Miguel Ángel | Unión Proletariá (Spain)
Millions of workers and oppressed people throughout the world are delighted by the economic, social, political, military and cultural progress of China and Russia. After many years of capitulation to the imperialists, there is finally a powerful force to confront them. This moral revival of the masses is a valuable incentive for their active participation in the political struggle and, therefore, for the proletariat to gain hegemony and the leadership of the anti- imperialist struggle.
Unfortunately, the leaders of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) are doing the opposite:
with their theory of the “imperialist pyramid”, they are sowing confusion and discouragement among the masses by exaggerating the shortcomings of the forces that are now confronting imperialism. They even accuse China and Russia of waging a struggle that would not be anti- imperialist, but inter-imperialist, in the style of the First World War, to replace the United States as the main dominating and exploiting force. It is logical that the capitalists denigrate the revolutionaries so that the masses distrust them and prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. But the damage is incomparably greater when it is done by a historically strong communist party like the KKE, which has also gained a certain prestige in the workers’ movement for its opposition to class conciliation, opportunism and reformism.
In the face of the growing anti-imperialist movement across the planet, the leaders of the KKE behave like sectarians, according to Marx’s definition: “For the sect, the meaning of its existence and its problem of honour are not what it has in common with the class movement, but the peculiar talisman that distinguishes it from it.”[1]
It is true that the spontaneous mass movement has shortcomings because it reacts against the superficial phenomena of reality and ignores the essence of reality, which can only be discovered through science, to which the majority of the exploited have no access. For this reason, the struggle of the communists against the spontaneous subordination of the workers to bourgeois ideology is indispensable for the proletarian class to be able to free itself from capitalist exploitation. But far from favouring this liberation, the propaganda of the KKE leaders against Russia and China discourages the workers from participating in a joint struggle against the Western imperialists who are the main pillar of international capitalism.
We will try to unravel the tangle of arguments with which they justify their position, first answering the most practical ones, linked to the war in Ukraine, and then the more theoretical ones, on imperialism and how to combat it.
Countering Russian propaganda by taking on NATO propaganda
A recent article,[2] the head of the KKE’s International Relations Section, Eliseos Vagenas, promises to refute the “justifications of both sides” in the war in Ukraine, but he only criticises the arguments of those of us who support Russia. He begins by narrowing the focus to Ukraine, with its natural and industrial wealth and its geostrategic position as a “bone of discord” over which the two “imperialist” sides fight. With this sleight of hand, he obscures what is right before the eyes of any half-informed observer: the harassment actions of the United States and its European allies against Russia and China through proxy wars, “colour revolutions”, NATO expansions in Eastern Europe and East Asia, sanctions, trade conflicts, etc.
Anyone who compares his sources of information can easily see how the NATO powers have been harassing Russia until it regained sufficient strength to defend itself. The Greek leader, on the other hand, sees things the other way round and, what a coincidence! He sees them exactly the same as Western governments: Russia had been on good terms with the West until its bourgeoisie felt “that it had consolidated its power, that it should claim space for its own monopolies and in turn create its own capitalist unions on the territory of the former USSR, which was prevented by NATO enlargement.” Russia would thus be the imperialist aggressor, while NATO would only be defending itself against Russia’s claim to “dispute the supremacy of its own monopolies.” If Russia’s arguments were honest, Vagenas continues, it should not have taken up arms because, by doing so, it has provoked an enlargement of NATO that has swallowed up Sweden and Finland, as well as an increased militarization of Ukraine. It seems that he does not mind taking inspiration from the reformist social democrat Plekhanov and, what is even worse, from the reactionary militarist Stoltenberg!
It recognises the fascistisation of Ukraine, but warns against the attempt of the Russian bourgeoisie to “take advantage of the Antifascist Victory and the antifascist and pro-Soviet sentiments of the Russian people”. The KKE leadership tends to see only the negative side of those who fight the imperialists. Its dogmatic sectarianism prevents it from appreciating the contradictory nature of objective reality, especially when it contains something progressive that contradicts its rigid prescriptions. However, it is a fact that the Russian bourgeoisie cannot ignore the antifascist and pro-Soviet sentiments of the Russian people in a situation where the Western imperialists are desperately trying to subjugate the entire nation. Consequently, we are faced with an objectively necessary and positive alliance, so far led by the bourgeoisie, but which strengthens the working class as the antagonism with the main international representatives of the bourgeois class–the imperialists–develops.
Vagenas absurdly tries to blame Putin for the rise of fascism in Ukraine for trading with this country, as if the USSR had not traded with German imperialism before and during the Third Reich. Even more absurd is his accusing the majority of communists of lacking “all revolutionary logic” by concluding an anti-fascist alliance with the Russian bourgeois regime, despite the fact that the bourgeois regime is the “matrix” of fascism. Here, as in many other cases, the leadership of the KKE exhibits its metaphysical “logic” which we will analyze later and which, for the moment, prompts us to ask: did the USSR perhaps lack “all revolutionary logic” by allying itself with the American and British bourgeois regimes against the Nazi-fascist powers, despite the fact that they were also a “matrix” of fascism?
