Proletarian

Those are the words that were famously said by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Those were the words that were so frequntly repeated in the writings of the CPSU(B) under Stalin. Those were the words that carried on the Marxist-Leninist tradition for centuries.

But, recently, these words have become muddled, even ignored. Those who claim to profess Marxism-Leninism, to agree with it's internationalist, anti-revisionist sentiment, have ignored it and followed nationalism instead.

They have muddled the Marxist-Leninist tradition.

As J.V. Stalin said:

Whether the proletariat rallies to the banner of bourgeois nationalism depends on the degree of development of class antagonisms, on the class consciousness and degree of organization of the proletariat. The class-conscious proletariat has its own tried banner, and has no need to rally to the banner of the bourgeoisie. (Stalin, Marxism and the National Question)

These words remain as true today as they were said. The “banner of bourgeois nationalism” today has become all-pervasive, as seen in Maoism, as seen in the reactionary anti-worker movements around the world.

The banner of proletarian internationalism, however, is ignored by the bourgeoisie, who simply want to keep their power. While the oppression of nations affects the proletariat, the bourgeoisie cannot be the ones to protect them, and do not want to be.

Only the proletariat, united, can fight for it's own freedom and liberties. The banner of bourgeois nationalism cannot be used by the proletariat. Leninism-Stalinism understands this, but those claiming to uphold it often don't.

Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Iosif Stalin, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) understood this.

However, many did not. These were lead by Maoite China, and, later, the Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite USSR.

Maoite China

The 8th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is a goldmine for examples of Chinese revisionism. For example:

“Thus, it has become possible for the bourgeois-democratic revolution in our country to be directly transformed, by peaceful means, into a proletarian-socialist revolution. “Second, in our country the allies of the working class consist not only of the peasantry and the urban petty-bourgeoisie, but also of the national bourgeoisie. For this reason, in order to transform our old economy, we must use peaceful means of transformation not only in the case of agriculture and handicrafts, but also in the case of capitalist industry and commerce. This needs to be done step by step; this too needs time. “But, in order to accomplish the tasks of socialist transformation, we must also adopt policies and measures suited to conditions in China so that the broad masses of our peasants and handicraftsmen will gladly take to collective economy, and the national bourgeoisie accept socialist transformation without much reluctance.”

I will now tackle each of these quotes individually: 1) You can never directly transform a bourgeois-democracy into proletarian-socialism, through peaceful means. This was proven when Allende tried it, this was proven when the Mensheviks “tried” it. The October Revolution had to succeed the February one. 2) The bourgeoisie are never among the allies of the working class. This open, crude, nationalism was fought by Stalin in Marxism and the National Question. As he pointed out:

The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement. It appeals to its “native folk” and begins to shout about the “fatherland,'; claiming that its own cause is the cause of the nation as a whole. It recruits itself an army from among its “countrymen” in the interests of ... the “fatherland.” Nor do the “folk” always remain unresponsive to its appeals; they rally around its banner: the repression from above affects them too and provokes their discontent.

Thus the national movement begins.

The strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it.

Whether the proletariat rallies to the banner of bourgeois nationalism depends on the degree of development of class antagonisms, on the class consciousness and degree of organization of the proletariat. The class-conscious proletariat has its own tried banner, and has no need to rally to the banner of the bourgeoisie.

[...]

From what has been said it will be clear that the national struggle under the conditions of rising capitalism is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves. Sometimes the bourgeoisie succeeds in drawing the proletariat into the national movement, and then the national struggle externally assumes a “nation-wide” character. But this is so only externally. In its essence it is always a bourgeois struggle, one that is to the advantage and profit mainly of the bourgeoisie. (Stalin, Marxism and the National Question)

But the unity of a nation diminishes not only as a result of migration. It diminishes also from internal causes, owing to the growing acuteness of the class struggle. In the early stages of capitalism one can still speak of a “common culture” of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But as large-scale industry develops and the class struggle becomes more and more acute, this “common culture” begins to melt away. One cannot seriously speak of the “common culture” of a nation when employers and workers of one and the same nation cease to understand each other. What “common destiny” can there be when the bourgeoisie thirsts for war, and the proletariat declares “war on war”? Can a single inter-class national union be formed from such opposed elements? And, after this, can one speak of the “union of all the members of the nation into a national-cultural community”? Is it not obvious that national autonomy is contrary to the whole course of the class struggle? (Stalin, Marxism and the National Question)

There can be no unity between proletarian and bourgeois classes.

