Illusions in Elections here ♦ Learning from Russian Revolution to Fight Directly for Communism here ♦
1960s Chinese poster attacking Soviet revisionism
The illusion of the Vote and the Reality of Communist Revolution
“The illusion of having a socialist or progressive president, in the long run, is as harmful as a fascist,” said a comrade during a discussion about the new Chilean president.
Gabriel Boric, a young socialist, 36 years old, was elected president of Chile at the end of 2021. His career as a student activist during the 2011 protests and later as a legislator gave him an image of a fighter for social causes. A large majority of young people went out to vote in the elections which gave him the victory.
“I will be president of all Chileans,” Boric said. He is promising to reform the health and pension system, raise the minimum wage and tax the super-rich more.
In his new cabinet of 24 ministers, 14 are women. Including the granddaughter of former socialist president Salvador Allende, assassinated in 1973. He gave her the position of minister of defense.
Legislator Camila Vallejo of the revisionist Communist Party of Chile, who was also a student leader, will be the government’s spokesperson.
The finance minister will be Mario Marcel, who was president of the Central Bank and worked for the World Bank. His nomination was applauded by the big Chilean capitalists.
Boric’s opponent was the fascist José Kast. His father, German by birth, was a soldier in World War II and a member of Hitler’s Nazi Party. Like father like son. Kast is a great admirer of the murderous fascist Augusto Pinochet, who together with the CIA (USA) overthrew and assassinated Salvador Allende and thousands of Chileans.
Kast congratulated Boric on his win. His party has a lot of power in parliament and the senate and will be part of the decisions of the new government.
The masses, especially the youth, are looking for an alternative to the ravages of capitalism. But trying to reform capitalism will not work.
A true communist revolution is needed, one that eliminates money and wage slavery. Boric and his cabinet will maintain the foundation of capitalism.
But the worst thing is that they politically disarm the masses. They take away the revolutionary communist vision of a new world: a communist world without racism, sexism, and exploitation. We will not achieve this by peaceful means.
Votes, ballot boxes and elections only legitimize the capitalist dictatorship. They are the silken glove of the capitalist democratic dictatorship that hides the iron fist of the capitalist fascist dictatorship, which they bring out when the masses seek more radical changes. This was the Pinochet’s attack in 1973.
Boric is not the first socialist in Latin America to come to power and want to reform capitalism. History has shown us that those experiences only keep the capitalist system alive. For example, Allende in Chile, the FMLN in El Salvador, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Maduro in Venezuela, Jose Mujica in Uruguay. In all these places the working masses continue to be wage slaves and suffer the attacks of capitalism.
Changing our lives will not be done by voting and electing governments that fight for us.
We need to make the masses aware of true communist ideas and end capitalism through a communist revolution. For that we need thousands and millions organizing active communist collectives in the factories, schools and barracks.
Let’s start with ones and twos, reading and distributing our communist literature. These will mobilize the masses who will fight for and build the communist world that we so badly need. Building a new society will require the daily and constant action of millions.
Let’s defeat the illusion of a good capitalism, with the reality of building a communist world. Join ICWP
Comrade in Los Angeles, USA
We Learn from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Directly for Communism Is the Only Way to Triumph
Some comrades and friends want us to talk more about the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian Revolution.
Our pamphlet Mobilize the Masses for Communism talks about the weaknesses of the Bolshevik party. It explains that Soviet socialism could not “become” communism. Its main point, however, is what ICWP will do differently: what we have learned from the mistakes of the Soviets and others.
We recognize the Russian Revolution as one of the greatest working-class victories. The Russian communist party grew from 24,000 members in February 1917 to over 200,000 seven months later. Many were in the Russian army in the trenches of the first world war. These members, mostly new Bolsheviks, mobilized millions to overthrow the liberal capitalist Kerensky government and establish the Soviet republic.
The Bolsheviks declared communism as their goal. Fourteen imperialist powers sent troops to attack the Soviets, but the Bolsheviks organized more than five million workers and peasants into the Red Army to smash them. They also organized among the soldiers of the invading armies. Every invader witnessed big revolts among rank-and-file soldiers, forcing them to withdraw.
In 1918, the Bolsheviks organized society as “war communism.” As an emergency measure, they eliminated money, but they didn’t think that the masses (or the system of production) were ready for this long term.
After the war, Russia was in chaos. There were rebellions of workers, peasants, and soldiers. In 1921 the Bolsheviks retreated to the New Economic Policy (NEP), which meant openly capitalist relationships.
The first socialist Five-Year Plan replaced NEP in 1928. Bolshevik leaders advocated struggle toward more collective ways of life but undermined that by maintaining a wage system that pushed the masses to seek personal gain. Workers were urged to earn bonuses by producing more; students to get higher grades and white-collar jobs; soldiers to get medals and promotions; and women were rewarded for producing more babies.
This contradiction sharpened as factory and farm workers, including party members, fought for a more collective approach. While few workers or Party cadres questioned the wage system itself, many struggled against its divisively competitive policies.
Socialism was actually state capitalism. Although the means of production were no longer in the hands of private capitalists, the economic system still rested on money, banks, wages, and production for sale. Having rejected that people can be won directly to communism, Party leaders had no choice left but to accommodate capitalist relations.
Defeating the Nazis in World War II was a great achievement of millions mobilized most significantly by communists. Many – including about 20 million in the Soviet Union – died fighting for a world in which the working class, led by the Party, would become the human race.
Many counterrevolutionaries also died. This was war, and traitors had to be dealt with swiftly and summarily. Unlike many other countries, Russia had no fascist “Fifth Column” because they were dealt with before they could do further harm to the revolution.
But the Soviet leadership lacked confidence in the working class. They had decided in 1934 that defeating fascism would require allying with “lesser-evil” capitalists such as the USA and Great Britain. This meant organizing around nationalism and a vague classless “anti-fascism” rather than for communism.
The defeat of the Nazis in 1945 thus laid the basis, not for world communism, but for a new Soviet empire that renounced and suppressed world revolution. The failure of the Bolshevik revolution to achieve communism became obvious in 1989, but Russian communism was already defeated once its leaders determined to mobilize the masses for socialism, not communism.
We have learned from both their victories and their mistakes. We fight directly for communism and know the working class will be won to this. This is the only way the Party and our class can triumph.
We invite newer and younger comrades to send in your questions about the former Soviet Union and other aspects of communist history. Future articles will try to answer them.
For further discussion, see: Women in the Soviet Union
Read our manifesto:
“Mobilize the Masses for Communism”
available here