The author of the article then accuses the Russian bourgeoisie of using Russians and Russophones in the republics that became independent from Moscow as pawns in its geopolitical plans, overlooking the fact that, first, it was the new non-Russian bourgeoisies led by Western imperialism that adopted hostile measures both towards the Russian Federation and towards the culturally Russian part of the population of Ukraine, Latvia, etc.
Moreover, it parrots NATO propaganda, which blames Russia for annexing territories under the pretext of protecting the Russian national minority: in reality, the Russian community is not a minority, but a majority, in eastern and southern Ukraine; it was part of this republic peacefully until the nationalists violently seized power in kyiv (Euromaidan), against the Constitution and the majority decision of the electorate, but with the sponsorship of the West, to force the anti-Russian Ukrainization of the whole country; The population of these territories―proudly proletarian―was not annexed by the Russian army, but before the latter intervened, it defended itself where it could (in Crimea, Sevastopol and in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, because in Odessa, Kharkov and other places it was massacred by fascist paramilitaries) from the aggression of the new authorities, it was the victim of fraud by the Western governments that signed the Minsk Agreements, it demanded an autonomy that was denied it, it then proclaimed its independence and, only when it was about to be crushed by an army that had become a battering ram for NATO, it asked for military aid from the Russian Federation and its accession to it.
After making some fair criticisms of Russian bourgeois nationalism (fair because, as Lenin warned, even the nationalism of an oppressed nation tends to be exclusionary and reactionary), Vagenas rejects the view of most communists who consider Russia to be part of an anti-imperialist axis. The argument he makes is that Russia, being a capitalist country dominated by monopolies and integrated into the global capitalist market, is an imperialist country and therefore cannot be anti-imperialist.
The “imperialist pyramid”, an anti-dialectical simplification
When we question the schoolboy logic that presides over his theory of the “imperialist pyramid” and that leads him to equate the United States and Burkina Faso as imperialist countries, the leader of the KKE is only able to recognize that “each capitalist country within the world imperialist system plays a different role and occupies a different position on the basis of its power, its economic, political and military strength.” But simply recognizing that there are “differences” between countries is insufficient to understand the world today and to be able to transform it. It is not just a question of differences, but of opposition, of antagonism between oppressor countries and oppressed countries.
Lenin discovered that the basis of contemporary imperialism is monopoly capitalism, but anyone who claims to be a Marxist-Leninist must not be content with this essential cause abstracted from the diversity of imperialist phenomena in which it is expressed. In fact, Lenin also went so far as to say that “the division of nations into oppressors and oppressed… constitutes the essence of imperialism… which the social-chauvinists and Kautsky deceitfully avoid.”[3] What then is the essence of imperialism? How can we explain the contradiction that Lenin falls into here?
Contrary to the leaders of the KKE who deduce everything from an abstract definition, Marx advocated the method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete” as “the process by which thought assimilates the concrete, reproduces it spiritually as concrete.” Moreover, he did not confuse the concrete with a single particular aspect, even if it were essential!, but defined it as “the synthesis of multiple determinations, therefore, the unity of the diverse” which appears “in thought as a process of synthesis.”[4] Accordingly, Lenin held that truth is always concrete and called for a concrete analysis of concrete reality. As much as the domination of monopolies is an essential aspect of imperialism, it does not encompass its concrete essence. To encompass the essence of a thing, one must take into account the various phenomena in which it is expressed: in Lenin’s words, “The essence is manifest, the phenomenon is essential.”[5]
It is certainly easier to reduce imperialism to monopolies (or capitalism to the market), but this is not enough and is therefore false and contradicts reality and its theoretical reflection as Marxism-Leninism: this abstract reductionism harms the proletarian revolution and benefits the bourgeois counterrevolution.
The KKE leaders’ theory of the “imperialist pyramid” abolishes at one stroke the anti-imperialist solidarity of the proletariat with the socialist states and oppressed nations on the grounds that the bourgeoisie has grown stronger or is the ruling class in them. With this theory, they feed the irrational fear and panic of the weaker revolutionaries that alliances with certain sections of the bourgeoisie against others will end up breaking up the workers’ movement, as has often happened in recent decades. Instead of trying to understand concretely why this has happened and what concrete alliances are progressive and necessary, they promote the sectarian and anti-unitarian attitude of entrenching themselves in a false class independence that is really an isolation of the proletariat from the people and an isolation of the communists from the masses, for the greater glory of imperialism.
