Real Communism Will Not Be a Union, Not Socialist, Not a Soviet Republic
“Would you like to read Red Flag, a communist newspaper?” a comrade asked a Black postal worker at a rally against the US Supreme Court decision denying abortion rights.
“Communism?” he responded. “They tried that in Russia. It didn’t work.”
“Not really,” the comrade answered. “You can tell by the name—the USSR—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They didn’t even claim to be communist. We’ve got a different plan. We have learned from the errors of the past that building socialism after a revolution is a dead end. We fight directly for communism.”
The postal worker and his partner took Red Flag and promised to read it.
December 30, 2022 is the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the USSR. We can learn three hard lessons from the last century.
Fight for Communism—Not Socialism
The strategy of the 19th and early 20th century communist movement was revolution to overthrow capitalism and seize the means of production—factories, banks, railroads, land. They would keep a market economy with jobs, money, and wages.
But, they said, the surplus value that workers created would go to the whole society rather than private capitalists. They called this socialism and saw it as a stage necessary to build a material basis of abundance and allow an eventual transition to a communist society.
The Russian communists (Bolsheviks) instituted “war communism” during the civil war that followed their revolution. But they always saw it as an emergency measure.
Amid the chaos and rebellions that followed, they retreated to the New Economic Policy. This policy created openly capitalist relations—a market economy with capitalist competition for jobs, housing, and customers. It continued the material basis for individualism, selfishness, sexism, and pitting workers of different “races” and genders against each other.
Socialism never led to communism anywhere.
We won’t make that mistake. We prepare now to build communism directly whenever and wherever we lead workers to power.
Workers Need a Mass Communist Party—No Governmental Fig Leaf
When Czar Nicholas II abdicated in February 1917, Russia became a republic. Workers and soldiers reorganized the soviets (workers’ councils) that had been important during the defeated 1905 revolution. They shared power with Kerensky’s bourgeois Provisional government.
The Bolsheviks opposed Kerensky under the slogan “all power to the Soviets” and seized power in October 1917.
In January 1918 they formed the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. Local workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets elected representatives to regional soviets. These then elected representatives to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
In practice, the Party controlled all these elections. It needed the fiction of an independent government to support its socialist economy.
We think this was a mistake that hid the nature of class rule. The Party became the core of a new capitalist class as it managed socialism’s capitalist social relations.
In contrast, we are organizing a mass party which includes everyone who agrees to fight collectively for communism. In the future it will include the whole society.
We won’t have a government separate from the party and the masses it mobilizes for communism. The masses will rule directly to guarantee the victory of communism as long as remnants of the capitalist class exist anywhere. Later, the masses will run society without there being anyone to “rule” over.
One Global Party Fighting for a World Without Nations and Borders
Fraternal Bolshevik parties in Belarus, Ukraine, and the South Caucasus were part of the revolutionary movement leading up to the November 1917 victory. They led their own struggles against the czar and the reactionary forces during the civil war.
At that time, the Russian party, with the agreement of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, made unprincipled compromises with the Shah of Iran and the nationalist Ataturk of Turkey instead of supporting the communist insurgencies in those countries. Instead of fighting for world revolution, Soviet Russia began to build state capitalism, with a governmental structure to match.
After the civil war, the Soviet Republics of Belarus, Ukraine, and the South Caucasus joined Soviet Russia in one nation-state. Russia wanted a unitary state with limited autonomy for the other republics. The other republics, remembering czarist Russian imperialism, wanted a confederation—a much more limited union. They compromised on a “Union” and adopted the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR. It included the right of any republic to secede.
Today we fight for a world without nations and without borders. We embody that commitment in the organization of one party of the working-class worldwide: the International Communist Workers’ Party. We are not a confederation (“Comintern”) of national parties.
We understand the idea of the Party “center” not as geographical but as the center of ideological struggle. This includes the pages of Red Flag. Our core collectives include comrades from many places. We use technology to cross the bosses’ boundaries as we struggle to advance our line and to improve our work.
Our areas of concentration include garment workers in South Asia and Central America, students in South Africa and India, and immigrant industrial workers in the United States and Europe. We invite you to join us in fighting for a truly communist world.
Read Our Pamphlet:
Summaries of Mobilize the Masses for Communism
Front page of this issue