3) The last is a simple one to debunk. The bourgeoisie will never accept socialism “without much reluctance.”

The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. (Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder)

I think by now the open revisionism of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party has been made clear. For further reading, I would recommend Socialism Cannot Be Built in Alliance with the Bourgeoisie.

Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite USSR

The 1977 Constitution of the USSR begins with:

The aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat having been fulfilled, the Soviet state has become a state of the whole people. (Brezhnev Constitution of the USSR)

This is outwardly revisionist. As Lenin pointed out:

If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters inevitably transform the state (and we are speaking of democracy, i.e., one of the forms of the state) into an instrument of the rule of their class, the exploiters, over the exploited. Hence, as long as there are exploiters who rule the majority, the exploited, the democratic state must inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters. A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, “and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from “democracy”. If we argue in a liberal way, we must say: the majority decides, the minority submits. Those who do not submit are punished. That is all. Nothing need be said about the class character of the state in general, or of “pure democracy” in particular, because it is irrelevant; for a majority is a majority and a minority is a minority. A pound of flesh is a pound of flesh, and that is all there is to it. (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky)

These liberal tendencies in the USSR are here seen in their full light. Here note the differences between the 1977 (Brezhnev) and 1936 (Stalin) constitutions of the USSR:

All power in the USSR belongs to the people. (Brezhnev Constitution of the USSR)

All power in the U.S.S.R. belongs to the working people of town and country as represented by the Soviets of Working People’s Deputies. (Stalin Constitution of the USSR)

The difference is jarring. The first protects the bourgeoisie by pretending the Soviet Union is a “non-class” state, while the seconds protects the proletariat by showing that the USSR, is, outwardly, is a proletarian state.

However, the idea of a non-class state is impossible. As Lenin and Engels write:

This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable. (Lenin, The State and Revolution)

In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap. [italics my own] (Engels, The Civil War in France)

The state is a weapon of one class against another. There is no “non-class state.” Just to confirm that the revisionist USSR actually considered itself a state, read Article 64 of the Brezhnev Constitution of the USSR:

It is the duty of every citizen of the USSR to respect the national dignity of other citizens, and to strengthen friendship of the nations and nationalities of the multinational Soviet state. (Brezhnev Constitution of the USSR)

Nikita Khrushchev had also had similar ideas:

The draft Programme of the Party raises and resolves, a new important question of communist theory and practice―the development of the dictatorship of the working class into a state of the whole people, the character and tasks of this state, and its future under communism. The state of the whole people is a new stage in the development of the socialist stage, an all-important milestone on the road from socialist statehood to communist public self-government. (Khrushchev, The Road to Communism)

He also went against intensification of class struggle under socialism, Lenin's theory that class struggle does not die down under socialism, but rather, intensifies:

Stalin's report at the February-March central committee plenum in 1937, Deficiencies of party work and methods for the liquidation of the Trotskyites and of other two-facers, contained an attempt at theoretical justification of the mass terror policy under the pretext that class war must allegedly sharpen as we march forward toward socialism. Stalin asserted that both history and Lenin taught him this. (Khrushchev, The Cult of the Individual)

Khrushchev says this, ignorant of the fact that Lenin had taught him this.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat that is victorious and has taken political power into its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance. (Lenin, Deception of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality)

I hate to use the same quote twice, as I used it for Mao, but I guess revisionists are quite similar:

The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. (Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder)

Conclusion

The proletariat must fight against nationalism and revisionism and all it's forms and for proletarian internationalism. Proletarians of all countries, unite!