They claim to be communists, but they ignore the Communist Manifesto when it explains how the proletariat prepares itself as a revolutionary class not by abstaining from, but by participating in, bourgeois struggles: “The clashes in the old society in various ways favour the development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie lives in a permanent struggle: first against the aristocracy, then against those sections of the bourgeoisie whose interests are in conflict with the progress of industry, and finally always against the bourgeoisie of all other countries. In all these struggles it is forced to appeal to the proletariat, to call on its help and thus draw it into the political movement. In this way the bourgeoisie provides the proletarians with the elements of their own education, that is, weapons against itself.”
Since they have forgotten the Manifesto which should have inspired them, and before continuing with the analysis of their concrete errors, we will remind them of the category of communists to which they tend to degrade themselves: the critical-utopian communists “pretend to replace social action by their personal speculative action, the historical conditions which will determine proletarian emancipation by fantastic conditions which they themselves forge, the gradual organisation of the proletariat as a class by an organisation of society invented according to their whim. For them, the universal course of history to come is determined by the propaganda and practical execution of their social plans.”[6]
Russia and China are not imperialist countries
The KKE leadership places China and Russia at the top of the “imperialist pyramid” with a poor argument that can be summed up as saying that they are powerful countries in which there are monopolies.
Of course, the economy of both has a commodity basis, which does not necessarily mean capitalist, and even less imperialist, as any Marxist should know. To date, no society has yet reached the level of development described by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme: none has been able to do without commodity relations of production, not even the Soviet Union in Stalin’s time, where consumer goods continued to be considered commodities.
All socialist revolutions have pursued and continue to pursue the goal of liberating humanity from the alienation that the commodity entails, as analyzed by Marx in the first section of the first book of Capital. But will is not enough, since a quantitative and qualitative development (socialization) of the productive forces (including the worker) is also needed to put an end to the scarcity of the means of subsistence necessary for the free development of each individual. Historically, private property, the market and capitalism have been necessary levers for this development, until reaching the current situation in which they are becoming increasing obstacles that the proletarian revolution has the mission of removing. To this end, this revolution seizes political power from the bourgeoisie to undertake a dialectical transition―long, complex, contradictory―from the domination of capitalist relations of production to their complete abolition in communist society.
No process of development can do without partial setbacks, during which the conditions for further advances are completed. Thus, for example, the First International (IWA) had to water down its programme compared with the Communist Manifesto in order to make possible the united action of the working class, which convinced the militant proletariat of Europe of the suitability of the principles defended by Marx and Engels. The Soviet power under Lenin also had to take a relative step backwards, which was the New Economic Policy, in order to be able to resume the offensive in the construction of socialism. Then, as now, the bourgeoisie interpreted these setbacks as proof of the superiority of capitalist economy over communism, and the “left” prophets claimed that the Bolsheviks had betrayed the proletarian revolution and returned to capitalism.
In Russia in the 1990s, the working class party had become so weak that it was ousted from political power by a new, emerging bourgeoisie. But soon the voracity of the Western imperialists forced the main section of the Russian bourgeoisie to turn away from them and to rely on the proletariat formed under Soviet socialism. Russia is thus a capitalist country led by a weakened bourgeoisie, harassed from outside and dependent on a national detachment of the working class in the process of recovering its historic democratic, patriotic, anti-imperialist and socialist position. The Greek “pyramidists” should at least acknowledge that the freedom of workers to unionize, to join the communist parties with which they still have relations and to accede to their Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory is greater in Russia than in Ukraine or in any ordinary capitalist country. Therefore, the attitude of the communists towards this country should be less antagonistic and more cautious than towards countries with a solid bourgeois dictatorship.
This is one of the reasons why it is inappropriate to call it imperialist. Another reason is the solidarity it provides to other peoples and governments attacked by the real imperialists: Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, the DPRK, Mali, Niger, etc. Disregarding the opinion of the peoples who receive it, the “leftists” of the KKE question this aid as insufficient and self-serving, but their accusation is not at all original. Young Soviet Russia was also reproached for not sacrificing itself for the European revolution, the USSR for not providing direct military support to the Greek communists who were under attack by the Anglo-American interventionists, etc.
Even if we ignore the above, Russia does not fit Lenin’s description of contemporary imperialism, which he did not limit to the domination of capitalist monopolies, even though that was its essential cause. The Eurasian country has not experienced a process of monopolization, but rather, on the contrary, of de-monopolization based on the preceding socialist economy (“socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly placed at the service of the entire people and which, therefore, has ceased to be a capitalist monopoly”).[7] Capitalist accumulation in a country with such immense resources does not yet require the export of more capital than goods. And the capital it exports, as well as the military, nuclear, industrial, space, pharmaceutical, diplomatic, etc. power that Vagenas mentions to “prove” Russia’s imperialist character, are not caused by an internal over-accumulation of capital, but by the need to overcome the imperialist encirclement. It achieves this thanks to its recent socialist past and not as a beneficiary of the “imperialist pyramid” at the expense of other peoples. On the contrary, it is a power that, even under bourgeois leadership, only manages to maintain itself sovereignly by fighting against this “pyramid” in alliance with all those oppressed by it.
