Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism

Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism
First published	1980
Source	Marxists Internet Archive
Audiobook	Scientific Socialism

Introduction

At the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Spain, in April 1978, the Carrillo revisionists declared that their party was no longer a Marxist-Leninist party, but a "Marxist democratic revolutionary party,". "To consider Leninism the Marxism of our time," declared Carrillo, "is unacceptable."

The French revisionist leaders proposed to their 23rd Congress, held in May 1979, that they should give up referring to Marxism-Leninism in the documents of their party and use the term "scientific socialism" instead.

The Italian revisionists too, at the 15th Congress of their party in April 1979, removed from their Constitution the requirement that the members of the party should master Marxism-Leninism and apply its teachings. "The formula of 'Marxism-Leninism' does not express the whole wealth of our theoretical and ideological heritage," said the followers of Togliatti. Now anyone can take part in the Italian revisionist party, regardless of the ideology to which he adheres or which he applies.

In this way the Eurocommunist revisionists formally and publicly have sanctioned the final break with Marxism-Leninism, which in practice they had done years ago. Very pleased with this rapid and complete social-democratic transformation of these parties, the bourgeois propaganda called 1979 "the year of Eurocommunism".

In a situation when the European bourgeoisie is in great difficulties because of the grave economic and political crisis, when the revolt of the masses against the consequences of this crisis and capitalist oppression and exploitation is mounting to ever higher levels, nothing could serve it better than the anti-Marxist views and anti-worker activity of the Eurocommunists. Nothing could give greater assistance to the strategy of imperialism for the suppression of the revolution, the undermining of liberation struggles and domination of the world than the revisionist, pacifist, capitulationist, collaborationist trends, including Eurocommunism.

The Western bourgeoisie does not conceal its enthusiasm over the fact that now the Eurocommunist revisionists have lined themselves up with the social-democrats, and the fascists to attack the revolution, Marxism-Leninism and communism jointly, with all their weapons. The capitalists are overjoyed that they are preparing new administrators of their affairs to gradually replace the social-democrats, whose long service in the apparatuses of the bourgeois state and open struggle against the working class and the cause of socialism in many countries, has led them into the ranks of extreme reaction and compromised them deeply in the eyes of the workers. Today the social-democrats, have become identified, not only ideologically and politically, but also from the social viewpoint, with the big bourgeoisie. Now the bourgeoisie has great hopes that the Eurocommunist revisionists will become the main warders of the capitalist order, the banner-bearers of counterrevolution. But the great lords of capital are a little hasty in beating the victory drum.

For more than a century now, communism has been terrifying the capitalist bourgeoisie and land-owners, imperialists and opportunists, and renegades from Marxism-Leninism. For more than a hundred years Marxism-Leninism has been guiding the proletarians in their battles to overthrow capitalism and for the triumph of socialism. Its triumphant banner waved for a long time in many countries, and the workers, peasants, people's intellectuals, women and the youth tasted the fruits of that free, just, equal and human life for which Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin had fought. Although socialism has been overthrown in the Soviet Union and other countries where the counter-revolution triumphed, this does not prove that Marxism-Leninism has been defeated and invalidated, as the bourgeoisie and the revisionists claim.

The great leaders of the proletariat, Marx and Lenin, pointed out and stressed that the revolution is not a triumphant march in a straight line. It will have victories but also setbacks; it advances in zigzags and mounts step by step. The history of the development of human society shows that the replacement of one social system by another, higher system, is not done within one day, but covers a whole historical epoch. In many instances and in many countries the bourgeois revolutions, which replaced the feudal system of exploitation with the capitalist system of exploitation, were unable to escape the counter-revolution, either. An example of this is France, where the bourgeois revolution, although it was the most profound and radical revolution of the time, was unable to establish and consolidate the capitalist order immediately. After the initial victory of 1789, the bourgeoisie and the working masses had to rise again in revolution to overthrow the feudal monarchy of the Bourbons and the feudal system in general and finally restore the bourgeois order.

The epoch of proletarian revolutions has just begun. The advent of socialism represents an historical necessity which results from the objective development of society. This is inevitable. The counter-revolutions which have been carried out and the obstacles which emerge can prolong the existence of the old exploiting system to some extent, but they are powerless to halt the march of human society towards its socialist future.

Eurocommunism labours to raise a barrier of thorns and brambles to the revolution, in order to defend the capitalist system. But the flames of the revolution have swept over and destroyed not only such barriers, but also whole fortresses erected by the bourgeoisie.

The revisionists and the Eurocommunists in particular, are not the first to attack Marxism-Leninism and to pronounce the gravest anathemas against it. The bourgeois reaction and imperialists have massacred, tortured and killed in prisons thousands and hundreds of thousands of communists, and fighters for the revolution, who had embraced the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and fought for the liberation of the proletariat and the peoples. The fascists have burned the books of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin in the city squares, and in many countries still people are sent to the firing squad when it is discovered that they read their books or whisper their names with hope and admiration, even in secret. No library could hold all the books, magazines, newspapers and other publications which attack Marxism-Leninism, no one can calculate or even imagine the quantity and extent of the anti-communist propaganda of imperialism.

Nevertheless, Marxism-Leninism has not disappeared, it is living and flourishing as an ideology and a reality, materialized in the socialist social system constructed according to its teachings. Examplifying this is socialist Albania, the Marxist-Leninist parties, and those millions and millions of workers and peasants who are fighting every day for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, for democracy and national liberation. No force, no torture, no intrigue, no deception can eradicate Marxism-Leninism from the minds and hearts of men.

The doctrine of Marx and Lenin is not a scheme drafted in the studies of philosophers and politicians. It is a reflection of the objective laws of the development of society. Even without knowing Marxism-Leninism, the working people struggle to escape from oppression and exploitation, to overthrow the bosses and tyrants, in order to live in freedom and enjoy the fruits of their toil. But by acquainting themselves with the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, they find the right road in the struggle, find the compass which guides them in the capitalist jungle and gain the light which shows them the certain socialist future.

The revisionists want to smash this compass of the workers, want to dim this light so that they lose this perspective. Until recently the revisionist parties of the West were united in the Khrushchevite-imperialist anti-communist campaign against Stalin. They spoke with great enthusiasm about "liberation from Stalinism", allegedly to return to Leninism, which, according to them, had been distorted by Stalin. Now they preach abandoning Leninism "in order to go back.", to the founders of scientific socialism - Marx and Engels.

These renegades are trying to present their rapid descent down the steps of betrayal of Marxism-Leninism as a painful ascent of the mountain to find the source of the communist truth. However, all revisionists, whether Khrushchevite or Eurocommunist, fight with equal ferocity and cunning both against Stalin and against Lenin and Marx. The initial concentration of their fire against Stalin, leaving Lenin out of it for the time being, was simply tactical. Their class logic told the imperialists and revisionists that at the given moment it was preferable first to destroy socialism in the Soviet Union, first to attack Marxism-Leninism where it had been applied in practice. The bourgeoisie and reaction understood that the capitalist degeneration of the Soviet Union would greatly assist their struggle to bring about the degeneration of communist parties which were not in power.

The name and work of Stalin were linked with the establishment of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and the construction of socialism in that country. By denigrating Stalin and the social system for which he fought and worked throughout his life, reaction and all the anti-communist scum wanted to destroy not only the greatest and most powerful base of socialism, but also the communist dream of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. With their attack on Stalin and his work, they wanted to create an atmosphere of pessimism among the fighters for the revolution, the bitter disappointment of someone who unwittingly, has been guided by a false ideal. However, besides all the great hopes they had pinned on the campaign against Stalin, despite the victory of the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and other countries, the revolution was not conquered, Marxism-Leninism was not eliminated, and socialism was not snuffed out. The Khrushchevite, betrayal was a major one, bit it could never pull down the glorious banner A Marxism-Leninism which the genuine revolutionaries, millions of people who believe in its inexhaustible power, always hold high. While Khrushchevism was unmasked as a counterrevolutionary ideology of the restoration of capitalism and as a great power policy for the domination of the world, Marxism-Leninism remained the ideology which leads to the triumph of the revolution and the liberation of the peoples.

Now the revisionists have turned against Leninism. It is natural to ask- why is this attack against Leninism undertaken and why are pracisely the Eurocommunists the standard-bearers of this attack?

Like Khrushchev, who with his attack against Stalin wanted to attack the theory and practice of the construction of socialism, the Eurocommunists, with their attack on Lenin, want to attack the theory and practice of the proletarian revolution. The work of Lenin is very wide-ranging, but it is closely linked precisely with the preparation and carrying out of the revolution. Therefore, like Khrushchev who could not destroy socialism in the Soviet Union without getting rid of Stalin, the Eurocommunists cannot thoroughly undermine and sabotage the revolution without eradicating Lenin from the minds and hearts of the working people.

In the struggle to deny and denigrate Marxism-Leninism, the bourgeoisie has always had the support of opportunists and renegades of every kind and every hue, according to the time. All of them have proclaimed the end of Marxism. They have described it as unsuitable for the new times, while they have advertised their "modern" ideas as the science of the future. But what became of

Proudhon, Lassalle, Bakunin, Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky and their supporters? History has nothing positive to say about them. Their preachings have served only to hold back and sabotage the revolution, to undermine the struggle of the proletariat and socialism. They were defeated in the struggle with Marxism-Leninism and ended up in the rubbish basket. From time to time new opportunists drag them out of this basket, trying to peddle the bankrupt and discredited formulae and theses of the latter as their own and to oppose Marxism-Leninism. This is what the Eurocommunists are doing today.

The Eurocommunists are not the first and by no means original in their efforts to negate Marxism-Leninism on the grounds that it is "outdated" and that allegedly new theories have been discovered for everyone, proletarians and bourgeois, priests and police, to go over to socialism together, without class struggle, without revolution, without the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Our Party of Labour long ago analysed and unmasked the anti-Marxist theories and counterrevolutionary actions of the Yugoslav and Soviet revisionists. It has also refuted the opportunist and bourgeois views land stands of the Chinese revisionists. It has not refrained from criticizing the ideological and organizational degeneration of the communist parties of Western Europe, either. In this book, however, we shall deal in greater detail with the examination and criticism of the anti-communist concepts and theses of the revisionist current which is doing great harm to the cause of the revolution and socialism not only in Europe but throughout the world.

Its capitalist godfathers have baptized this trend of modern revisionism Eurocommunism, whereas for us Marxist-Leninists it is anti-communism.

I
The New Imperialist Strategy and the birth of Modern Revisionism

Opportunism - a Permanent Ally of the Bourgeoisie

The birth of modern revisionism, like the birth of the old revisionism, is a social phenomenon conditioned by many different historical, economic, political and other causes. Taken as a whole, it is a product of the pressure of the bourgeoisie on the working class and its struggle. Opportunism and revisionism, from the start to this day, have been closely linked with the struggle of the bourgeoisie and imperialism against Marxism-Leninism, have been a constituent part of the capitalist grand strategy to undermine the revolution and perpetuate the bourgeois order. The more the cause of the revolution has advanced, and the more Marxism-Leninism has been spread among the broad masses of the working people, so much the greater has been the attention which imperialism has devoted to the use of revisionism as its favourite weapon to oppose and undermine the triumphant ideology of the proletariat.

This is what happened at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, after the publication of the "Communist Manifesto" and other works of Marx and Engels, and the growth of the influence of Marxism among the working masses of Europe. Precisely at this time reformist trade-unionist currents were spread in Britain, the petty-bourgeois views of Proudhon in France, the petty-bourgeois concepts of Lassalle in Germany, the anarchist ideas of Bakunin in Russia and elsewhere, and so on. This phenomenon appeared again after the heroic events of the Commune of Paris, when the bourgeoisie, mortally afraid of the spread of the great example it set, encouraged the new opportunist trend of Bernstein, who tried to strip Marxism of its revolutionary content and make it harmless to the political domination of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

At the beginning of the 20th century, when the political and economic conditions were becoming more and more ripe for the revolution and the seizure of power by the proletariat, the bourgeoisie gave all-out support to the opportunist trend of the Second International and used it extensively in its manoeuvres for the preparation for and launching of the First World War.

After the historic victory of the October Revolution, when socialism was transformed from a revolutionary theory and movement into a socioeconomic system which had triumphed in one sixth of the world, capitalism was forced to alter its strategy and tactics. Internally, it stepped up its violence and terror even further, began to use the most ferocious means to strengthen its rule even by bringing fascism to power. First of all, it further whipped up its demagogy and propaganda in order to denigrate and distort Marxism-Leninism by inventing new, pseudo-Marxist "theories", by slandering the Soviet Union and preparing for war against it. At that time Lenin wrote that imperialism "...just because it feels that Bolshevism has become a world force, is trying to throttle us as fast as possible in the hope of dealing first with the Russian Bolsheviks, and then with its own." (Lenin)

In 1918 the British, American, French and Japanese imperialists began their military intervention in Russia. The struggle against the first state of workers and peasants brought all the reactionary forces into a single camp. The opportunists and renegades from Marxism also hurled themselves into the attack on the October Revolution and the proletarian state power. Kautsky in Germany, Otto Bauer and Karl Renner in Austria, Léon Blum and Paul Boncourt in France, rose in fury against the October Revolution and the Leninist strategy and tactics of the revolution. They called the October Revolution unlawful, a diversion from the course of historical development and a deviation from the Marxist theory. They preached the peaceful revolution without violence and bloodshed, the taking of power through the majority in parliament; they were against the transformation of the proletariat into a ruling class. They praised bourgeois democracy to the heavens and attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat.

When the armed intervention against Soviet Russia failed and when social-democracy was unable to stop the creation of new communist parties and the great revolutionary drive of the working masses of Europe, the bourgeoisie pinned all its hopes on breaching the communist front "...from within and is looking for champions among the leaders of the RCP (B)."(Stalin)

The Trotskyites again brought up "the theory of permanent revolution", according to which socialism could not be built in the Soviet Union without the triumph of the revolution in other countries. They amalgamated in a single front with the struggle of the bourgeoisie against socialism. Stalin very correctly pointed out that a single enemy front had been created, including everybody, from Chamberlain to Trotsky. The rightists, the Bukharinites also went on the attack against socialism. They were for extinguishing the class struggle, and preached the possibility of the integration of capitalism into socialism.

The strategy of imperialism assumed a more marked counterrevolutionary and anti-communist character, especially after the Second World War, as a result of the alteration in the ratio of forces in favour of socialism and the revolution, which shook the whole capitalist system to its foundations. These changes put the question of the revolution and the triumph of socialism on the order of the day, no longer in just one or two countries-, but in whole regions and continents. Imperialism, headed by American imperialism, this time based its greatest hope on the militarization of the whole of its life, on military blocs and pacts, on violent intervention and open war against socialism and the revolutionary and liberation movements of the peoples. However, it pinned very great hopes also on the invigoration and activation of all the opportunist forces in order to undermine the socialist countries and communist parties from within and to bring about their degeneration.

The Victory over Fascism and the Counter-offensive of Imperialism

The imperialist powers and the whole of world capitalism encouraged and launched the Second World War with the aim of directing it against the Soviet Union and socialism. This war, however, not only failed to overthrow the first socialist state, but also dealt imperialism heavy blows, causing it great damage which put its whole system in jeopardy.

Not only were the armies of fascism routed on the battlefield, but the anti-communist ideology of world imperialism and the counterrevolutionary policy of international opportunism were defeated, too. The fascist powers, Germany, Italy, Japan, which comprised the main striking forces of the attack of international capitalism on socialism and communism, were defeated. The British and French empires, which up till that time had been the "big noises",- in world politics, declined in power and weight and tailed along behind the policy of the United States of America. The anti-communist front was thoroughly breached and the "cordon sanitaire" set up against the Soviet Union was smashed to smithereens.

The Soviet Union, which carried the main burden of the war and played a decisive role in the victory over fascism and the liberation of enslaved peoples, emerged from the war strong and with an indisputable international prestige. In the great clash with imperialism, the socialist system gave historical proof of its superiority, stability and invincibility. As a result of the conditions which were created and their anti-fascist national liberation war led by the communist parties, a series of other countries broke away from the capitalist system and set out on the road to socialism. The socialist camp was created and this was the greatest event after the October Revolution.

The communist parties of all countries had an unprecedented growth. Standing in the forefront of the fight against fascism, they had proved through the blood of their members and their stands that they were the political forces most consistently loyal to the interests of the peoples and the nations, the most resolute fighters for freedom, democracy and progress. Marxism-Leninism spread throughout the whole world, the international communist movement extended its authority and influence to all continents. The great ideas of freedom, independence and national liberation, which inspired the antifascist war, pervaded not only Europe, but also Asia, Africa and the Latin-American continent. The victory over fascism and the creation of the socialist camp awakened the peoples in the colonies. The colonial system of imperialism entered its greatest crisis. The powerful national liberation movement in the colonies, which accounted for almost half of mankind, burst out like a volcano. The rear of the capitalist system, the colonial and semi-colonial regimes began to collapse. Weakened by all these defeats, the imperialist system began to be shaken to its foundations.

All these changes constituted a great victory, not only for the Soviet Union, not only for the countries of people's democracy, not only for the peoples of the world, but also for the immortal theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the vitality and accuracy of which was confirmed once again with new force in the greatest war which mankind has seen to this day, during which two worlds - the socialist world and the capitalist world, clashed. All the changes which occurred after the Second World War proved in practice the theses of Marx and Lenin that the capitalist world was in decay and heading for collapse, while the revolution and socialism were on the ascent.

It was these great victories of socialism, the peoples, and the Marxist-Leninist theory which compelled world imperialism to draft its new defensive and offensive strategy in order to resist the mounting waves of the revolution and the struggle of the peoples, in order to prop up the shaky foundations of the capitalist system.

The joint line, which the imperialist powers worked out after the war, was characterized by two fundamental directions:

First, they mobilized all their forces, every means at their disposal to restore their economic, political and military potential damaged by the war, to strengthen the capitalist system which was being shaken by the great attack of peoples' revolutionary liberation struggles. They set to work to consolidate the existing anti-communist alliances and to form new ones, and made great efforts to preserve colonialism by means of neo-colonialism.

After the Second World War, American imperialism found itself in a dominating position from the point of view of economic power, and to some extent from the military viewpoint, in regard to Europe and Asia which were ruined by the war. The militarized American economy was very powerful. The United States of America tried to establish its economic, military and political hegemony over the whole world, with the overriding aim of encircling and weakening the Soviet Union, which emerged triumphant from the Second World War and which certainly would be quickly restored from the economic aspect and would assist in the consolidation and progress of the new states of people's democracy, which had been created in Europe and Asia. To this end, the imperialist tactics of the political-ideological struggle and the economic struggle, as well as the military tactics, were built up. The latter were the further continuation of the American plans worked out during the Second World War, those plans which had made the United States of America a great power for the production of modern weapons, as well as for the discovery and production of the atomic bomb, which was dropped for the first time on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The United States of America became the leadership of the capitalist world and took upon itself the role of its "saviour". Thus the pretentions of American imperialism to world domination were placed on the agenda. "The victory in the Second World War," declared Harry Truman, who replaced Franklin Roosevelt as president, "faced the American people with the permanent and urgent task of becoming the world leader". In essence this was a call for struggle against the revolution and socialism, to win new dominant economic and military positions throughout the whole world, to restore its partners and to save the colonial system. In order to realize this strategy, UNRRA was used, the "Marshall Plan" was drafted, NATO was created, and other aggressive blocs of American imperialism were set up.

Second, the fundamental question for capital was to build up the undermining work against the Marxist-Leninist ideology on all fronts, in order to remove the most revolutionary section of the working people from its influence, and to cause the degeneration of socialism.

Along with the unrestrained armaments race, the militarization of the economy and the economic blockades against the socialist countries, imperialism also mobilized many means of propaganda, philosophers, economists, sociologists, writers and historians for the furious campaign against the revolution and socialism, in order to present capitalism and the capitalist state as changed, as "people's capitalism", as "a state of general well-being", etc. The bourgeoisie also exploited the favourable post-war economic circumstances to clamour about the "prosperity of capitalism", to spread illusions among the masses about the elimination of crises, anarchy, unemployment and other ills of capitalism, about the alleged superiority of capitalism over socialism, which was presented as a "totalitarian" order behind the "iron curtain", etc.

In order to hinder the peoples' liberation struggle, to strangle the proletarian revolution, to destroy socialism, and defend and consolidate its. own position, the bourgeoisie in the moments of its agony and the general crisis of its capitalist system, incites, encourages and sets in motion the various opportunist and revisionist currents, along with other means. These enemies of the proletariat and the revolution set to work with all their strength, first of all, to attack Marxism-Leninism, the ideology which makes the working class conscious of its social situation and its historic mission, in order to distort this ideology, to make it harmless to the bourgeoisie and worthless to the proletariat. The new trends of revisionism which emerged after the Second World War and which were called for short "modern revisionism" undertook this despicable role of betrayal.

Modern revisionism, which is the continuation of the anti-Marxist theories of the parties of the Second International, of European social-democracy, adapted itself to the times after the Second World War. It has its source in the hegemonic policy of American imperialism. All the variants and currents of modern revisionism have the same base and the same strategy, and differ only in the tactics which they apply and the forms of struggle which they use.

Modern Revisionism in Power - a New Weapon of the Bourgeoisie against the Revolution and Socialism

The first current which preceded the modern revisionism in power was Browderism. This current was born in the United States of America and took its name from the former general secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, Earl Browder.

In 1944, when the victory of the peoples over fascism was clearly on the horizon, Browder came out publicly with a program which was reformist from start to finish. He was the first herald of that line of ideological and political capitulation which American imperialism was to strive to impose on the communist parties and the revolutionary movement. Under the pretext of the alleged change in the historical conditions of the development of capitalism and the international situation, Browder proclaimed Marxism-Leninism "out-dated", and called it a system of rigid dogmas and schemes. Browder advocated giving up the class struggle and called for class conciliation on a national and international scale. He thought that American capitalism was no longer reactionary, that it could cure the ills of bourgeois society, and could develop in democratic ways for the good of the working people. He no longer saw socialism as an ideal, as an objective to be achieved. American imperial ism with its strategy and policy had disappeared completely from his field of vision. For Browder, the big monopolies, the pillars of this imperialism, constituted a progressive force for the democratic, social and economic development of the country. Browder denied the class character of the capitalist state, and considered American society a unified and harmonious society, without social antagonisms, a society in which understanding and class co-operation prevailed. On the basis of these concepts Browder also denied the need for the existence of the revolutionary party of the working class. He became an initiator of the disbanding of the Communist Party of the United States of America in 1944.

"The Communists," he wrote, "foresee that the practical political aims they hold will for a long time be in agreement on all essential points with the aims of a much larger body of non-Communists, and that, therefore, our political actions will be merged in such larger movements. The existence of a separate political party of Communists, therefore, no longer serves a practical purpose but can be, on the contrary, an obstacle to the larger unity. The Communists will, therefore, dissolve their separate political party, and find a new and different organizational form and name, corresponding more accurately to the tasks of the day and the political structure through which these tasks must be performed."(E. Browder)

Browder took the Conference of allied powers which was held in Teheran in 1943 . as his starting point and justification for the formulation of his bourgeois liquidatory theory and made a completely distorted and anti-Marxist analysis and interpretation of the results of this conference.

Browder presented the agreement of the anti-fascist allies to carry the war against Hitlerite Germany through to the end as the beginning of a new historical epoch, in which socialism and capitalism had found the way to co-operation within "one and the same world", as he expressed it. Browder presented it as a duty to ensure that the spirit of co-operation and peaceful coexistence between the allied powers, which emerged from Teheran, should be applied not only between the Soviet socialist state and those capitalist states, but also within the capitalist country in relations between antagonistic classes. "Class differences and political groups now no longer have any importance," said Browder. He considered the achievement of "national unity", without incidents and in an atmosphere of class peace, the sole objective which the communists, should set themselves, and he understood this national unity as a bloc uniting the groups of finance capital, the organizations of monopolists, the Republican and Democratic parties, and the communists and tradeunion movements, all of which, without exception, he considered "democratic and patriotic" forces. For the sake of this unity Browder declared that communists must be ready to sacrifice even their convictions, their ideology and special interests, that the American communists have applied this rule to themselves first of all. "The political aims which we hold with the majority of the Americans," says he, "we will attempt to advance through the existing party structure of our country, which in the main is that of the peculiarly American 'two-party' system".(E.Browder)

Confused by the relatively peaceful development of American capitalism following the well-known reforms which the American President Roosevelt undertook in order to emerge from the economic crisis at the beginning of the 30's, as well as by the rapid growth of production and employment during the war period, Browder drew the conclusion that American capitalism had allegedly been rejuvenated, that now it would develop without crises and would ensure the raising of the general well-being, etc.

He considered the American economic system to be a system capable of resolving all the contradictions and problems of society and fulfilling all the demands of the masses. He equated communism with Americanism and declared that "communism is the Americanism of the 20th century". According to Browder, all the developed capitalist countries could resolve every conflict and go gradually to socialism by using bourgeois democracy, for which American democracy had to be the model. Therefore, Browder considered that the task of American communists was to ensure the normal functioning of the capitalist regime, and declared openly that they were ready to co-operate to ensure the efficient functioning of the capitalist regime in the post-war period, in order to "ensure the greatest possible lightening of obligations which are a burden on the people". According to him, this lightening of burdens would be done by the "reasonable" American capitalists, to whom the communists must extend the hand of friendship.

In conformity with his ultra-rightist concepts and submitting to the pressure of the bourgeoisie, after the disbanding of the Communist Party. in May 1944, Browder announced the creation, in place of the party, of a cultural and illuminist association called the "Communist Political Association", justifying this with the argument that the American tradition allegedly demanded the existence of only two parties. This association, organized as a network of clubs, was to engage mainly in "activity of political education on a national, regional and local plane".

The Constitution of this association says: "The Communist Political Association is a nonparty organization of Americans which, basing itself upon the working class, carries forward the tradition of Washington, Jefferson Paine, Jackson and Lincoln under the changed conditions of modern industrial society," that this association "...upholds the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and tile achievements of American democracy against all the enemies of popular liberties." (The Path to Peace, Progress and prosperity, New York 1944 pp.47-48) Browder wiped out all the objectives of the communist movement. In the program of the Association there is, no mention of MarxismLeninism, the hegemony of the proletariat, the class struggle, the revolution or socialism. National, unity, social peace, defence of the bourgeois Constitution and the increase of the capitalist production became its only objectives.

In this way, Browder went over from open revision of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary strategy and tactics to the organizational liquidation of the communist movement in the United States of America. Although the party was re-formed at its 13th Congress in June 1945, and the opportunist line of Browder was formally rejected, his influence was never eliminated in the Commumst Party of the USA. Later, especially after 1956, the ideas, of Browder flourished again and John Hayes in an article entitled "The Time for Change Has Come", (Political Affairs, October 1956) once again demanded in the spirit of Browderism the turning of the Communist Party of the USA into a cultural and propaganda association. And in fact, that is what the Communist Party of the USA is today an organization in which the revisionism of Browder combined with that of Khrushchev prevails.

With his revisionist concepts about the revolution and socialism, Browder gave world capitalism direct aid. According to Browder, socialism arises only from some great cataclysm, from some catastrophe, and not as an inevitable result of historical development. "We do not desire any catastrophe for America, even if such a thing would lead to socialism,". he said. While presenting the prospect of the triumph of socialism as very remote, he advocated class collaboration in. American society and throughout the world. According to him, the only alternative was that of-' development by evolution, through reforms and with the aid of the United States of America.

According to Browder, the United States of America, which possessed colossal economic power and great scientific-technical potential, had to. assist the peoples of the world, including the Soviet Union, for their "development". This "aid", said Browder, would help America maintain high rates of production after the war, ensure work for all, and preserve the national unity for many years. To this end, Browder advised the magnates of Washington that they should set up a "series of giant industrial development corporations for the various devastated and undeveloped regions of the world, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America.,"(The Path to Peace, Progress and Prosperity, new York 1944, pp.21) "If we can face realities without flinching, and revive in modern terms the grand tradition of Jefferson, Paine, and Lincoln, then America can face the world united, assuming a leading part... in the salvation of mankind..." (E.Browder, Theheran, Our Path in war and Peace, New York 1944 p.128) In this way, Browder became the spokesman and propagandist of the grand strategy of American imperialism, and its expansionist neo-colonialist theories and plans.

Browderism directly assisted the -Marshall Plan- through which the United States of America aimed to establish its economic hegemony in the different war-devastated countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, etc.

Browder advocated that the ,countries of the world, and especially the countries of people's democracy and the Soviet Union, ought to soften their Marxist-Leninist policy and accept the -"altruistic" aid of the United States of America, which, according to him, has a colossal economy and huge surpluses which can and should serve all peoples(!).

Browder tried to present his anti-Marxist and counterrevolutionary views as the general line of the international communist movement. Under the pretext of the creative development of Marxism and the struggle against dogmatism, he, like all the earlier revisionists, tried to argue that the new epoch after the Second World War required a communist movement which would reexamine its former ideological convictions and relinquish its old "formulas and prejudices", which, according to him, "cannot help us at all to find our way in the new world". This was a call for rejection of the principles of Marxism-Lemnism.

Browder's views encountered the opposition of the communist parties of several countries, as well as of the revolutionary American communists themselves. Browderism was exposed relatively quickly as undisguised revisionism, as an openly liquidationist current, as a direct ideological agency of American imperialism.

Browderism did great damage to the communist and workers' movement of the United States of America and some Latin-American countries. Upsets and splits occurred in some of the old communist parties of Latin America, and these had their source in the activity of opportunist elements who, weary of the revolutionary struggle, grasped at any means with which American imperialism provided them to quell the revolts of the peoples and the revolution, and to spread decay in the parties, which were working for the education and preparation of the peoples for revolution.

ln Europe, Browderism did not have the success it had in South America, although this seed of American imperialism was not left unabsorbed by those disguised anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist reformist elements who were awaiting or preparing the suitable moments, to deviate openly from the scientific Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Although in its own time Browderism did. not manage to become a revisionist current with broad international proportions, the other modern revisionists who came later revived its views and made them their own. These views, in various forms, remain the basis of the political and ideological platforms of the Chinese and Yugoslav revisionists, as well as of the Eurocommunist parties of Western Europe.

Not only Browderism, but also Mao Zedong thought, the theories and line which the Chinese leadership followed, responded to the American strategy for "restraining communism" and for the establishment of the hegemony of the United States of America over the post-war capitalist world.

At the beginning of 1945, at the time when Browder appeared on the scene and when a new American strategy under Truman was assuming its complete form, the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in that country. The Constitution which this congress adopted, states: "The Commiunist Party of China is guided by the ideas of Mao Zedong in all its activity."Commenting on this decision, in the report which he delivered at the congress, Liu Shaoqi declared that Mao Zedong had allegedly refuted many outdated concepts of the Marxist theory and replaced them with new theses and conclusions. According to Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong had managed to give Marxism a "Chinese form". He says: "The ideas of Mao Zedong are Chinese Marxism."

These "new theses and conclusions", this "Chinese form" of Marxism had nothing at all to do with any creative application of MarxismLeninism in the concrete conditions of China, but were a denial of its universal fundamental laws. Mao Zedong and his comrades had a bourgeois democratic concept of the development of the revolution in China. They were not for raising it to a socialist revolution. For them the model was the "American democracy" and they reckoned on the support of American capital for the construction of new China.

There were great affinities between the ideas of Mao Zedong and the opportunist ideas of Browder who, it must be said, had studied and thoroughly understood the anti-Marxist concepts of the Chinese leaders. Browder wrote: "What is called the 'Communist' camp in China, because it is led by outstanding members of the Chinese Communist Party, is much closer to American concepts of democracy than is the so-called Kuomintang camp; it is closer in every way, including the wider scope given to 'free enterprise' in the economic life." (E. browder, Teheran, Our Path in War and Peace, New York 1944, p.26)

Mao Zedong was for the unrestricted free development of capitalism in China in the period of the state of the type of "new democracy", as he called that regime which was to be established after the departure of the Japanese. At the 7th Congress of the CPC he said, "Some think that the communists are against the development of private initiative, against the development of private capital, against the protection of private property. In reality, this is not so. The task of the order of new democracy, which we are striving to establish, is precisely to ensure the possibility for broad circles of Chinese to freely develop their private initiave in society, to freely develop the private capitalist economy." In this way, Mao Zedong took over the anti-Marxist concept of Katitsky, according to which, in the backward countries the transition to socialism cannot be achieved without going through a lengthy period of free development of capitalism which prepares the conditions to go over to socialism later. In fact, the so-called socialist regime which Mao Zedong and his group established in China,was and remained a bourgeois-democratic regime.

