Marxist doctrine is clear on both points, opportunist have found ways to distort them, suggesting that the dictatorship of the proletariat is actually socialism, or even that Lenin supported the concept of Socialism in one country. This opportunistic distortion could be supported by statements such as:

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.
(Lenin, On the Slogan for a United States of Europe, 1915)

When people depict the difficulties of our task, when we are told that the victory of socialism is possible only on a world scale, we regard this merely as an attempt, a particularly hopeless attempt, on the part of the bourgeoisie and of its voluntary and involuntary supporters to distort the irrefutable truth. The final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible.
(Lenin, Third All-Russia Congress Of Soviets Of Workers’, Soldiers’ And Peasants’ Deputies, 1918)

I know that there are, of course, wiseacres with a high opinion of themselves and even calling themselves socialists, who assert that power should not have been taken until the revolution broke out in all countries. They do not realise that in saying this they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the working classes carry out a revolution on an international scale means that everyone will remain suspended in mid-air. This is senseless.
(Lenin, Report On Foreign Policy Delivered at a Joint Meeting OF the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and The Moscow Soviet, 1918)

In the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, what Lenin means by “Victory of Socialism in a single country is of course impossible.” is that the success of the socialist revolution, that is, the victory over the national bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, cannot progress in transforming society if it remains isolated, even though a revolution can take place in a single country at a single moment. Lenin describes this concept in such detail that any attempt to distort his words cannot be considered simple ignorance, but opportunism.

Complete and final victory on a world scale cannot be achieved in Russia alone; it can be achieved only when the proletariat is victorious in at least all the advanced countries, or, at all events, in some of the largest of the advanced countries. Only then shall we be able to say with absolute confidence that the cause of the proletariat has triumphed, that our first objective—the overthrow of capitalism—has been achieved.

We have achieved this objective in one country, and this confronts us with a second task. Since Soviet power has been established, since the bourgeoisie has been overthrown in one country, the second task is to wage the struggle on a world scale, on a different plane, the struggle of the proletarian state surrounded by capitalist states.
(Lenin, Achievements and Difficulties of the Soviet Government, 1919)

When we started the international revolution, we did so not because we were convinced that we could forestall its development, but because a number of circumstances compelled us to start it. We thought: either the international revolution comes to our assistance, and in that case our victory will be fully assured, or we shall do our modest revolutionary work in the conviction that even in the event of defeat we shall have served the cause of the revolution and that our experience will benefit other revolutions. It was clear to us that without the support of the international world revolution the victory of the proletarian revolution was impossible. Before the revolution, and even after it, we thought: either revolution breaks out in the other countries, in the capitalistically more developed countries, immediately, or at least very quickly, or we must perish. In spite of this conviction, we did all we possibly could to preserve the Soviet system under all circumstances, come what may, because we knew that we were not only working for ourselves, but also for the international revolution. We knew this, we repeatedly expressed this conviction before the October Revolution, immediately after it, and at the time we signed the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. And, generally speaking, this was correct.
(Lenin, Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921)

Let us now demonstrate that a socialist or communist society does not and has never existed anywhere in the world in its modern form, following the overcoming of capitalist society, while we are aware of the existence of “primitive communism” experienced by humanity at the dawn of time.

“No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.” (Lenin, The Tax in Kind, 1921).

These are Lenin’s words at a time when the USSR was effectively a dictatorship of the proletariat, the only form of state capable of transforming society into a socialist one and dying out in the transition to communism. It was only after the proletarian state had become a classical capitalist state, abandoning all class-based and internationalist policies. It was only after it had become a state no longer capable of changing society in a revolutionary way that the leaders dared to call the state socialist. In 1938, Stalin said “The USSR has already eliminated capitalism and established a socialist system”. Just a year before launching into an imperialist war in which we cannot in anyway see a difference between the meaning of the actions of the USSR and it’s allies and that of it’s adversaries. As far as proletariat movement is concerned, All acted according to the rules of a capitalist state in all respects.

If we want to draw a parallel with the biological taxonomic rankings, we should view the “capitalist/Western” bloc and the “socialist/Eastern” bloc not as two distinct Kingdoms but rather as two species of the same genus, capitalism. As we will demonstrate, the “socialist” countries of the 20^th century are in no way drastically different from their capitalist counterparts. Not only because state capitalism is also well present in western economies, but also because both economic structures, statist and liberal, shared the essential characteristics of capitalism as defined in Marx’s epoch-making analysis.

Two types of economic systems that can intersect and coexist. Two seemingly opposing systems within the same mercantile system. Despite the embargoes, treaties, and alliances aimed at isolating the two parts of the world, the capitalist economy is so interconnected globally that it can overcome any barrier. It is not that the “socialist” countries hid their exchanges with capitalist nations or framed them as accidental; on the contrary, they were intended and purposeful. The so called “socialist” countries produced goods that must be exchanged as commodities with the opposing bloc. This is an undeniable fact. And as commodities, these goods which embody the surplus labour of workers crystallized in material form, are exchanged for the universal commodity; money, a form that is decidedly incompatible with communist society. In addition, these blocs were very fluid. As demonstrated in World War II and the following Cold War, the Soviet Union and it’s satellites changed consistently changed sides according to their changing interests, which never coincided with the interests of the proletariat.