The “imperialist pyramid”, the monopoly of a “handful of countries”―as Lenin said―or of the “golden billion”―as Putin says―was established during the Bolshevik leader’s lifetime after hundreds of years of capitalist accumulation, and since then, the composition of each of the two camps into which the world was divided has changed little. As Kautsky demonstrated in relation to Kautsky, nothing can be as compact and monolithic as a pyramid in the antagonistic relationship between the imperialists and the relationship between them and the oppressed peoples. The unity between the former can only be relative in relation to the latter, while the struggle is absolute. For this reason, the expression “imperialist chain” used by Lenin is more correct to describe the relationship of oppression between countries and how each break in a link puts the whole chain in jeopardy. This is what happened with the socialist and national liberation revolutions of the 20th century, and this is what will happen again with the increasingly united anti-imperialist struggle of the socialist, ex-socialist and sovereignist countries, of the oppressed peoples and of the internationalist proletariat. The imperialist chain is broken, weakened, rebuilt and broken again in a historical process that enables the proletariat to replace capitalism with communism, and not in a fatal ahistorical repetition of the initial stage of imperialism with a mere change of hierarchy between countries.
As for China, Vagenas reproaches it for participating in the G-20 alongside Russia and the other most powerful capitalist states (negotiating does not presuppose identity of objective) and for having “as its objective the profit obtained from the exploitation of the labor force not only of the workers of its own country, but also of many other countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, in all the places where its monopolies are developed.” Of course, economic profit comes from work carried out beyond the reproduction of the value of the labor force. But this is not necessarily “exploitation” of workers. For there to be true exploitation, the ultimate objective must be to perpetuate the class relationship by which one class lives at the expense of the work of the other.
However, where is the proof that the perpetuation of the exploitation of man by man is the goal of China, whose regime proclaims itself to be socialist, with the rule of the working class under the leadership of its Communist Party, the prevalence of state and cooperative ownership, central economic planning, etc.? The leaders of the KKE and others object that these are just fine words to cover up a reality in which “the bourgeois classes, the monopolies, rule”, analogous to the false socialism ruling in our capitalist countries. But the analogy is not sufficient proof. Unlike our “socialists”, the Chinese communists came to power by overthrowing and expropriating the exploiting classes, and are succeeding in improving the situation of the working population of their country and the oppressed peoples with whom they do business, and their economy continues to develop and outstrip that of capitalist countries without economic crises to endanger this positive trend.
It is true that, from 1978, they carried out a risky partial retreat towards the market, capitalism and the penetration of foreign capital, greater than that permitted by the Soviet leaders who succeeded Stalin and than that proposed by Lenin as NEP. The international context in which the Chinese leaders took this course was characterized by the relative consolidation of the imperialist camp, its enmity with the USSR, the continued weakening of the workers’ movement despite its efforts to counteract it and a growing inequality in the development of productive forces between the oppressor countries and the oppressed countries, including China. They then opted to develop their productive forces as quickly as possible at all costs.
Today’s concrete imperialism and the revival of the workers’ movement
The crisis that the proletarian movement has been undergoing since the mid-twentieth century is not only due to the erosion of revolutionary principles in the socialist states and communist parties, but also to a change in the concrete conditions of existence of the working class in the capitalist countries: increasing inequality between workers in the dominant countries and those in the dominated countries, favouring national antagonisms; growth in the level of professional education of workers and, through it, in their ideological indoctrination; intensive development of production and fragmentation of the industrial fabric; exponential increase in the means of communication controlled by the capitalists; greater resources to bribe the top of the proletarian movement thanks to the more efficient neocolonial exploitation of the oppressed countries; etc.
Since the First World War and the time of Lenin, the concrete reality of the working class and the concrete reality of imperialism have changed. As a result of the Second World War, one imperialist power had emerged, far superior and dominant over all the others, which imposed its particular interests in the joint struggle of all of them against the internationalist proletariat and its new bastions: the socialist countries and the anti-colonial revolutions. This progressive field of contradictory forces in their class composition is the one that today can and needs to unite to defeat the imperialists. And it is precisely the participation of the proletariat in this alliance that will allow it to win its leadership in order to continue the struggle until the victory of socialism. There is no other way than to sustain this alliance, fighting within it for the strategic interests of the proletariat. But any exaggeration of the internal struggle, of criticism of our allies, that weakens unity will only lead to prolonging the horrors of imperialism.