In practice, the line which the Chinese leadership, headed by Mao Zedong, began to follow for restraining the revolution in China and shutting off its socialist perspective assisted American imperialism, which wanted to extend its domination, and the other imperialist powers, which were seeking to preserve their old domination.

In the post-war years, the anti-colonialist national liberation movements surged ahead on all continents. The British, French, Italian, Dutch, and Belgian colonial empires were collapsing. one after the other under the waves of the popular uprisings in the colonies. The revolutions in most of these countries were bourgeois-democratic. However, in some of them, the objective possibilities existed for the revolution to be raised and assume a socialist character. Mao Zedong, with his views and activities, advocated the diversion of the anti-imperialist revolutions from the right course of their development; he wanted them to stop half-way, not to go beyond the bourgeois framework, so that the capitalist system was perpetuated. If we bear in mind the importance of the Chinese revolution and its influence among the colonial countries, the damage which the -theories" of Mao Zedong caused was great.

Mao's line was that China, and following its example, Indochina, Burma, Indonesia, India, etc., had to rely on the United States of America and American capital and aid for their development. In fact this was acceptance of that new strategy which had been formulated in the departments of Washington and which Browder had begun to advocate in his own way.

The American envoys attached to Mao Zedong's staff in the years 1944-1949 have described in detail the views, attitudes, activity and demands of Mao Zedong towards the United States of America. One of these envoys was John Service, political adviser to the commander of the American forces on the Burma-China front and later secretary of the American Embassy to the Chiang Kai-shek government in Chongqing. He was one of the first of the American intelligence agents who made official contact with the leaders of thia Communist Party of China, although there were continual unofficial contacts. Speaking about the Chinese leaders, Service admits: "Their outlook impresses one as modern. Th eir understanding of economics, for instance, is very similar to ours." (J. Service, Lost Chance in China, New York 1974, p.195) "It is not surprising," he continues, "that they had favourably impressed most or all of the Americans who have met them during the last seven years: their manners, habits of thought, and direct handling of problems seem more American than Oriental." (Ibidem, p.198)

In essence, the liquidationist views of Browder about the party are found in the theories of Mao Zedong too. Just as Chinese communism was a wash-out, the Communist Party of China, too, was such only in name. Mao Zedong did not work to build a genuine Marxist-Leninist proletarian party. From its class composition, its organizational structure and the way it was built and the ideology which inspired it, the Communist Party of China was not a party of the Leninist type. Moreover, Mao Zedong had no consideration even for this party such as it was. He did whatever he wanted. During the so-called Cultural Revolution, he completely disbanded it, concentrating everything in his own hands and putting the army at the head of affairs.

Like Browder, who presented Americanism as the ideal model of the society of the future, Mao Zedong too, considered American democracy the finest example of state and social organization for China. Mao Zedong admitted to Service: "After all, we Chinese consider you Americans the ideal of democracy."

Along with their acceptance of American democracy, the Chinese leaders sought the establishment of close and direct links with American capital, sought American economic aid. Service writes that Mao Zedong told him, "China must industrialize. This can be done - in China only by free enterprise and with the aid of foreign capital. Chinese and American interests are correlated and similar...

"The United States would find us more cooperative than the Kuomintang. We will not be afraid of democratic American influence - we will welcome it...

"America does not need to fear that we will not be co-operative. We must co-operate and we must have American help." (J. Service, Lost Chance in China, New York 1974, p.307)

Today we hear such statements and requests every day from the disciples and collaborators of Mao Zedong, such as Deng Xiaoping, Hua Guofeng, and others who are achieving in practice the all-round links with American imperialism dreamed of and initiated by Mao Zedong. Now the Chinese strategy is orientated completely towards co-operation with the United States of America in

particular, and world capitalism in general, and they began to support China politically and to influence it ideologically, so that it would obliterate any shadow of Marxism-Leninism from the minds and hearts of common people and thus carry out thorough-going political and organizational transformations towards the capitalist system, whether in the economic field, in the state organization, or in the organization of the party. Objectively, the whole line of Mao Zedong for the construction of China and his concept of the development of the countries. which liberated themselves from colonialism has served and gone along with the strategy of American imperialism. If close collaboration between China and the United States of America was not established at the start, this is explained by the fact that in the post-war years the Chiang Kai-shek lobby triumphed in America. At that time the "cold war" warwas at its height and Macarthyism prevailed in America. On the other hand, immediately after the war, the United States of America gave priority to Japan, thinking that first of all, it had to aid Japan or subjugate it from every point of view, to make it a powerful and obedient ally, to reconstruct the Japanese economy, and turn that country into a great bastion against the Soviet Union, and eventually against Mao Zedong's China. Apparently, the USA was not sufficiently powerful to be able to provide aid for all parts of the world and to prepare them against the Soviet Union, against the system of socialism, therefore, it gave preference to preparing Europeand Japan, where the destruction was great and where socialism. had become dangerous to world capital.

Without doubt, these were the factors that made the heads of American imperialism refuse to grasp the hand Mao Zedong held out to them immediately. Considerable time had to pass. The Chinese revisionist leaders had to give new proofs, of their "love" for America before Nixon could go to Beijing and the Americans and all the others understand that China had nothing at all to do with socialism.

After the Second World War the Yugoslav revisionists were included in the great campaign of American imperialism and other reactionary forces that gathered around it, in the struggle against socialism and the revolution. This current, which represented revisionism in power, emerged at a crucial moment of the struggle between socialism and imperialism.

The period after the Second World War could not be a period of tranquility either for imperialism or for socialism. In the new conditions which had been created, imperialism had to cope with situations which were mortally dangerous to it, while socialism had to be consolidated, had to radiate and give its aid in the right way for the liberation and the progress of the peoples of the world. It was a time when not only the wounds of the war had to be treated and healed, but the class struggle had to be waged correctly, too, both within the countries where the proletariat had taken power and in the international arena. The victory over fascism had been achieved, but the peace was relative, the war continued with other means.

The socialist countries and their communist parties were faced with the task of working to consolidate their victories on the Marxist-Leninist road and to become examples and mirrors for the peoples and the other communist parties which were not in power. The communist parties of the socialist countries, also, had to temper themselves further with the Marxist-Leninist ideology, taking care that this was not turned into a dogma, but preserved as a revolutionary theory for action, a means to achieve profound social transformations, which is what it is in fact. In particular, after the historic victory over the fascist coalition, the socialist countries and the communist parties had to avoid becoming conceited, thinking that they were infallible, and forgetting or weakening the class struggle. This is the important thing Stalin had in mind when he stressed the need for the continuation of the class struggle in socialism.

Precisely in these circumstances the Titoites came out against Marxism-Leninism. Titoism did not throw off its disguise and come out openly against the revolution and socialism at the start, but, on the contrary, tried to camouflage itself while continuing to prepare the terrain for taking Yugoslavia back into the road of capitalism and its transformation into a tool of world imperialism.

It is a recognized fact that Titoism leaned spiritually, politically and ideologically towards the West, towards the United States of America, that right from the start it maintaiined numerous political contacts and achieved secret combinations with the British and other representatives of world capitalism The Yugoslav leaders opened all the doors to UNRRA, and by this means and under the pretext of aid with the stockpiles of clothing and food left over from the time of the war, the American-British imperialialist tried to infiltrate into many countries of the world, and especially into the countries of people's democracy. The aim of the imperialists was to prepare a more or less suitable terrain for ioperations of a more wide-ranging plan in the future. The Yugoslavs benefited greatly from the things UNRRA gave them, but for its part, UNRRA was able to exert its influence on the still incompletely built state mechanisms of the newly formed Yugoslav state. Right from the start, American imperialism and the whole of international reaction gave Titoism all their support because they saw in it the course, the ideology and the policy which led to the degeneration of the countries of the socialist camp, to the splitting and disruption of their unity with the Soviet Union. The activity of Titoism conformed completely to the aim of American imperialism to undermine socialism from within. But Titoism was also to serve the strategy of imperialism of paralysing the liberation struggles and weaning new states, which had just thrown off the colonialist Yoke, away from the revolutionary movement.

From the beginning, the Yugoslav revisionists were against the theory and practice of the genuine socialism of Lenin and Stalin on all questions and in all fields. Tito and his group linked the country with the capitalist world and set themselves the task of transforming everything in Yugoslavia, including its policy, ideology, state organization, the organization of the economy and the army, in the direction of the Western capitalist states. Their aim was to transform Yugoslavia into a bourgeois capitalist country as quickly as possible. Browder's ideas, which were the ideas of American capitalism, found a place in the political and ideological platform of Titoism.

First of all, the Titoites revised the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism about the role and mission of the revolutionary state power and the communist party in socialist society. They attacked the Marxist thesis about the leading role of the communist party in all fields of life in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Following the example of Browder in America, they liquidated the party in practice, not just because they changed its name, calling it the League of Communists, but because they also changed the aims, functions, organization and the role which this party was to play in the revolution and the construction of socialism. The Titoites transformed the party into an educational and propaganda association. They eliminated the revolutionary spirit of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and de facto went so far as to eliminate the influence of the party and to raise the role of the Popular Front above it.

On the cardinal question of the party, in connection with the leading factor of the revolution and the construction of socialism, there is a community of political, ideological and organizational views between Browderism and Titoism. Since Titoism, like Browderism, is liquidationist and anti-Marxist on the decisive platform of the vanguard role of the party of the working class in the revolution and construction of socialism, it is such in all its platforms.

The similarity of the views of the Titoites and those of Browder is apparent also in their stand towards "American democracy" which the Titoites took as a model for the construction of the political system in Yugoslavia. Kardelj himself has admitted that this system is "... similar to the organization of the executive power in the United States of America". (E. Kardelj, Directions of the Development of the Political System of Socialist Self-administration, Rilindja, Prishtina 1978, p.235)

Following the liquidation of the party and the break with the Soviet Union and the countries of people's democracy, Yugoslavia has been writhing in a chaos of economic-organizational operations. The Titoites proclaimed the state property "social" property, and camouflaged the capitalist relations of production under the anarcho-syndicalist slogan of "factories to the workers", and set the detachments of the working class one against the other. The collectivization of small producers was called the "Russian way" and was opposed with the "American way" of the creation of capitalist farms and the encouragement of private peasant economies.

This transformation in the economic, political and ideological fields was bound to bring about the subsequent transformation of the state organization, the organization of the army, and the organization of education and culture and so it did. In the fifties they proclaimed their so-called self-governing socialism, which was used to disguise the capitalist order. This "specific socialism", according to them, was to be built by relying not on the socialist state, but directly on the producers. On this basis, they preached the withering away of the state in socialism, denied the fundamental Marxist-Leninist thesis about the need for the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat during the whole period of the transition from capitalism to communism.

In order to justify their course of betrayal and to throw dust in people's eyes, the Titoites presented themselves as "creative Marxists" who opposed only "Stalinism" but not Marxism-Leninism. Thus, they proved once again that the slogan of "the creative development of Marxism and the struggle against dogmatism" is the favourite slogan common to every variant of revisionism.

The United States of America, Britain, European social-democracy, etc., gave Titoite Yugoslavia all-round political, economic and military aid and kept it alive. The bourgeoisie was not opposed to Yugoslavia formally retaining its "socialist" appearance, indeed it was interested in this. However, this kind of "socialism" had to be completely different from the socialism envisaged and built by Lenin and Stalin, which the Yugoslav revisionists began to attack, to call a "low form of "socialism", "state socialism", "bureaucratic", and "anti-democratic". Yugoslav "socialism" had to be a hybrid capitalist-revisionist society, but essentially bourgeois-capitalist. It had to be a "Trojan horse" which would get into the other socialist countries, in order to divert them from the road of socialism and link them with imperialism.

And in fact Titoism became the inspirer of revisionist and opportunist elements in the former socialist countries.

The Yugoslav revisionists carried out extensive undermining and sabotage work in these countries. Suffice it to mention theevents in Hungary in 1956, in which the Yugoslav Titoites played a very active role to open the way to the counter-revolution and take Hungary into the camp of imperialism.

In his well-known speech at Pula in 1956, Tito himself has clearly and openly explained the place which Titoism occupies in the overall strategy of imperialism in undermining the socialist countries from within. At that time he declared that the Yugoslav model of socialism was valid not only for Yugoslavia, but also for other socialist countries, which ought to follow and apply it.

The Titoite concepts and theories about world development and international relations also conformed to the strategy of American imperialism. In his speech delivered in Oslo in October 1954, the main theoretician of Yugoslav revisionism, Kardelj, came out openly against the theory of the revolution, while advertising the -newsolutions which capitalism had allegedly found. Distorting the essence of state monopoly capitalism, which assumed wide proportions in many capitalist countries after the Second World War, he proclaimed it an element of socialism, while he called classical bourgeois democracy "a regulator of social contradictions in the direction of the gradual strengthening of socialist ele ments". He declared that today "a gradual evolution towards socialism" is taking place, and this he called "an historical fact" in a series of capital ist states. These revisionist concepts, which in essence are identical with those of Browder, were included in the program of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and became a means of ideological and political diversion against the revolutionary and liberation movements of the proletariat and peoples.

On this basis the Yugoslav revisionists elaborated their theories and practices of "non-alignment", which came to the aid of the strategy of American imperialism to restrain the impulse of the anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of the so-called third world and to undermine their efforts to defend their freedom, independence and sovereignty. The Titoites advised these peoples that their aspirations could be fulfilled by applying the policy of non-alignment, that is, of not opposing imperialism. According to the Titoites, the road to the development of these countries had to be sought in "active cooperation", in "ever more extensive co-operation" with the imperialists and big world capital, in the aid and credits which they should take from the developed capitalist countries.

As to where the course which the revisionists of Belgrade advocate leads, the present-day reality of Yugoslavia makes this very clear. The collaboration with American imperialism, with Soviet social-imperialism and the other big capitalist states, the large amount of aid and credits which they have received from them have turned Yugoslavia into a country which is dependent on world capitalism for everything, into a country with its independence and sovereignty crippled.

The strategy of American imperialism and the whole struggle of the international bourgeoisie against the revolution and socialism received further, extremely great and much desired aid with the emergence on the scene of Khrushchevite revisionism. The Khrushchevite betrayal was the heaviest and most dangerous blow which has ever been struck at socialism and the peoples' revolutionary liberation movement. It transformed the first socialist country, the great centre of the world revolution, into an imperialist country and a hotbed of counter-revolution. The repercussions of this betrayal on the national and international scale have- been truly tragic. Not only have the peoples' revolutionary liberation movements suffered from its consequences, and they are still suffering from them, but international peace and security have been placed in great danger.

As an ideological and political current, Khrushchevism has no great difference from the other currents of modern revisionism. It is the result of the same external and internal pressure of the bourgeoisie, of the same deviation from the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and of the same aim of opposing the revolution and socialism and preserving and strengthening the capitalist system. The difference which does exist has to do only with the level of the danger which it represents. Khrushchevite revisionism always remains the most dangerous, the most fiendish, the most threatening revisionism. This is for two reasons: first, because it is a disguised revisionism. It retains its external socialist appearance and in order to deceive people and lure them into its traps, makes extensive use of Marxist terminology, and according to the need and the occasion, even of revolutionary slogans. By means of this demagogy it seeks to spread a thick fog so that the present-day capitalist reality of the Soviet Union will not be seen, and above all, its expansionist aims will be hidden in order to mislead the revolutionary liberation movements, and turn them into instruments of its policy. Second, and this is more important, Khrushchevite revisionism has become the ruling ideology in a state which represents a great imperialist power, a thing whicb gives it many means and possibilities to manoeuvre in broad fields and in large proportions.

Khrushchevism and the other revisionist currents have in common the liquidation of the communist party and its transformation into a political force which serves the bourgeoisie. In the Soviet Union too, the Communist Party of Lenin and Stalin has been liquidated. It is true that the party there did not change its name, as occurred in Yugoslavia, but it was stripped of its revolutionary essence and spirit. The role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union altered, and its work for the strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist ideology was replaced with the distortion of the Marxist-Leninist theory, under different disguises, through empty phraseology and demagogy. The political organization of the party, like the army, the police and the other organs of the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, was transformed into an organization to oppress the masses, not to mention the fact that it also became the bearer of the ideology and policy of their oppression and exploitation. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union degraded, was weakened, and became a "party of the entire people", that is, no longer the vanguard party of the working class, which carries forward the revolution and builds socialism, but a party of the new revisionist bourgeoisie, which causes the degeneration of socialism and carries forward the restoration of capitalism.

Like Browder, Tito, Togliatti, etc., who preached the transformation of their parties into "associations", "leagues", "mass parties", allegedly to adapt them to the new social changes which ad occurred as a result of the development of capitalism, the growth of the working class and its political and ideological influence, etc., Khrushchev too justified the change in the character of the party as an alleged adaptation to the situation created in the Soviet Union, where allegedly the construction of socialism had been completed and the construction of communism had begun. According to Khrushchev, the composition of the party, its structure, role and place in society and the state had to alter in conformity with this "new epoch".

When Khrushchev began to advocate these theses, the construction of communism in the Soviet Union notonly had not begun, but moreover, the construction of socialism was not yet completed. True, the exploiting classes had been eliminated as classes, but there were many remnants of them still existing physically, let alone ideologically. The Second World War had hindered the broad emancipation of relations of production, while the productive forces, which constitute the necessary and indispensable basis for this, had been gravely impaired. The Marxist-Leninist ideology was predominant, but this does not mean that the old ideologies had been completely eradicated from the consciousness of the masses. The Soviet Union had won the war against fascism, but another war, with other means, and no less dangerous, had commenced against it. Imperialism, headed by American imperialism, had proclaimed the "cold war" against communism and all the poisoned arrows of world capitalism were aimed at the Soviet Union first of all. Great pressure was exerted on the Soviet state and the Soviet peoples, with the aim of instilling the fear of war amongst them, diminishing their revolutionary enthusiasm, and restraining their internationalist spirit and opposition to imperialism.

In the face of these internal and external pressures, Khrushchev surrendered and capitulated. He began to present the situation in rosy colours, in order to conceal his own pacifist illusions. His theses about the "construction of communism", the "end of the class struggle", and the .final victory of socialism>,. looked like something new, but in fact they were reactionary. They were the expression of the concealment of a new reality which was being created, of the birth and development of the new bourgeois stratum and its pretensions to establish its own power in the Soviet Union.

The line and program which Khrushchev presented at the 20th Congress of the CPSU constituted not only the line of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, but also the line of undermining the revolution, and of the subjection of the peoples to imperialism and the working class to the bourgeoisie, The Khrushchevites preached that at the present stage, the main road of transition to socialism was the peaceful road. They advised the communist parties to follow the Dolicy of class conciliation and collaboration with social-democracy and other political forces of the bourgeoisie. This line assisted the attainment of those objectives for which imperialism and capital had long been fighting with every means, including arms and ideological diversion. It opened broad roads to bourgeois reformism and gave capital the possibility to manoeuvre in the difficult economic, political and military situation created for it after the Second World War. This is the explanation for all that great publicity which the bourgeoisie gave the 20th Congress of the CPSU all around the world and which called Khrushchev "a man of peace" who "understands the situation", unlike Stalin who was for "communist orthodoxy", "incompatibility with the capitalist world"., etc.

With their preachings of the peaceful road to socialism, the Khrushchevites sought to impede the communists and the revolutionaries of the world from preparing for and carrying out the revolution, and wanted them to reduce all their work to propaganda, to debates and electoral manoeuvres, to trade-union demonstrations and day-today demands.

This was the typical social-democratic line which Lenin had fought so fiercely and the October Revolution had overthrown. The Khrushchevite views, which were borrowed from the arsenal of the chiefs of the Second International, aroused dangerous illusions and discredited the very idea of the revolution. They did not prepare the working class and the working masses to be vigilant and to oppose the bourgeois violence, but urged them to remain submissively at the mercy of the bourgeoisie. This was also proved in the events in Indonesia and Chile, etc., with the communists and peoples of those countries paying very dearly for the revisionist illusions about the peaceful road to socialism.

Equally in favour of imperialism and the bourgeoisie and harmful to the revolution was the other thesis of the 20th Congress of the CPSU about "peaceful coexistence", which the Khrushchevites tried to impose on the whole communist movement, extending it even to relations between classes, and between the peoples and their imperialist oppressors. According to the Khrushchevites, who presented the problem as "either peaceful coexistence or devastating war", there was no other solution for the peoples and the world proletariat but to bend their backs, to give up the class struggle, the revolution and any other action which "might anger" imperialism and provoke the outbreak of war.

In fact the Khrushchevite views about "peaceful coexistence", which were closely linked with those about the "changed nature of imperialism", were practically identical with the preachings of Browder that American capitalism and imperialism had allegedly become a factor of progress in post-war world development. The prettifying of American imperialism and the false image created about it slackened peoples' vigilance towards the hegemonic and expansionist policy of the United States of America and sabotaged the peoples' anti-imperialist liberation struggle. Both as an ideology and a practical political line, Khrushchevite "peaceful coexistence" urged the peoples, especially in the new states of Asia, Africa and Latin America, etc., to extinguish the "hotbeds from which the flames of war might burst out", to seek rapprochement and conciliation with imperialism, to take advantage of "international co-operation" for the "peaceful development" of their economy, etc. In its expressions, terms and other formulas, this line was the same as that preached by Browder, that in the conditions of the "peaceful coexistence" between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, wealthy America could assist restoration and advance of the whole world. It was the same line which Tito advocated and applied in Yugoslavia, which had opened the doors of that country to American aid, credit and capital.

It was the same desire, which Mao Zedong and other Maoist leaders had, to build up China with American aid, but which the different circumstances and events bad hindered up to that stage.

And the Soviet Union cannot escape American aid and the aid from the other Western countries any more than the Titoites, or today the Maoists can escape them. The integration of the Soviet Union and other revisionist countries linked with it into the world capitalist economy has assumed large proportions. These countries have become some of the biggest importers of Western capital. Their debts, at least those which are made public, amount to tens of billions of dollars. Sometimes because of changing circumstances, such as those caused by the events in Afghanistan at present, this process is slowed down, but it never stops. The capitalist interests of the two sides are so great that in special situations they override all their frictions, rivalries and clashes.

The Soviet revisionists used the thesis about "peaceful coexistence" not only to justify their policy of concessions to and compromises with American imperialism. This line also served and is still serving them as a mask to hide the expansionist policy of Soviet social-imperialism, in order to lower the vigilance and resistance of the peoples to the imperialist plans of the Soviet revisionist leaders for hegemony. The thesis about "peaceful coexistence" was a call of the Soviet revisionists to the American imperialists to divide up the world and rule it jointly.

The Khrushchevite revisionist line assisted imperialism and reaction to take advantage of the situation in order to launch an all-round attack on communism. Of particular assistance to this new attack on the revolution and socialism were the attacks and the slanders of the Khrushchevite revisionists on Stalin and his work.

The Khrushchevite revisionists started their campaign against Stalin in order to justify the anti-Marxist course which they had begun to follow inside and outside the country. They could not negate the dictatorship of the proletariat and transform the Soviet Union into a bourgeois-capitalist state, could not strike bargains with imperialism, without negating the work of Stalin. This is also the reason why the campaign against him was conducted with the accusations borrowed from the arsenal of imperialist and Trotskyite propaganda which presented the past of the Soviet Union as a period of "mass reprisals", and the socialist system as "suppression of democracy" and a "dictatorship like that of Ivan the Terrible" etc.

But for all the slanders and attacks of imperialists, revisionists and other enemies of the revolution, the name and work of Stalin remain immortal. Stalin was a great revolutionary, an outstanding theoretician, who ranks with Marx, Engels and Lenin.

Life has proved the correctness of the analyses of the Party of Labour of Albania and its stands towards Khrushchevite revisionism and is confirming them every day. In the Soviet Union socialism has been destroyed and capitalism has been restored. Meanwhile, in the international arena, the stands and actions of the Soviet leadership have more and more revealed the socialimperialist character of the Soviet Union and its reactionary great power ideology. Thus, Khrushchevite revisionism has become not only the ideology of the restoration of capitalism and sabotage of the revolution and the peoples' liberation struggle, but also the ideology of socialimperialist aggression.

II
Eurocommunism - an Ideology of submission to the Bourgeoisie and Imperialism

As we mentioned above, modern revisionism emerged in the period of the sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism. It became an ally of the bourgeoisie and imperialism and joined in their efforts to contain and divert the great tide of proletarian revolutions, national liberation struggles and the peoples' anti-imperialist democratic movement. As such, the new revisionism could not fail to assume different forms and appearances, to use methods and tactics adapted to the needs of capital in each country. It assumed its greatest development, its extension in the communist and workers' movement after Khrushchevite revisionism emerged on the scene.

The betrayal which took place in the Soviet Union was of incalculable assistance to the bourgeoisie and imperialism at the moments most difficult for them. It gave big capital possibilities to attack the Marxist-Leninist theory and the practice of socialist construction, to create doubts about the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat, and to cause the ideological and political degeneration of the communist parties. Above all, the communist and workers' parties of Western Europe which followed the treacherous line of Tito and Khrushchev, were severely shaken ideologically. In these parties, the terrain had long been prepared for them to embrace the Khrushchevite revisionist ideas and practice and carry them further. Their organizational and ideological degeneration to different degrees and in various ways had begun earlier. Pseudo-revolutionary theories and practices had long been applied in their ranks.

The Beginnings of Modern Revisionism in the Communist Parties of Western Europe

During the Second World War many positive factors which made the transformation of the anti-fascist war into a profound popular revolution both possible and necessary, had emerged in Europe. Fascism had eliminated not only the national independence of the occupied countries, but also all democratic freedoms, and had even buried bourgeois democracy itself. Therefore, the war against fascism had to be not only a war for national liberation but also a war for the defence and development of democracy. As regards the communist parties, the achievement of these two objectives had to be linked with the struggle for socialism.

In the countries of Central and South-eastern Europe, the communist parties knew how to link the tasks of the war for independence and demcracy with the struggle for socialism. They worked out and applied a policy which led to the establishment of the regimes of the new people's democracy. Meanwhile, the communist parties of Western Europe did not prove capable of utilizing the favourable situation created by the Second World War and the victory over fascism. This showed that they had not properly understood and did not apply the directives of the 7th Congress of the Communist International. (The congress was held July 25 to August 21, 1935) This congress instructed that in the course of the opposition and fight against fascism, in certain conditions, the possibilities would be created for the formation of united front governments which would be entirely different from the social-democratic governments. They were to serve the transition from the stage of the fight against fascism to the stage of the fight for democracy and socialism. In France and Italy, however, the war against fascism did not lead to the formation of governments of the type which the Comintern wanted. After the war, governments of the bourgeois type came to power there. The participation of the communists in them did not alter their character. Even the French Communist Party, which up to the end of the Second World War had a correct line in general, was unable to overcome and correct its mistakes, weaknesses and deviations on certain problems, which stemmed among other things from lack of realistic analyses of the internal and external situations.

The French Communist Party played a primary role in the creation of the Popular Front in France. It launched the slogan of the Popular Front at its Congress of Nantes in 1935, a slogan which quickly found an echo among the broad masses of the French people. The Comintern made a high valuation of the efforts and work of the French Communist Party for the creation of the Popular Front. However, it must be said that the party did not know how or was unable to take advantage of the situation and utilize it in favour of the working class.

The Communist Party spoke openly about the danger threatening France from internal and external fascism, denounced this danger and came out in the streets in demonstrations, but it expected the measures against fascism and everything else from the "legal" governments, from the bourgeois governments, formed by combinations in the bourgeois parliament. This was apparent at the time of the creation of the Popular Front which was a success for the French Communist Party, because in the complicated situation of that time it blocked the way to the setting up of a fascist government in France. Although it took some measures in favour of the working class, the Blum government violated and betrayed the program of the Popular Front in its internal and foreign policy. The Communist Party, which did not take part in the Popular Front government, but supported it in Parliament, was unable to stop this process. The struggle of the masses, strikes, demonstrations and actions were replaced by the once a week meetings which Leon Blum held in his home with Thorez and Duclos.

The leader of the Popular Front government was a socialist, and the socialists made up a large part of the government, but the government apparatus at the centre and the base remained what it was. The army remained "la grande muette". It was commanded, just as under all former governments, by the reactionary caste of officers trained at the bourgeois military schools for the purpose of suppressing the French people and occupying colonies, but not fighting fascism and reaction.

The French Communist Party did not carry its actions through to the end, it was not organized for real struggle against fascism and reaction. The propaganda and agitation, the demonstrations and strikes it led, were not on the line of the seizure of power from the hands of the bourgeoisie. Irrespective of the fact that the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism were not denied, the activity and struggle of that party unwittingly and unconsciously assumed the nature of the struggle for reforms, for economic demands on the trade-union level. Of course, the trade-unions, play a revolutionary role when they are under correct leadership and a revolutionary situation is created in them, otherwise the trade-union movement is turned into a routine concocted by the trade-union chiefs through stands which are sometimes correct, sometimes deviationist, sometimes liberal, sometimes opportunist, but which, in the final analysis, end up in fruitless talks and compromises with the employers.

When the war broke out in Spain, the French Communist Party actively assisted the Communist Party of Spain and the Spanish people in the war against Franco with agitation and propaganda and material aid. It called for volunteers to go to Spain, a call to which thousands of members of the party and other French anti-fascists responded, and three thousand of them fell martyrs on Spanish soil. The main leaders of the party took part directly in the war or else went to Spain on various occasions. Most of the volunteers, who set out from many countries to join the International Brigades in Spain, passed through France. It was the French Communist Party which organized their passage.

During the Spanish War the communists and the working class of France gained new experience in battle, and this was added to the old tradition of the revolutionary struggles of the French proletariat. This constituted a great capital, a revolutionary experience gained in organized frontal class battles against the savage Franco reaction, Italian fascists and German nazis, as well as against French and world reaction. This revolutionary capital should have served the party in the critical moments of the Second World War and the occupation of France, but in reality it was not utilized.

The French Communist Party exposed the policy of Munich with which the Daladiers and Bonnets made concessions to Hitler, selling out the interests of the Czechoslovak people with the aim of turning the Hitlerite war machine against the Soviet Union. It unwaveringly defended the Soviet-German non-aggression pact and withstood the slanders and persecutions of the bourgeoisie. It called for resistance and rose boldly in the fight against the German occupiers and their collaborators of Vichy. This struggle, which began with actions, strikes, demonstrations and sabotage, was steadily extended. The FTP [Francs Tireurs et Partisans] created by the Communist Party were the only formations which fought the occupiers, while the Gaullist reseaux, as the name shows, were nothing but a network of the Secret Service to gather military information useful to the Allies. While the Gaullists advocated waiting for a landing before going into action, the Communist Party fought valiantly for the liberation of the country.

In the liberation war the French Communist Party organized and developed the resistance against the occupiers, and tried to and did achieve something in connection with the anti-fascist front. However, as the events showed, it had not considered and had not planned the seizure of power, or if it had planned this, it abandoned the idea.

This is confirmed by the fact that during the war the party created many committees for national liberation, but it did not give any attention to them and did not take any measures to ensure that these committees affirm themselves as the nuclei of the new state power. From beginning to end the partisan formations remained small and without organic links with one another. At no time did the party raise the question of the creation of big formations of a real national liberation army.

The French Communist Party carried on an anti-fascist liberation war which it led itself, but it did not turn this war into a revolutionary war of the whole people. Moreover, it considered it more appropriate and "revolutionary" to beg De Gaulle to be allowed to send one of its representatives to his "Free France Committee". All this meant, "Please, Mr. De Gaulle, accept me into your Committee too." This meant, "Mr. De Gaulle, the French Communist Party and the partisan forces are going under your command and the 'Free France Committee'" This meant, "Mr. De Gaulle, we communists have no intention of carrying out any revolution or of seizing power, all we want is that the old game of parties, the 'democratic' game, will be played in the France of the future and that on the basis of polling we too will take part in the future government."

While the French communists were acting in this way, the bourgeoisie was preparing and organizing its forces to seize power in France, which it would assume when the Anglo-American allies landed there. The National Committee, created and led by the De Gaulle group in London, and turned into a government in Algiers, would be the most suitable force to take over this power. Of course, it would do this together with the internal forces which the bourgeoisie had prepared and set in motion together with the old army commanded by generals who after having served Petain, had placed themselves into the service of De Gaulle, when it became clear that the German ship was sinking.