From this, arises the question, ‘How can capitalism exist without the capitalist?’ We will look at this question under the assumption that there were no capitalists in any of the “socialist” countries, which is not entirely true. IT is true that in his economic exposition, Marx’s generally speaks of the capitalist class as consisting of individual capitalists. This is simply because that was the general form that capitalism took in his day and was therefore the most suitable premise for an analysis of the mechanisms of capitalist social relations. However, he did not fail to mention that notion – of incredible historical significance for our task – that insofar as the state employs wage labour, it acts itself as a capitalist, as even the individual capitalist is only the personification of their impersonal capital. The idea that it is not necessary for individual capitalist to exist in order for capitalist production and wage labour to exist, creating the same social relations as capitalism with the individual capitalist, is present from the outset in our fundamental conceptions of political economy, and is the key to clarifying the question of “socialist” countries, also called actually existing socialism. The fact that the state is the sole employer, i.e., the sole capitalist, rather than one of many capitalist in collaboration, is only a matter of quantitative, not qualitative, differences. In both cases, workers assert themselves as a class by selling their labour power to Capital, so that in both cases, the social relations are capitalistic in nature. The fact that a more centralized economy would be easier to transform into a communist economy if in the eventual success of the working class’s conquest over capitalism, does in-fact, not make that economy more communist.

Bourgeois economics deals only with numbers, statistics, and lifeless graphs in it’s analysis, remaining incapable of revealing the nature of the social relations presupposed by Capital, which is why it can arbitrary draw lines of demarcation to separate apparently different ‘types of economies’ using completely inconsistent criteria. The same assessment was in fact used by soviet economist who claimed that the greater industrial growth of the Soviet Union and it’s satellite states was due to the miracles of socialism, making a mockery of the entity of Marxist political economy. However, we can actually use the data provided by these bourgeois economists to dismantle their conclusions and prove our Marxist view of the world. Marx described the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalism, and this is the simple key to understanding the difference in the growth orates of different national economies. The rate of profit in England was already falling in Marx’s time. In Russia, it took decades for the capitalist economy to become properly established. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the second half of the 20^th century, the younger capitalist economies of the Eastern world grew at a faster rate then those of the West. This growth has nothing to do with socialism. It only has to do with the same mechanisms that caused Germany and Japan to surpass England in development rate in the early 1900s, and no one would call their economies socialist.

Previously, we acknowledged, for the sake of clarity, the idea that the capitalists had effectively disappeared in “socialist” countries. We now return to this concept. Lenin clearly presented the situation in his works following the October Revolution, stating that while it was relatively easy to get rid of the big capitalist, the much more difficult challenge through the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat was the elimination of small-scale capitalist and small farmers. As long as these exist, there can certainly be no talk of the abolition of classes.

Socialism means the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes. But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke.

And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear.
(Lenin,Economics and Politics In the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,1919)

Stalin subsequently employed precisely the same method as the Socialist Revolutionaries whom he himself had previously criticized! These small capitalist continued to exist throughout the entire duration of the Soviet Union, long after the dictatorship of the proletariat had ceased to exist and had taken the form of a classical capitalist state. The same can be said of all the other “socialist” countries, with the main difference being they had not experienced the dictatorship of the proletariat. For all these other “socialist” countries, the reason that made their rate of development remarkable is the same that kept their small-scale production so widespread, namely their relative underdevelopment. Some sectors, particularly certain branches of food production, were still dominated by small capitalist, by peasants who were able to produce a surplus to sell as a commodity. In fact, as Marx describes in Capital Volume 2, those industries in which the resulting goods are more perishable and can withstand less in the form of stocks are generally less suited to the modern capitalist economy, which makes it more difficult to take them out of the hands of the petty bourgeoisie. Of course, capitalism finds a way, and has since found many ways to incorporate such goods into it’s circuit. After all, capitalism itself is the greatest enemy of the petty bourgeoisie as it continually concentrates capital in relatively fewer and fewer hands.

Returning to the last point, we said that, unlike the Soviet Union, the rest of the “socialist” bloc did not experience the dictatorship of the proletariat, a necessary stage in transition from class society to socialism and communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat can only be established when the civil war of the workers against the national capitalist class, if successful, imposes it’s own proletariat state. While, in Russia, this did indeed happen when it made it’s revolution in 1917, it was then paralyzed in it’s expansion internationally. Where are the communist revolutions of the other supposedly socialist countries? Not in the so called anti-fascist, democratic, or popular “revolutions”, nor the simply established puppet “communist” government, but explicitly in the communist revolutions, with the clear goal of destroying existing social forms. The answer is that there have been none. And, without a real communist revolution ensuring the conquest of power by the proletariat, the discussion about whether a country or a region has ever been socialist or tended towards socialism is completely useless. All that really happened in the “socialist” countries after the victory over Germany and the division into “socialist” blocs sanctioned by the Yalta agreements was an export of red flags and banners, sentimental anthems, fossilized bureaucracy, opportunistic tactics, and (in short) everything except for revolution. There can be no communist transformation of society without open war declared by the proletariat on the bourgeoisie. There can be no communism without the abolition of classes, private property, the commodity form, and the state itself. Stalin’s claim that the USSR had achieved socialism in it’s essence or Ceaușescu’s promise to achieve a ‘multilateral’ socialist economy are nothing more than the most infamous and disgusting blasphemy against millions of workers who fought for nothing less than total destruction of society as we know it today and their fight to replace it with a truly classless society. We shed not a tear when we hear their patriotic hymns celebrating the great achievements of “socialism”. We continue on the same path as always, fully aware of the enormous task that lies ahead.