Every progressive person knows for sure that the real base supporting imperialism and capitalist oppression of the masses are the Western powers, primarily the United States of America. Each defeat they experience weakens their economy and, consequently, their ability to oppress the people and to tame the workers’ movement. They are the main enemy against which we must direct all the opposing forces. Among these there are also oppressors and some might even end up developing the capacity to replace the current imperialists. But this replacement is not yet possible, it is only one tendency among others and the task of the revolutionary proletariat is precisely to promote the opposing tendency in the only possible way: to fight to strengthen this alliance, thus demonstrating that it is the best leader for achieving victory.
The KKE leadership believes (or wants us to believe) that it will overthrow capitalism and build the new socialist-communist society by breaking away from what it calls “all imperialist alliances” and clinging to only one of Lenin’s slogans against unjust wars like the First World War: not supporting any side. But it forgets that Lenin also spoke of taking sides in just wars like the one being waged against imperialism on various fronts. It also forgets that Lenin, even in that unjust war, called on revolutionaries to promote above all the defeat of their own country’s government, an objective that these Greek leaders sabotage by repeating NATO’s anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda. As Che Guevara said (and the Mexican supporters of the KKE so wrongly recall): “You cannot trust imperialism even a little bit, not at all.”8.To really contribute to the political independence of the working class in each country, one must begin by gathering the greatest possible force against its own imperialist government instead of distracting, confusing and disorienting the masses with the supposed defects of those who fight it with more than just words.
Vagenas is partly right when he criticizes as a petty-bourgeois illusion the prospect of a multipolarity of countries living together in peace, justice and harmony, as long as their economies are capitalist (by the way, this idyllic relationship was not even achieved between socialist countries, because they still present “in all their aspects, in the economic, moral and intellectual, the stamp of the old society from whose womb they come.”)9). However, as long as there is no progress towards communism, the slogan of multipolarity is tactically pertinent as a dialectical mediation, as an international democratic demand that breaks down imperialism.[10] Our author is wrong to completely dismiss this demand and any other democratic demand, thereby erecting a Great Wall of China between democracy and socialism.
On the relationship between the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialism
Lenin had to deal with such dogmatic and metaphysical errors, which appear with every sharp turn in the course of political events, as an irrational reaction to opportunist deviations. During the First World War, it was the so-called “imperialist economism” that is now being diligently copied by the leaders of the KKE. It was formulated by prominent theorists of the Bolshevik Party who played a vacillating role in the Russian revolution and who ended up opposing the construction of socialism in the USSR (Bukharin, Piatakov, Radek, etc.). The philosophical root of this defective thinking was explained by Lenin in his assessment of Bukharin: “His theoretical conceptions can hardly be called entirely Marxist, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never studied and I believe has never fully understood dialectics).”[11]
Lenin warned the adherents of “imperialist economics” that “they have gotten themselves into a quagmire, that their ‘ideas’ have nothing in common with either Marxism or revolutionary social democracy” and that they are incapable of “solving the problem of how to link the advent of imperialism with the struggle for reforms and democracy.”[12]
This inability was also evident in the article that former KKE General Secretary Aleka Papariga wrote in 2013, On Imperialism and the Imperialist Pyramid, when she identified “the anti- imperialist struggle with the anti-capitalist struggle.”[13] It is one thing to link the two struggles, which is correct, and quite another to reject any expression of anti-imperialism that is not anti-capitalist. Imperialism is not only highly developed capitalism, but also its superstructure.[14] Reactionary that denies bourgeois democracy and that, consequently, turns the popular strata and the oppressed nations into allies of the proletariat in its necessary struggle for democracy.
The Mexican followers of the KKE candidly admit that they are revising the Marxist-Leninist conclusions about imperialism… for the sake of imperialism!: “For a certain period… some wars could be just, but since the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as Lenin said, wars were imperialist on both sides. (…) Lenin pointed out the problem of dependent, colonial and semi-colonial countries, however, the development of productive forces and the class struggle (where the USSR and the communists played a decisive role) has changed that world.”[15]
The “pyramidists’” contempt for general, i.e. bourgeois, democratic questions is even more serious now that the imperialists have succeeded in reducing the class consciousness of the workers and it is the oppressed nations and the surviving socialist states that are putting up the greatest resistance to the offensive of imperialism in crisis. Under these conditions, the working class will become a political force again only if its communist vanguard encourages its participation in the democratic struggle―particularly the national liberation struggle―against imperialism and, in the course of this, also educates it in socialism.
But the defenders of the “imperialist pyramid” disagree and prefer the logic of the “imperialist economists” which Lenin summarized thus: “The ‘only’ thing that can be ‘opposed’ to imperialist war is socialism; only socialism is the ‘way out’. ‘Consequently’ to include democratic slogans in our minimum program, i.e. under capitalism, is a deception or an illusion, confusion or postponement, etc., of the slogan of the socialist revolution.”
This type of logic shows that “there is a failure to understand the relationship between capitalism and democracy, between socialism and democracy,” and that “the awakening and growth of the socialist insurrection against imperialism are inextricably linked with the growth of democratic resistance and rebellion.”