This was a dangerous situation, which the French Communist Party did not appreciate and assess correctly, or did not analyse thoroughly. It was afraid of complications with the allied forces which were landing, it was afraid of De Gaulle and the forces gathered around him, hence it was afraid of civil war, and especially of war with the Anglo-Americans.

The Communist Party forgot the example of the heroic communards, who encircled by Bismarck's German armies, rose in revolt against the Versaillese, "storming the heavens", as Marx said, and created the Commune of Paris. Theoreticians may try to justify this fatal mistake of the French Communist Party during the Second World War by saying: "The strength of the forces had to be taken into account." Of course, the strength of the forces had to be taken into account. But since the communards, without a party, without organization, without links with the peasantry and the rest of France, and encircled by foreign occupation troops, launched the attack and seized power, the French working class with its party at the head, tempered in battle, enlightened by Marxism-Leninism, and having such a great and powerful ally as the Soviet Union in its struggle, at the head of the working masses and the genuine patriots, could have carried out the immortal deed of the communards a hundred times more successfully.

The leadership of the Communist Party in general proved hesitant and weak in fulfilling with courage and wisdom the desires and aspirations of the French communist militants and proletariat, who fought with determination and heroism against the Hitlerite occupiers. It did not proceed on the Marxist-Leninist road, on the road of revolutionary struggle. It did not follow in the footsteps of the communards.

The anti-fascist war in Italy had its own characteristics and features, but the objectives which the leadership of the Italian Communist Party had set itself, its vacillations and concessions are similar to those of the French Communist Party.

The start of the Second World War found most of the leading cadres of the Italian Communist Party in France. Nearly all of them fell into the hands of the police. Amongst them was the general secretary of the party, Palmiro Togliatti, who as soon as he was released from jail, in March 1941, went to the Soviet Union.

Although the Italian Communist Party took a correct stand towards the aggressive war which the fascist powers launched, and condemned it as a predatory imperialist war, its activity remained restricted. All the efforts of this party were centered on the creation of a coalition of the anti-fascist parties in exile, on issuing a number of appeals, resolutions and propaganda publications.

In March 1943, the party, which had begun to develop its activity within the country from the middle of 1942, managed to organize a series of powerful strikes in various zones, which testified to the rise of the anti-fascist people's movement. These strikes accelerated the developments which led to the overthrow of Mussolini.

Fear of the revolution had made the Italian bourgeoisie and the symbol of its rule, the king, summon Mussolini to power in 1922. This same fear made the bourgeoisie and the king remove Mussolini from power in July 1943.

The overthrow of Mussolini was carried out by means of a coup d'état of the ruling caste. The take-over was the work of the king, of Badoglio, and other leading figures of fascism. Seeing the inevitability of Italy's defeat, by so doing they wanted to forestall the danger that the working class and the people of Italy would rise in struggle and revolution, which would not only overthrow fascism and the monarchy, but would place the domination of the Italian bourgeoisie as a class in jeopardy.

The resistance movement of the Italian people against fascism assumed great development especially after the capitulation of Italy. In Northern Italy, which was still occupied by the Germans, on the initiative of the party, the liberation war, which included the broad masses of anti-fascist workers, peasants, intellectuals and others, was organized. Big regular partisan formations were created, the overwhelming majority of them under the leadership of the party.

Likewise on the initiative of the Communist Party, national liberation committees were formed in Northern Italy, along with the partisan units and detachments. The party struggled to make these committees new organs of the democratic power, but in fact they remained coalitions of different parties. This did not permit them to be transformed into genuine organs of the people's power.

Whereas in Northern Italy the struggle of the party in general was developed on the right road, and could have led not only to the liberation of the country but also to the establishment of the people's power, in the South and on a national scale the party did not raise the question of the seizure of power. It sought only the formation of a strong government with authority, and did not fight for the overthrow of the monarchy and Badoglio. At a time when favourable conditions existed in the country to carry forward the revolution, the program of the Communist Party was minimal. The party was for a parliamentary solution within the framework of the laws of the bourgeois order. Its maximum claim was for its participation in the government with two or three ministers.

In this way, the Italian Communist Party involved itself in bourgeois political combinations and made unprincipled concessions one after the other. On the eve of the liberation of the country it had great political and military strength which it did not know how to use or did not want to use, and it disarmed itself voluntarily to the bourgeoisie. It abandoned the revolutionary road and set out on the parliamentary road, which gradually transformed this party from a party of the revolution into a bourgeois party of the working class for social reforms.

In regard to Spain, it must be said that the directives of the 7th Congress of the Communist International had greater results than in France or Italy. The effect of them was especially apparent during the Civil War. At first the communists did not take part in the Popular Front government, but gave it their support. Nevertheless, the Communist Party criticized the government for its irresolute stand and demanded that it take measures against the fascist danger, against the activity which the fascists carried out, especially the caste of officers, who constituted the immediate danger at that time.

On July 17, 1936 the fascist generals launched their "Pronunciamento". The fascists' plot was well co-ordinated. They had acted under the nose of the leftist government and the authorities established by a government which had emerged from the coalition of the Popular Front. All the anti-fascist forces lined up against this danger. In November the government headed by Largo Caballero was formed with two communist ministers included. Thus a common front was formed to defend the Republic even with arms. The government granted autonomy to the Basques, confiscated the lands of fascists in favour of poor peasants and nationalized all their property.

Right from the start, the Communist Party called on the working class and the people for resistance. The Communist Party did not content itself with appeals, however, but went into action. The members of the party went into the barracks to explain the situation to the soldiers, telling them what the fascists were and what a threat they presented to the workers, the peasants and the people. In Madrid, the capital of Spain, the fascist coup failed.

In other cities, the people, and first of all the working class, attacked the military units which had risen against the Republic and paralysed them. In Asturia the fight of the miners against the fascist troops raged for a month and this province remained in the hands of the people. The fascists could not pass there. The same thing occurred in the Basque region and many parts of Spain.

In the first days of August it seemed that the fascist generals were on the way out and their defeat would have been complete had the troops of fascist Italy and nazi Germany not gone to their assistance immediately, together with the troops recruited in Spanish Morocco and those sent by fascist Portugal.

In a country where the army was led by an old caste of reactionary royalist and fascist officers the fate of the country could not be left to the army, of which a part followed the fascist generals while the rest began to fall apart. Therefore, the Communist Party called for the creation of a new army, an army of the people. The communists set to work to create this army and within a short time managed to set up the Fifth Regiment. On the basis of this regiment, which achieved great fame during the Spanish War, the people's army of the Spanish Republic was built up.

The resolute stand of the Communist Party against the fascist attack, the bold example it set by placing itself at the head of the masses to prevent the advance of fascism, the example which its members set, 60 per cent of whom went to the different fighting fronts of the war, greatly increased the authority and prestige of the party among the masses of the people.

A party grows, wins authority and becomes the leadership of the masses when it has a clear line and hurls itself boldly into struggle to implement it. During the Civil War the Communist Party of Spain became such a party. Between the beginning of the fascist insurrection in July 1936 and the end of that year, the Communist Party increased the number of its members three fold. And despite the fact that in those days people turned to the party, not to cast votes in elections but to give their lives, at no time has any other party, whether the so-called communist party of Carrillo or the other revisionist parties which have opened all their doors to anyone, with religious beliefs or otherwise, workers or bourgeois, who want to join them, been able to show such a growth of its authority and influence as that which the Communist Party of Spain achieved during the time of the Civil War.

The Spanish War came to an end at the beginning of 1939, with the extension of Franco's rule over the whole country. In that war the Communist Party of Spain did not spare its efforts or forces to defeat fascism. If fascism triumphed, this is due, apart from various internal factors, first of all to the intervention of Italian and German fascism, as well as to the capitulationist policy of "non-intervention" followed by the Western powers towards the fascist aggressors.

Many members of the Communist Party of Spain gave their lives during the Civil War. Others fell victim to the Francoite terror. Thousands and thousands of others were thrown into prison where they languished for many years or died. The terror which prevailed in Spain after the victory of the fascists was extremely ferocious.

The Spanish democrats who managed to escape arrest and internment took part in the French resistance and fought valiantly, while the Spanish democrats who went to the Soviet Union entered the ranks of the Red Army and many of them gave their lives fighting against fascism.

Although in extremely difficult conditions, the communists continued the guerrilla war and the organization of resistance within Spain. The majority of them fell into the hands of the Francoite police and were condemned to death.

Franco dealt a heavy blow to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and the masses of the Spanish people and this had negative consequences for the Communist Party. Losing its soundest, most ideologically prepared, most resolute and courageous element in the armed struggle and during the fascist terror, the Communist Party of Spain came under the negative and destructive influence of the cowardly petty-bourgeois and intellectual element, such as Carrillo and company, who became dominant. They gradually transformed the Communist Party of Spain into an opportunist and revisionist party.

Unity with the Khrushchevite Revisionists in the Struggle against Marxism-Leninism and the Revolution

The economic and political conditions which were created in Western Europe after the Second World War were even more favourable to the consolidation and spread of those mistaken opportunist views which had existed previously in the leaderships of the communist parties of France, Italy and Spain and further encouraged their spirit of concessions to and compromises with the bourgeoisie.

Amongst others, such factors were the abrogation of fascist laws and of other measures of restriction and compulsion which the European bourgeoisie had adopted from the first days after the triumph of the October Revolution and had maintained up to the outbreak of the war, with the aim of restraining the upsurge of the revolutionary drive of the working class, to hinder its political organization and prevent the spread of the Marxist ideology.

The re-establishment on a more or less extensive scale of bourgeois democracy, by completely legalizing all political parties except the fascist parties; permitting their unhindered participation in the political and ideological life of the country; giving these parties possibilities for active participation in the electoral campaigns, which were now held on the basis of less restrictive laws, for the approval of which the communists and other progressive forces had waged a long struggle, created many reformist illusions among the leaderships of the communist parties. The view began to establish itself among them that fascism was now finished once and for all, that the bourgeoisie was no longer able to restrict the democratic rights of the workers, but on the contrary would be obliged to allow their further development. They began to think that the communists, emerging from the war as the most influential and powerful political, organizing and mobilizing force of the nation, would compel the bourgeoisie to proceed on the course of extending democracy and permitting the ever greater participation of working people in running the country, that through elections and parliament they would have possibilities to take power peacefully and then go on to the socialist transformation of society. These leaderships considered the participation of two or three communist ministers in the post-war governments of France and Italy not as the maximum formal concessions which the bour geoisie would make, but as the beginning of a process which would develop gradually up to the creation of a cabinet consisting entirely of communists.

The development of the economy in the West after the war also exerted a great influence on the spread of opportunist and revisionist ideas in the communist parties. True, Western Europe was devastated by the war but its recovery was carried out relatively quickly. The American capital which poured into Europe through the "Marshall Plan" made it possible to reconstruct the factories, plants, transport and agriculture so that their production extended rapidly. This development opened up many jobs and for a long period, not only absorbed all the free labour force but even created a certain shortage of labour.

This situation, which brought the bourgeoisie great superprofits, allowed it to loosen its pursestrings a little and soften the labour conflicts to some degree. In the social field, in such matters as social insurance, health, education, labour legislation etc., it took some measures for which the working class had fought hard. The obvious improvement of the standard of living of the working people in comparison with that of the time of the war and even before the war, the rapid growth of production, which came as a result of the reconstruction of industry and agriculture and the beginning of the technical and scientific revolution, and the full employment of the work force, opened the way to the flowering amongst the unformed opportunist element of views about the development of capitalism without class conflicts, about its ability to avoid crises, the elimination of the phenomenon of unemployment etc. That major teaching of Marxism-Leninism, that the periods of peaceful development of capitalism become a source for the spread of opportunism, was confirmed once again. The new stratum of the worker aristocracy, which increased considerably during this period, began to exert an ever more negative influence in the ranks of the parties and their leaderships by introducing reformist and opportunist views and ideas.

Under pressure of these circumstances, the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line.

In this way, after the Second World War, the Italian Communist Party, that of France, of Great Britain and after this, that of Spain too gradually began to deviate from Marxism-Leninism, to adopt revisionist views and theses and to take the course of reformism. When Khrushchevite revisionism emerged on the scene, the terrain was suitable for them to embrace it and unite firmly with it in the struggle against Marxism-Leninism. Apart from the pressure of the bourgeoisie and social democracy within their own countries, the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU exerted a great influence on these parties to go over completely to anti-Marxist, social-democratic positions. The first to embrace the line of the 20th Congress of the CPSU were the Italian revisionists who immediately after that congress, loudly proclaimed the so-called Italian road to socialism. As soon as fascism had been overthrown, the Italian Communist Party had come out with an opportunist political and organizational platform. When Palmiro Togliatti landed in Naples on his return from the Soviet Union in March 1944, he imposed on his party the line of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie and its parties. In the plenum of the National Council of the Party which was held at that time, Togliatti declared, "We do not put forward the seizure of power as the objective of our struggle, because of international and national conditions; we want only to destroy fascism completely and to create a 'truly progressive, anti-fascist democracy'. The ICP 'must view every problem from the angle of the nation, of the Italian state'." (By P. Spriano, The History of The Italian Communist Party, Turin 1975).

In Naples Togliatti put forward for the first time the idea, and indeed the platform, of what he called the "new party of the masses", which differed in class composition, ideology and organizational forms from the communist party of the Leninist type. It was natural that, for a policy of unprincipled alliances and a policy of reforms which Togliatti wanted, he needed a reformist party, a broad unrestricted party which anyone could enter or leave whenever he liked. Many years later a collaborator of Togliatti wrote, "His notion of a mass party which has its roots in the people assumes all its proper value if we link it closely with the national component of the communists' struggle. Their objective, in fact, is to achieve profound changes in society...by means of reforms" ( G. Ceretti, In the Shadow of the Two T, Paris 1973). With the liberation of the country, the working class of Italy hoped for profound social justice, expected that things would change and that at last it would have its say. But this did not occur. And this was because of the organization and managernent of the life of the country by the different bourgeois parties, including the Communist Party. To deceive the masses and to give them the impression that their voice was being heard in the governing of the country, they arranged political life with majority and minority parties, with parties in office and parties in opposition, with all the parliamentary games and tricks, with all their lies and humbug.

At first the Italian Communist Party received two unimportant portofolios, which the big bourgeoisie allowed it within the "democratic" game, in order to strengthen its position, restore its army, the police and all the network of suppression, and in order to use the presence of communists in the government to strangle and paralyse any tendency of the working class and the Italian people to settle accounts with those who exploited them, oppressed them and sent them to rob other peoples of their freedom, leaving the bones of their sons in Abyssinia, Spain, Albania and the Soviet Union. Then, in May 1947, when they no longer wanted them, the bourgeoisie threw the communist ministers out of the government. The possible danger of an attack by the workers had been averted. The working class had been "lined up", incorporated in different unions according to party colours, and thus the struggle for votes, the parliamentary struggle, began.

After the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party publicly proclaimed their old revisionist stands. Not only did they approve every sign of liberalism which came from Moscow, but they raced ahead so fast that they put the Khrushchevite revisionists in difficulties, and thus the Italian Communist Party began to become a worry to them. The Togliatti supporters approved the revisionist course of "destalinization", applauded the Khrushchevites' mud slinging at Stalin and bolshevism, applauded the Khrushchevites' course for the destruction of the socialist foundations of the Soviet state, were in favour of revisionist reforms and the policy of opening up to the capitalist states, especially the United States of America. As revisionists, Togliatti and his supporters were fully in agreement with Khrushchevite peaceful coexistence and rapprochement with imperialism. This was their old dream of collaboration with the bourgeoisie on the national and international plane.

On the course on which the Khrushchevite revisionist party had set out in the Soviet Union it needed unity and friendship with the Italian Communist Party, it needed the support, in particular, of the two revisionist parties of the West, of France and Italy, which were two big parties with a certain international authority. This was the reason for the "honours", which the Khrushchevites paid these two parties, and together with the "honours", which were obvious, went big subsidies under the lap.

Just as the Khrushchevites hastened to turn the Soviet Union into a capitalist country, so Togliatti and company hastened to integrate themselves into the Italian capitalist order. In June 1956, in the report submitted to the CC of the Italian Communist Party under the flamboyant title "The Italian Road to Socialism", Palmiro Togliatti launched a series of theses so blatantly anti-communist that Khrushchev was compelled to tell him that he should restrain himself and should not cross his bridges so hastily.

At that time Togliatti put forward the question of the integration of socialism into capitalism, as well as the thesis denying the role of the communist party as the sole and indispensable leader of the struggle of the proletariat for socialism. He said that the impulse towards socialism might come even where there was no communist party. These theses were identical with those of the Yugoslav revisionists.

It is not accidental that the Italian revisionists proved to be ardent supporters of the rehabilitation of the Yugoslav revisionists. Togliatti personally went to Yugoslavia to bend the knee to Tito and to help make him "acceptable" in the international communist movement.

The Italian Communist Party and Togliatti spoke out against Moscow being "the only centre of international communism". They preached "polycentrism", the aim of which was the creation of a new revisionist bloc, headed by the Italian Communist Party, which by opposing the Soviet revisionist bloc, would raise the authority of the Italian Communist Party in the eyes of the Italian and world bourgeoisie. Togliatti thought that he would win the trust of the Italian monopoly capital in this way and be invited to join in its dance. Khrushchev saw the danger of the revisionist parties, both those of the countries which were members of the Warsaw Treaty and those which were outside it, breaking away from the tutelage of Moscow, therefore he tried to preserve "unity".

However, Togliatti's "polycentrism" and Khrushchev's "unity" were opposing and unreal things. Revisionism splits and does not unite.

The revisionist party of Togliatti today, under Longo and Berlinguer, has steered an obscure and by no means clear course. Intellectualist and social-democratic views have made deep impressions on its line and stands. The leader of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, manifested these views with increasing stridency, up to his famous "testament", which he wrote a short time before he died in Yalta. This "testament" represents the code of Italian revisionism on which the views of Eurocommunism in general are based today.

After the 20th Congress of the CPSU modern revisionism found an environment suitable for its spread in the French Communist Party also. The idea of parliamentarianism, the idea of "alliances" with social-democracy and the bourgeoisie, of struggle for reforms, had long been implanted in the leadership of this party. This was not proclaimed openly as it is now, that is, it was not raised to a theory. But the opposition to and struggle against fascism, the struggle for the defence and development of democracy, for the improvement of the situation of the working people, all of these actions correct in principle and also correct as tactics, were not linked by the French Communist Party with the final aim, with the socialist perspective. For the leadership of the French Communist Party, this perspective was obscure, or something which was accepted in theory but was considered to be unrealizable in the conditions of France.

The French Communist Party, as we said, had avoided changing the war for national liberation into a people's revolution, had turned away from the struggle for the armed seizure of state power. The working class and its party shed their blood, but for whom? In fact, for the French bourgeoisie and the Anglo-American imperialists. How should this course of the French Communist Party be described? Bluntly: betrayal of the revolution. Politely: an opportunist liberal line.

It is true that the French Communist Party was not liquidated either by the German occupiers or by reaction, but the negative phenomenon occurred that, with the liberation of the country, the partisan forces which were led by the party were disarmed by the bourgeoisie, or more precisely, the leadership of the party itself took the decision that "they should be disarmed" since "the Homeland had been liberated".

With the liberation of the country, the bourgeoisie again took power while the communists were left out of the banquet. The victor's carriage was prepared for De Gaulle, who was proclaimed the saviour of the French people. To avoid the resistance and strikes of disillusioned and revolted workers, De Gaulle summoned Maurice Thorez; and one or two other communists to the government. The Communist Party paid for this place at the bottom of the table which the bourgeoisie gave it, by adopting stands contrary to the interests and will of the French working class.

One mistake inevitably leads to another. Dizzy with the electoral success which they achieved in the elections of November 10, 1946, where the communists and socialists won the absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly, the leaders of the French Communist Party went even further down the road of reformism. Precisely at this time Maurice Thorez gave an interview to the correspondent of the British newspaper "The Times" in which he said that the development of democratic forces throughout the world and the weakening of the capitalist bourgeoisie after the Second World War induced him to envisage for France "... the transition to socialism on roads other than those which the Russian communists followed thirty years ago... In any case, the road can be different for each country." (M. Thorez, The Sons of the People, Paris 1960).

Perhaps this road to socialism, about which Thorez spoke at that time, was not exactly the Khrushchevite road, the contours of which were laid out later. But in any case "the different road", which Thorez sought then, was not that of the revolution.

The French bourgeoisie and American imperialism did not allow Thorez and the leadership of the French Communist Party to live long with their dreams of the parliamentary road to socialism. Not much later, through a simple decree of the socialist premier of that time, Ramadier, the communists were thrown out of the government.

At its meeting in October 1947, the Central Committee of the French Communist Party was obliged to make self-criticism about its mistaken stands and actions at that period, about its incorrect evaluation of the situation, the ratio of forces, the policy of the Socialist Party etc.

Thus, beginning from the end of 1947, the French Communist Party began to see certain questions more correctly. It raised the working class in important class battles and big strikes, which had a pronounced political character, especially those of the years 1947 and 1948, which caused panic among the French bourgeoisie. At that time the French Communist Party fought against the Marshallization of France and the warmongering policy of American imperialism. It opposed the establishment of American bases in France and rose against the new colonial wars of French imperialism. The party called on the working class to oppose the colonial war in Vietnam, not merely with propaganda but also with concrete actions.

In this struggle the French working class produced from its ranks such heroes and heroines as Raymonde Dien, who lay down on the rails to stop a train loaded with arms for Vietnam.

The French Communist Party took an active part in the meeting of the Information Bureau which examined the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. It condemned and sternly denounced the betrayal by Tito and his group.

However, after the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's advent to power, vacillations and deviations appeared again in the line of the French Communist Party and the stands of its leaders. These vacillations were apparent as early as 1954, in its attitude towards the liberation war of the Algerian people.

What did the French Communist Party do to assist this war? It waged only a propaganda campaign and nothing more. It was its duty to display its internationalism towards the liberation war of the Algerian people in deeds, because in this way it would have fought for the freedom of the French people too. It did not do this because it was guided by opportunist and nationalist stands. The French Communist Party went even further. It stopped the Communist Party of Algeria from taking part in the war. The facts show that when the flames of the national liberation war were sweeping Algeria, the Algerian communists did nothing, while the general secretary of the party, Larbi Buhali, went skiing and broke his leg in the Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia.

When Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites began their activity to seize power and bring about the capitalist degeneration of the Soviet Union, when they launched their attack against Stalin at the 20th Congress, it seemed that, in general, the French Communist Party was opposed to Khrushchevite revisionism and the Italian Communist Party. Apparently, Thorez and the leadership of the French Communist Party regarded the changes which were taking place in the Soviet Union with suspicion.

This could be seen in their stand towards the question of Stalin, when they did not associate themselves with Khrushchev's slanders; it was apparent at the time of the events in Poland and Hungary in 1956, when, in general, they maintained correct stands.

However, after Khrushchev and his group liquidated Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others, after he consolidated his position in the party and the state and took the bit between his teeth, it was seen that the leadership of the French Communist Party headed by Thorez was wavering. Little by little and from concession to concession. it went over from its anti-Khrushchevite position to the position of Khrushchev. Was this fortuitous? Was it an aberration by Thorez? Was it a retreat on his part or on the part of Duclos and the other leaders in the face of the pressures, praises and blandishments of Khrushchev and his other putschist methods? Of course, those methods were used and had their influence in the transition to, and later, the uninterrupted march of the French Communist Party towards revisionism. But these do not account for everything. The true causes must be sought within the French Communist Party itself, in its earlier stands, in its internal structure and organization, in its composition and in the external environment which exerted its own pressure on that party.

The process of the descent of the French Communist Party into revisionism did not take place within one day. Quantity was transformed into quality over a relatively long period. The parliamentary reformist road, the Thorez road of "the extended hand", his admiration for and concessions to a series of intellectuals, some of whom were expelled after their betrayal, while others remained in the party, and developed defeatism, spreading all sorts of theories which distorted Marxism-Leninism, brought the French Communist Party to revisionist positions. The French Communist Party lived surrounded by a bourgeois, revisionist, Trotskyite, anarchist, political and ideological environment which beat ceaselessly at its walls, which penetrated them and caused the party great damage.

Major international events also created great upheavals in the French Communist Party. The publication of Khrushchev's secret report against Stalin, which was exploited by all the European and world bourgeoisie, also created a turbulent situation in the French Communist Party. The stand which this party adopted towards events in Hungary and Poland encountered the stern opposition of the big bourgeoisie of France, the middle bourgeoisie, the liberal intellectuals, as well as opportunists outside and also inside the party.

The events which occurred in France in connection with the war in Algeria also brought about that the old opportunist views and stands again came to the surface and became predominant in the French Communist Party.

All these factors taken together transformed the French Communist Party, from one of the parties with the greatest authority, as it had been known in the past, into a social-democratic reformist revisionist party. In a word, the French Communist Party turned back to the former traditions of the old socialist party from which it had broken away at the Congress of Tours in 1920.

One of the revisionist parties which has come out most fervently with the banner of Eurocommunism is the party of Carrillo. How did it come about that the Communist Party of Spain, a party which distinguished itself for its resolute stand at the time - of the Popular Front and the Civil War, -became united with the Khrushchevites and reached the state of corruption, degeneration and treachery it is in today? The changes did not and could not come about all at once, without a protracted process of decline and degeneration within the Spanish party and especially in its leadership.

In the early years after the Second World War the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain and the majority of its members were in France, where they lived a more or less legal life. The Spanish Republican government was in exile too. This was the time when the communists were still in the governments of countries like France and Italy. The Spanish communists too, began to act like their French and Italian comrades. In 1946 the Spanish Republican government in exile was re-formed in Paris. The Communist Party of Spain sent Santiago Carrillo as its representative to this government.

When the communist ministers were expelled from the governments in France and Italy in May 1947, the situation began to become difficult for the Communist Party of Spain and its cadres and militants, also. In August of the same year the Spanish communists were expelled from the government in exile. The police searches, arrests and other measures against them began anew. The infiltration of French and Francoite police into the ranks of the Spanish communists and democrats became more intensive.

It became ever more difficult for the leaders and cadres of the party to stay and work in France, therefore, they went to Prague, East Berlin, and other countries of people's democracy. Their exodus towards these countries more or less coincided with the time when the Khrushchevite revisionist scum began to surface in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe.

The meetings of the Political Bureau and the Central Committee of the Party began to be held far away from Spain. Those communists, who had known the harsh conditions of the Civil War and illegal life in Spain, the difficulties and privations of life in exile in France, began to get the taste for the luxury and comfort of the castles of Bohemia and Germany, to become acquainted with the blandishments an praise, as well as with the various pressures of the Khrushchevite revisionists, the apparatchiki and their secret agents. As events showed, the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain became one of the most obedient blind tools of Nikita Khrushchev and those of his group.

In 1954 the 5th Congress of the Communist Party of Spain was held. At that congress the first elements of the spirit of pacifism and class conciliation became apparent, of that spirit which, a little later, was to become the platform of Spanish revisionism and would find its most complete expression in Carrillo's ultra-revisionist work of betrayal.

Adopting the Khrushchevite road of peaceful transition to socialism, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain published a document in June 1956, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Civil War, in which it formulated its policy of "national reconciliation". The Communist Party of Spain expressed its support for an agreement between forces which 20 years earlier had fought one another with opposing armies. "A vengeful policy will not help to get the country...out of this situation. Spain needs peace and reconciliation between its sons..." (C. Colombo, The History of The Spanish Communist Party, Milain 1972.) said this declaration.

The time of the resolute stands of the Spanish communists against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The dictatorial fascist regime of Primo de Rivera ruled in Spain from 1923-1930. and the generals' "pronunciamento", stands which had increased the influence of the communist party among the masses and had strengthened and tempered it, had passed. Now was the time of the line of the most vulgar opportunism, of blandishments and of bending the knee to the bourgeosie and its parties, to the Catholic Church and the Spanish army, a line which was to rank the party of Dolores Ibarruri and Carrillo among the typically social-democratic parties.

We were unaware of the internal process of retrogression which had occurred in the Communist Party of Spain, but at the Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow in November 1960, when the Party of Labour of Albania openly exposed modern revisionism and especially Soviet revisionism, headed by the traitor to and renegade. from Marxism-Leninism, Khrushchev, the Communist Party of Spain and Ibarruri personally attacked us in the most vicious way.

Thus, when it came to defending Marxism-Leninism, the leaders of the Communist Party of Spain savagely attacked the Party of Labour of Albania and defended Khrushchev and his group of traitors to Marxism-Leninism. Time proved that our Party of Labour was on the right road, on the Marxist-Leninist road, while the Communist Party of Spain, headed by Ibarruri, had lined up totally in the camp of renegades from and enemies of communism.

After 1960 major quarrels and differences emerged in the Communist Party of Spain which led to its splitting, as a result of which two anti-Marxist revisionist groups were created: the one pro-Soviet, with Lister at the head, and the other, a faction led by Ibarruri and Carrillo, which sought independence from Moscow in order to adopt the line which later took the name Eurocommunism.

The line of Carrillo became more and more identical with the line of the Italian Communist Party and that of the French Communist Party. Likewise, it conformed with the line of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Thus a still structureless unity began to crystalize between Titoism, the Italian revisionist party, the French revisionist party, and the Spanish revisionist party of Ibarruri.

At the time when this grouping of West European revisionists, including Tito, which wanted to break away from Moscow, was being formed, Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China welcomed Carrillo to Peking and had close and intimate talks with him. What the content of these talks was has not been revealed, but time is showing that the Chinese revisionists and the Spanish revisionists have many things in common. Therefore, open official links between the Chinese revisionist party and the Spanish revisionist party will be established before long.

Carrillo also adopted the political orientations, the aims, strategies and tactics of the Italian and French revisionist parties for the establishment of close collaboration with the reactionary bourgeoisie and the bourgeois capitalist states. However, the Communist Party of Spain still did not have legal status. For this reason, even under Franco, it made great efforts to be legalized within Spain. Francoism and Franco did not allow such a thing. After the death of Franco, with the coming to power of King Juan Carlos, Carrillo achieved some results in the direction of legalizing the party. However, in return for this legality, he had to make such statements and such colossal concessions in principle that even the French Communist Party and the Italian Communist Party had not permitted themselves to make to the capitalist bourgeoisie of their countries.

In order to return to Spain and legalize the party, Carrillo agreed to recognize the regime of King Juan Carlos, indeed he went so far as to praise it and call it "democratic", and accepted the monarchy and its flag. After this submission, the monarchists gave him carte blanche. The Communist Party of Spain was legalized. Carrillo and Ibarruri returned to Spain together with the whole herd of Spanish traitors.

As soon as they returned to Madrid, the revisionist chiefs openly denied the Republic and declared that the Spanish War now belonged to history. Coalition with the other bourgeois parties and the struggle for participation in the government of the country was proclaimed as the foundation of their line. In the various elections which have been held in Spain, Carrillo's party has not won more than 9 per cent of the votes and has a few deputies in parliament. Carrillo has described this as a "great democratic victory which will change the face of Spain". But in fact, the Spanish revisionists can never clean up the face of Spain because what Ibarruri, Carrillo and company have in their hands is not soap but tar. They have rejected the red flag of the revolution and have shamelessly trampled underfoot the blood of tens and hundreds of thousands of heroes of the Spanish War.

In the reformist and opportunist transformation of the communist parties of the Western countries, the line which the Soviet revisionist leadership established in its relations with them played an important role. The aim of the Khrushchevite revisionists of the Soviet Union was to compel the revisionist parties of the different countries to follow them in the policy of establishing their social-imperialist hegemony over the whole world. They demanded that these parties become their assistants in the fiendish activity they had engaged in.

Naturally, the American imperialists and their allies could not approve the hegemonic and expansionist aims of the Soviet social-imperialists. Nor could the revisionist parties of different countries agree with the Soviet policy. Urged by the bourgeoisie of their own countries, they began ever more openly to carry on separate activities independently of the revisionist party of the Soviet Union.

