LESSONS FROM PROLETARIAN STRUGGLES
THE PITFALL of anyone arguing that
communism is not attainable in our lifetime is the same as that of those who
preach to the poor to accept their wretched existence on earth for anyway they
will inherit the kingdom of heaven – metaphysics.
At
a time when Marx had just completed formalizing the idea of communism, it was
understandable that one would think about it as attainable only beyond our
lifetime. The Communist Manifesto had antedated the Paris Commune by more than
two decades, hence at the time he wrote the manifesto no experience was at hand
to prove that communism could be achieved in the immediate sense.
The Paris
Commune upheld the fact, which Marx proceeded to annotate into the manifesto,
that “the proletariat cannot just lay hold of the machinery of the bourgeois
state and use it for its purpose.” This reinforced the idea of armed struggle
having to be waged in order to install the workers as the ruling class. Such
installation, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the
condition for the abolition of classes and the withering away of the state
whence alone to proceed the communist society.
Moreover the
liberation of the proletariat must be on a world scale. Therefore, so long as
there remain in the world workers continuing to suffer bourgeois oppression and
exploitation, communism cannot be said to exist.
Indeed
the context within which to establish communism is awesome: workers armed
revolutions raging all over the world; proletarian dictatorships needing long
periods to consolidate; and longer periods still for those dictatorships to
rearrange relations of productions and put in place the mechanism for the
abolition of private property and classes. One whole great era counting
centuries appears to be necessary to truly bring about the withering away of
the state, the final phase for the establishment of a communist society. Given
this context, communism appears utterly unrealizable now or in the near future.
For
this reason, communism has been categorized as no different from that heaven
for inheriting by the poor not in the here-and-now but in the great beyond.
But,
again, in the time of Marx that was understandable. But between 1848, when he
wrote the Communist Manifesto, and 2012 is more than a century and half of
workers’ unceasing struggles. These struggles have crystallized aspects of
proletarian politics which support the idea that communism is not a heavenly
promise but a dream attainable in our lifetime.
For
instance, the Bolshevik Revolution of
1917. Contrary to popular perceptions, that revolution was not against the bourgeoisie
but against the feudal rule of Tzar Nicolas II. What overthrew the succeeding
bourgeois rule was not a revolution but a quiet coup undertaken by the
Bolsheviks through the simple expedience of arresting the Kerensky cabinet and
making Kerensky himself just flee. Whereupon Lenin proclaimed the famous lines:
“All power to the Soviets!” From accounts of the event, it was hardly a violent
takeover, definitely a bloodless one.
In
contrast, the struggle of the Chinese Communist Party against the Kuomintang
was bloody. After fighting together against the Japanese invasion beginning
1938, the two parties were thrown into the bloodiest ever in recorded history
of civil wars. Erupting immediately at the end of World War II, the civil
strife lasted for five years and culminated in communist takeover of the entire
mainland China in 1949, while the Kuomintang retreated to the small island of
Formosa (now Taiwan).
On
the other hand, the struggle of Fidel Castro against Cuban Dictator Fulgencio
Batista
in 1959 offers a role model for a
revolution against a totalitarian regime. Though having communistic aims due to
the influence of Che Guevarra, the Castro revolt did not show its communist
color all throughout the struggle. Castro proclaimed socialism only when he was
already entrenched in power.
In
Southeast Asia, communist rebellions in Vietnam and Laos emerged victorious,
with military coups with shades of socialist leanings prevailing in Cambodia
and Myanmar.
From
the Bolshevik experience, we see that seizure of political power by the
proletariat need not involve a mass movement. What was needed was the ingenuity
of accommodating into the purposes of the enemy and there to have the patience
to wait for the right opportunity to strike.
Moreover, the
Bolsheviks showed that the political power to install at the moment of seizure is
not necessarily proletarian. What the Bolsheviks seized was bourgeois political
power, and it was that very power which they used in bringing about the
transformation of Russia into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
We see, then,
that bourgeois political power is not demolished on the rubble of which to
build proletarian political control. Far from that, it is on bourgeois
political power that proletarian political control builds.
It should be
considered however that the bourgeois Kerensky government was newly-installed
from the just-concluded uprising against the Tzarist regime and had not quite
consolidated itself so as to be able to withstand brand new attacks, much more
treachery; Kerensky had allied with the Bolsheviks in the seizure of power from
Tzar Nicolas II and Lenin had insisted in not putting up a separate Soviet
government as proposed by the Mensheviks; his idea of accommodating themselves
into the Kerensky government by sitting in the Duma prevailed. Most important of all, Trotsky was in
complete control of the Red Army.
The
Chinese experience presents a classic strategy for people’s war in times of
global conflagration. But no more of such situation as China was in exists in
present times and it is highly unlikely that the Chinese Communist Party
strategy by which it defeated the Kuomintang
will come in handy even if the
current tension over the Scarborough Shoal erupts into a wider conflict in Asia
Pacific.
But
there is one significant fact about the Chinese experience which not many know
about. During its inception, the Chinese Communist Party was a small group of
twenty individuals, pioneers of the proletarian cause in China. The dominant
party at the time was the Kuomintang, party of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, founder of the
Republic of China. When the Japanese invaded China in 1938 and a resistance
must be put up against the invasion, the Chinese Communist Party was prevailed
upon by the Soviet Union to just accommodate itself into the Kuomintang, which
Russia actually supported. It was while being integrated with the Kuomintang
that the Chinese Communist Party embarked on building cells of political power
in the countryside. These cells were called armed independent regimes – an
application of Mao Tse Tung’s strategy of surrounding the cities through the
countryside. Upon the outbreak of the Chinese civil war, those armed
independent regimes became the backbone of the Chinese Communist Party in its war
with the Kuomintang.