The path that Lenin prescribed was: “Through bourgeois democracy towards the socialist and consequently democratic organization of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and opportunism. There is no other way. There is no other way out. Marxism, like life itself, knows no other way out… without fearing that this will ‘stain’ ‘the purity’ of our economic objectives.”[16]
He explained the relationship between the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialism as a process that leads to a qualitative leap: “While we rely on the democratic achievements already achieved and denounce their incompleteness under the capitalist regime, we demand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as an indispensable basis both for ending the misery of the masses and for fully and integrally carrying out all democratic transformations. Some of these transformations will be initiated before the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, others in the course of its overthrow and others after the overthrow. The social revolution is not a single battle, but a period comprising a whole series of battles for economic and democratic transformations at all levels, battles that can only culminate in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.”[17]
To become the vanguard of these battles, instead of despising and rejecting other participating classes, this is the mission of the socialist proletariat.
Lenin concluded his critique of “imperialist economism” by explaining the cause of its emergence: “It is one thing to ponder the causes and significance of an imperialist war brought on by highly developed capitalism, the social-democratic tactics in relation to such a war, the causes of the crisis within the social-democratic movement, etc.; but it is quite another thing to allow war to oppress one’s thought… One such form of oppression and repression of human thought by war is the contemptuous attitude of ‘imperialist economism’ towards democracy.”[18]
The trauma that has oppressed the rational thinking of the “pyramidists” is, without a doubt, “the counter-revolutionary process of overthrowing Soviet socialism” by the opportunist leaders of the CPSU, which, according to Vagenas, “was completed” in 1989-1991, “completely” destroying the positions won by the proletariat during decades of revolution (an impressive display of dialectical materialism!). Their unfortunate mechanical denial of opportunism has a historical precedent immediately after the October Revolution, when a few communists interpreted the success of the Bolsheviks in a one-sidedly leftist way.
Partnerships, intermediate stages and commitments
The KKE leaders start from the abstract scheme according to which, once capitalism has reached its highest stage, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat remain as the only antagonists. Hence, only this contradiction and that of the capitalists among themselves remain, while the contradiction between the imperialist countries and the oppressed countries has disappeared. In this way, they consummate Lassalle’s revenge on Marx: in contrast to the working class, the other classes form nothing but a reactionary mass.
Therefore, any proposal for an alliance or compromise with any sector of the bourgeoisie or any proposal for a “stage between capitalism and socialism”.[19] This would be reactionary and would amount to treason. The “new” “pyramidal” analysis of imperialism also rejects the position that Engels held in relation to the Blanquist Communards: the communists are communists not because they want to achieve their goal without stopping “at intermediate stages and without compromises, which only serve to delay the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery”; but “because, through all the intermediate stages and all the compromises created not by themselves but by the course of historical development, they clearly see and constantly pursue their final goal.”[20]
In particular, as we announced earlier, the leader of the KKE Eliseos Vagenas deduces from the fact that “fascism is a product of the system of exploitation, a choice of the bourgeoisie”, the conclusion that it would be “contrary to all revolutionary logic to believe, as some communist parties do, that the bourgeoisie, even of another country, can effectively propose to end fascism, but at the same time support by all means the “matrix” that gives rise to it, that is, the capitalist system. (…) This division of imperialist forces into “bad” (‘fascist’, ‘neo-fascist’) and “good” forces leads to calls for the formation of “anti-fascist fronts” in a classless direction, that is, in alliances without socio-class criteria, even with bourgeois forces and to align themselves with the supposedly “anti-fascist states”. This conception leads the communist movement, the working class to disarm, to renounce its historic mission… the way is opened to collaboration with opportunism, with social democracy and with bourgeois political forces, with sectors of the bourgeoisie. The way is opened to choosing between imperialists.”[21]
Does this comrade mean to imply that the communists should not have supported the Popular Front, entered its government (which was bourgeois) and defended with arms in hand the Second Spanish bourgeois Republic against international fascism between 1936 and 1939?
Does he not feel moved by the historical fact that it was precisely through the formation of anti-fascist popular and national fronts that socialism spread to a third of humanity and international communism became a mass party?
Vagenas appeals to Lenin to decree that “the correct side of history, when imperialist ‘predators’ clash, is not to choose the side of the weaker ‘predator’ to take the place of the more powerful. The correct side of history is to choose the side of the people against the camp of the capitalists … and to build the new socialist-communist society by disengaging ourselves from all imperialist alliances.”[22]
Without flinching from the Trotskyist “matrix” of his logic, the KKE leader is contrasting Lenin with Stalin because of the anti-fascist alliance that the latter concluded to win the Second World War. In fact, Vagenas’ logic also condemns Lenin, since Lenin also negotiated agreements with one imperialist against another, such as the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, and he always defended a policy of alliances and a mass line based on dialectical materialism, as anyone can see from his writings Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, On “Left” Infantilism and the Petty-Bourgeois Spirit, The Infantile Disorder of “Leftism” in Communism, etc.