One after the other, the revisionist parties of Western Europe, Latin America and Asia rose to a greater or lesser extent against the Khrushchevite Soviet hegemony, at the same time bringing out new anti-Marxist theories. The "theories" of the big revisionist parties of Western Europe, which took the name Eurocommunism, very quickly became the most complete and most publicized of these theories. As soon as it emerged on the scene, Eurocommunism, like Titoite and Khrushchevite revisionism, began a frontal struggle against Marxism-Leninism, with the aim of revising and discrediting its fundamental principles in the eyes of the workers.

From Revisionist Opportunism to Bourgeois Anti-Communism

urocommunism is a variant of modern revisionism, a hotch-potch of pseudo-theories opposed to Marxism-Leninism. Its aim is to hinder the scientific theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from remaining a strong and unerring weapon in the hands of the working class and the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties for the destruction of capitalism, its structure and superstructure, to its foundations, for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of the new socialist society.

The Italian revisionists have defined Eurocommunism as "a third road, different from the experience of the parties of social-democracy and different from those which have been promoted since the October Revolution in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries". As the theses of the 15th Congress of the Italian Communist Party have it, this "third road" is presented as "a solution which is adapted to the national characteristics and the conditions of the present epoch, to the essential features and demands which are common to developed industrial societies, which are based on parliamentary democratic institutions, as the countries of Western Europe are today." (The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979). Hence, as the Eurocommunists themselves admit, this "third road", this so-called Eurocommunism, has nothing at all to do with the genuine scientific communism elaborated by Marx and Lenin, embodied in the October Revolution and in the other socialist revolutions that followed it, and confirmed by the class struggle of the international proletariat. Eurocommunism can be described accurately and correctly as European revisionism number three.

Now the French Communist Party, the Italian and Spanish parties, have only the name communist, because the three of them are floundering in the stinking waters of the bourgeoisie which they serve. The programs of the revisionist parties of the Western countries are typically reformist programs, which do not differ from the programs of the bourgeois parties, socialist and social-democratic, which sing the same refrain. Indeed, it is the latter which inspire the revisionists. Their objective is not the proletarian revolution and the socialist transformation of society, but the creation of the opinion among the broad masses that they should abandon the revolution, which, they say, has become unnecessary and inappropriate. But what should be done, according to them? "We must transform our life-style", "we must change our way of life", "we must think about the day-to-day problems", "we must not attack present-day capitalist society", "we must carry out a cultural revolution in place of the proletarian revolution", explain these anti-Marxist parties day and night. "We must live better, must protect our wages and not allow them to be reduced, must have paid holidays and guaranteed jobs", "what more can we ask?" they say to the workers. The Italian and French revisionist parties deal with these questions at every meeting and every congress and feed this stuff to the proletariat and the workers in order to win their votes.

The classical revisionism of the social-democratic type has been integrated into modern revisionism. The theories of Bernstein and Kautsky in various forms, sometimes openly and sometimes modified, are found in the revisionist Browder, are found in Khrushchevite revisionism, in Titoite revisionism, in French revisionism and in the Italian revisionism of Togliatti, in the so-called Mao Zedong thought, and all revisionist currents. These innumerable anti-Marxist currents, which are developing in the present-day capitalist and revisionist world, are the fifth column in the ranks of the world revolution to prolong the existence of international capitalism by fighting the revolution from within.

Negation of Marxism-Leninism is the objective which capitalism and imperialism have always wanted and want to achieve. In this direction modern revisionism is helping them with all its means and ways, open and disguised, with all kinds of pseudo-scientific philosophical theories and slogans.

At the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party, Marchais declared that they would go to socialism without class struggle, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer needed to build it. He admitted that in his "socialism" there would be not merely different parties, but even parties of reaction. Thus, for Marchais, as for Brezhnev and Tito, socialism has already begun to be built in many countries where capital rules, and all that is necessary is to put the signboard "socialist country" over the gate.

In other words, since all countries are going to socialism spontaneously, as the revisionists preach, no one allegedly has any need for Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution and socialism, for it now belongs to the past, and therefore should be abandoned.

The various revisionists allege that Marxism-Leninism "is in its dotage", that it is no longer capable of solving the problems which the developed society of the present day raises, that it is no longer suitable to present-day civilization. According to them, modern society has absorbed all that it can absorb from Marxism-Leninism, and this has entered the ranks of outdated philosophies such as Kantism, positivism, Bergsonian irrationalism and other idealist philosophies. The ultrarevisionist Milovan Djilas writes openly that Marxism-Leninism, a philosophy elaborated in the 19th century, can no longer be valid when contemporary science is much more developed than the science and philosophy of the past century.

Proceeding on this road, during the last two or three years, the Italian, French and Spanish revisionists have made great efforts to formulate in theory their opportunist views and stands, which they call Eurocommunism, and to give them the character of a separate ideological and political doctrine, which allegedly represents "a new development of Marxism". In the recent congresses which these parties have held, and in the programs which were adopted, Eurocommunism assumed a completely defined form. These three parties have officially rejected Marxism-Leninism. The French of Marchais, who consider the theory of Marx a theory with dry and dogmatic concepts, a closed system of unalterable rules, say that the new "theory" which they have created, has "its sources in the philosophical and political currents of our nation". (Cahiers du communisme, June-July 1979, p.392) It is self-evident that the French revisionists are not referring to those revolutionary progressive philosophical contributions which Marx included in a critical way in his work, but precisely to those views which he exposed and refuted and which the revisionists have now made their own.

The revisionists' removal of any reference to Marxism-Leninism in their Constitutions, programs and other documents, is not an act of just a formal character, which sanctions what they had done in practice long before. Likewise this act does not represent only the implementation of the will of the bourgeoisie, its demand that the revisionist parties must no longer mention "the spectre of communism". Neither is it only an act which officially expresses the open transition of modern revisionism to the ideological positions of European social-democracy. The abandonment of any reference to Marxism-Leninism by the revisionist parties, which up till now have used it as a disguise to deceive the working people, shows that they have commenced an open struggle against it from the positions of bourgeois anti-communism. The fact is that on the ideological plane, it is precisely the Eurocommunists who are carrying the banner of struggle against Marxism-Leninism, socialism and the revolution today. The publicity which the big bourgeois press, the publishing trusts, the radio and the television are giving to the articles, books, speeches and congresses of the revisionists is truly astounding. Figures such as Berlinguer, Marchais, and even Carrillo have been transformed by the big propaganda machine into personalities who outstrip not only the film "stars" but even popes and heads of the biggest states. Journalists and writers pursue them at every step and never allow them to drop a word without publishing it in the biggest headlines on the front pages of newspapers.

All this advertisment, all this clamour, is evidence of the great joy of the bourgeoisie, which has found zealous lackeys who are fighting communism from the left, as they say, at a time when its open anti-communist weapons had become rusty and broken. Capital could not find anything better or more effective in the difficult situations it is experiencing than the service which the revisionists offer. Therefore, the praise which the bourgeoisie is heaping on the demagogy and deception, the theoretical speculations and practical activity with which the revisionists are manoeuvring to deceive and disorganize the workers, is completely understandable and justifiable.

The Bourgeois Conception of Bourgeois Society

The Eurocommunists try to paint a distorted picture of the present-day capitalist society and its contradictions, to present it as a society which has evolved so greatly since the time of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin that their fundamental analyses and teachings about it "are out-of-date and no longer valid".

They see present-day capitalist society as unified and no longer distinguish its polarization into proletarians and bourgeois, no longer see the contradiction between these two classes as the fundamental contradiction, and consequently do not see the class struggle as the main motive force of this society. For the Eurocommunists, of course, there are certain contradictions, which they call contradictions of "development", of "progress", of "well-being", of "democracy", etc., which have allegedly replaced the old contradictions, especially the contradiction between labour and capital, on which the whole Marxist-Leninist theory about the role and the historic mission of the proletariat, the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism is based.

Today, they say, the proletariat of the time of Marx and Lenin no longer exists, the classes have changed and they are no longer those which Marx and Lenin knew and about which they spoke. Nowadays, say the Eurocommunists, even the bourgeois class has dissolved as a class, has been transformed into "workers" and all the wealth has been gathered in the hands of a small clique of capitalists who preserve and defend this property. Marchais, for example, has "discovered" that in France today the bourgeoisie "that counts" has been reduced to only 25 financial and industrial groups, while the others are "workers". Consequently, stress the revisionist renegades, the present-day bourgeois capitalist state has changed, because society itself has changed and the classes have changed. Therefore, they reason, Marx and Lenin, who did not know the present-day capitalist state, which is entirely different from that of their time, foresaw another role for the proletariat, which differs from that of the present day, another method for the seizure of power by the proletariat, another method of struggle to go over to socialism.

For the Eurocommunist revisionists, all the classes and strata of capitalist society today, and especially the intelligentsia, have been identified with the proletariat. With the exception of a small handful of capitalists, in their eyes all the others, without distinction, want to change society from a bourgeois society into a socialist society. And in order to carry out this change, according to the Eurocommunists, the old society has to be reformed and not overthrown.

Hence, they imagine that state power must be taken gradually, through reforms, through the development of culture, and through the close collaboration of all classes without exception, both those who hold and those who do not hold this power.

All the revisionists follow the course of Marcuse, who when he speaks about the American proletariat, tries "to prove" that in the "highly industrialized American society", a proletariat in the Marxist sense does not exist, because, according to him, this proletariat now allegedly belongs to history.

To Marcuse, Garaudy, Berlinguer, Carrillo, Marchais, and their company, this means that the "consumer society", "developed industrial society" has not only changed the form of the old capitalist society but has also leveled out the classes, and as Georges Marchais in particular has declared, now "we can no longer talk about the French proletariat, but about the French working class".

Marx said that "...our 'proletarian' is economically none other than the wage-labourer who produces and increases 'capital', and is thrown out on the streets as soon as he is superfluous for the needs of aggrandissement of 'Monsieur capital'.. ."

What has changed in France that Marchais can no longer see proletarians? Are there no longer wage-labourers who produce surplus value and increase capital, are there no longer unemployed whom "Monsieur capital" has thrown out on the streets as unwanted?

In socialist Albania, certainly, the proletariat no longer exists in the sense that this notion has in the capitalist countries, because in our country the working class has the state power in its hands, is the owner of the chief means of production, is not oppressed or exploited, and works freely for itself and for the socialist society.

The matter is quite different in the capitalist countries where the working class is deprived of the means of production and, in order to live, is obliged to sell its labour power and submit to capitalist exploitation, which is continuously increasing its intensity. Besides being savagely oppressed and exploited to the bone, the proletariat in those countries also suffers the oppression of the bourgeois army and police. Although the proletariat in the capitalist states may be dressed in the nylon materials which the "consumer society" produces, in fact it remains the proletariat.

It is not without purpose that the modern revisionists change the name of the proletariat. If one speaks of the proletariat, which in capitalism possesses nothing but the strength of its arms, it is self-evident that this proletariat has to fight its exploiters and oppressors. It is precisely this struggle, which has the objective of destroying the old state power of capital to its foundations, that terrifies the bourgeoisie and precisely in this context the revisionists assist the bourgeoisie with all the means they possess.

The denial of the existence of the proletariat as a class in itself, as the most advanced class of society, charged by history with the glorious mission of eliminating the exploitation of man by man and building the new, truly free, equal, just and humane society, is nothing new. The various opportunists were preaching it at the time when Marxism was emerging as a philosophic doctrine and a political movement. Marx and Engels refuted these views and gave the proletariat weapons and arguments to fight not only these, but also the other lackeys of the bourgeoisie, the future apologists of capitalism, such as the modern revisionists today.

One of the greatest merits of Marxism is that it saw in the proletariat not just an oppressed and exploited class, but the most progressive and revolutionary class of the time, the class which history had charged with the mission of the gravedigger of capitalism. Marx and Engels explained that this mission stems from the socio-economic conditions themselves, from the place which the proletariat occupies and the role which it plays in the process of production and socio-political life, from the fact that it is the bearer of the new relations of the future socialist society, that it has its own scientific ideology which illuminates its way has its own leading staff - the communist party.

Despite the changes which have occurred in the development of the economy and the social composition of capitalist society, the overall conditions of the existence, the work and the life of the proletariat today remain those which Marx analysed. No other class or social stratum can replace the proletariat as the main and leading force of the revolutionary processes for the progressive transformation of society.

The teachings of Marx on this question remain unshaken. In the Marxist theory the proletariat finds its own spiritual weapon, just as this theory finds its material weapon in the proletariat. Marx said that the proletariat is the heart of the revolution while philosophy is its head. Marx's "Capital" is the beacon light for the world proletariat, which shows it scientifically in what manner and in what forms the bourgeoisie exploits it. The capitalists chain the proletariat to the factories and machines, but "Capital" teaches the proletariat how to break these chains.

The revisionist theses about the change in the nature of the proletariat and its historic mission have long existed in the communist parties of the Western countries, but the first to come out with them publicly and officially was Roger Garaudy. Garaudy was one of the first revisionist "theoreticians" to develop the theory that one could no longer talk about the impoverishment of the French proletariat and that the various classes and strata of the population were already moving towards blending and unification.

The thesis of Garaudy, now repeated and applied by the other revisionists, is that "in the present situation, there is no longer any need for violent revolution, because the workers are gradually sharing actively in the profits of the big capitalist enterprises, which now are no longer run by the bourgeois owners, but by the technicians who have replaced them". This is a great fraud, because these technicians and specialists are under the thumb of a single management, they are the servants of the big capitalist trusts and monopolies which are the real owners of the means of production.

In the capitalist world, despite the changes which have taken place in the social class structure, nothing has altered in regard to the positions of classes and class relationships. The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin about classes and the class struggle in bourgeois society retains its full freshness and validity.

A series of other "theories" similar to that of Garaudy emerged in the West from both the "new" French pseudo-philosophers and from their German, American, Italian and other counterparts. All these theories carry the brand of revisionism, Trotskyism, anarchism and social-democracy. The moment arrived when all these theories became completely the private property of the French, Italian, Spanish, British and other revisionist parties, which gathered up all this revisionist and opportunist refuse and codified it in a banal way.

Daily life, the struggle of the working class, has exposed these theories and continues to do so.

It has revealed their reactionary counterrevolutionary aim. It proves that the working class is impoverished the more the capitalists are enriched, that it properly understands what Marx said, that the more wealth each worker produces the poorer he becomes, that the more commodities the worker makes the more he reduces his own value as a commodity, that the proletariat cannot escape from exploitation without taking over the means of production and without destroying the state power of the bourgeoisie.

Today, the modern revisionists such a Marchais, Berlinguer, Carrillo and company, reject this scientific view of Marx. Today, they say, the process of the relative and absolute impoverishment of the proletariat no longer exists because of the development of the technical-scientific revolution and the gains which the workers have achieved through reforms. They want to tell the proletarians that all their demands and needs are being fulfilled from the hand-outs which capitalism gives them, therefore they have no reason to rise in revolution.

Some other revisionist "theoreticians", faced with the undeniable facts of life, declare that it is true that Marx spoke about the exploitation of the working class, but what he said is equally valid for both the capitalist and the socialist countries. Consequently, the working class has no reason to rise against capitalist exploitation because allegedly it can never escape it! This is a distortion of the reality and a slander. The position of the working class in capitalism and its position in socialism are diametrically opposite.

In the capitalist and revisionist countries the worker is not free, either in work or in life. He is a slave to the machine, to the capitalist and the technocrat, who squeeze out the last drop of his labour power and from this create surplus value for capital. Only in the genuine socialist order, in which the working class is in power, do the teachings of Marx, properly applied, provide the possibility for the proletariat to become conscious and completely the master of the means of production and, through its dictatorship, to gain all its political, economic and democratic freedoms and rights.

The binding of the working class with economic chains, with which capitalism shackles it, is the main thing in bourgeois society. The whole capitalist system has been built on this bondage. However, the bourgeois and revisionist theoreticians, being quite unable to deny this great truth, try to obscure the question of economic exploitation about which Marx speaks and which is primary, and to interpret it through a series of concocted theses and false views. Being unable to refute the binding of the worker to capital, these "theoreticians" preach that allegedly there is no longer any need to point out how much the owner in the capitalist order squeezes and enslaves men, but what should be pointed out is that his link with capital is allegedly in favour of the worker because it keeps him alive. Their aim is to divert the proletariat from the class struggle against capitalism by trying to focus its attention on the "blessings" of the "consumer society". The modern revisionists have invented many deceptive theses to divert attention from economic oppression and exploitation. They give great publicity to their thesis that in the "consumer society" the worker enjoys so many things that he regards the economic problems as coming at the bottom of the list. According to them, almost his only worries are the problems of religion, the family, his wife, his TV-set, his car, etc. And as a result the problem of economic exploitation is allegedly no longer the basic problem of the class struggle and revolution. However, they do all these things in order to water down the wine and divert the working masses from the struggle to overthrow the bourgeois order.

In breaking with Marxism-Leninism and wanting to create a new "theory" which is distinct from the doctrine of Marx and Lenin on all fundamental questions, the Eurocommunists have got themselves into a great mess and confusion, into profound incoherence and great contradictions. They are practically unable to explain any contradictions of the present-day capitalist world or to give answers to the problems which arise from them. True, they speak about such phenomena as "crisis", "unemployment", the "degradation and degeneration" of bourgeois society, but they content themselves with general observations which no one, not even the bourgeoisie, denies. However, they consciously try to cover up the cause of these phenomena, the savage capitalist exploitation, and to avoid showing that this exploitation can be eliminated only through the revolution, with the overthrow of all the old relations which keep the system of capitalist oppression on its feet.

With their theses about the "dying out of the class struggle" as a consequence of the "essential changes" which capitalist society has allegedly undergone because of the development of the forces of production, the technical-scientific revolution, the "restructuring of capitalism", etc.; with their preaching of the need to establish extensive class collaboration, because now allegedly it is not only the working class and working masses who are interested in socialism but also nearly all the strata of the bourgeoisie, except for a tiny group of monopolists; with their claim that the transition to socialism can be made through reforms, because present-day capitalist society is allegedly developing on the road of peaceful integration into socialism, etc., the Eurocommunists have identified themselves, not only in theory but also in their practical activity, with old European social-democracy and have amalgamated with it in a single counterrevolutionary current in the service of the bourgeoisie.

Their stand towards the working class and its leading role has been the touchstone for all revolutionaries at all times. Abandonment of the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolutionary movement, pointed out Lenin, is the most vulgar form of reformism. But this vulgarity does not worry the Italian revisionists. Indeed they proclaim their reformism so bombastically that they make themselves truly ludicrous. "The leading role of the working class in the process of leaving capitalism behind and building socialism," they declare, "can and must be achieved through collaboration and agreement between different parties and currents which aspire to socialism, and within the framework of the democratic system in which all constitutional parties enjoy full rights, even those who do not want the socialist transformation of society and oppose it, of course, while always respecting the democratic constitutional rules." (The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979)

This "original Marxist" vision, add the supporters of Berlinguer, is not a new discovery, but the development of the thinking of Labriola and Togliatti. In this case, they themselves admit the source of their ideas. However, it shoudl be added that Labriola, whom they are now making a classic, was not a consistent Marxist. He remained far removed from the revolutionary activity and problems of the revolution. As for Togliatti, his work already shows that he was a deviator and an opportunist.

By referring to Labriola or Togliatti, the Italian revisionists and their counterparts in France or Spain want to leave in oblivion Lenin's theory about the necessity for the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution and the construction of socialism.  In all his work of genius Lenin defended and developed Marx's theory about the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution, abandoned by the European social-democrats. The social-democratic views on this question have been now revived by the revisionists. He proved that in the new conditions of imperialism, the hegemony of the proletariat is essential not only for the socialist revolution but also for the democratic revolution. He explained that the establishment of this hegemony is essential because the proletariat is interested more than any other social class in the complete triumph of the revolution, in carrying it through to the end. With the theory of Lenin the proletariat has gone into the revolution and has won, while with the theories that the revisionists preach, it remains oppressed by the bourgeoisie.

The Leninist theory about the undivided hegemony of the working class has found a brilliant confirmation and application in the carrying out of the revolution and the triumph of socialism in Albania, too. To the Albanian communists it was clear from the start that only one party, the Communist Party, could lead the National Liberation War through to complete victory, that only one class, the working class, could be the leader in this struggle, that the main ally of this class would be the poor and middle peasantry, that the youth and the students would be the main support of the Party and, together with the Albanian women, would comprise the fighting strata of the people's revolution.

The small number of the working class in Albania did not hinder it in the least from playing its hegemonic role because it had at the head its Communist Party, which was guided by the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The correct line of our Party, which responded to the situation and the interests of the broad working masses, made it possible to achieve the great unity of the people around the working class in a single front under the sole and undivided leadership of the Communist Party.

The correct line and leadership of our Party led to the extension of the struggle, which gradually built up until it assumed the form of a general uprising, a broad people's armed struggle, up to the liberation of Albania and the establishment of the people's power.

In negating the hegemonic and leading role of the working class in the revolution and the construction of socialism, the Eurocommunists, could not but abandon also the role and mission of the communist party, as it is defined by Marxism-Leninism and as it has been confirmed by the long history of the world revolutionary and communist movement.

The theses of the 15th Congress of the Italian Communist Party say that now a "new party" has been built. What is this "new party"? "The Italian Communist Party," says its Constitution, "organizes the workers, the working people, the intellectuals and the citizens who fight within the framework of the Republican Constitution for the consolidation and development of the anti-fascist democratic regime, for the socialist rejuvenation of society, for the independence of the peoples, for the reduction of tension and for peace, for cooperation among all nations ..." The Constitution continues, "the Italian Communist Party is open to all citizens of 18 years of age, who irrespective of race, philosophical views and religious belief, accept the political program and untertake to act to carry it out by militating in one of the organizations of the party..." (The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979).

We quoted this long clause of the Constitution of the Italian revisionist party, which is almost identical with those of the French and Spanish revisionist parties, in order to show how far the Eurocommunist revisionists have departed from the concepts of the Leninist party and how closely they have approached the models of socialist and social-democratic parties. They speak about a "new party", wanting it to be distinct from the party of the Leninist type, but in fact their party which they call new is an "old party" of the type of the parties of the Second International, against which Lenin fought and on the ruins of which he built the Bolshevik Party which became an example and the model for all other genuine communist parties.

The statement placed at the beginning of the Constitution, that anyone, irrespective of his philosophical views and religious belief, can enter the party, requires no comment to prove that the philosophy of Marx is alien to this party, that its eclecticism is blatant, that the line of compromises of every kind is part of its strategy, let alone its tactics, that the Italian Communist Party is a liberal social-democratic party, with its line, policy and stands determined by the changing political circumstances. Its liberal policy ensures that at times it will get votes, but not that it will take and hold power. It makes the bourgeoisie praise it, and the priests in the churches and the monks in the monasteries sympathize with it.

Lenin's fundamental idea about the party is, that it must be a conscious vanguard detachment of the working class, a Marxist detachment of it.

".... the role of vanguard fighters. Lenin said, can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory." Lenin

This revolutionary vanguard theory, a reliable guide to victory, is Marxism. Not only have the revisionists abandoned the fundamental condition for a communist party to be such, i.e., acceptance of Marxism, but they permit all the bourgeois, opportunist, reactionary or fascist philosophical views to coexist in their party, and this they have sanctioned in their Constitution. The thing that characterizes, that distinguishes the communist parties, is Marxism-Leninism, the sole ideology by which they are guided and to which they loyally adhere in all their activity. Without Marxism-Leninism there cannot be a communist party.

The genuine communist parties are parties to carry out the revolution and build socialism, while the so-called Italian, French and Spanish communist parties and others of this type are parties of bourgeois reforms. The former are parties for the overthrow of the bourgeois order and the construction of the new world, the latter are parties for the defence of the capitalist order and the preservation of the old world.

At the time when Lenin was fighting against the opportunists for the construction of the Bolshevik Party, he said:

"...give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!" -Lenin

He built such a party and led the Russian working class to the glorious victory of the October Revolution.

But where do Berlinguer's revisionists want to lead the Italian working class? "We must fight within the framework of the Republican Constitution," they say. And the bourgeoisie says, "Fight as much as you like within the bars of the cage of my Constitution because this does me no harm."

The bourgeoisie maintains the army, the police, the courts, etc., to defend its Constitution, laws and institutions. Lined up beside them now is the revisionist party which is struggling to keep the working class oppressed and enslaved, to corrupt it ideologically and confuse it politically. It has transformed itself into an institution of the bourgeois state to extinguish the revolutionary spirit of the working class, to obscure the socialist perspective, to prevent it from understanding the miserable condition in which it is living and from rising in resolute struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

The Eurocommunists' "Socialism" Is the Present Capitalist System

How do the Eurocommunists envisage socialism? Although they are obliged to speak about socialism for demagogy, the "socialism" which they want to build is simply a fraud and deception.

It is known that not only now, but for years, many bourgeois and petty-bourgeois philosophers and ideological trends have speculated greatly with the idea of socialism. Many utopian schemes and endless misrepresentations have been concocted about socialism. Marx rejected all the old forms of socialism and taught the world proletariat that it should organize and fight to establish the new social order based on genuine scientific socialism.

As early as in the first programmatic document of Marxism, the "Communist Manifesto," Marx and Engels made an all-round criticism of various pseudo-socialist theories, such as "feudal socialism", "petty-bourgeois socialism", German "genuine socialism", "conservative or bourgeois socialism". They revealed their class essence as anti-scientific theories which served the interests of the bourgeoisie. In struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opportunist and anarchist theories which hindered the emancipation of the proletariat and its struggle, the "Manifesto" taught the working class that it could escape bourgeois oppression and exploitation only by means of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and that it could not liberate itself without, at the same time, liberating the whole of society.

History has proved that since the birth of Marxism, every other ideological trend which has come out with socialist slogans, has turned into a reactionary current in the process of the class struggle. Marxism alone provides the accurate idea of the genuine socialist society. No socialism can be achieved or built without being based on this theory.

The first great confirmation of the Marxist theory formulated in the "Communist Manifesto" came in the revolutionary events of 1848-1849, which shook the whole of Europe.

Revolutions not only open the way to social progress but they always become the grave of utopian, revisionist and other false doctrines. This occurred with the doctrines of "bourgeois socialism", "petty-bourgeois socialism", etc., which were buried by the revolutions of 1848-1849.

The main evil of those so-called socialist doctrines was that they completely ignored the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat and envisaged socialism as the realization of this or that system, invented by this or that "theoretician". This was the source of all those illusions that the creation of associations supported by the state, restriction of inheritance rights, establishment of progressive tax scales would gradually lead to socialism in a peaceful way. Proudhon and Louis Blanc, the German "genuine" socialists and utopian communists like Waitling, Cabets, Desamis and others had preached and were preaching this "doctrinaire socialism".

The working class leaves this doctrinaire socialism to the petty bourgeoisie, says Marx, while " ... the proletariat rallies more and more round revolutionary socialism, round communism... This socialism," he continues, " is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations."

At present the new Proudhonists, such as Georges Marchais, Enrico Berlinguer, Santiago Carrillo and others are trying to impose on the West-European proletariat these old philosophies which were refuted by Marx, dressed up in different cloaks. All the revisionists want to deceive the masses with their "theories" by eliminating the scientific foundations of Marxism. They are simply telling lies when they say that "they are objective in their recognition of the laws which make society advance"! In reality they have become lackeys of the "consumer society" created by the capitalist and imperialist bourgeoisie to ensure maximum profits from the exploitation of the working class and all the working masses. These revisionists also want to consume something from the surplus value which is extracted from the proletariat of their countries.

The question of what socialism is, what socialist society is, what it represents and achieves at present is not a question of the future, but a concrete reality, a whole historical practice, a tangible social system. Genuine scientific socialism, that advocated by the great geniuses of the revolution, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, was achieved and existed for a long time in the Soviet Union and many other former socialist countries, and it exists and is advancing in socialist Albania. The efforts which the Eurocommunists are making today "to prove" that genuine socialism has allegedly never existed anywhere, that the socialist society built in the Soviet Union by Lenin and Stalin was allegedly a "distortion of socialism", indeed a "failure" of the concepts and ideas which Marx and Lenin had of socialism, are nothing but expressions of their hostility to communism, expressions of their desire to keep the existing bourgeois society intact.

The Italian, French and Spanish revisionists have traveled a long road to reach the point of their denial of socialism. At first, they claimed that socialism in the Soviet Union was divided into two parts, a "Leninist socialism" which was good, just, but conditioned by the special historical conditions of czarist Russia, therefore unsuitable for the developed capitalist countries, and a "Stalinist socialism" which was bad, because allegedly it was a distortion of the former, deformed, bureaucratized, and so on. This evolution in judgements is not accidental. If the "Leninist experience" were accepted, even with reservations, if the justice of the use of the revolutionary violence for the seizure of power were accepted, for example, then there would be no place left for the Eurocommunists' "model" of socialism. Lenin's theory on the revolution and the construction of socialism, which is a further development of Marx's teachings, is so much a whole, so coherent, so scientific and logical that it must be accepted as it is or not accepted at all. It cannot be chopped into pieces without falling into irreconcilable contradictions and absurdities of logic.

Thus the Eurocommunists are now no longer opposed only to Stalin, but have abandoned Leninism too, thinking that with this they have escaped and found the way to preach "Eurocommunist socialism". But if they have abandoned Leninism, the proletariat has not done so. Leninism is a living science, the militant ideology of the proletariat, the banner of the revolution and the construction of socialism. Leninism is that powerful weapon with which all genuine revolutionaries, all those who want communism and are striving for socialism, fight against all enemies, against the bourgeoisie and its collaborators. Leninism is the mirror which brings to light the true features of the Eurocommunists and all other revisionists, which reveals the falsity of their opportunist "theories", which shows up their reactionary activity against the proletariat, socialism and the peoples' cause.

In order to avoid the dissatisfaction of the rank and file of their parties, the doubts which the "theories" they propose about "socialism" and their confused, contradictory theses in general arouse, the Eurocommunists declare that their socialism still does not represent a "model", is not yet something clear and defined, but only an expression of the "need to find the way" towards this society which must be discussed. In other words, it is just beating the air, because nothing is being achieved.

The "socialism" envisaged by the Eurocommunists is a society in which socialist and capitalist elements are combined and coexist in the economy and politics, in the base and superstructure. In their "socialism" there will be both "socialist property" and capitalist property, hence there will also be exploiting and exploited classes; alongside the party of the working class there will also be bourgeois parties; the proletarian ideology will coexist with the other ideologies; in this "socialism" the state will be a state in which all parties and classes have power.

The Eurocommunists can dream as much as they like about such a hybrid capitalist-socialist society, but this society which they propose can never be achieved. Socialism and capitalism are two different social systems which are mutually exclusive. Capitalism exists as long as it keeps the proletariat and the working masses oppressed and exploited, while socialism is built and advances only on the ruins of capitalism, after it is completely overthrown.

In order to justify their profoundly opportunist views, the Eurocommunists overrate the role of equipment, of means of production in the development of society, thus slipping into the so-called theory of productive forces, which was the ideological basis of all the opportunism of the Second International.

According to them, the impulse towards socialism comes automatically and spontaneously from the development of productive forces. Therefore, they claim, for the transition to socialism there is no need for class struggle or proletarian revolution. Moreover, according to the Eurocommunists, even in those countries where the revolution has been carried out and socialist relations of production have been established, if there is a relatively low level of productive forces, there can be no talk of genuine socialism there.

In order to see how far the Eurocommunists have departed from the idea of socialism and what sort of socialist society they pretend that they have to build, one need only examine some of their main theses, about which they beat the big drum so loudly as the highest development of the progressive thought of present "day human society."

"An integral nationalization of the means of production is not necessary to achieve a socialist society," declare the Italian revisionists. "Alongside of a public sector... private initiative will operate... Freely united peasant property; crafts; small and middle industry; the private initiative in the tertiary field... will play a special role. In this concept of the transformation of society in the socialist sense, there must be a linking of the economic system in order to ensure an integration between programing and the market, between public and private initiative ..."