In
the case of the Cuban Revolution, the fact that it won shows that armed
revolution is a correct form of struggle by the workers against a bourgeois
dictatorship. It further shows that the socialist aim of the revolution is not
a factor for winning a workers’ struggle and that it is all right to conceal
that aim while the revolution is ongoing. Most of all, the Cuban revolution
proves that achieving political power by the proletariat right under the nose
of the bourgeoisie can be done; Cuba is just at the backyard of America, the
cradle of world bourgeois power.
The
Vietnam struggle shatters the myth that size and weaponry decide the outcome of
battle; the barefoot, cloth-garmented David Vietcong slew the heavily-armored
Goliath Uncle Sam with virtually just a pebble fired from a slingshot. And the
eventual successes of the rebellion in Laos and the military coups in Cambodia
and Myanmar point to the advantage of establishing workers’ political power in
contagious areas; this was the pattern Che Guevarra was following after the success
of the Cuban revolution when he tried to push revolutionary movements in South
America, culminating in his capture and execution in Bolivia.
At the moment,
the situation in Nepal is worth watching. Back in 2006, the Unified Communist
Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) swept away the monarchy in popular elections
that were part of the political settlement of the war it had been fighting with
the Nepal military. Recently the Maoist coalition government which had been
running the country since 2006 demanded the sacking of Nepal Army Chief General
Kul Bahadur Katwal, who, backed by the Nepal president, defied that demand no
matter that it is constitutional. Prime Minister Prachanda and the Maoist
members of the coalition were forced to resign over the controversy. Now
multitudes are pouring out once again into the streets of Nepal, damning the
ruling bourgeois elite. Things are back to where they were in 2006.
Meanwhile
socialist parties of Europe had taken to the road of parliamentary struggle in
fighting for the workers. The Labor Party in the United Kingdom and the
Communist Party in Italy had at one time or another exercised political control
of society without having to disturb its bourgeois character. The latest to
emerge in this genre is Francois Hollande, who recently won president of France
as a candidate of the Socialist Party.
The foregoing
citations of hard facts and insights on various past revolutions are meant to
draw whatever enlightenment may be had from these events in terms of gaining a
correct grasp of the problem at hand: How may the proletariat live communism in
the here-and-now?
Summing up, we
enumerate the lessons the citations pointed to:
1 ) From
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, seizure of political power by the workers
need not be through a mass movement, much less be bloody.
It is important that a military
component is in place.
There is the element of
“accommodating into the enemy’s purpose” to work on
in any case. The
implication here is that a kind of secretive maneuver may be employed to get a
communistic purpose accomplished.
2 ) From the Chinese experience, people's war is effective in times of world war..
Building cells of political power is a sly maneuver performing a dual task: as a defense of
revolutionary gains, at the same time as a strategy for surrounding the enemy
wave by wave. In form, the strategy is not likely to apply anymore, but it is
the essence of the strategy that is important, and it can work.
Again, there is
the element of “accommodating into the enemy’s purpose”. This is a very
ingenious principle (actually a Sun Tzu tenet) which can work magic for the
proletarian struggle in the present times.
In contemporary
terms, the whole grim bloodiness of the Chinese civil war appears negated by
the sliding back of China into not just capitalism but global capitalism. In
simple words, the deaths of comrades had all been unnecessary sacrifices.
3 ) From
the Cuban Revolution, two outstanding lessons are had. One, in struggling,
workers don’t need to flaunt their communistic color. And two, workers can chip
at bourgeois political power right in the bourgeoisie’s own turf.
As to the success of Castro’s armed
struggle, it is history. Chances are it won’t come in handy anymore. Well and
good, then. As Sun Tzu says, “The best general is one who wins a war without
fighting a battle.”
4 ) The
Vietnam experience epitomizes the dialectics of big and small, strong and weak,
victory and defeat. And the spread of communism across South East Asia is an
innovation on the “wave-by-wave build up of cells of political power” strategy
employed by Mao Tse Tung in the Chinese experience.
5 ) The
current turmoil in Nepal validates our earlier assertion that people’s war is
unlikely to apply anymore in contemporary times. The NUCP-M did right by
accommodating itself into the purpose of the Nepal ruling elite against the monarchy,
but by demanding the replacement of the Nepal Army Chief, it did wrong. As we
pointed out from the Bolshevik experience, in a workers’ seizure of political
power within an alliance with the bourgeoisie, there must be a military
component. The Bolshevik had that component absolutely under the control of
Trotsky. The NUCP-M denied itself that component by sacking the very head of
the Nepal military.
6 ) The
workers’ parties in Europe accommodating themselves into the purposes of the
bourgeoisie are to be encouraged. It is of no moment that, if at all, their
espousal of workers’ interests is hypocritical. What is important is that we
make good use of their hypocrisy.
How
these lessons are to be applied in advancing proletarian revolutionary politics
will
depend on the obtaining specific
concrete conditions. But whatever the conditions are, all that
are needed to be
done are in some way or another embodied in these lessons and, in any case,
pose
the ultimate challenge to the ingenuity of servants of the proletariat.
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