The mechanistic and metaphysical logic of the “pyramidists” does not admit the unity of opposites, but only identity or the most rigid antinomy. Its drawback is that it runs into contradiction from the moment it attempts to put it into practice.
Thus, Aleka Papariga herself cannot fail to acknowledge that society is not divided exclusively between a completely separate proletariat and bourgeoisie, but that there are other social strata or classes, and that therefore “an alliance between the working class and the poor popular sectors of the objectively self-employed” is necessary. But she adds that this alliance “must develop in a firmly anti-monopoly, anti-capitalist direction, and be directed towards the acquisition of workers’ power.”
This direction corresponds to the objective interest of the working class, but not to that of those other strata or intermediate classes which, as Comrade Parariga notes, “are fluctuating by their nature (by their position in the capitalist economy), which have an interest in the abolition of monopolies, in the socialisation of concentrated means of production, while at the same time they are imbued with the illusion that they have an interest in small private property. They cannot understand that their long- and medium-term interests can be served only by socialist power.”[23]
If they cannot understand this, then it is absurd because it is impossible to pretend to achieve an alliance on this basis. Let us see what solution the leader of the KKE offers to this contradiction: “The illusion that any other compromise can be successful under conditions of monopoly capitalism, that is, in the imperialist phase of capitalism, is harmful, utopian, inefficient.” Therefore, she does not contemplate any way other than the rejection of all compromises and alliances that are really possible, the isolation of the proletariat and its disintegration because its peripheral layers are in contact with those intermediate layers.
Under the pretext of preserving the political independence of the working class in the face of opportunism, the “pyramidists” reject any compromise with other classes and for objectives more immediate than socialism. In this paranoid and suicidal way, Lenin disagreed with the struggle against opportunism:
“To prepare a recipe or a general rule (“no compromises”!) for all cases is absurd. One must have one’s own head in order to know how to orient oneself in each particular case. (…) Naive and totally inexperienced people imagine that it is enough to admit compromises in general, in order to remove all boundaries between opportunism, against which we are and must be fighting an uncompromising struggle, and revolutionary Marxism or Communism. But such people, if they do not yet know that all boundaries, in nature and in society, are variable and to a certain extent conventional, cannot be cured except by prolonged study, education, enlightenment and political and practical experience. (…) To wage war to overthrow the international bourgeoisie, a war a hundred times more difficult, prolonged and complex than the most bitter of current wars between states, and to renounce in advance all manoeuvring, all utilisation (even if only temporary) of the antagonism of interests existing between enemies, all agreements and compromises with possible allies (even if they are provisional, inconsistent, wavering, conditional)―is this not infinitely ridiculous? (…) The whole question is to know how to apply this tactic in order to raise and not lower the general level of consciousness, revolutionary spirit, fighting capacity and victory of the proletariat.”[24]
The solution to the contradiction in which Comrade Papariga has found herself is in the part of her statement that corresponds to the reality of those intermediate layers or classes that “have an interest in the abolition of monopolies, in the socialization of the concentrated means of production.” If at least the “pyramidists” were consistent with their essentialist conception of imperialism, they would appreciate the contradiction between the monopolists and the rest of the capitalists, both within the imperialist countries and on an international scale. Alliances on this basis would not be sufficient to achieve socialism, but they would be absolutely necessary to weaken monopoly capitalism and to politically develop the working class as the leadership of the remaining oppressed masses.
Comrade Papariga rightly demands that the struggle against capitalism and imperialist war be combined “with the struggle against opportunism… since the root of opportunism is found in the imperialist system itself because the bourgeoisie, when it realizes that it cannot manage its affairs with stability, relies on opportunism as a general vision, as a political party, in order to gain time to regroup the bourgeois political system, to undermine the constant growth of the revolutionary workers’ movement.”