The French revisionists also proclaim such a "socialism". This society, they say, "requires a sufficient body of democratic nationalizations, along with other forms of social property and an economic sector based on private property". (L'Humanitè, January 13, 1979) Carillo says, "This system, which will have a mixed character in the field of the economy, will be expressed in a political regime in which the owners will be organized not only economically but also in one or more political parties, which represent their interests. This situation will become one of the components of political and ideological pluralism." (S.Carillo, "Eurocomunisme" et Etat, France 1977, pp.121-122)

It requires no special knowledge of social laws to understand that the tableau of the socalled socialist society which the Eurocommunists present is nothing other than the precise and most typical tableau of present-day bourgeois society. The basic element which determines a social system is the ownership of the means of production. If the ownership of the means of production is private, then we have to do with a system in which man exploits man, in which wealth is accumulated in the hands of the minority at one pole, while the overwhelming majority of the people live in poverty and want at the other pole. It has already been proved that socialism cannot exist without the elimination of capitalist property and the smashing of the bourgeois state. There can never be socialism without the establishment of social ownership of the means of production in all sectors without exception, without the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The proletariat has fought with courage, sacrifice and abnegation to overthrow the relations of capitalist ownership of the means of production. To this end, it has elaborated its own ideology, Marxism-Leninism, which must guide it in the revolution and the establishment of social ownership of the means of production, in the elimination of the exploitation which arises from private ownership of these means, and in the elimination of poverty. The proletariat realized this objective in those countries where the revolution triumphed and socialism was established. This experience, which the construction of socialism in Albania is confirming more and more each day, shows that the fundamental condition for the construction of socialist society is precisely the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the transformation of the whole economy of the country on a socialist basis, the establishment of social ownership of the means of production.

Liberation found Albania a backward country from the socio-economic and cultural viewpoint, mainly an agricultural country, almost without industry, with a very low level of development of the productive forces. Did this constitute an obstacle to the construction of socialist relations of production? Of course. it did, indeed a major obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. Our Party could not wait for the productive forces to be developed to a high level, and then commence the establishment of socialist relations.

Among the first and most important measures which our people's state power took were the liquidation of foreign capital and the transformation of its enterprises into socialist state property, the implementation of an extensive and radical land reform, which not only liquidated the large-scale property of the feudal lords and the estate-owners, but also greatly restricted the property of the rich peasants. These measures of a profoundly revolutionary character created important premises for the gradual socialist transformation of the countryside, for the development of the cooperative movement there.

Having the unerring guide of Marxism-Leninism, as well as the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union, the Party of Labour of Albania put forward the liquidation of the economic base of capitalism and the construction of the economic base of socialism in town and counstryside as a main objective.

The socialization of the main means of production was carried out relatively quickly, by means of nationalization without compensation. In 1946, two years after Liberation, the banks, industry, the mines, power stations, transport, communications, foreign trade, internal wholesale trade, part of the retail trade, the machine and tractor stations, the forests, waters and underground assets, were socialist state property. Thus the socialist sector of the economy occupied the commanding position.

A major problem for every socialist revolution is the agrarian problem. The development of the whole economy and the stability of the people's state power itself depend on the correct solution of this problem. In Albania, where the peasantry comprised the overwhelming majority of the population and agriculture was the main branch of the economy, the agrarian problem was extremely acute and decisive. The course which our Party followed to resolve this cardinal question was the Leninist course of socialist co-operation.

Adhering strictly to the principle of the free will of the peasantry to unite in cooperatives, the process of the collectivization of agriculture, which began almost immediately after the liberation of the country, and went on for about 15 to 20 years, was carried out without first nationalizing the land. This was done only after collectivization had been completed, with the approval of the new Constitution in 1976.

With the construction of the economic base of socialism in town and countryside, the exploiting classes were liquidated as classes, and the exploitation of man by man was wiped out. Only two friendly classes remained, the working class and the cooperativist peasantry, linked with each other by common ideas, aims and interests, along with the stratum of the socialist intelligentsia from the ranks of the working people and created during the years of the people's state power.

The construction of socialism cannot be carried out either through decrees or in a spontaneous way. Socialism is built with multiplied forces, with the participation of all the working people, and with a co-ordinated, centralized, overall plan.

By implementing a correct policy for the industrialization of the country, it was possible to transform Albania quickly, from a backward agricultural country into a country with developed industry and agriculture, with advanced education and culture, a country in which the people live in true freedom and happiness.

The Eurocommunists do not accept our experience, or that of the Soviet Union or other countries when they were socialist. They want to invent a "new" socialism. However, you need a crippled logic in order to accept the existence of private ownership of the means of production in society and at the same time think you can avoid the exploitation of man by man, and to speak about "socialist transformations", "equality", "justice", etc., such as the Eurocommunists preach. The preservation of private ownership of the means of production, of "private initiative", that is, the possibility of capitalist accumulation in the society which the Eurocommunists, propose means in fact that the capitalist system will be retained completely intact and inviolate.

In all their philosophical fantasies, as well as in the programs which their parties proclaim, the Eurocommunist revisionists do not touch at all on the question of what will be done with the multinational companies and foreign capital. Since they do not mention it, this means that they will remain integral parts of the "socialist" society which they advocate, this means that big American, West-German, British, French and other capital will no longer think of super-profits, but will serve socialism. This is just day-dreaming. On this question, Carrillo, Berlinguer, Marchais are not as progressive as those circles of the bourgeoisie in many developing countries, which, although they are not for socialism, demand the expulsion of foreign monopoly capital and liberation from the multinational companies.

In regard to the so-called public sector, the existence of which "Eurocommunist socialism" foresees, here we have to do simply with a speculation in terms, with a vulgar attempt to peddle the sector of state capitalism, which exists to this or that degree in all the bourgeois countries, as a socialist sector of the economy.

The state capitalist sector, or the "public sector", as the bourgeoisie calls it, has been created in ways and for reasons that are known.

State capitalism in the industrial countries of Europe existed previously, but it assumed an obvious development, especially after the Second World War. It was created as a result of a number of factors. In Italy, for example, it was set up by the bourgeoisie, as a result of the exacerbation of the class struggle, and the great pressure of the working masses, who demanded the expropriation of big capital, especially that linked with fascism, which was responsible for the catastrophe which the country suffered. In order to escape the further radicalization of the struggle of the working masses and to avoid revolutionary outbursts, the weak Italian bourgeoisie carried out the nationalization of some big industries, a nationalization which fulfilled the minimum demands of the communist and socialist parties, which emerged from the war strengthened. In Britain, the creation of the "public sector" like that of railways or coal came as a result of big capital's abandoning some backward and unprofitable branches. It handed these over to the state, which subsidized them from the budget, from the tax-payers, while it invested its capital in the sectors of new industries with a high level of technology, in which great super-profits were secured more easily and quickly.

Nationalizations of this kind have been and are still being carried out for this or that reason in other countries, too, but they have not changed and can never change the capitalist nature of the system in power, cannot eliminate capitalist exploitation, unemployment, poverty and the lack of freedoms and democratic rights.

As very lengthy experience has already proved, state capitalism is supported and developed by the bourgeoisie, not to create the foundations of socialist society, as the revisionists think, but to strengthen the foundations of capitalist society, of its bourgeois state, in order to exploit and oppress the working people more. Those who run the "public sector" are not the representatives of the workers, but the men of big capital, those who have the reins of the whole economy and the state in their hands. The social position of the worker in the enterprises of the "public sector" is no different from that of the worker in the private sector; his relationship to the means of production, to the economic management of the enterprise, the policy of investments, pay, etc., is the same. The bourgeois state, i.e., the bourgeoisie, appropriates the profit of these enterprises. Only the revisionists are able to find some distinction between the "socialist" character of the enterprises of IRI and the "bourgeois" character of FIAT, between the "free" workers of Renault and the "oppressed" workers of Citroen.

The society of "democratic socialism", which the Eurocommunists preach today, is the bourgeois society which exists at present in their countries. They just want to touch it up a bit, so that the old European bourgeoisie, with one foot in the grave, will look like a young bride, full of life and vitality. According to the Eurocommunists, all that is needed is a bit of retouching, retaining the state capitalist sector alongside the private sector, creating some workers' consultative councils attached to the management of enterprises, allowing the trade-union bosses to call for justice and equality in meetings in the squares, giving the revisionists a few seats in the government and... socialism will come of its own accord.

With their unrestrained zeal to fight and deny Marxism-Leninism, the Eurocommunist revisionists, prettify the present-day reality of capitalist society in every way. To them, the existing social system in Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere, the state which rules in these countries, is a kind of supra-class democracy, a democracy for all. In this society and this state they see only a few difficulties, a few mistakes, a few distortions at the most, but nothing more. On this basic concept and premise they build up their schemes of their "democratic socialism", which in essence will be the same present-day bourgeois society, but without the "defects", "restrictions" and "difficulties" which it has today.

The revisionists declare that in their socialism more than one party will exist and function, along with the possibility of their alternation in government. It must be said that on this question the Eurocommunists are really coherent. It is natural that in this society, in which there will be antagonistic classes, different strata of the bourgeoisie, groups of capitalists with separate interests, there also will be different parties, and that the practice which has existed up to now in capitalist society, that the different parties alternate at the head of this state, according to the occasion and the need, will certainly exist. But where the Eurocommunists deliberately misrepresent matters is that they present this "pluralism", that is, the practice of changing the horses in the chariot of the bourgeois state, as the culmination of democracy, as a situation which creates the possibility to solve all social problems. Their aim is to distort the very concept of socialist society and to present bourgeois democracy and its institutions as capable of realizing socialist aims, with no need for the revolution, without the need to smash the old bourgeois state apparatus. In fact, their ideal state is the current American, or more particularly, the German political system, in which two big bourgeois parties, which alternate with one another at the head of the government, rule. They want two big parties in Italy, France, or Spain too: one of them openly bourgeois, democratic or liberal, and the other a workers' party, whether they call it socialist, communist, labour, or what you will, as well as a few other unimportant small parties, just for the sake of variety. And in this way, "Italian socialism", "French socialism", "Spanish socialism" would be created, just as "Swedish socialism", "Norwegian socialism", and so on, have been created.

In "democratic socialism" the state must not be the state of workers and peasants, that is, it must not be like the state advocated by Marx and Lenin, which would bring the workers from the factories and the peasants who work the land into leadership. The Eurocommunists want a state which will be the state of "everybody", and the government of this state likewise will be of "everybody". But a state of "everybody" as never existed and never will exist.

The Eurocommunists' concepts about the state are very close to those of Proudhon and Lassalle, refuted by Marx more than a century ago. Lassalle, for example, preached that through reforms, in peaceful ways, through general elections, and with the aid of the bourgeois state and of associations of producers, which would have to be created, the reactionary Prussian state could be transformed into a free popular state. He presented this kind of "state" as a model for the new socialist state for which the workers ought to fight.

The Lassallian concept of the "popular state" denied the class character of the state as a dictatorship of a given class.

Marx, especially in his outstanding work "The Critique of the Gotha Programme", confronted the Lassallian concept of the "free popular state" with the concept of the state as a class organ, with his concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

"...one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'," says Marx.

"...Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformations of one on to the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

The Marxist theoretical theses and doctrine on the state, proclaimed in the monumental works of Marx and Engels, found brilliant confirmation in the events of the Commune of Paris.

The Commune of Paris showed that the proletariat cannot retain the old bourgeois state machine and use it for its own purposes, to overthrow the capitalist order. The Commune destroyed that machine and, in place of it, created state organisms and institutions entirely new in content and form. The Commune was the first form of the political organization of the proletarian state power. As Lenin stressed, the Commune of Paris showed the historical limitations "...and limited value of the bourgeois parliamentary system and bourgeois democracy...."(Lenin). It was proved in practice that the state which the Commune of Paris set up represented the highest type of democracy, that of the overwhelrning majority of the people.  It put into practice the great democratic rights and freedoms which the bourgeoisie proclaims but never realizes.

Later Lenin, in struggle with the opportunist distortions of the chiefs of the Second International, brilliantly defended Marx's theory on the state.

He refuted their concepts that allegedly the state is not an organ of the domination of one class over another, but an organ of class conciliation, that the apparatus of the bourgeois state should not be destroyed, but should be used in the interests of the working people. In his famous book, "The State and Revolution", Lenin showed that the state is a product of contradictions between classes and an expression of the irreconcilability of these contradictions. He proved that the bourgeois state apparatus, an apparatus set up to keep the working class and the working masses oppressed and exploited, could not be used by them for the elimination of oppression and exploitation. The proletariat has to build its own state, new in form and content, in structure and organization, in the people who run it and in their methods of work, a state which will ensure the freedom of the working masses and suppress the efforts of enemies of socialism to restore the capitalist system.

Lenin's book "The State and Revolution" and the Leninist theses on the dictatorship of the proletariat played an important role in the preparation for the October Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet state power in Russia. They remain powerful weapons in the hands of genuine revolutionaries to combat the theorizing of modern revisionists, who are trying to revive the old views of Kautsky and company about the state, which Lenin exposed and defeated.

The theorizing of the Eurocommunists about the state is a consequence of the anti-Marxist line of these renegades, who pretend that not class struggle but class peace exists in capitalism, that the army and the police are no longer retrogressive forces of the bourgeoisie, therefore, there is no need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the genuine democracy which the proletariat establishes. They want only one state, one democracy - the state of bourgeois-revisionist democracy.

The "Democratic" Road to Socialism - a Disguise to Protect the Bourgeois State

The question of state power has always been the fundamental question of the ideology and policy of every party, irrespective of what class interests it represents. Eurocommunism could be no exception to this. It began its struggle precisely in this field, becoming a new weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie to protect its power of oppression and exploitation, and to prevent the proletariat from carrying out the revolution, destroying this power and establishing socialism.

In their propaganda against Marxism-Leninisrn, the Eurocommunists, insist that in the conditions of modern society, as they call the present day capitalist society, the theory of Marx about the overthrow of capitalism by means of violent revolution needs new "interpretations". Among the first who began the frontal attack on, to describe as invalid and violate, the thesis of Marx and Lenin about the necessity for the violent revolution, a thesis which they totally distorted, were the Soviet revisionists, as we mentioned above. In order to make their theory of peaceful transition to socialism "convincing", they went so far as to claim that the October Revolution was a peaceful revolution, contrary to what history recognizes it as the first revolution which overthrew the Russian bourgeoisie with violence and established the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the same time they began to propound the theory that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a temporary phenomenon which gave way to the so-called state of the whole people. With these theories, they aimed to minimize and negate the revolutionary class content of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This deliberate distortion of Marxism-Leninism by the Soviet revisionists became the basis on which the Eurocommunist theories on this question were built up. The Khrushchevite theses that with the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union the class struggle no longer existed, that the triumph of socialism was guaranteed and there was no danger of any reversal, that there was no longer any need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, or for the party of the working class, became an inspiration and encouragement for the other revisionists to go even further. Misrepresenting the significance of the changes which have taken place in the world and misinterpreting a correct phrase of Lenin's about the special features of the road to socialism, they stress that at the present time it is possible to go to socialism through parliamentarianism and reforms.

The Eurocommunists present the course of transformation of capitalist society into socialist society as the development of bourgeois political democracy through to the end, as they say, as a peaceful course which does not lead to a qualitative change but only to a quantitative change.

The Italian revisionists say, "Political democracy presents itself as the highest institutional form of the organization of the state, even of a socialist state." (The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979)

If we analyse this so-called thesis, it turns out that "political democracy" for the working people allegedly exists already in capitalism and that socialism is allegedly reached by extending this democracy and, finally, that the fundamental feature of socialist society allegedly is bourgeois democracy which is identified with socialist democracy.

Meanwhile the Spanish revisionists, for their part, claim that "socio-political democracy is not a third road, either capitalist or socialist, but is a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism." (The Ninth Congress of The Spanish Communist Party, Barcelona 1978) "Democracy is simultaneously the aim and the means of transformations," (L'Humanitè, February 13, 1979) says Marchais.

As can be seen, in order to justify. their revisionist views Berlinguer, Carrillo, Marchais and others present very confused ideas about democracy and the state. Such reasoning, which is not based on the class relations that exist in bourgeois society, which is outside the connection between the capitalist economic base and superstructure, outside reality and any logic, has the aim of proving allegedly that genuine democracy is not that which the dictatorship of the proletariat establishes, the democracy of the great majority of the exploited masses over the minority of the capitalist exploiters, or their remnants, but democracy à la Marchais and Carrillo, that is, "democracy for all, where everyone lives in peace and class harmony". However, history has proved that there is not and cannot be bourgeois democracy without the bourgeois dictatorship, just as there cannot be socialist democracy without the dictatorship of the proletariat. The rights and duties of citizens are related directly to the domination of the class which is in power. Where the capitalist class rules, there are rights for the bourgeoisie, and restriction of rights, oppression and denigration of the masses, while where the working class rules, there are rights and freedoms for the workers, and restriction and compulsion for the minority of former rulers and exploiters, as well as for the enemies of socialism.

The Eurocommunists are not the first opportunists to deny the need for the revolution as the only basic means for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism. Before them, a similar thing was done by Proudhon, whom Marx exposed, and by Bernstein and company, who ended up openly defending the capitalist system.

Bernstein, for example, preached that by improving the labour legislation, by increasing the role and activity of trade-unions and cooperatives, by increasing the representation of the working class in parliament, all the economic, political and social problems of the proletariat could be solved peacefully and on the evolutionist course. He stated explicitly that the working class need win the simple majority in parliament, get 51 per cent of the votes, and it could achieve all its aims. Since the "will of the majority" rules in democracy, he said, the state loses its class character, is transformed from an organ of the class rule into an organ which stands above classes and represents the interests of the whole society. In such a state, he said, the working class and its party can and must collaborate with all the other classes and parties. Together, they must defend and strengthen this state against "reactionaries".

Bernstein preached that the road of the transformation of society was the road of partial and gradual reforms, the road of evolution, of the gradual integration of capitalism into socialism. Therefore, according to him, the party of the working class must be a party not of social revolution, but of social reforms. Lenin strongly criticized and pointed out the utter falsity of these views of Bernstein, which Kautsky and company took over later. The Great October Revolution gave the historic verdict in the great debate between the Marxists led by Lenin, who defended the idea of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the revisionist opportunists, who were partisans of the peaceful, reformist road, of "pure" democracy, etc.

This revolution showed the proletariat and peoples of the world that the road to victory over imperialism and capitalism does not run through reforms and agreements with the bourgeoisie, but through violent revolution.

"Arguing" in support of their opposition to the Marxist-Leninist theory on the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Eurocommunists claim that Marx himself allegedly "only once mentioned this term"! However, it is known that the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes the fundamental question of the whole of Marx's doctrine on socialism. In 1852 Marx wrote,

"What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society. ..."

Marx did not regard the dictatorship of the proletariat as a simple alternation of some people in the government, but as a qualitatively new state, which is built on the ruins of the old bourgeois state. He considered the smashing of the old bourgeois state machine with violence an essential for the triumph not only of the proltarian revolution, but of any genuine people's revolution led by the working class. Lenin called this conclusion, put forward by Marx in his outstanding work "The 18th Brumaire of Luis Bonaparte",  a  gigantic step forward. It is precisely this foundation stone of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine that all the old revisionists have attacked and denied, and which all the new Eurocommumst revisionists attack.

The stand of the Eurocommunists towards the question of. the revolution, the state and democracy coincides in essence with that of the Soviet revisionists, who have declared that now the "communist" party in the Soviet Union has allegedly been transformed into a "party of the entire people" and that the dictatorship of the proletariat has been replaced with the "state of the entire people". On the basis of these statements of the Soviet revisionists Marchais and Carrillo have the right to reason: "If you can allegedly transform the party and the state of the proletariat into a party and state of the entire people, why shouldn't we in the West have the right to carry out such a thing, but without violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat? We are going to proceed in 'pluralism' and understanding with the bourgeoisie, by building up opinion for a 'genuine democracy', which has not been achieved in your country. It is in vain for you to claim the existence of democracy in your country while you are strengthening oppression."

In regard to the Titoites, they too are in difficulties with the Eurocommunists in connection with "democracy" and "pluralism". The Yugoslav revisionists speak about the unity of the ..non-aligned world., and with this formula -"elirninate" the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They demand from imperialism and world capitalism only that the "non-aligned countries" "should remain within their present status quo and be assisted economically." In this direction the Titoites are of the same opinion as the Eurocommunists, with the one difference that, while the Yugoslavs speak about alleged "independence from superpowers and blocs", the Eurocommunists do not do this even formally.

Without attacking them directly, but through the ideas they express, the Eurocommunists tell the Yugoslav revisionists that the existence of only one party in Yugoslavia is not the road of genuine democracy, therefore the political system in Yugoslavia too must undergo changes.

While directly attacking Lenin and the whole Marxist-Leninist theory on the state and the revolution, Berlinguer, Marchals, Carrillo and company call on the Khrushcheevites to carry their betrayal through to the end,  telling them that it is not only the "mistakes" of Stalin which is the problem for their filthy undertaking, but the socialist system itself, which, although it was an appropriate system after the October Revolution, is not right at the present time, because it allegedly denies democracy.

Without doubt, this thesis is not to the advantage of the Khrushchevites who, in order to conceal their betrayal and to pose as Marxist-Leninists, still maintain some allegedly Leninist forms.

In order to retain this disguise, from time to time the Brezhnev group makes some feeble criticism of the disobedient parties and advises them that they must allegedly safeguard the class principles of Lenin on the road and the forms of transition to socialism. However, the revisionist parties of the Western countries do not fail to reply to Brezhnev that they are doing nothing more than what the Soviet revisionists have done, that they are acting according to their conditions, which allegedly dictate the peaceful road, the road of democratic reforms, political and ideological pluralism, etc., etc. Berlinguer, Marchais and Carrillo, who have gone further than Togliatti, tell the Soviets: "Isn't it you who have spoken about peaceful coexistence? Then, come on, let us create this coexistence and carry it through to the end." And with whom are we to peacefully coexist? With the opponents of communism, that is, with the capitalist bourgeoisie, American imperialism, etc. However to achieve peaceful coexistence, they say first we must revise the "dogmas" in policy, in ideology, in the economy and in art, because the "dogmas" cannot be adapted to present-day society. Since the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin on the dictatorship of the proletariat, the. class struggle, and the seizure of power with violence are allegedly "dogmas", then they are not suitable, either, therefore power must be taken not through violence, but in the parliamentary way, through general elections, through the coming to power of the working class and removal of the bourgeoisie from power in democratic ways.

For the sake of demagogy, and to throw dust in the eyes of the masses, the Eurocommunists mutter in an undertone that the "third way", or "democratic socialism", is not social-democracy, because it "has not carried society beyond the logic of capitalism". ( The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979)

Nevertheless, they add immediately, we must unite with social-democracy and the other political forces, and together with them must exert influence on the state apparatus of the capitalist bourgeoisie, through propaganda, reforms, the church, culture, etc., and not destroy it, as the classics of Marxism-Leninism say, so that gradually this state power will assume a truly democratic form, so that it will serve the whole of the society and create the conditions to build "socialism" in a peaceful way. In other words, they advocate the creation of a bastardized social order which will have nothing in common with scientific socialism.

The theses of Togliatti and his supporters, the line of the Italian Communist Party, have become the ideal of all the Eurocommunist revisionists, to such an extent that they have aroused the envy of Carrillo and Marchais. Georges Marchais writes in "L'Humanité", "In 1956 we were slow to draw lessons from what had occurred in the Soviet Union, and work out the French road to socialism," that is, as Togliatti did. When Marchais or Carrillo say that the police are with the Italian Communist Party, and that in Rome they vote for this party, they are praising the efforts and achievements of Berlinguer in the direction of collaboration with social-democracy, the Christian Democrats, and the socialists on public questions, and also in the administration of the affairs the bourgeoisie.

The "successes" of Berlinguer in these directions, that is, in submission to Italian and world capitalism, serve the other revisionists as practical support for their opportunist politicaI theses. Berlinguer works with great zeal. He does not attack the bourgeois Constitution, does not attack the power of the bourgeoisie, does not even mention overthrowing this power and its apparatus, does not speak about destroying the Italian oppressive army, but on the contrary, signs statements together with the parties of reaction that the army must be strengthened, that the American bases must remain, that the power and funds of the police must be increased, that the police must have the right, outside the law, to check up on anything which is suspicious, even to bug telephone conversations and open private correspondence.

Now the program and activities of the Italian revisionists are ready and tested for the other revisionists too. In Italy, Spain and France, the integration of revisionism into capitalism, and not of capitalism into socialism, as the Eurocommunists preach in their programs and speeches, is developing and taking a concrete form.

The Italian, French and Spanish communist parties say nothing at all about the Chinese revisionists. Their whole struggle is spearheaded against Marx Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and for their own ends, sometimes against the Soviet revisionists, too. They are in accord with the Chinese revisionists on all fronts. The Chinese revisionists are struggling for an alliance with the United States of America, the developed capitalist countries and the ruling cliques in the neo-colonial countries.

Such an alliance is on the course of the Eurocommunist renegades. The fact is that the Chinese foreign policy conforms completely with the policy which the Eurocommunists preach about the unity of revisionist parties with the bourgeois-capitalist regimes in power. The Chinese revisionists and the Communist Party of China also are for pluralism in socialism. In China the parties of the bourgeoisie not only exist, but they participate in the state power and the leadership, together with the Communist Party, which cannot exist and run things without collaboration with them. On these fundamental questions the Chinese revisionists are in agreement with the European revisionists.

On the other hand, Chinese private enterprises, Chinese-foreign capital joint private enterprises, purely foreign private enterprises, cooperativist sectors, etc., exist alongside of the state capitalist sector in China. This conforms completely with the "third road", with the "socialism" which the Eurocommunists propagate.

Mao Zedong proclaimed his "theory" about the "blossoming of a hundred flowers and contention of a hundred schools". What does this mean? This means that all idealist, social-democratic, republican, religious and other ideas, are permitted and develop in China. "Let all the schools contend, this is dialectical," says Mao Zedong. But since pluralism allegedly becomes dialectical, a thing which the Eurocommunists preach, too, then it must be possible to go to socialism together and in unity with the bourgeoisie and its parties in peace and peaceful competition.

When bourgeois parties exist and take part in the leadership in China, along with the Communist Party, then the state cannot be the dictatorship of the proletariat, but must be a hybrid organism, which is a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat only in words, while in reality it is a bourgeois democracy.

The Chinese practice responds to the line of the Eurocommunists and serves as a "confirmation" of how the transition to socialism can be carried out without revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Someone may say: "But China went to socialism through the revolution", "China has a dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. This is not true. The truth is that China fought against the Japanese occupiers and the Kuomintang, but the dictatorship of the proletariat was never established and socialism was never built there. The state power in China was called the dictatorship of the proletariat, but its content was different, and now we are seeing that the disguises which the Communist Party of China and the Chinese state had put on, are falling off one after the other. Following the death of Mao Zedong, who was an eclectic, and of Zhou Enlai, who was a bourgeois democrat, we see that China is revealing its true features, emerging as a bourgeois republic and an imperialist state.

In regard to the contradictions the Eurocommunists have with the Soviet revisionists over the character of the state in socialism, these are not in the least of a principled nature. They attack the revisionist Soviet state, presenting it as a distortion which, as they put it, neither Marx nor Engels would approve, and indeed, even Lenin would not consider many things right. But this is a vulgar speculation. The present Soviet state is not a socialist state. It has been transformed into a dictatorship of the revisionist bourgeoisie which oppresses and exploits the working masses. With this speculation, the Eurocommunists want to prove that their pluralist line is the only "scientific Marxist" line, the only line suitable for the construction of true socialism. According to them, this line is a dialectical consequence of the materialist development of history, which allegedly Marx and Engels "did not foresee" and which allegedly "Lenin did not foresee", either. However, it has been allegedly discovered by Berlinguer, Marchais, Carrillo and the other revisionists of Western Europe who are beating their breasts and saying: "It is we who envisage the genuine transformation of society and who analyse the phenomena of the present-day world to their roots". In fact, they are opposed to any kind of revolutionary transformation. They want to preserve the present-day bourgeois "consumer" society, to preserve the domination of capitalism and the exploitation of the working people. This is their ideal and their aim. For this they are working and struggling. All the rest is just propaganda, demagogy, deception, means which the bourgeoisie uses to fight socialism and the revolution.

The Eurocommunists' "Independence" Is Dependence on Capital and the Bourgeoisie

The struggle against imperialism in general, and its tools in every country is one of the fundamental. questions of the strategy of every communist party, and one of the decisive conditions for the triumph of any revolution, whether people's democratic, anti-imperialist or socialist. At the same time, its attitude to imperialism serves as a touchstone to evaluate the political and ideological position of every political force which operates either within the national framework of each country, or on an international scale. In other words, the stand towards imperialism has always been a line of demarcation which divides the genuine patriotic and democratic revolutionary forces, on the one hand, from the forces of reaction, counter-revolution and national betrayal, on the other hand. What is the stand of the Eurocommunists on this vital question of such major importance of principle?

Commencing from the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when Khrushchev came out with the line of conciliation and rapprochement with American imperialism, and put this forward as a general line for the whole communist movement, the revisionist parties of the Western countries abandoned any anti-imperialist position, on both the theoretical and practical planes. It seemed as if they were liberated from their shackles to rush into conciliation with the big imperialist, colonialist and neocolonialist bourgeoisie. The new strategy which Khrushchev presented to the communist movement was that which the leaders of the Western communist parties had long desired, which they had begun to apply in practice, but which, you might say, had not yet received the seal of official approval.

Even before the 20th Congress of the CPSU, because of various vacillations and concessions, in France and Italy the struggle against NATO, against the revival and rearmament of German imperialism, against the interference of American capital and its military bases in Europe and so on, had begun to decline. If something was done at that time, it was only in the field of propaganda, without any action. On the Algerian question, the French Communist Party was in almost the same position as the bourgeois parties of the country. But its chauvinism and nationalism on this question, more and more softened its stand towards the big ally of the French bourgeoisie - American imperialism and its economic and political expansion. Since "French Algeria" had to be defended, "French Africa" had also to be defended, and a blind eye and a deaf ear turned to "British Asia" and "American America".

The Italian revisionists, who were trying in every way to convince the bourgeoisie of their sincerity and loyalty, tried to give the maximum proofs precisely in not opposing the foreign policy of the Christian Democrat government, which was a policy of unconditional alliance with American imperialism, total submission to NATO, the opening of doors to American big capital, and the transformation of the country into a big military base of the United States of America.

In regard to the Spanish revisionists, their sole preoccupation at that time was to achieve the legalization of the party and return to Spain. Thinking that the "democratization" of Spain could be done only through the pressure of the United States of America, which, according to them, was interested in removing the "obstacle" Franco, they did not even see the American policy of expansion and hegemony, let alone fight it.

"The national roads to socialism", which the revisionist parties of the countries of Western Europe adopted in the spirit of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, led to their submission, not only to the national bourgeoisie but also to the international bourgeoisie, first of all, to American imperialism. At the same time, it was natural that their abandonment of Marxism-Leninism, the revolution and socialism could not fail to be accompanied by their abandonment of the principles of proletarian internationalism, of aid to and support for the revolutionary and liberation movements.

Although the French, Italian and Spanish revisionist parties began gradually to keep a certain distance from the Soviet Union, to criticize Moscow over certain aspects of its internal and external policy, to disapprove of some of its actions in international relations, they never reached the point of describing and condemning the present-day Soviet Union as an imperialist country. True, they condemned its aggression in Czechoslovakia, for example, but on the other hand, they approved the Soviet intervention in Africa; true, they demanded the withdrawal of the Soviet fleet from the Mediterranean, but were silent about the dispatch of Soviet weapons to all parts of the world. According to the Eurocommunists, the Soviet policy within the country is anti-democratic, but abroad in general it is socialist and anti-imperialist. This stand has led and leads the Eurocommunist parties to support the hegemonic and expansionist policy of the Soviet Union in general, despite some opposition.

In this way, just as the revisionist parties of Western Europe became defenders of the bourgeois order within their own countries, they became no less ardent fighters for the preservation of the imperialist system on an international scale. The Eurocommunists became champions of the bourgeois imperialist status quo on all fronts.

If the Eurocommunists still retain some disguise, try to appear as opponents, though feeble ones, of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist order on internal problems, in relations between the revolution and international capitalism on a world scale, between the oppressed peoples and imperialism, between socialism and capitalism, they are openly against any change.

Today, the revisionist parties of Italy, France, Spain and the other parties of the Eurocommunist trend have been transformed into pro-imperialist political forces which, in their line and activities, are indistinguishable from the bourgeois parties of those countries. Let us take their stand towards NATO and the European Common Market, which represent two of the basic political, economic and military factors on which the domination of the European big bourgeoisie and the hegemony of American imperialism in Europe are founded and realized.

