A Critical Reassessment of the Socialist Experiments of the

twentieth century instrumental for Marxists today

March 25, 2012. ‘POLEMIC’, a discussion forum of intellectuals, activists and students organized a talk on ‘Socialist Experiments of the twentieth century, Capitalist Restoration and Problems of Socialism’ in Mumbai on Sunday. Abhinav Sinha, editor of the renowned hindi magazine ‘Muktikami Chhatron-Yuvaon ka Aahwan’ was the speaker on the occasion. Prashant, the convener of ‘Polemic’, Mumbai, while welcoming the audience , said that Polemic’s aim is to initiate an open ended discussion and debate on the real issues pertaining to the progressive movement and ideology today, and the problems of building a new revolutionary socialist alternative to the present oppressive and exploitative capitalist system. He then asked abhinav to express his views on the aforementioned topic.

                         

Abhinav, who has been active in the student-youth movement and labour movement for past twelve years and is researching on the new forms of working class resistance in the age of globalization, began his talk with a short discussion on the serious crisis that the entire capitalist order is facing today. People all around the world are taking to streets against vagaries of capitalism. However, these spontaneous movements have clearly failed to provide any alternative to capitalism. Various speculative philosophers like Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, etc are propagating a new fallacy in the name of communism and in fact it is the reiteration of the same old post-modernist attack on the revolutionary core of Marxism, that is, the concept of class, proletarian dictatorship, state, and revolution. Today, the revolutionary core of the Marxist theory must be defended against the onslaught of these new vagabond philosophers, who are being hailed by the western media as most innovative and 'entertaining' thinkers. Euphoric claims about ‘end of history’, ‘end of ideology’ etc notwithstanding, history has shown that Marxism is the only ideology that has been able to provide a scientific, practicable alternative to the predatory capitalist system. Therefore, in the present scenario one needs to once again make a critical assessment of the successes and failures of the socialist experiments of the 20th century, especially the Soviet socialism.

Further elaborating on this point, Abhinav said that communist revolutionaries must learn form the positive and negative experiences of the Soviet and Chinese experiment of socialist transformation. Socialism is a long transitional period between a class society and classless society. During this period too, classes, economic inequality, bourgeois values, rights and privileges are in the existence in society. During this protracted period of the socialist transition, for a very long time, the possibilities of capitalist restoration are present from the side of the old exploiting classes as well as the new bourgeiosie which comes into existence within the revolutionary party and state. This new bourgeoisie is generated from the continuing disparity between mental labour and manual labour, between town and country and between industry and agriculture. Therefore, under socialism the fundamental question is to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of proletariat. These three great inter-personal disparities have to be eliminated through perpetual revolution in the sphere of ideology, culture, art, psychology, politics and other spheres of superstructure. Under socialism too, the class struggle is the key link of the development of society. And here lies the unprecedented significance of the Great Cultural Proletariat Revolution, the epoch making contribution by Mao-tse-tung, and this is precisely where the Soviet socialism under Stalin failed. 

While Stalin defended the achievements of socialism in the Soviet Union and made unprecented advance in direction of abolition of private property, he failed to understand that even after the abolition of juridical forms of private property, the revolutionization of production relations has to be continued under the proletarian state, and merely developing production itself would not lead to a class-less society. Despite his incomplete understanding of Socialist construction, Stalin defended the USSR under his leadership, against the Nazi invasion and single-handedly won the war. His achievements were great despite serious mistakes that he committed. Winding up his talk, Abhinav said that the new editions of proletarian revolution can be created on the basis of this understanding and preparation can be made in advance to prevent various possibilities of the capitalist restoration. He added, however, that before that the communist revolutionaries around the world have to get rid of their dogmatism and reductionism and understand Marxism as a science

rather than a set of dead formulae.

Around 55 intellectuals, activists, and students attended the programme. The talk was followed by a session of open discussion. Various activists, intellectuals and students participated in the discussion, including Com. C. Shekhar, Mr. Das from CGPI, Mr. Praveen Nadkar from 'Jan Hastakshep', Trade Union activist Ms. Deepti Gopwatee, Com. Vijay Kulkarni from Lal Nishan (Leninvaadi), Com. Shyam Sonkar from Republican Panthers, Asif from IIT Bombay, among others.