But it is striking that this comrade reduces the fight against opportunism to mere denunciation and overlooks the economic root of opportunism that allows the bourgeoisie to use it against the workers’ movement, which can only be destroyed by the alliance of the proletariat with the liberation movement of the nations oppressed by the imperialists: “monopoly gives superprofits, that is, an excess of profits above the normal, ordinary profits of capitalism throughout the world. The capitalists can spend a part of these superprofits (and even a not small part!) to bribe their workers, creating something like an alliance (…) of the workers of a given country with their capitalists against other countries. (…) On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists to turn the handful of richest, privileged nations into “eternal” parasites on the body of the rest of humanity, to “rest on their laurels” by exploiting Negroes, Indians, etc., by holding them down by means of modern militarism, equipped with a magnificent technique of extermination. On the other hand, there is the tendency of the masses, who are more oppressed than ever, who bear all the calamities of imperialist wars, to throw off this yoke, to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The history of the workers’ movement will now inevitably develop in the struggle between these two tendencies, for the first tendency is not accidental, but has an economic “foundation.”“[25]
Which of these two tendencies do the leaders of the KKE represent when they deny that the “handful of richer nations” exploit and parasitize the others, when they decree that all countries are imperialist to a greater or lesser extent? Which do they represent when they despise the struggle of nations for sovereignty and independence, including their own and that of other European nations, subjugated or directly occupied by the Yankees and subjected to their interests through the European Union? Without supporting all those who rise up against the states that dominate the planet, the struggle against imperialism and opportunism becomes an empty phrase and a deception. To contrast this national struggle with the proletarian struggle is to conceal how the Paris Commune and all the socialist revolutions that triumphed afterwards were unleashed.
It is good to “critically examine the errors, weaknesses and problematic approaches that influence” the ranks of the international communist movement, as Comrade Vagenas calls for at the end of his article. But we must do so in order to move forward and not backward. The criticism that the proletariat needs does not consist in resurrecting old and crude errors that have been overcome by the Marxist-Leninist worldview and by revolutionary experience. A criticism such as that engendered by the theory of the “imperialist pyramid” only deserves to be criticized and repudiated in turn. It is an essential condition for liberating the energy, initiative and potential of the working class on the road to socialist revolution. We hope that the comrades of the KKE and other victims of dangerous dogmatic-sectarian errors will undertake a process of understanding and rectification in order to join forces in the common struggle against the imperialists and their opportunist agents.
Notes
[1] Letter from Marx to Schweitzer, fromOctober 13, 1868
[2] https://www.iccr.gr/es/issue_article/Los-pretextos-de-justificacion-de-la-guerra-imperialista-son-una-cortina-de-humo-a-los-ojos-del-pueblo/
[3] The revolutionary proletariat and the right of nations to self-determination, Lenin. https://www.marxists.org/espanol/lenin/obras/oc/akal/lenin-oc-tomo-23.pdf, p. 41.
[4] Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Marx. https://www.nodo50.org/gpm/Einstein/Grundrisse_Tomo_I.pdf
[5] Philosophical Notebooks, Summary of Hegel’s book “Lectures on the History of Philosophy”, Lenin.
https://historiaycritica.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/cuadernos-filosoficos1.pdf,
p. 235.
[6] The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels:
http://www.marx2mao.com/M2M(SP)/M&E(SP)/CM47s.html#en39
[7] The catastrophe that threatens us and how to combat it, Lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/espanol/lenin/obras/oe3/lenin-obras-2-3.pdf, p. 140.
[8] https://www.iccr.gr/es/issue_article/Las-guerras-imperialistas-y-las-tareas-de-los-comunistas/
[9] Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx.
https://www.marxists.org/english/me/1870s/gotha/critique- of-the-gotha-programme.htm
[10] See the detailed and accurate analysis of the issue in “Multipolarity” or Internationalist Anti-Imperialism, by Dimitrios Patelis. https://waporgan.org/?p=2828
[11] Letter to the Congress, Lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/english/lenin/works/1920s/testament.htm
[12] The New Tendency of “Imperialist Economism,” Lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/english/lenin/works/1910s/8-1916.htm
[13] On Imperialism and the Imperialist Pyramid, Aleka Papariga.
https://pcpe.es/sobre-el-imperialismo-y- la-piramide-imperialista/
[14] See Lenin’s discussion with Bukharin at the March 19, 1919 session of the 8th Congress of the RCP(b) on the party program (marxists.org/espanol/lenin/obras/oc/akal/lenin-oc-tomo-31.pdf, pp. 35-36)
[15] https://www.iccr.gr/es/issue_article/Las-guerras-imperialistas-y-las-tareas-de-los-comunistas/
[16] Response to P. Kievsky (I. Piatakov), Lenin. http://redstarpublishers.org/respuestakievski.pdf
[17] The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin. Id. ut supra, p. 40.
[18] Response to P. Kievsky (I. Piatakov), Lenin.
[19] On imperialism and the imperialist pyramid, Aleka Papariga.
[20] The infantile disorder of “leftism” in communism, Lenin.
http://www.marx2mao.com/M2M(SP)/Lenin(SP)/LWC20s.html#s8
[21] https://www.iccr.gr/es/issue_article/Los-pretextos-de-justificacion-de-la-guerra-imperialista-son-una-cortina-de-humo-a-los-ojos-del-pueblo/
[22] Ibid.
[23] https://pcpe.es/sobre-el-imperialismo-y-la-piramide-imperialista/
[24] The infantile disorder of “leftism” in communism, Lenin.
[25] Imperialism and the Split of Socialism, Lenin. https://www.marxists.org/english/lenin/works/1910s/10-1916.htm