From the time it was created to this day, NATO has changed neither its nature, its aims nor its objectives. The agreements remain those which were signed in 1949. Everyone knows the purpose for which the Atlantic Pact was created and why it is maintained. Even if people did not know them, the Pentagon and the staff in Brussels remind them of this day by day. NATO was and still is a political and military alliance of American and European big capital, first of all to preserve the capitalist system and institutions in Europe, to prevent the revolution from breaking out and to strangle it violently if it begins to advance. On the other hand, this counterrevolutionary organization is an armed guard of neo-colonialism and the spheres of influence of imperialist powers, and a weapon for their political and economic expansion. To hope to achieve the transformation of West European capitalist society and the construction of socialism while having NATO and the American bases in the country, is to daydream. The attempts of the Eurocommunists to stress only the anti-Soviet function of NATO and to forget its mission of suppressing the revolution in Western Europe have the aim of deceiving the workers and preventing them from seeing the reality.

The Eurocommunists do not want to see the existence of a major national problem, the question of American domination in Western Europe and the need for liberation from it. From the end of the Second World War down to this day, American imperialism has bound this part of Europe with all kinds of political, economic, military, cultural and other chains. Without breaking these chains you cannot have socialism, or even that bourgeois democracy which the Eurocommunists praise to the skies. American capital has penetrated so deeply into Europe, is so closely combined with local capital that where one begins and the other finishes can no longer be distinguished. The European armies have been so completely integrated into NATO, in which the Americans dominate, that in practice they no longer exist as independent national forces. An ever greater integration is developing in the financial and monetary field, in technology, culture, etc.

It is true that between the European NATO member countries and the United States of America there are various contradictions. These are normal and inevitable between big capitalist groups and groupings, but it is a fact that on all the major world political and economic questions the NATO countries have always submitted to Washington. When it comes to choosing between class interests and national interests, the European big bourgeoisie, like the bourgeoisie of all other countries, always tends to sacrifice the latter. This is why the communists have always fought to defend the national interests, seeing them as closely linked with the cause of the revolution and socialism.

The Eurocommunists' denial of the existence of a national problem in their countries, concretely, the need to fight the American domination and dictate and to strengthen the national independence and sovereignty, is further proof of their political and ideological degeneration and their betrayal of the cause of the revolution. Today, the Italian revisionists not only insist that Italy must stay in NATO, but have become even greater supporters of the Atlantic Treaty than the Christian Democrats and the other pro-American bourgeois parties. "Italy must stay in the Atlantic Alliance," say the Italian revisionists, "because of the need to preserve the balance of power on which the preservation of peace in Europe and the world depends." (The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979)

With this thesis, Berlinguer and company tell the workers: Don't oppose NATO, don't demand the withdrawal of the Americans from Naples and Caserta, don't condemn the stationing of atomic missiles near your homes, say nothing about the American aircraft which stand in the Italian airports ready to fly wherever the interests of the American imperialists are affected. Let the national interests of Italy be sacrificed for the sake of the hegemonic American policy, say the Italian revisionists; let Washington dictate who should govern Italy and how they should govern it, let Italy be consumed in an atomic holocaust, as long as the balance between the two superpowers is maintained.

The thesis about the balance between big powers as a factor or means for the preservation of peace is an old imperialist slogan with which the world, and Europe especially, are very well acquainted. It has always been used to justify the hegemonic policy of big imperialist powers and the right which they give themselves to interfere in the internal affairs of others and dominate them.

To accept the need for the existence and strengthening of imperialist blocs, allegedly as a means for the preservation of peace, as the revisionists do, also means to approve their policy. The imperialist military blocs exist not to preserve the peace and to defend the freedom, independence and sovereignty of their member countries, as the Eurocommunist revisionists proclaim, but to rob them of these things, to preserve the domination and hegemony of the superpowers in those countries. It is known that one of the main aims of American imperialism when it created NATO was to defend the interests of United States' capital in Europe politically, but also with arms, and to put down any revolution which might break out there with fire and steel. These are the objectives of NATO which the Eurocommunist revisionists support.

The policy of blocs is an aggressive policy of the superpowers. It results from their hegemonic and expansionist strategy, from their ambitions to establish their complete and undivided rule over the whole world. The Eurocommunists do not see or do not want to see this predatory nature of imperialism, because, according to their "theories", big capital, which is its foundation, is being "democratized", is becoming "people's" capital, because the big bourgeoisie is being "integrated into socialism". In regard to their loyalty to NATO, the French revisionists are no different from their Italian counterparts, but in order to be in unison with the Giscardians or the Gaullists, they too speak about the special position which France should have in these organizations. For its part, Carrillo's party is striving with all the means it possesses to seize the banner of the struggle to get Spain into NATO. In this way Franco's unrealized dream will be achieved.

For the Eurocommunists, the European Common Market and United Europe, this great combine of capitalist monopolies and multinational companies for the exploitation of the peoples and the working masses of Europe and the peoples of the world, are a "reality" which must be accepted.. But to accept this "reality" means to accept the elimination of the sovereignty, the cultural and spiritual traditions of each individual country of Europe in favour of the interests of the big monopolies, to accept the elimination of the individuality of the European peoples and their transformation into a mass oppressed by the multinational companies dominated by American big capital.

The Eurocommunists' slogans alleging that their participation in "the Parliament and other organs of the European Community will lead to their democratic transformation", to the creation of a "Europe of working people", are nothing but demagogy and deception. The speeches of the Eurocommunists and the propaganda meetings of the Parliament of United Europe can no more transform Europe into a socialist society than the "democratic road" can transform the capitalist society of each country into such a society. Therefore, the stand of the Eurocommunists towards the European Common Market and United Europe is a stand of opportunists and scabs, which results from their line of class conciliation and submission to the bourgeoisie. It is intended to bemuse the working masses, to break their militant drive in defence of their own class interests and the interests of the whole nation.

Their reformist ideology, submission to the bourgeoisie and capitulation to the imperialist pressure have transformed the Eurocommunist parties into parties which are not only anti-revolutionary but also anti-national. Even amongst the ranks of the bourgeoisie it is rare to find people who call themselves politicians and who accept the concept of "limited sovereignty", as Carrillo does. " ... we are conscious that this independence will always be relative...," he writes. In the "democratic and socialist" Spain, which he proposes in his program, " ... investments of foreign capital and the functioning of multinationals will not be prohibited...". "However," he adds, "for a very long time to come we must pay a tribute to foreign capital in the form of surplus value ... but this will serve the development of those sectors which correspond to the national interest." (S. carillo, "Eurocommunisme" et Etat, France 1977, pp.157-160)

With their stands in defence of the monopolies and the interests of imperialist powers, the Eurocommunists have, set themselves against the antiimperialist and democratic traditions of the French, Spanish and Italian workers. They have also set themselves against the patriotic traditions of the struggle which the workers and progressives of these countries have waged against NATO, the American bases in Europe and the interference and pressure of American imperialism. The Eurocommunists have abandoned these positions and gone over to the camp of reaction.

The idea of class conciliation and submission to foreign domination, which pervades the entire political and ideological line of the Eurocommunists, emerges clearly also in the stand which they take towards the anti-imperialist national liberation revolutionary movements. Not being for the revolution in their own countries, they are not for the revolution in other countries, either. They do not want the weakening of their imperialist and neo-colonialist bourgeoisie, therefore they can never see the revolution in the oppressed countries as a direct aid for the overthrow of the capitalist system. For them, the unified process of the revolution, the natural connection between its different currents, the indispensable reciprocal aid, do not exist.

Sometimes they say the odd propaganda word in favour of anti-imperialist movements, just for the sake of appearances. But this is only empty phraseology with no concrete content and, above all, not accompanied with political action. Their "support" is, at most, a slightly leftist pose, a way of appearing progressive and democratic.

Taken as a whole, in their stand towards the revolutionary liberation movements the Eurocommunists have embraced the ideology of non-alignment, which is extremely convenient for them in order to justify the subjugation of peoples to the domination of imperialist powers and to proclaim neo-colonialism as a way for the former colonial countries to emerge from poverty and develop. In the theses for their recent congress, the Italian revisionists wrote, "the struggle for the construction of a new international system and order in the economic field is a moment of more and more fundamental importance in the struggle for peace, for international co-operation and the policy of peaceful coexistence." (The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979)

They are consistent in their opportunist line. They think that the exploiting character of the international economic relations of the capitalist system can be changed with some reforms, in the same way as they seek to reform the capitalist order within the country. Carrillo also talks about a new world economic order, or how the Eurocommunists envisage it. Indeed, he puts the matter more clearly: "In any case we must proceed from an objective reality; although imperialism is no longer a unified world system, a world market always exists, regulated by the objective laws of the exchange of commodities, laws which, in the final analysis, are capitalist." (S. Carillo, "Eurocomunisme" et Etat, France 1077, p.159)

According to Carrillo, these objective capitalist "laws" cannot alter or be replaced even in the conditions of socialism. In order to "support" this thesis he quotes the example of the capitalist character of relations between revisionist countries in the economie field. In other words, according to Carrillo, it turns out that it is in vain for the peoples to rise in struggle against national and neo-colonialist oppression, against unequivalent exchanges between the developed capitalist countries and the undeveloped countries, which are expressed especially in the savage plunder of the raw materials of the latter. This is the international order which Carrillo wants to retain and to which Berlinguer wants to do some retouching, so that it looks shiny and new.

A line which is opposed to the genuine national interests of the country, a line which defends imperialist hegemony and expansion, which praises neo-colonialism and sanctifies foreign capitalist exploitation is doomed to failure. The objective laws of the development of history cannot alter. The new world order for which the proletariat and the peoples are fighting is not the imperialist order which the Eurocommunists advertise, but the socialist order to which the future belongs.

In recent years, the stand of the Italian, French and Spanish revisionist parties towards the Soviet Union and their relations with it have become a major object of discussion and interpretation by the whole international bourgeoisie. The attempt of the Eurocommunists to describe themselves "independent" of Moscow, "original" and even "opponents" of the Soviet Union appears to be made allegedly to deceive the bourgeoisie of their countries, but in reality it is made to deceive the proletariat of their own countries and the international proletariat. It is by no means impossible that this could be a manoeuvre on the part of the Soviet revisionists to create the impression of the existence of allegedly profound differences and contradictions of "principle" between them and the communist parties of Western Europe, especially with the Italian and French parties, with the aim of facilitating the participation of these parties in the bourgeois governments of the respective countries. If this could be achieved, this would be in the interests of Soviet social-imperialism, in the interests of its world domination, because it weakens its rivals while increasing its influence and hegemony in different countries. The Khrushchevite revisionists need this also to support their anti-Marxist thesis that "state power can be taken in a peaceful way", and thus "prove" what they failed to prove in Chile. Indeed, at the 25th Congress of the CPSU, Brezhnev said that the Chilean experience does not rule out the theory of taking power in parliamentary ways.

On the other hand, Eurocommunism is a kind of idea that suits the European big capitalist bourgeoisie which is encouraging and fanning up the contradictions between the Eurocommunists and Soviet social-imperialists in every way, because it is interested in weakening the revisionist ideological power and influence of the Soviet Union. It tries to present the Italian, Spanish, French and other revisionisms as an ideological bloc which is being created in Europe in opposition to the Soviet revisionist bloc. And since they are talking about an anti-Soviet ideological grouping, it is self-evident that the reactionary bourgeoisie of the industrialized countries of Europe has this Eurocommunism under its influence.

However, the Kremlin would not like Eurocommunism to break away completely from its influence. Therefore, the propaganda being spread in the West about Eurocommunism as an "independent" ideological current annoys Moscow.

This annoyance also stems from the fact that in this way the split, which has long existed between the revisionist parties of Western Europe and the revisionist party of the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe, is made public.

These parties have never had, do not have and never will have unity. However, it pleases the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to maintain a superficial appearance of unity amongst the revisionist parties not only of Europe, but of the whole world. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union tries to maintain its ideological hegemony over all the other revisionist parties of the world in disguised ways. It is eager to sign joint declarations and communiqués with them, in order to give the appearance of the existence of unity and the respect which these parties have for the Soviet leadership.

There have been splits and disagreements between the Italian Communist Party and the French Communist Party and the Khrushchevite revisionists since the time of Togliatti and Thorez, and these disagreements and differences have steadily increased and extended. However, they did not reach then such a degree of acuteness as they have reached today. Now the worsening of relations has come out openly. "Pravda" attacked Carrillo and condemned Eurocommunism. Carrillo replied just as sharply to Moscow. He dotted the i's of the revisionist ideological and political orientation of his party and broke off the connections of dependence on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Following "Pravda"'s criticism and Carrillo's reply, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia came out as an ardent defender of the Communist Party of Spain. The Yugoslav revisionists openly took Carrillo's side, because they have always been for the split, for the breaking away of revisionist parties from Moscow, and they have always struggled to bring this about.

In regard to the French and Italian revisionist parties they are somewhat more cautious in this polemic. Sometimes they raise it, sometimes they lower it and at other times they extinguish it altogether. This is explained not by any particular "moderation", but apparently by the existence of certain material and other links, which they want to preserve because they bring them profits. Precisely for the preservation of these threads linked with rubles, which have long existed between them and the Soviets, they want the tempers to be cooled a little so that the polemic with the Khrushchevites does not assume uncontrollable proportions. The visits of Berlinguer, Pajetta, etc., to Moscow were made for this purpose. The Italian revisionist leaders declared that they were going to Moscow to explain to the Soviet leaders that there should not be a bitter polemic and that Moscow did not have the right to meddle or interfere in the line of the communist party of another country, because each of them had the right to define its own strategy and line on the basis of the situation in the country, and allegedly also bearing in mind the experience of the world communist movement. Moscow is ready to put its signature to these theses, but in return demands recognition of its "socialism" and, above all, approval of the main direction of its foreign policy. When Marchais applauds the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and acclaims the expansionist policy of the Kremlin as the highest expression of "international solidarity", Brezhnev cannot fail to reward him by approving the "democratic road" so dear to the French revisionists, which is completely in accord with the theses of the Khrushchevites' 20th Congress.

Although they have an identical strategy today, the Italian, French and Spanish revisionist parties differ a little in their tactics, because of the specific features of the bourgeoisie in these three countries. The French bourgeoisie is strong - a bourgeoisie with long experience. It also has great political and ideological power, not to speak of its economic strength and the military and police power which it has at its disposal. The Italian bourgeoisie, however, is not so strong as the French one. Although it has power in its hands, it has many weak points. This has made it possible for the Italian revisionist party to enter into negotiations and to establish collaboration in many forms, indeed even in parliamentary forms, with other parties, not to mention their collaboration through the trade-unions with the Italian capitalist bourgeoisie, and first of all with its Christian Democratic Party.

This is why Berlinguer's party will try to move closer to the bourgeoisie, but at the same time try and play a policy "de bascule" between Moscow and the bourgeoisie of its country, the more so when the Italian bourgeoisie also has its own interests in regard to the Soviet Union.

We must not forget the large investments which the Italian bourgeoisie has made there.

The French bourgeoisie also, which knows what the revisionist Soviet Union is, does not proceed blindly in its policy, as the Chinese revisionists would like and advocate when they demand that France should take a hard line in its relations with the Soviet Union. Of course, the relations between these two countries are not all sweetness and honey, but neither are they as tense as the Chinese would like. Meanwhile, the French Communist Party, too, in its policy of agreement with the socialists, has in mind that it must not put itself in open and clear-cut opposition to Moscow, but should maintain a certain status quo with it at a time when it is moving towards lining up and unity with the French bourgeoisie.

With the Spanish bourgeoisie the situation is different. After Franco, the Suarez party, which is in power in collaboration with the other parties, is the representative of a bourgeoisie which has its own traditions, but which are mostly the traditions of the fascist dictatorship. It is a bourgeoisie which has experienced many disturbances, which have not allowed it to create that stability which the French bourgeoisie has created, and to a lesser extent, the Italian bourgeoisie. Now it is in the process of revival. Carrillo, with his revisionist ideology, has been included in this process, in the process of consolidation and strengthening of a capitalist regime which is closely linked with American imperialism and which is making efforts to join NATO, United Europe, etc. All these factors restrict the field of manoeuvre for both the bourgeoisie and the Spanish revisionist party, whose game with Moscow is lacking in amplitude.

The Communist Party of China too, likes Eurocommunism, both as an ideology and as a practical activity. It agrees with the name and with the content of the line of these three parties. China, as a state, and the party which defines the line and strategy of this state, proceed according to the world contingencies which alter every hour and minute. In the grouping called Eurocommunism the Communist Party of China sees an ideological opponent of the Soviet Union which it considers the number one enemy.

Therefore, just as it supports without the slightest hesitation, and assists without the slightest reserve every force (with the exception of genuine Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries), which appears to be against the Soviet Union, China supports and approves Eurocommunism, too. The Communist Party of China long ago established relations with Carrillo, as it is doing now with Berlinguer, too. It took a step by sending the Chinese ambassador in Rome to attend the recent congress of the Italian Communist Party as the official representative of the Communist Party of China. Recently it welcomed Berlinguer to Beijing. There is no doubt that it will establish relations with the French revisionist party, too. These links will be gradually increased and strengthened. This cannot fail to happen in as much as they have identical strategies and similar tactics. The delay in establishing close links comes from China, which hesitates to go too far in the direction of the Eurocommunist parties in order to avoid angering the top circles of the bourgeoisie ruling those countries, especially the parties of the right, to which it gives priority and considers its closest allies.

The genuine Marxist-Leninist parties of Europe and of all continents are not misled by the tactics and manoeuvres of the Soviet revisionists who allegedly have entered into polemics and opposition with the so-called Eurocommunism. They do not think that they can find a breach here. In principle, there is no breach among the revisionists. They are tactically split in order to better achieve their strategy, which has the aim of the global domination of modern revisionism over the world proletariat. Therefore, the Marxist-Leninist parties expose and fight Soviet modern revisionism, Yugoslav, Chinese and Eurocommunist revisionism equally. They do not and must not have any illusions on this question.

III
Reformist Ideology and Political Opportunism - Fundamental Characteristics of the Eurocommunist Parties

As we saw, modern revisionism is expressed in various currents and assumes different appearances according to the concrete political and socio-economic conditions of each country or group of countries. This is the case also with the parties which are now known under the name of Eurocommunist parties. Although they represent. a separate current of modern revisionism, a current which conforms more to the interests of the bourgeosie of the developed capitalist countries, such as the countries of Western Europe, the Italian, French and Spanish revisionist parties also have certain specific features.

The Constitution of the Bourgeois State - the Basis of Togliatti's "Socialism"

Speaking about the third road., which consists of the new strategy of Eurocommunist revisionism, in his report entitled "For Socialism in Peace and Democracy...", delivered at the 15^th Congress of the ICP, Berlinguer . gives a rather more complete explanation of what he and his associates mean by this third road. "I'in referring," he says, "to a fortunate expression. .. which we have accepted... We have had the experience of the Second International: the first phase of the struggle of the workers' movement to emerge from, capitalism. . . But this experience... capitulated in the face of the First World War and various kinds of nationalism. "The second phase," continues Berlinguer, "opens with the Russian Revolution of October ... " (E. Berlinguer, For the Socialism in the Peace and the Democracy Throughtout Italy and Europe).

But this, too, according to him should be looked at critically in view of the history and the reality of the Soviet Union, because this experience is not valid, either. And it results that the third phase has begun now with Eurocommunism. The task of the workers' movement in Western Europe, Berlinguer declares, is "to find new roads of advance towards socialism and the construction of socialism" (E. Berlinguer, For the Socialism in the peace and the Democracy Throughtout Italy and Europe).

According to the Italian revisionists, the road to achieve this "society" is "the line laid down by the Republican Constitution to lead Italy to the road of its transformation into a socialist society based on political democracy". (The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979). Whereas the French revisionists, who cannot present the De Gaulle Constitution as the basis of their socialism, since not only did they not take part in drafting it, but they also voted against it, do not mention it, although in practice they do not negate it.

The Italian revisionists worked out their idea of achieving "socialism" through the bourgeois Constitution a long time ago. In his speeches, as early as 1944, Togliatti declared that allegedly "the times had changed, the working class had changed and the ways to the seizure of power had also changed. With this he meant that <-(the time of revolutions was over and the time of evolutions had come", that "power cannot be seized except by way of reforms, on the parliamentary road, through votes".

Later, at the meeting of the CC of the Italian Communist Party on June 28, 1956, immediately after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Togliatti said: "we must foresee a socialist advance which takes place precisely on the terrain which the Constitution determines and envisages, which is the terrain of democratic freedoms and progressive social transformations... This Constitution is not yet a socialist Constitution. But since it is an expression of a broad unitary movement of rejuvenation, it differs profoundly from the other bourgeois Constitutions, and represents an effective base for the development of Italian society on the road towards socialism."

That the Italian Constitution differs, for example, from the Constitution of the time of the monarchy and fascism, that a series of democratic principles figure in it, this is understandable, because these principles have been imposed on it by the struggle of the working class and the Italian people against fascism. But the Italian Constitution is not the only one which contains such principles. After the Second World War, the bourgeoisie in all the capitalist countries of Europe tried, to this or that degree, to outflank the working class by giving it certain rights on paper and taking them away in practice.

Those things which the Italian Constitution envisages are formal freedoms and rights which are violated everyday by the bourgeoisie. For example, it envisages a certain restriction of private property. But this has not stopped the FIATs and Montedisons from becoming more and more wealthy and their workers becoming ever more Impoverished. The Constitution envisages the right to work, but this stops neither the capitalist employers, nor their state from throwing about 2 million people out of work. The Constitution guarantees a series of democratic rights but this has not stopped the Italian state, the carabinieri or the police, basing themselves on the rights which the Constitution provides, from acting almost openly to set up that mechanism which is ready for the establishment of a fascist regime. The various fascist commandos, from those of the extreme right to those who call themselves the "Red Brigades" and the terrorists of the Fontana Square, also find their justification in the Italian Constitution.

To think, as the followers of Togliatti do, that the Italian bourgeoisie drafted its well-known Constitution to lead the society towards socialism, is simply absurd. The Italian Constitution, like the other fundamental laws of bourgeois countries, sanctions the undivided political, legislative and executive rule of the bourgeoisie in the country, sanctions the protection of its property and its power to exploit the working masses. It gives a legal basis for the organs of violence to restrict the freedom and democracy of the people, to suppress all and rule over everything. "Beautiful", words such as freedom, equality, fraternity, democracy, justice, etc., may be written in the Constitution for two hundred years, but in practice they will not be realized for another two thousand years, if the capitalist bourgeoisie is not overthrown together with its Constitution and laws.

For the Italian revisionists the existing Constitution is their Bible and the bourgeoisie could not find better advocates to defend it or more zealous propagandists to advertise it. The ardent defence which the Italian revisionists make of the Constitution of their capitalist state shows that they cannot conceive any other social system outside the existing bourgeois society, outside its political, ideological, economic, religious and military institutions. To them socialism and the present-day Italian capitalist state are the same thing. The opportunism in which the leaders of the Italian revisionist party were born and raised, has clouded their eyes and shut off all horizons to them. The Italian revisionists have become the guardians of the capitalist order. They even present this role as a virtue and mention it in their documents. ". ..in these'30 years," say the theses for the 15th Congress of the ICP, " the Communist Party has followed a line of the consistent defence of democratic (read- bourgeois) institutions; a line of the organization and development of democratic life amongst the masses of workers and citizens, a line of struggles for individual and collective freedoms, for observance and the application of the Constitution. The ICP has implemented this policy through continually seeking unity with the ISP', with the other democratic forces, secular and Catholic, and seeking every possible convergence even with Christian Democracy itself, even from the opposition, with the aim of avoiding the damage to the democratic constitutional framework".(The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979).

For 35 years on end the Italian bourgeoisie, revisionists, the Church, and so on, have been deceiving the Italian people by telling them that the hard life which they lead, the poverty in which they live, the savage exploitation, corruption, terror, and all the other social evils that characterize Italy are the result of "failure to implement the Constitution consistently". But the situation in Italy has been and still is deplorable, not from failure to implement the Constitution, but because of the system which the Constitution defends. The present situation is the result of the whole development of Italy after the war.

Italy, which suffered the evils of the royal regime of the Savoy dynasty, which experienced the horrors of the fascist regime, which came to know the economic poverty and moral and political degeneration which this regime brought, which suffered the devastation of the Second World War, came out of this war economically ruined and entered a grave political and moral-social crisis which continues to this day.

After the end of the war, Italy was turned into chaos, but also into a circus, in which the role of acrobats and clowns was played by the new hierarchs decked out in the robes of re-constituted parties with "brilliant", titles such as socialist, social-democrat, Christian Democrat, liberal, communist, etc. One posed as the continuer of the party of Gramsci, the other of Don Sturzo, the one of Croce, the other of Mazzini. From a country of silence and closed mouths, which Italy was in the time of fascism, it turned into the country where a deafening clamour is traditional.

If American capital has got one foot in the door in the different countries of Europe, it has both feet firmly planted in Italy. This has occurred because the bourgeoisie of that country is more degenerate, more cosmopolitan, more unpatriotic, and more given to all-round corruption.

The Christian Democrats have always held the reins of Italy in their hands. The other bourgeois parties also want their share in this bargaining, where everything, including Italy itself, is up for sale, wholesale and retail. The innumerable frequent changes of governments are an expression of the struggle for power, of the competition and rivalry between parties. Changes are made, but the Christian Democrat Party always remains the pivot which takes the lion's share. The Christian Democrats have proved to be skilful tight-rope walkers in the formation of ministerial councils, giving their rivals carefully measured rations of authority and leaving the impression that they are and are not the incontestable rulers of the country. In this way they bring on stage sometimes the "centre-left", sometimes the "centre-right", setting up a cabinet sometimes "monotone" in colour, sometimes "two-tone". All these are conjuror's tricks to show that they are allegedly finding a solution to the chaos, poverty, hunger, unemployment, to the terrible all-round crisis the country is in.

At present all sorts of crimes are flourishing in Italy. The new fascism has organized itself in parliamentary parties and possesses countless terrorist squads and groups, which the Italians call the "lambs" of the general secretary of the fascist party, Almirante. The criminal mafia has its claws deeply implanted everywhere, and crime, thefts, murders, kidnappings, have been raised to a modernized industry. No Italian is certain of tomorrow. The army, the carabinieri and the organs of the secret police have become so inflated that the country can hardly breathe. They have been increased allegedly to defend the people and "the democratic order" from the members of the ultraleft and ultra-right brigades. But the truth is that without these organs the big thieves and murderers who occupy the soft seats in parliament or in the staffs of the army, police etc., could not protect themselves. At the same time, Italy is up to its ears in debt while its currency is one of the weakest of all the currencies of the countries of Western Europe. Today it is called the "sick man" of the European Nine. No one trusts this Italy, with this rotten regime it has, this Italy which may take a course dangerous not only for the Italian people but also for its neighbours.

The various Italian governments, not to mention the period of Mussolini fascism, have in general maintained unfriendly stands towards Albania, either openly or in disguise. The treacherous Albanian reaction which fled on board the British ships was gathered together in Italy, was organized and trained by the post-war governments of that country, by the permanent enemy of Albania - the Vatican, as well as by the Anglo-Americans, to operate against the new Albania. In the first years after Liberation, our people had to wage a stern fight against wreckers who landed in our country from Italy. What end they met, is known. However, the end of the others was no better. Some of the fugitive Albanian traitors remained in Italy, the others dispersed to the United States of America, Belgium, Britain, Federal Germany and many other countries where the imperialist espionage services sent them.

Seeing that they could achieve nothing against the new Albania with acts of diversion, the Italian governments began to maintain an "indifferent" political stand towards our country. True, diplomatic relations between the two countries were established, but other relations always remained at a low level. The Italian governments never showed any desire to develop them. No government has ever publicly condemned Mussolini's barbarous acts against Albania. However, these governments did interest themselves in taking the bones of the Italian soldiers killed by our partisans during the National Liberation War from their graves and sent them to Italy to consecrate them as "heroes who had fought for the greatness of Italy", and every year they pay homage to them. Most of the Italian press rarely publishes any positive article about Albania. It has distinguished itself above all the world press for its stand of denigration and misinformation about our country.

The stand of the Italian revisionists has not been and is not any different from this stand of the government leaders and the press of Italy. In 1939, the leaders of the Italian Communist Party stood back and watched the fascist armies which were going to rob a small neighbouring people of their freedom. They did not prove to be even at the level of the Italian socialists, who condemned the imperialism of their country at the time of the war of Vlora in 1920. Even after the war, the main leaders of the Italian Communist Party did not deign to come to Albania, to condemn the crimes of fascism and express their solidarity with the Albanian people who had faced death and destruction and had fought heroically against Italian fascism.

The Italian Communist Party fought and is fighting to eliminate the revolutionary spirit from its members and the Italian proletariat, to foster the idea of class conciliation and wipe out all thought of seizing power from the hands of the capitalists through violence. It is nothing but a social-democratic party like the others, but has been left in opposition and has not been invited to take part in the dance, because it was formerly in the Third International, and because, apparently, the bourgeoisie requires still greater proofs of loyalty from it.

The Italian "democratic" bourgeois state gives billions of lire in subsidies to the Italian Communist Party, as well as to other parliamentary parties. However, the revisionist party also has other large sources of income from trading companies, as well as from various subsidies in the form of commissions. It has its aristocracy and its plebs: the aristocrats are the deputies, senators, chairmen and councillors of municipalities and the permanent functionaries.

The 10th Congress of the Italian Communist Party, which was held in 1962, codified the ideas of Togliatti, his social-democratic line and open departure from Marxism-Leninism. Togliatti was a reformist intellectual and this is what he remained to the end of his life, up till the "Testament of Yalta" in which he re-emphasized his "polycentrism" and pronounced himself in favour of the "pluralism" of parties allegedly to go to socialism, of the "freedom of religion", "freedom of speech", "human rights", etc. This was the road of the socalled Italian socialism.

The 10th Congress presented the "Italian road to socialism" as an original road, as a new development of Marxism, as a superseding of the teachings of the October Revolution and the experience of all the socialist revolutions up to that time. In reality, it was the road of "structural reforms" the revisionist, opportunist road adopted to suit the needs and the situation of Italian monopoly capital.

According to the "theory" of "structural reforms" the transition to socialism will be made through gradual reforms which will be forced from monopoly capital in a peaceful way. These gradual reforms will be made only by means of parliamentarianism, through power of the vote, regardless of the fact that the capitalist monopolies have in their hands the wealth of the country, the weapons, and the running of parliament and the administration. According to the Italian revisionists, the .Kreforms of socio-economic structures" which it is allegedly possible to carry out within the framework of the bourgeois state, "will wipe out exploitation and class inequalities and will make it possible... to gradually overcome the gap between those who rule and those who are ruled, and move towards the complete liberation of man and society " (The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979).

The Italian revisionists have slipped completely into the positions of trade-unionism and social-democracy. They restrict the workers' struggle merely to economic and democratic demands, and think that the consequences of the capitalist order can be avoided while leaving this order intact. However, history has proved this to be utopian, because the consequences cannot be eliminated without eliminating their causes which lie in the capitalist system itself.

Now the Italian revisionist chiefs themselves accept this open transition to the positions of social-democracy, and indeed they even boast that they have been able to take this "historic" step. At the recent congress of the Italian Communist Party, Ingrao, the former chairman of the Italian Parliament and member of the leadership of the party, declared: "We have much to learn from social-democracy." It is true that the leaders of the Italian revisionist party are still young pupils, compared with the old social-democratic professors, in revising Marxism-Leninism and in the struggle against the revolution. However, they can be considered their equals in their unrestrained zeal to serve the bourgeoisie unconditionally and in a servile manner.

The Italian revisionists can preach night and day, can foam and shout in all the squares and pray in all the churches of Italy, but they will never be able to achieve their reformist dreams of the transition to socialism through parliament, the Constitution and the bourgeois state.

The follow-on from Togliatti's line of "structural reforms", has now become the "historic compromise" with the bourgeoisie, proclaimed by Berlinguer. This slogan, with which the Italian revisionist leadership is now comforting itself, was launched precisely at the time when the Italian capitalist bourgeois state was in a very deep crisis. Through the "historic compromise" the Italian Communist Party offered Christian Democracy, the representative of big capital and the top clerical hierarchy, its co-operation in order to get out of this situation and rescue this state.

Berlinguer's "historic compromise" is the continuation of the old orientations of the Italian Communist Party which immediately after the war sought participation in the bourgeois state, and unification with the socialists of Nenni. It is the continuation of its notorious flirtation with the then chairman of the Christian Democrats, Alcide de Gasperi, it is the hand of friendship of Togliatti-Longo offered to the Catholics. Berlinguer turned this orientation from a tactic into a strategy. The "historic compromise". proposed by the Italian Communist Party is the old liberal policy which has always fitted Italy "comme un gant" like a glove (French in the original).

Berlinguer's "historic compromise" was an effort and a hope born under the influence of events in Chile. When the Italian revisionists saw that the socialist Allende was unable to remain in office without the co-operation of the Christian Democratic Party of Frey, they thought that they, too, could neither come to power nor remain in office without the support and collaboration of the Christian Democrats. Fear of the establishment of fascism with the aid of American imperialism led them to major retreats and concessions in principle and practice, to abandoning even that slightly independent position which they had maintained until that time, when they thought they could win the parliamentary majority and govern jointly with a left coalition. Since that time, in order to avoid the events of Chile in Italy, they accepted to play the secondary and subsidiary role in a coalition, no longer of the left, but of the right, together with the Christian Democrats.

When the Italian Communist Party launched the slogan of the "historic compromise" Italy gave the impression that it was being transformed into a powerful industrialized country. At this period, not only to reaction, but also to the Italian "communists" themselves, the -"historic compromise" seemed like a long-term "strategy". However, the crisis came and fascism was revived, became threatening; the bombs began to burst, people were murdered and disappeared. The "historic compromise" began to become more immediate and to seem "reasonable" even to a part of the bourgeoisie and some Christian Democrats. Aldo Moro was a representative of this current, but he was liquidated, because the Christian Democrats were not and are not yet ready to enter this compromise, regardless of the losses they have suffered in elections.

In the present crisis situation, the Christian Democrats have found some ways and forms of co-ordinating activities with the "communists" on certain questions, at the trade-union level and the party level, but still they are afraid of even an Italian Communist Party "à l'eau de rose".

Will Italian monopoly capital accept the hand which the Italian Communist Party is offering it? It wants the revisionists to support the government in parliament, to vote for its program and laws, to come into the "parliamentary majority", into the "government majority", but not into the government, not into power, not into the centres where political decisions for running the country are taken. The United States of America has expressed its opposition to the presence of the European revisionists in the governments of the NATO member countries. The Italian bourgeoisie is carrying out this order of its patrons.

Whenever parliamentary elections are held the Italian Communist Party is faced with a great dilemma. It does not know how to act in case it wins a greater number of votes than the Christian Democrats. Berlinguer, frightened, adheres to the formula that in any case a broad government should be formed of an the parties of the "democratic arch", which would carry out some reforms, of course, in a "pluralist democracy", and Italy would not leave NATO.

Why does Berlinguer hold out this prospect? Because this is the revisionist line of the Italian Communist Party, which is afraid to. accept the responsibility in the face of the crisis and bankruptcy of the bourgeois system which cannot be cured with reforms. On the other hand, the Italian Communist Party is afraid of the masses of the workers and working people of Italy, who if this party should win, will demand not cooperation with the employers, but the seizure of power. The Italian Communist Party does not want this situation and will never permit it. But neither does the American and the Italian monopoly bourgeoisie want it, and they will do everything in their power to avoid such a situation.

An anti- historic compromise might be made in the beginning if the Italian Communist Party wins on the votes, but this compromise- will be ephemeral, just to calm public opinion, until the screws can be tightened. Capital never hands over its weapons, if they are not taken from it by force. The Italian Communist Party is not of those parties which go into revolution. It is not, and never has been, for the establishment of a Socialist society in Italy, either today, tomorrow, or ever.

The Successors of Proudhon in France

Togliatti and his Italian acolytes long ago carried out the theoretical elaboration of the "roads" to the "new socialist society" which the Eurocommunists advocate. At present, however, it is the French revisionists who are making megalomaniacal "philosophical" speeches, who are trying to make up for lost time and emerge as the banner-bearers of Eurocommunism, as those who interpret and state its laws. This role they have undertaken makes them ridiculous and exposes them even more in the eyes of the working class of their own country and the working people of the whole world. Georges Marchais has become a zealous follower of the theories of Roger Garaudy, who made the law ideologically in the French Communist Party in the time of Thorez and who was expelled from that party later. Garaudy strove to "prove" that in the developed capitalist countries the proletariat allegedly no longer exists, that it has been put on the same level as the working people of the administration, the engineers and technicians who according to Garaudy, are all equally exploited. Now Georges Marchais has taken over this theory as his own and has carried it even further. According to him, everyone, not only the working class, not only all the working people, but even the bourgeoisie, and indeed the army and police, are allegedly for the "socialism" which he preaches. In his discourses he says repeatedly, "We want to advance to socialism, but we are hindered by just 25 families, which comprise the strength of capital in France." "How is it possible that we, all this force, should not be able to have our say and overcome this caste which remains in power?" wonders Marchais. And he provides his own answer, that to advance to socialism France requires only economic and political reforms. He deals with the question of overthrowing capital as something which can be easily achieved, just with a few words, by puffing out one's cheeks and blowing it over. Whatever else it may be, the road which the French revisionists advocate can be anything but it has nothing at all to do with the genuine road to socialism.

Marchais compares and equates the present representatives of state power in France with the French aristocracy before the time of the triumph of the bourgeoisie, two centuries ago, and refers to its leaders as "these princes who govern us". However, the French revisionists are not even in the positions of those people who carried out the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. It is known that this revolution cut off the heads of the king and the queen, and of all those "princes" who governed France at that time. The progressive bourgeoisie of that period, which overthrew the monarchy and feudalism, did not stop at that, but carried the revolution further by cutting the heads of all the leaders of the reactionary factions of the bourgeoisie which were emerging: the Feuillants, the Vergniauds and Dantons. This revolution reached its culmination in the dictatorship of the Jacobins led by Robespierre whom bourgeois reaction sent to the guillotine.

Marchais describes Prince Ponyatowski, Giscard d'Estaign's former minister of the interior, as a Versaillese. However, he forgets the Commune of Paris which fought with arms against Thiers and the Versaillese. "The Communards stormed the heaven," said Marx, while Marchais, with his revisionist theories, wages against the Ponyatowskis "1a guerre en dentelles". (French in the original)

The leaders of the French revisionist party try to explain "the underlying reasons- for the decline of France. The theses for the 23rd Congress of the French Communist Party say: "Since 1976, inflation practically stands at a high level; unemployment has increased about 30 per cent; the buying power of the working people has declined; economic growth has ceased.. . Austerity, unemployment and the super-exploitation of the working people are accompanied with an increase in the capitalists' profits.. . In France, which has a multi-branched industrial economy, whole branches, such as iron-steel, shipbuilding, machine building, textile, footwear, etc., are being ruined today. The number of workers employed in industry has fallen by more than 500,000." These things about the situation in France are known. The problem is not to observe the grave situation of the economy and the workers in France, but how to change this situation.

Marx did not restrict himself merely to making his diagnosis of capitalist society, but also defined the road to overthrow it. The modern revisionists have abandoned this scientific road and only prattle to deceive the party and the working class that they are allegedly concerned about its situation.

The French revisionists also speak about the grave crisis which the capitalist world is experiencing today. "The present crisis of the capitalist countries is an international crisis," says Georges Marchais, "it is in the final analysis a crisis of the system of exploitation, domination and plunder of the workers and the peoples." Very good, but how does he intend to utilize this key moment, which not only France, but the whole world is experiencing? With what kind of struggle? With class struggle, or with discourses? Does he hope that with his speeches he will liquidate the French monopoly bourgeoisie which oppresses the proletariat and working people of France with all that army and police force which Marchais thinks he has on his side? No, he indulges in demagogy which is meant, on the one hand, for the "gallery" and on the other, to tranquilize the employers.

Such revisionists base themselves on the pseudo-theories which they have concocted themselves, according to which the situation has now allegedly matured to the point that there is no longer any need for the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build the new socialist society. Now, according to them, every class in society, indeed every individual, thinks as a socialist. For them, socialism has become so deeply implanted in the consciousness of man that it has become part and parcel of his consciousness. The Resolution adopted by the 23rd Congress of the French Communist Party says, "Socialism. is already being realized, and moreover, being realized in a great diversity of forms." (Cahiers du communisme, June-July, 1979, p.371)

The purpose of these pseudo-theories is to tell the workers that what Lenin did through revolution and bloodshed has now been achieved, moreover under the savage oppression of capital, without revolution and without violence.

The revisionist leaders of the French Communist Party are trying to convince the workers that in the existing society of France, Europe and the world, man has managed to understand that industrial society is no longer a society based on capitalist profit. This is an utterly false theory, because monopoly capital which prevails in this society demands not merely profits, but maximum profits. Georges Marchais also speaks about the export of capital, but he does not say that this export is a means of barbarous exploitation, not only of the workers of the metropolises, but also of the workers of the backward or developing countries. Today the export of capital has become a fundamental feature of neo-colonialism. Georges Marchais goes so far as to claim that in the existing situation, mimperialism is obliged to seek new international solutions which correspond to the needs of the peoples.. How humanitarian this imperialism has become that acts according to the needs of the peoples! However, imperialism remains imperialism and dees not change with the words and analyses of sophists. By preaching such stuff the French Eurocommunist revisionists are simply assisting imperialism by prettifying it, by spreading and nurturing the illusion that it desires to remake a new world.

In a long tirade, at the 22nd Congress of the FCP, Marchais goes so far as to say that the accusation of allegedly wanting to eliminate the wealthy, levelled against the French revisionists, is without foundation. Considering it a slander, he declares openly that they want private property to exist, want the middle bourgeoisie to exist with all its property and want the landed peasantry to exist; that they want only to nationalize all the common state assets and to have all these administered by the people. Social-democracy also defends these capitalist structures which Marchais defends. In this instance he has the right to be angry with those who accuse him of not being one hundred per cent loyal to the bourgeoisie like his social-democratic brothers.

At the beginning of 1979, Georges Marchais wrote: "We want a social democracy, an economic democracy, a political democracy, and we wish to go further, to a radical transformation of social relations so that we can make it possible for the French people to live in a democratic selfadministrative socialism." "L'Humanité"

Thus, Marchais emerges as a follower of Tito who has implemented in Yugoslavia precisely the anarcho-syndicalist theories of Proudhon and Bakunin on "worker self-administration", which Marx and later Lenin sternly condemned. Now Georges Marchais, under the cloak of "creative" Marxism but never "deigning" to use any of the statements of the great teachers of Marxism, does not dare to defend the anti-Marxist views of Proudhon openly and say that he is his disciple. However, in demanding "self-administration", he simply is changing the terms while he carries on the petty-bourgeois theory of Proudhon.

The leaders of the French Communist Party speak a great deal about wages and raise the problem of the reformist struggle for raising them. The buying power of the workers and their families must be increased by giving more to those who get the least, they say. The measures to minimize the inequalities in incomes as well as in bonuses must be increased. The range of wage differentials must be reduced by raising the lower wages. The revisionists raise these problems because at the present time increased pay is a universal demand of the masses.

Georges Marchais asks in amazement how the phenomenon can exist that workers and the elderly do not have the possibility to live properly, do not have the right to speak on the radio and television.

They must win all these things, he says. "My Party has fought and is fighting to increase wages, to reduce taxes, to ensure that parliament will no longer be as it is at present, with intolerable conditions imposed on its functioning and its prerogatives restricted," says he. While restricting the struggle of the working class simply to day-to-day demands, the French revisionists neglect the teachings of Marx who has explained that in a disguised way, wages hide the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists who appropriate a part of the labour, precisely the unpaid labour of the workers, which creates surplus value for the capitalist. They deliberately say nothing about the idea of Marx who says that the solution to the problem does not lie in raising wages, or in equalizing them, as Proudhon, that classic reformist, believed. Marx said that to restrict the struggle of the working class merely to wages was nothing but an attempt to prolong the existence of wage slavery. The final elimination of the exploitation of wage labourers, says Marx, is the only correct and radical solution to the problem.

The French revisionists leave in obscurity Marx's theory about the social character of production and the capitalist, private character of the means of production in capitalism and the relations of production between classes. They deliberately do not mention the fact that these questions involve the interests of different classes which are constantly in struggle with one another to alter the character of ownership. They deal with these problems in general terms, simply as economic questions, just as the theoreticians of economism did. Their "theory" is not the theory of Marx, but the theory. of deviators who came after Marx. Marchais reduces the mission and the struggle of the proletariat to a struggle for economic rights and not for the overthrow of the power of capital. In the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" Marx issued the call: "Workers of all countries, unite!" But why? To carry out the revolution. While Marchais says: Workers, peasants, bourgeois, police, soldiers and officers, unite. .. to carry reforms! The notion "proletariat" is considered by the French revisionists to be a romantic notion about which to create poetry.

Instead of fighting to ensure that the proletariat is in the forefront of the revolution and in close alliance with the working people of town and countryside, the French revisionists try to unite it in "another historic bloc", in a "union of the left", as the French revisionists call their collaboration with the bourgeois parties, or in the "historic compromise", as the Italian revisionists call such a thing.

The French revisionists promote this theory on alliances on the basis of their view that in the present-day capitalist order, the workers everyday "see that the conditions of life are improving" and that "the proletariat, in the true meaning of the term, is disappearing". This is the thesis of the revisionist Garaudy whom the French revisionists keep outside the party in vain. Whether he is inside or outside it, it is all the same so long as the revisionist leaders of the French Communist Party agree that the bourgeois parties should join them in the dance in order to go to socialism. That is where Garaudy and company vegetate, too. The French revisionist leadership criticized and expelled Garaudy from the party, not proceeding from principled positions, but because he came out prematurely with and raised the banner of "the new line", something which according to rank, was up to Marchais and other leaders more senior than he. This leadership is acting in the same way today with Ellenstein and Althuser who want to proceed more quickly on the revisionist road. However, there is no doubt at all that the leadership of the French Communist Party will quickly come to terms and unite, not only with Garaudy and Ellenstein, but also With Mitterrand, Rocard and all the social-democrats. Whether they will pass first through a "union of the left", a "Joint program" or through some other form is of no importance. Since they have the same views and aims, everything else will come about automatically.

The revisionists in general and the French ones in particular in their theories are opposed to the management of the economy by the state in socialism. Marchais says: "We are fighting today against authoritarianism and suffocating centralism... On the contrary, we want the state enterprises to be autonomous in their administration. . . we want the working people - the workers, the clerks, the engineers and the cadres to take part more and more actively in this administration. We also want the communes, districts and regions to become real centres for decision making and democratic administration."- (Le socialisme pour la France, Paris 1976, pp. 84-85).

These views of revisionists in the French Communist Party are totally in accord with the line of Yugoslav "self-administration" and the federalism of Proudhon who said, "there should be only an industrial democracy, a positive anarchy. Whoever speaks of freedom speaks of federalism, or says nothing, whoever speaks of republic, speaks of federalism, or says nothing, whoever speaks of socialism, speaks of federalism, or says nothing." Hence for Proudhon, the federal principle is applied in the economy and in politics. Perhaps Georges Marchais does not describe these questions in the terms which Proudhon used, but when he speaks of his "democratic socialism- he says, -We want a fine society, with justice, freedom, etc.-, and asks whether it is reasonable that the workers should be suppressed for these simple aspirations and that these aspirations should remain only a dream.

Proudhon demanded democracy and freedom, and according to him, these could be won very easily, could be taken from the hands of the capitalists without any trouble. Marchais does not restrict himself merely to this, but stresses that the workers in bourgeois democracy had greater freedom two hundred years ago, they took part in the affairs of the state and the factories, and finally, he is "indignant" that they do not have these freedoms today. However, he goes no further than indignation. And Marchais goes no further, because he does not want to do battle with the capitalists but wants to co-exist with them in peace. All this is like a fairy tale for the "gogos" [the innocent].

Marchais preaches that even in the conditions of the existence of the capitalist order, by means of reforms it can be brought about that the proletariat takes part in the management of the economy. He dreams and says that within this order there can be a social democracy in which all the workers, without exception, can benefit from wealth, that there can be a political democracy in which every citizen can control, manage, and truly be in the leadership, in other words "self-administration". Is this not completely the theory of Proudhon?

In connection with the democratic socialismhe advocates, Marchais also deals with the question of property and the planned running of the economy. He divides property in this society into state and private Property, but the property which he leaves to private owners is colossal. With this he wants to tell the ruling bourgeoisie, don't accuse us French revisionists in vain, because we respect private property, we are not for the for proletarian revolution, we are no longer for "raisind the fist", but for "holding out the hand of friendship". Marchais speaks about municipal, departmental, regional property. He does not use Proudhon's term "federalism", but it amounts to the same thing. When Marchais says, we fight against authoritarianism and suffocating centralism, he implies the struggle against democratic centralism, contrary to the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. And he stresses, we must build up the plan in a democratic way, ensuring that not only the workers and other working people, but also those who have property will take part.

Marchais knows that the planning of the economy is not a method which can be applied in any social system depending on the good will of those who are in the leadership of the country. Unified central planning becomes possible only where complete social ownership has been established over the means of production, and this is characteristic only of socialism. Private property, in whatever form, has not submitted and never will submit to centralized planning. These are objective truths and they cannot change just because this would please Marchais and other Eurocommunist "theoreticians".

Modern revisionism, not only in France but in all capitalist-revisionist countries, is also attacking Marxism-Leninism in the field of literature and the arts, because it wants to use them as means to poison the minds of people and make them degenerate. The revisionist writers, poets and artists have taken the road of bourgeois degeneration. Today it is difficult to distinguish an Aragon from a Beauvoir and an André Stil from a Sagan. This is not referring to a similarity in style and form, but to an identity in the content and purpose of their works which are inspired by anti-Marxist philosophical trends, in order to emerge on the same course, to fight the revolution, to tame the spirits, to make them "dead spirits", equally degenerate.

All the revisionist "theoretieians" advocate the thesis that Marx and Engels allegedly gave very little attention, if any at all, to aesthetics. The .aesthetes of the French Communist Party go even further. They try to "prove" that Marx was allegedly not interested at all in art or did not understand it. Contrary to the facts, they allege that Marx "was unable to understand what it was that gave art an everlasting value irrespective of the historical moments, and was unable to understand how Greek art, linked with the infrastructure of that time, continues to arouse emotions". Such a distortion of Marx is not done without a purpose.

On the one hand, they want to create the impression that there is no Marxist opinion about art and that allegedly the revisionists are elaborating this, and, on the other hand, they are trying to deny the class character of art and to start discussion about whether art "is part of the superstructure or the structure, whether or not it is an ideology, whether or not it is linked with the class and the revolution, to what degree and to what point", etc.

A series of "theoreticians" of the French Communist Party have had different opinions about literature and art at different periods, and this has brought about confusion and chaos in the ranks of the party and its militants and vacillations in the creative literary and artistic work of communist writers and artists. At one period, the French Communist Party fought for that creative work which was based on the people's art, on revolutionary art, and later, on socialist realism. At a later stage anti-Marxist trends penetrated the creative work of communist artists.

With its decadent art, the bourgeoisie exerted an influence not only on the rank-and-file members of the communist party, but also on the cadres engaged in agitation and propaganda. Influengped by this art, these elements propounded theories, gave distorted and incorrect interpreatiols of Lenin, who pointed out that the revolution creates its own art and that the communists do not reject the progressive heritage of the people from the past. These individuals also interpreted in bourgeois and revisionist ways the statements of Lenin, Stalin and Zhdanov, that in socialist society the writers and artists should be free in their creative work, should have personal initiative, but always be realist and create works which truly serve the revolution and socialism.

Certain pseudo-Marxist aesthetes went so far as to defend the thesis that Lenin had allegedly advocated absolute freedom in creative work, The anti-Marxist philosopher Garaudy proclaimed "unlimited realism". Others defend the thesis that when ideology and the party prevail in literature and art, there is no freedom and therefore, no creative work.

What else could one expect in the field of aesthetics, when such people as Andr6 Gide, Malraux or Paul Nizan had influence in the French Communist Party and posed as communists. Together with Aragon, they took part in the First Congress of the Soviet writers in Moscow, but in the end betrayed and became open anti-communists. Such "theoreticians" in France, inside and outside the Communist Party, could have no idea of the value of art based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. The purpose of these elements was to separate art and literature from politics and ideology, of course, from proletarian politics and the Marxist ideology. They struggled to clear the way for the spread of bourgeois ideology and politics, for the development of decadent art, psychoanalist, sexual, crime and pornographic novels, so that the markets, book-shops, show-cases, theatres and cinemas would be filled with such works.

Let us take Picasso. He was a member of the French Communist Party till he died, but he never became a Marxist. This is reflected in his works, while the French Communist Party boasted of him and the only criticism which they made of him was for a scrawl which was called "Portrait of Stalin", and which his friend and comrade Aragon published in the newspaper "Les lettres françaises" of which he was director.

Socialist realism was not supported by th-French Communist Party strongly and with conviction. Some of the writers, philosophers and critics who were party members, such as Marguerite Daras and Claude Roys, deserted. After Khrushchev's slanders against Stalin, the French Communist Party was shaken and such intellectuals were the first to capitulate. It launched the slogan of "complete freedom in art and culture", and such former defenders of socialist realism as Aragon, André Stil, and André Wurmser not only changed their coats but even sold their souls and their hides to revisionism. Thus the French pseudo-communist literary figures began to fall in love with the Lukacses, the Kafkas and the Sartres. Critical discussions began throughout the whole party on the platform which the bourgeoisie desired, such as, "what is the relation between literature and ideology?", "what form should be accepted in art, 'sectarianism in interpretation' or 'opportunist eclecticism'?". Speaking as an "authority", Roland Leroys pronounced the conclusion that, "there cannot be a specific form of proletarian art or art which is completely revolutionary".

Wallowing in opportunism and revisionism, the French Communist Party allowed these antirevolutionary theses to ooze like stagnant waters and become predominant amongst its creative artists.

As a conclusion, we can say that the line of the French Communist Party in literature and art has had its ups and downs. But it has always been wobbly. Its vacillation has been caused by its "orthodoxy" in the preservation of principles, on the one hand, and by the direct and indirect influence of bourgeois ideology in literature and art amongst its intellectuals, on the other hand.

In general, the intellectuals who worked in the field of artistic creativeness have played a role more negative than positive for the French Communist Party. Irrespective of their class origin, they completed their schooling and sought "fame". The party never influenced and guided them with the proletarian ideology and culture. To these intellectuals of the party it was their free, subjective, individual, creative work, and never the true interests of the proletariat and the revolution, that. was important. These elements lived and worked far removed from the working class and isolated from it. For them, the class was the "economy", while the intellectuals were the "godhead" that had to guide the "economic factor". The intellectuals of the French party had been raised and inspired in the Bohemia of Montparnasse, in "closerie des Lilas" "Pavillon de Flore", "Bateau-Lavoir" and in other clubs in which all kinds of decadent trends came together, trends from which emerged the Aragons, the Picassos, the Elsa Triolets and many other friends of the Lazareffs, the Tristan Zaras, the dadaists, cubists, and a thousand and one decadent schools of literature and art. This tradition and this road continued uninterruptedly within the French Communist Party, until it arrived at its 22nd Congress at which the revisionist Georges Marchais flaunted all the anti-Marxist corruption which had long been festering in the French Communist Party.

At this congress, the French revisionists came out officially against the leading role of the party of the working class in the field of art and against the method of socialist realism. Undef the pretext of the struggle against "uniformity" they claimed that socialist culture should be open to all currents, to all kinds of experiments and creations.

In the book which contains his report to the 22nd Congress, the pseudo-Marxist Georges Marchais published a poem by Aragon taken from his book "Elsa's Madman". Elsa was Aragon's wife. Here is what Aragon, a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, says in this verse: "Will there always be fighting and feuds/ Regal behaviour and bowed heads! Children born of mothers unwanted/Wheat destroyed by the locusts?/ Will there always be prisons and torture/ Always massacres in the name of idols (the idols are Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin)/ A mantel of words cast over the corpses/ A gag in the mouth and nailed hands?/ But a day will come with orange colours..." This is Aragon's way of saying that he and his party have abandoned the red colour, communism.

In this way, the French revisionists threw overboard the principles of the immortal theory of Marxism-Leninism. Now their party is floundering in a revisionism which is a mixture of the old utopian theories of Bernstein, Proudhon, Kautsky, and anarchism. Uniting with the ideology of other bourgeois parties, it is fighting to create the idea in France and elsewhere that Marxism has become obsolete, and Eurocommunism must come to the fore instead.

In 1968 the students in Paris clashed with "the forces of law and order" The Trotskyites, Sartre, the theoretician of existentialism, Sirnone de Beauvoir, Cohn-Bendit and others seized on to these clashes to give them an anarchist colour.

And in fact they took place in great disorder. The French Communist Party did not participate. Why did it not participate? Was it that in principle it was opposed to anarchism? I think this is not the reason. The reason is that it did not want to unite with the student youth, which was attacking the De Gaulle government. In fact, it was this movement which forced De Gaulle to hold the referendum, and when he did not win in the way he wanted, he retired to Colombay-Les-Deux-Eglises, where he died.

The French Communist Party stopped the working class from going into action and taking over the leadership of the uprising. The party had the strength to ensure that the flames were spread throughout France, and if not to seize power, at least to shake the power of "princes", or the power of "barons", as they called it at that time. It did not do this, because it was for that road and for those methods which the petty-bourgeois revisionist Georges Marchais advocates.

The French Communist Party has great hopes in a "coalition of the left", which it tried to create with the socialist party of Mitterrand in the elections for the president of France and in the parliamentary elections. The French Communist Party and the French Socialist Party reached a certain agreement, but this was temporary. Not only did they not win in the voting, but after the elections and the triumph of Giscard d'Estaign, it was seen that the love between the communists and the socialists was cooling, and indeed they began to attack one another. Neither the big bourgeoisie, nor its parties, nor even the Socialist Party of Mitterrand will ever want a communist party, even one of an orange colour, such as Aragon describes it, to take part in the government of France. This did not take place with the Popular Front, when Uon Blum was at the head of the Socialist Party, is not taking place today, when Mitterrand is at the head of the Socialist Party, and neither will it take place when someone else emerges at the head of it.

The interests of the French capitalist bourgeoisie and of the two hundred families, which Marchais has reduced to 25 in order to give the impression that today they are dealing with a small reactionary force, are closely linked together to protect their privileges, to protect their great possessions and capital, to increase their profits at the expense of the proletariat and all the working people of France. Of course, the socialists have contradictions with the other parties of the bourgeoisie, but when it comes to the issue that the bourgeois power is threatened by the proletariat, then unity is achieved, not between the communists and the socialists, however, but between the socialists and the bourgeoisie. This is occurring in Italy with the Socialist Party which is uniting with the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Social-Democratic Party, and is not making a common front even with Togliatti's "communists".

However, assuming for a moment that a cartel of the "left" in France could manage to take Power, for the French communists, even with their orange colour, this would be ephemeral and would change nothing. Why is this? Because this is what happened when De Gaulle, in order to get out of his difficulties, accepted a few communists headed by Thorez in the government, and threw them out again after he had used them as firemen. And when did he do this? He did this at a time when the French Communist Party had emerged from the Second World War with no small authority, as the only party which had fought the occupier consistently. Therefore, Marchais' pretentions that he "is going to take power and build socialism" now, with the Eurocommunist strategy, with the, revisionist ideology of Proudhon and Bernstein, will never be realized. The most that the heads of the French Communist Party might achieve is to; become share-holders in plundering the sweat and' toil of the French proletariat and people, to strengthen the fire brigades of the counter-revolution, but nothing more.

Revisionism with the Gloves Off

The line of the Spanish revisionists is worthy of special attention, not because these revisionists are different from the Italian and French variety, but because of the special role they have undertaken, as spokesmen and kite-fliers for all revisionists. Carrillo and company speak with the gloves off, speak openly, and whether or not the other revisionists headed by the Soviet revisionists like it, they express the true opinion of modern revisionism. If the Soviet revisionists ,sometimes "criticize" Carrillo, they do this not because of his treacherous revisionist ideas. but because he blurts out the opinions and aims of all -revisionists.

Carrillo is a product of the corrupt bourgeois capitalist society in decay, a product of lumpenintellectuals in the service of the capitalist bourgeoisie.

He has lived in France, and apparently, while there, was profoundly influenced by Sartrist, anarchist, Trotskyite, and all sorts of other corrupt anti-Marxist theories. Now he is developing these theories in the speeches and interviews with which he fills the pages of the bourgeois press, and especially in his much advertised book "Eurocommunism and the State". In this utterly anti-Marxist "work", the general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain has summarized and systematized the opportunist theses and views of Togliatti, Berlinguer, Marchais, Khrushchev, Tito and other ,chiefs of modern revisionism. His main aim is to justify his deviation from Marxism-Leninism, to attack the idea of the revolution and socialism, and legitimize revisionism.

Carrillo called his book "Eurocommunism and the State", as a counter to Lenin's famous and brilliant work "The State and Revolution", in which he put forward the strategy of the socialist revolution and the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This megalomaniac, Carrillo, pretends that with a mishmash of phrases gathered from all the renegades from communism, he can knock down one of the mightiest monuments of the Marxist thinking such as "The State and Revolution", which life and revolutionary practice have stamped with the great seal of history, making it immortal.

According to the renegade Carrillo, who propagates the theses of petty-bourgeois intellectuals, the proletariat today is allegedly no longer the most revolutionary class of society which leads the struggle for socialism, but all classes to some extent and, first of all, the intelligentsia, lead this struggle. He claims that in Lenin's time the proletariat was allegedly a backward class, while today, this renegade says, the working class is very advanced and the intelligentsia has grown up alongside it. In other words, he, too, associates himself with the theses of the revisionist philosopher Roger Garaudy. According to Carrillo, the communists must take power today, not through violence, not by destroying the bourgeois power and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but by using other forms, appropriate to the changes which the capitalist system has undergone. Allegedly, present-day bourgeois society contains within itself the kernel of socialism, therefore the proletariat is not the only class interested in the establishment of socialism.

We must understand, says Carrillo, that the capitalist state has changed today, and he goes on to claim that the others do not see this change in the capitalist state, but his mind reveals it. And what it reveals is an imaginary reality on which he proceeds to build up his whole worthless "theory" According to him, the capitalist state has nationalized a series of enterprises which have assumed other forms which differ from those of the old concerns of capitalism or imperialism. The state administers these enterprises more or less correctly, through functionaries who have a bourgeois mentality. Now, according to Carrillo, all that has to be done is to change this mentality and everything will be in order. This bourgeois mentality of the functionaries, says Carrillo, has undergone radical changes, but more must be done to reach the stage at which the bearers of this mentality understand the need for further reforms to advance to socialism.

Carrillo tries "to prove" that the presentday state in the capitalist countries allegedly does not represent the power of the bourgeoisie, its apparatus of violence to protect its property and rule, but is a supra-class power belonging to all classes. Being unable to make black entirely white, lie admits only that there is a certain superiority of the bourgeoisie in this state, which he regards as something left over from the historical conditions in which this state was created, but which now can be set right. But how is this change to be made? How is this superiority to be eliminated and the state of "democratic socialism" to be created? Obviously, according to him, the Leninist theory, which allegedly was valid for the past periods, cannot be applied, because the economic, social and other ,conditions have changed. Now another theory is needed, and Carrillo has it ready.

The ownership of the means of production, he says, is now not only that of the bourgeoisie. Along with it exists state ownership, which Carrillo considers "socialist", cooperativist ownership, etc. The proletariat no longer exists, because it has merged with all the intelligentsia, the office workers, the priests, the judges, the gendarmes, etc. Meanwhile, the capitalists remain a small group of stubborn bourgeois who still cling to the old. In these conditions, according to Carrillo, the institutions of the bourgeois superstructure must be democratized through reforms and education, and this process has already commenced. Thus the only task left for the communists to carry out is, to accelerate this process.

According to the renegade Carrillo, the conflict between the working masses and the bourgeois state today has radically changed. This conflict is no longer what it was before, because now allegedly the state is an employer which no longer defends the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole, but only of a fraction of it, that fraction which controls the big monopoly groups. Therefore, he says, now the state is no longer in opposition only to the advanced proletarians, but also directly to the broadest social classes and strata, including a big section of the bourgeoisie itself. The element of different classes, which is in opposition to the big financial oligarchy and the employing state, not only can penetrate the state apparatus, he declares, but already has penetrated it. Through this "progressive element" it is possible to take power by means of reforms.

"To confirm" these dreams, Carrillo quotes the example of Italy, where as he says, even the police in Rome vote for the Italian Communist Party. With this he wants to arrive at the conclusion that the forces of compulsion and oppression of the capitalist bourgeoisie have undergone changes also. True, he says, they frequently act according to the desire of capital, but they do this allegedly contrary to their conscious will, because, when the occasion arises to express this consciousness without exposure to the capitalist state, they act in opposition to the will of this state.

The position is similar in regard to the law courts. The courts, says Carrillo, naturally carry out the laws of the bourgeoisie, but there too, the consciousness of the courts has begun to undergo a metamorphosis.

He deals with the problem of religion and the church in the same spirit. The church, he says, has changed and is no longer that dogmatic church of the past. Today the clergy themselves are for amendment of the dogmas, are no longer opposed to science but in favour of it. This being the case, they are in favour of a life entirely different from that which the Bible and the Vatican formerly preached, and the Vatican has allegedly made anevolution towards a more progressive and human society, towards a society in which there will bea greater and more complete democracy.

According to Carrillo, even the church makes. its contribution to the social transformations towards socialism! Basing himself on this fantasy, he arrives at the conclusion that the top clerical hierarchy, without as yet going so far as to accept socialism and Marxism, has allegedly begun to, raise doubts about the possibilities of capitalism as a Way to solve the problems for the future. He declares that he takes his hat off to the clergysince they have made an evolution in their dogmas, therefore the Eurocommunists must reject their own "dogmas", i.e., Marxism-Leninism, in order to be more "progressive" than the church and the Vatican.

Education, one of the most consistent ideological apparatuses of the bourgeoisie, does not present any problem to Carrillo, because it has just about been transformed already. He claims that education today, while having become available to the masses, has also changed its ideological content.

As to the family, according to Carrillo, it has ,completely changed its way of life and thinking. Present-day children not only do not listen to their parents, but they are opposed to their ideas. Mentally, they are virtually living in socialism already.

In other words, for Carrillo, the whole of capitalist society has been transformed, is no longer that society of the time of Marx and the time of Lenin, is no longer that decayed state of 1917, when the Great October Socialist Revolution overthrew czarism. Carrillo links both the October Revolution in the Soviet Union and the revolutions. which triumphed in other countries with the world wars, thus perpetrating a monstrous slander against genuine revolutionaries, which, according to him, are in favour of war in order to ensure the triumph of the revolution. It is true that by exacerbating -the social contradictions to the maximum, and by .increasing the sufferings of the masses to an unprecedented level, world wars hasten and accelerate the outburst of the revolutions, as the only way to escape wars and the order which gives birth to them. But world wars and local wars are not the cause of social revolutions. The underlying cause of the revolution is the contradictions of the capitalist system itself, especially the conflict between old relations of production and new productive forces, a conflict which can be solved even without being associated with inter-state wars, as history has proved.

Socialism, declares Carrillo, cannot be linked with world war, because such a war in our time would lead to the total destruction of the human society. Thus Carrillo does not fail to make him-self a propagandist of imperialism's atomic black-mail. Following in the footsteps of Khrushchev, he says that it is not necessary to carry out revolutions or liberation wars in the conditions when the atomic bomb exists, because they might become the cause for nuclear wars in which neither side will win. If we speak about a world without weapons, without wars,. says Carrillo, then we must carry this idea ' through to the end. Since we want to build a world without wars, as was said at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, let us work in this direction, not only by demanding disarmament and making speeches in favour of peace, but also by undermining and sabotaging the revolution every-where.

On the other hand, to Carrillo violent revolution is a closed road because allegedly American imperialism will not permit such a thing. Carrillo wants to raise his own petty-bourgeois fear to the level of theory and to transform his capitulation to imperialism and the bourgeoisie into a norm. The threat of intervention to suppress any revolution on the part of imperialism, and not only American imperialism., but the whole of world reaction, has existed for a long time and this is part of the aggressive strategy of the American and other imperialists. However, history has proved that the peoples have risen into revolution, have clashed with the American intervention, and have triumphed. Let us take the Iranian revolution as a recent example. American imperialism used all its threats, but does not dare to intervene directly with arms, because it senses that, faced with the determination of the Iranian people, it will suffer a bigger defeat than that it and the gendarme Shah, whom it had armed to the teeth with the most modern means, suffered.

What is new in Carrillo's sermons is that he has become the spokesman for and champion of the imperialist policy, a spreader of panic and a tool of reaction to sow the seed of demoralization and capitulation among the masses. And whom does he warn that they should fear foreigners? He is addressing the heroic Spanish people, who fought so boldly and valiantly not only against Franco, but also against the armed intervention of Hitler and Mussolini, and against the socialists like Blum, who sabotaged the revolution in Spain, and whose pupil Carrillo has now become.

To Carrillo it seems unnecessary for the bourgeoisie to maintain a large police force and apparatus of oppression. Why does it need this when public opinion does not want such a thing? asks Carrillo. The state power of the financial oligarchy and capital ought to come to terms with the workers, preaches this new Christian priest. According to him, strikes can continue to be held, but should be done in co-ordination with and organized by the employers and the representatives of the workers, that is, by the worker aristocracy. It is very easy, says Carrillo, for the managers to reach agreement with the workers and put aside their arrogance and not impose their dictate.

According to him, this can be achieved simply and without difficulty. But he is reckoning without his host. He is speaking without those who have power and are holding on to it, who have the apparatus of oppression, the propaganda machine, the church, etc., in their hands. They do not swallow these tales of Carrillo's, but they support him so that he will create such concepts and spread them in the ranks of the working class and the strata of working people so that the latter will live with the dreams of Carrillo.

In regard to the army, the problem is quite simple to Carrillo. The present-day army must be transformed on the basis of a democratic policy, he writes in his book. This does not mean to give it another political colour, he says, let it retain the colour it has (i.e., reactionary), but it must never think about military plots, or about a present-day repetition of the history of the 19th century and part of the 20th century. To Carrillo, insurrections and civil wars must be avoided. Likewise to be eliminated is the historical binomial: the oligarchy plus the armed forces equals conservatism and reaction; an identification of the army and civilian society must be achieved, an identification which will allegedly facilitate the advance of the progressive forces towards democracy, a society of equality and justice.

According to him, no pretext must be given for the army to be set in motion by one side or the other, but work must be carried out for a "democratic transformation" of the military mentality, so that the army will understand that war should no longer exist in society, because otherwise it will be suicide. The doors of this army of capital should not be opened only to the cadres of the bourgeoisie, but also to the broad strata of the people, so that the ideology of the masses, the socialist ideology, etc. can penetrate it, and it will no longer be a reserve of the police, but simply a weapon in the service of public order. How this is to be done is another matter. However, Carrillo thinks that, since he preaches it, the bourgeoisie should accept his "wise" council, should peacefully relinquish the main weapon of its power, and one fine day, after it has been convinced that "this is what justice requires", will say to Carrillo, "come and take power, we are withdrawing, lead all of us towards socialism!"

In support of his thesis about the possibility of the democratization of the army and its transformation into an army which serves the people, Carrillo produces a number of arguments which are as naive as they are ridiculous. The French army, he says, was democratized after the war in Algeria, because its regulations were redrafted and new ones were established "which have created a democratic spirit in it". To claim that the French bourgeois army has changed its world outlook and is no longer a weapon in the hands of the big bourgeoisie, but a weapon in the hands of public opinion, is betrayal.

According to this revisionist, the military doctrine and the army itself in the capitalist states are in crisis, because in its ranks, in the ranks of the military cadres there are both hawks and doves. Hence, says Carrillo, we must work in a peaceful way to turn the hawks too, into doves. To this end, Carrillo thinks that the communist parties should have a separate military policy, but should never consider carrying politics into the army. He says that efforts should be made to draw the military theme into the field of the policy of the left, so that it will be a monopoly of neither the right nor the left. According to Carrillo, such a policy on the part of the communist parties would draw the army away from the policy of the right, and the army would go over more to the side of the nation. Thus, both the left and the right together should struggle against and control each other and, in the traditional way, should control the state, too, not the bourgeois state, but Carrillo's state, which .Kis to be created. through reforms.

As a conclusion of these "analyses" of present-day capitalist society and the bourgeois state, Carrillo, who poses as the ideologist and theoretician of Eurocommunism, also builds up his strategy to go over to socialism. The strategy of revolutionaries today, says Carrillo, is not to overthrow the state power of the bourgeoisie, because state power no longer belongs to the bourgeoisie, neither is it to overthrow the bourgeois relations of production, since they have changed already. The only thing which should be done is to gradually transform the existing political and ideological institutions through reforms, in order to bring them intoconformity with the social reality and turn them in favour of the people.

The head of the Spanish revisionists preaches that now it is completely possible to gradually transform the capitalist superstructure into a socialist superstructure, without altering its base.

This is anti-dialectical and contrary to simple logic. However, Carrillo is not interested in science, but in the schemes he has concocted. This is because his aim is not to indicate the solution of problems, but to obscure their solution, to set the proletariat on a wrong road, to lead it up a blind alley and turn it away from the revolution.

As we said, Carrillo has been inspired by all the "theories" of the Khrushchevites, the Trotskyites, Browder and a thousand and one other traitors to the working class. However, he demands that things should be said openly, that the i's should be dotted, in other words, that the revisionists' actions should be unified with capitalism and world imperialism. First of all, allegedly with theoretical arguments, he calls on all the revisionists and pseudo-communists of the world to rise against Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. He distorts and interprets as he pleases Marx's writings on the events of 1848, on the June Uprising in France, on the Paris Commune and goes so far as to admit openly that he is taking his treacherous theses from Trotsky or Kautsky. By mentioning these renegades and notorious and discredited opponents of Marxism, he shows from which stable he comes and where the sources of his "theoretical" discoveries lie.

Total denial of the class struggle is the foundation of all Carrillo's ideas. In his view, all classes are together at the head of the bourgeois state today. But to Carrillo the stratum of intellectuals is everything, is the cleverest, the most knowledgeable, the most capable and the best administrator. If one had said these things in the time when Marx, Engels and Lenin were alive, declares Carrillo himself , they would have called them utopian ideas. Our classics would not just have called these counterrevolutionary ideas utopian, but would have described them as betrayal, just as they described the predecessors of Carrillo as traitors.

Carrillo is a revisionist whose betrayal knows no bounds. All revisionists are traitors, but in one way or another they have tried to disguise their betrayal. They have hesitated to attack Marx, Engels and Lenin so openly as all of them have attacked Stalin.

But Carrillo goes further in his road than Khrushchev and many others. Although he tried, Khrushchev did not dare to publicly rehabilitate Trotsky. By calling Stalin a criminal, by rejecting all the revolutionary trials which were held in the time of the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, in practice Khrushchev rehabilitated Kamenev and Zinoviev. He also rehabilitated many other traitors such as Rajk and so on. However, Carrillo was not satisfied with Khrushchev. In his book, he rebukes him as if to say: "When you have rehabilitated all these fine people whom Stalin had shot, when you have betrayed Marx, Engels and Lenin, why have you not rehabilitated your father' Trotsky?" Therefore, Carrillo calls for Trotsky to, be rehabilitated and for a campaign to do justice to the "merits" of Trotsky.

In other words, Carrillo is one of the dirtiest, one of the most bare-faced agents of world capitalism. However, his "theories" will not do capitalism much good because, as Carrillo presents them, they are a real exposure of the pseudo-Marxism of the modern revisionists. On the one hand, Carrillo serves imperialism and world capitalism, because he opposes the revolution, and denies the Marxist-Leninist ideas which inspire the proletariat and the peoples throughout the world, but on the other hand, he tears the mask from theother modern revisionists and exposes them, discloses their true aims to the proletariat and the peoples.

Santiago Carrillo, the General Secretary of' the Communist Party of Spain, is a bastard of' revisionist bastardy. He took all the vilest and most counterrevolutionary things from modern revisionism and made himself the apologist of utter betrayal and capitulation.

ONLY THE MARXIST-LENINISTS HOLD HIGH THE BANNER OF THE REVOLUTION AND CARRY IT FORWARD

resent-day capitalist society, both bourgeois and revisionist, is pregnant with revolution and the revolution always has been and always will be guided only by the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin .and Stalin. All the different ideas which seek to revise our great theory will end up in the rubbish bin of history, just as they have always done. They will be smashed, together with capitalism, imperialism and social-imperialism, by the great power of the world proletariat which leads the revolution and is inspired by the immortal doctrine of Marxism-Leninism.

The tactics and manoeuvres of the Eurocommunists cannot overshadow our great doctrine and they will never get established. Only those who are imbued with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and remain loyal to it see what dangerous and cunning opportunists they are confronted with in their gigantic struggle for the triumph of the new world, the socialist world, without oppressors, exploiters, war-mongering imperialists and socialimperialists, without revisionists, demagogues and traitors, either old or new.

In France, Italy, Spain and the other capitalist countries, it depends greatly on the proletariat and its Marxist-Leninist parties to ensure that the anti-class, anti-revolutionary, anti-Marxist theories of the revisionists are defeated. Without a genuine Marxist-Leninist party to lead the proletariat in class battles and revolution, these anti-Marxist theories which have been spread by the revisionist parties cannot be combated and the power of the bourgeoisie cannot be liquidated.

Conscious of the great loss which the birth and spread of modern revisionism, especially Khrushchevite modern revisionism, brought the ,cause of the revolution and communism, the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries knew how and were able to resist this great counterrevolutionary tide and to organize themselves and fight resolutely against it.

With a lofty sense of responsibility to the proletariat of their own countries and the world, they placed themselves in the forefront of the stern, principled struggle for the exposure of the revisionists' betrayal and set to work to create new Marxist-Leninist organizations and parties.

The Marxist-Leninist movement was born and developed in this great process of differentiation from modern revisionism and the struggle for the cause of communism, and took upon itself to raise and carry forward the banner of the revolution and socialism, betrayed and rejected by the former communist parties. which the revisionist degeneration had transformed into firemen to quell the flames of the revolution and the peoples' liberation wars. The formation of new Marxist-Leninist parties was a victory of historic importance for the working class of each country, as well as for the cause of the revolution on a world scale.

The parties in which Browderite, Khrushchevite, Titoite, Eurocommunist, Maoist modern revisionism became established were liquidated as communist parties. Revisionism stripped them of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary spirit, transformed them from organized detachments of the working class to carry out the revolution into weapons for "extinguishing" the class struggle, for establishing class "peace", for sabotaging the revolution and destroying socialism.

Bearing in mind the struggle which the modern revisionists wage against the Leninist theory and practice on the party, the genuine communist revolutionaries fight for the defence, strengthening and development of proletarian parties built on the basis of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. They are conscious that without such a party, without an organized vanguard detachment of the working class, the revolution cannot be carried out, the national liberation struggle cannot be waged correctly through to the end and the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be deepened and go over to the proletarian revolution.

The Marxist-Leninist party does not emerge and is not created accidently or for no purpose. It emerges and is created as a resu t certain very important objective and subjective factors. The Marxist-Leninist party emerges from the ranks of the working class, represents its highest aspirations, its revolutionary aims and wages and carries forward the class struggle. Without the working class, without its revolutionary objectives, without the Marxist-Leninist theory, which is the theory of the working class, there can never be a Marxist-Leninist party.

A party of the working class becomes its truly organized detachment, its supreme staff when it is educated with and masters the MarxistLeninist theory and when it uses, this powerful and irreplaceable weapon competently, in a creative way, in the class struggle for the triumph of the revolution, for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism.

That party which assimilates this theory but does not apply it, or applies it incorrectly and continues to fail to correct the mistakes it is making, will not advance on the right road, but will deviate from Marxism-Leninism.

The genuine Marxist-Leninist party is characterized by the clear-cut and resolute stand which it maintains towards modern revisionism, towards Khrushchevism, Titoism, Mao Zedong thought, Eurocommunism, etc. The establishment of a clear line of demarcation over this question is of major principled importance.

If a party permits illusions to be created in its ranks, for example, that "irrespective of the Khrushchevite ideology, socialism is being built in the Soviet Union" that there are "bureaucrats" in the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but there are "revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists" as well, then willy-nilly such a party is no longer in a Marxist-Leninist position, but has deviated from the revolutionary strategy and tactics, and if not openly at least indirectly, has been transformed into a pro-Soviet party, irrespective of the fact that in words it might be against the theses of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Khrushchevism. Revolutionary experience has proved that you cannot fight against Khrushchevism if you do not also fight against the chauvinist and socialimperialist hegemonic policy which the leaders of the present-day capitalist and imperialist Soviet Union, Brezhnev, Suslov and company, follow.

The views of those who divide the reactionary line and the pro-imperialist policy of thecurrent Chinese leaders from Mao Zedong and. Mao Zedong thought are of the same nature and equally harmful. The counterrevolutionary stands of Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng cannot be opposed and unmasked if the ideological basis. of their actions, which is Mao Zedong thought, is not fought and unmasked.

The Party of Labour of Albania has reached this conclusion after making a profound analysis, of Mao Zedong thought and the line which the Communist Party of China has followed. Tot defend Mao Zedong and his ideas without going deeply into and seriously analysing the events. and facts means to fall into a revisionist deviation. As long as you do not clear up this position you cannot be in a genuine Marxist-Leninist position.

The Marxist-Leninist parties and the proletariat of each country never underestimate the, pressure of the bourgeoisie and its ideology, the, oppressive force of capitalism, imperialism, social-imperialism. and deceptive revisionist ideologies. This pressure and these negative influences, become harmful, very dangerous, if the party of the proletariat does not wage a resolute struggle, against them and does not have a strong organization and iron proletarian discipline, and if it is not characterized by a steel unity of thought and action, which excludes any spirit of factionalism and groups.

This is why, along with raising their ideological level and waging the struggle against revi-,sionism and the influences of the bourgeois ideology, the Marxist-Leninist parties devote the greatest care to their internal organizational strengthening on the basis of the Leninist norms and principles. The party is and becomes revolutionary wh en tested, active, dedicated, revolutionary elements militate in its ranks. They resolutely combat the sectarian intellectualist concepts which frequently, hiding behind the requirement to admit "trained elements", close the doors of the party to the workers and sound elements from the other strata of the working masses who, by militating in the ranks of the party, can gain all those qualities which must characterize the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat.

Sentimentality, liberalism, the tendency to .seek numbers in order to give the impression that the ranks of the party are increasing with new members, are harmful and have grave consequences. Such admissions without strictly applying the Marxist-Leninist norms not only do not hinder the influence and pressure of the bourgeoisie from attacking the party from outside but allow the party to be infiltrated by various elements which divide and liquidate it.

The Marxist-Leninist parties in the capitalist countries are working and fighting in difficult conditions and encounter many dangers which come from various directions. These dangers are not imaginary. They are real, are encountered every day, in every step and in every action. They cannot be withstood if the communists do not understand that the program of action and struggle of the party is founded on the need for sacrifice for the great ideals of the cause of the proletariat and communism, if these sacrifices are not consciously accepted and made unhesitatingly at any moment, in any situation or circumstances which the major interests of the proletariat and the people require.

In the capitalist countries, the existence of many parties causes great confusion in people's minds. These parties are parties for votes; they are in the service of local and world capital. This united capital rules with the aid of state power and money, with the organized force of the army, the police and other organs of violence. The parties, which are linked with capital, with the various multinational concerns and companies, play the game of "democracy" with the aim of diverting the masses from the main objective of their struggle - throwing off the yoke of capital and seizing state power, that is, carrying out the revolution.

It is not without purpose that the bourgeois parties apply certain organizational and political orientations and forms. For example, they allow anyone to enter or leave their ranks whenever he wants. All are "free" to talk and shout, to deliver discourses at meetings and rallies, but no one is allowed to act, to go beyond the bounds of the so-called freedom of speech. The transition from freedom of speech to concrete actions is classified and treated as an act of anarchists, criminals and terrorists.

The Marxist-Leninist party can never be such a party. It is not a party of words, but a party of revolutionary action. If its members are not engaged in concrete actions and struggle it will not be a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, but a Marxist-Leninist party only in name. At given moment& such a party will certainly be split into different factions, will have many lines which will coexist, and it will be turned into a liberal, opportunist and revisionist party. Such a party is neither suited to or needed by the workingclass.

A revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party cannot reconcile itself either to reformism or to anarchism and terrorism. It is against all these counterrevolutionary trends in whatever form they present themselves. The party must always bear in mind that it is impossible for the bourgeoisie not to attack it, that it is impossible that it will not call its actions the actions of anarchists and terrorists. However, this does not make the party tail behind events and the movement of the masses, give up actions and enter the vicious circle of revisionist and reformist parties.

It is the complex actions of the political, ideological and economic struggl e of the Marxist-Leninist parties at the head of the working class against the bourgeoisie, social-democracy, revisionism and the bourgeois state, which allow the masses to determine whether or not these activities are truly revolutionary in character. The masses know how to distinguish genuine revolutionary actions which are in their interests from terrorism and anarchism. Therefore they join in the revolutionary actions which the Marxist-Leninist parties lead and rise against the power of the bourgeoisie regardless of the blows and the harsh oppression of the capitalist bourgeoisie, which goes as far as undertaking bloody actions against the working class and genuine communists.

The Marxist-Leninist communist party is not afraid of civil war, which the savage oppression and violence of the bourgeoisie lead to. It is known that civil war is not waged between the working class and honest working people, but is waged by the working masses against the ruling capitalist bourgeoisie and its organs of oppression. The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat must lead to the violent seizure of power. It is precisely this development of which the capitalists, the bourgeois and the revisionists are afraid. That is why social-democracy and the modern revisionists strive to prevent the working class from gaining revolutionary consciousness, from understanding the significance of economic, political and ideological problems, and reaching that revolutionary maturity and sound organization which help in the creation of the subjective conditions for the struggle for the seizure of power.

The strategy and tactics of the bourgeoisie, which the Eurocommunists have made their own, aim to split the working class so that they will not be faced with a unified striking force. The Marxist-Leninist parties, however, fight for the opposite, for the unity of the working class.

The bourgeoisie fears the revolutionary organization and unity of the proletariat, which, contrary to the preachings of the Eurocommunists and other revisionists, remain the main revolutionary motive force of our time. Therefore, it tries, to maintain continuous control over tradeunion organizations, over trade-union centres, which can be numerous in the capitalist parties, with names and programs which appear different, but which have no essential differences between them. Through the bourgeois and revisionist parties and its own state structures, the bourgeoisie has encouraged as never before the diversionist role of the trade-unions which are openly manipulated by them.

As the facts show, trade-unions of this kind in many countries have become completely integrated into and become appendages of the economic and state organization of capitalism. The ever more open collaboration of the trade-union centres with the owning class, with finance capital and the bourgeois governments is a notorious fact. As it is now, the trade-union movement does not challenge capitalism, but works for it, tries to subjugate the proletariat and to restrict and undermine its struggle against capitalism. Some of them are more like big capitalist concerns than trade-union organizations.

It is a fact that, as a result of this undermining activity carried out but the revisionists and social-democracy, by the bourgeois-reformist trade-union centres, the European proletariat remains split, and an important section of the workers is manipulated by these centres. The control of revisionists and social-democrats over the trade-union movement is a major obstacle to the development of the class struggle and the formation and tempering of the revolutionary consciousness of the working people. Therefore, the only road for the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries, a road which is imposed on them, is to expose the activity of revisionists, to disintegrate their positions in the trade-union movement and to create revolutionary trade-unions. Obviously, these new trade-unions cannot but have the objective of achieving the unity of the working class, against the power of capital, against its demagogy and that of the bourgeois and revisionist parties.

To fight against the so-called traditional trade-unions does not mean that you are opposed in principle to the existence of unions as organizations of the masses with a broad character, as centres of the organization and resistance of the working class, historically inevitable and essential in the conditions of capitalism for uniting the working class and throwing it into the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

While putting forward the task of creating revolutionary unions, the Marxist-Leninists in no way abandoned their work in the existing unions in which there are large masses of workers, because otherwise they would have left the tradeunion bosses a free hand to manipulate the working class and to use it in their own interests and the interests of capital. Participation of communists in the existing unions is not determined by contingency and is not a "tactic" as the Trotskyites try to present it, but a stand of principle which stems from the Leninist teachings on the need for unity of the working class, which cannot be achieved without working among the masses and without freeing them from the influences of the bourgeoisie and various opportunists.

Of course, the struggle of the Marxist-Leninist party within the reformist and revisionist trade-union centres does not have the aim of correcting or educating the trade-union bosses, or improving and reforming them. Such a stand would be a new reformism. The Marxist-Leninist work with the masses of trade-unionists in order to educate and prepare them for anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-revisionist revolutionary actions. The unity and cohesion of the proletariat is brought about in the process of work and struggle.

However, as Marxism-Leninism teaches us, the unity of the working class is achieved, first of all, in the field of practice, through political actions and economic claims properly harmonized with one another, giving priority to political actions. Taking a firm revolutionary class stand, the Marxist-Leninists fight to link economic claims with political claims, and in this terrain denounce and expose the treacherous activity of the trade-union bosses who, through various trade-union manoeuvres, sacrifice the major fundamental interests of the proletariat.

At present, there are millions who come out on strikes, in demonstrations for economic claims, which also have a political character, because they are fighting capitalism which refuses to recognize the rights of workers. However, all these end up in an agreement between trade-union bosses and capitalists, who make the strikers some minor concession, just to give them a certain satisfaction. However, if these claims are given a real political character, the tools of capital in the trade-unions and capital itself are placed in great difficulties.

The worker aristocracy and the capitalist bourgeoisie are very much afraid of the linking of the economic struggle with the political struggle. They fear the political struggle, because it leads the working class a long way, and even leads it to clashes and battles. Political actions, properly carried out, weaken the leadership of the capitalist bourgeoisie in the trade-unions, break the rules, the laws, and everything else it has established in order to enslave the working class, and opens the eyes of the class.

The working class is the leading class, and as such, it must break its links with the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois psychology. In order to do this, it is necessary to fight both against liberalopportunist views, which lead to rightist tradeunionist deviations, and against sectarian views which isolate the genuine Marxist party from vigorous concrete work with the masses. Both these types of views have extremely harmful consequences for the cause of the revolution. Just as the reduction of the trade-union movement merely to struggle for economic demands must be combated, hesitation to fight for economic demands, for fear of going over to opportunism and the simple trade-union struggle, must also be avoided.

While fighting for the unity of the working class, the Marxist-Leninist parties see this as the basis for the unity of all the masses of the people, which is quite the opposite to those unprincipled, counterrevolutionary combinations and alliances which the Eurocommunists advocate.

The deepening of the crisis, which the capitalist-revisionist world is experiencing, is extending the social and class basis of the revolution. Apart from the working class, other strata of society exploited by capitalism, such as the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and the students, the youth and the masses of women, are taking part ever more actively in the revolutionary movement. Therefore, the question of linking up with these masses and leading them becomes a task of first-rate importance for the Marxist-Leninist parties.

Direct work by the Marxist-Leninist party and its members in the ranks of the masses is indispensable and of great value, but it is insufficient to extend the influence of the party among the broad working masses, if the levers of the party, the organizations of the masses, such as those of the youth, women, etc., are not organized and set into action. The Marxist-Leninist party works wherever the masses are, even in the organizations which are run and manipulated by the bourgeois and revisionist parties, in order to separate them from the influence of the reactionary and opportunist ideology of these parties, just a,, it works also to create the revolutionary organizations of the masses which militate on the line of the party and act with conscious conviction under its leadership.

In the countries where capital rules, the youth, the women and other working masses are a major reserve of the revolution. Today there are millions of youth and women unemployed, abandoned and left without hope by the bourgeoisie, therefore they are seething with revolt and the elements of revolutionary outbursts are accumulating. Regarding the movements of the youth, students, intelligentsia and progressive women as important component parts of the broad democratic and liberation revolutionary movements in general, the Marxist-Leninists try to unite the drive and revolutionary aspirations of these broad masses with the drive and aspirations of the working class, in order to organize, educate and lead them on the right road. When the inexhaustible energies of the youth, the women and the other masses are united with the energies of the working class under the leadership of the proletarian party, there is no force which can stop the triumph of revolution and socialism.

The hegemony of the proletariat will not be complete and effective if it is not extended over all the strata of the population interested in the revolution, especially over the peasantry which in the overwhelming majority of countries, represents the main and most powerful ally of the working class. At the same time, the alliance of the working class with the peasantry is the basis for uniting in a broad front all the working masses, all those who in one way or another are fighting against capitalism and imperialism, against oppression and exploitation by monopolies and multinational companies.

At the present time, many rallies and demonstrations are being held in the streets of cities and villages of the capitalist countries. Naturally, these are organized by the bourgeois, social-democratic and revisionist parties, which have certain aims when they bring the masses out in the streets. Above all, they want to keep the revolted masses of working people under their control and to confine their demands within the economic framework permitted by the bourgeoisie. The task of the communists is not to stand apart from these demonstrations because the bourgeois and revisionist parties organize them, but to take part in these mass movements and turn them into political demonstrations and clashes with the bourgeoisie and its lackeys.

Inactivity, apathy and fruitless discussions are lethal to a Marxist-Leninist party. If a Marxist-Leninist party is not continually active, in movement with agitation and propaganda, if it does not take part in the different manifestations of the working class and the other working masses, irrespective that they may be under the influence of reformist parties, it will not be possible to alter the direction which the reformist parties give the movement of the masses.

The correct line of the Marxist-Leninist party, cannot be carried among the masses by means of its press alone, which is usually very restricted. The communists, sympathizers, and members of the mass organizations carry the line of the party among the masses precisely during the activities and actions of the working class and the other working masses when they are in movement, in struggle and battle for their economic rights, and even more for their political rights.

Such vigorous revolutionary action ensures two important objectives: on the one hand, it tempers the party itself in action together with the masses and raises its authority and influence, and on the other hand, it creates possibilities for the party to see the most politically and ideologically sound and advanced elements of the working class in action, those who will be the best and the most resolute militants of the party in the future. From these elements, the MarxistLeninist parties secure the new blood for their ranks, and not from a few discontented intellectual elements, or some unemployed workers who demand justice, who are revolted, but are not so stable and do not accept the iron discipline of a Marxist-Leninist proletarian party.

The leaders of revisionist parties think that the whole work of the party consists of endless discussions, fruitless theorizing and empty contests over one question or another. Nothing comes out of such sterile work. The revisionist parties work on the masses through their press which, it must be admitted, is extensive. These parties themselves are big capitalist trusts, and they have paid workers especially to turn out their propaganda. They have become very skilful at preaching to the working masses what they should and what they should not do. With their demagogy they obscure the final aim of the working masses, which is the overthrow of the capitalist system, and make them believe that what is achieved with a normal strike is everything. This big lie is in favour of the capitalist bourgeoisie. That is why the bourgeoisie is not worried by the words, the articles and the discourses of the salaried revisionist propagandists, or by the strikes which are held under the leadership of their parties.

The Marxist-Leninist parties never descend to these forms of the stale propaganda of the revisionist parties. They know that the uprising and the revolution do not come about automatically. They must be prepared. The best preparation is through actions. But together with action, the theory which guides these actions is necessary. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin teach us that without revolutionary action there is no revolutionary theory and without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary action.

The work of the Marxist-Leninist party among the masses, uniting them around concrete political objectives, is an important task, because the revolution is not carried out by the working class alone, and even less so by its vanguard, the communist party alone. To carry out the revolution, the working class enters into alliance with other social forces, with progressive parties and factions of them, with progressive individuals, with whom it has interests in common on various problems and at different periods. Broad popular fronts with definite political programs are created with these forces. The party of the working class is not dissolved in these fronts, but always retains its organizational and political independence.

The question of alliances is a very acute and delicate problem. The Marxist-Leninist party must follow, study and define the tendencies, demands and contradictions which exist within the movement of the masses, in other words, the dialectics of the class struggle. On this basis the communists choose the right road to achieve various alliances. The maturity of the Marxist-Leninist party is expressed in its sound analysis and assessment of the situation which exists in the ranks of the masses and amongst different political groupings for the creation of necessary alliances. Only with a correct policy and an accurate foresight of how events will develop will the party of the working class be able to maintain its individuality in these alliances and increase its influence among the masses which it wants to rally and throw into revolution.

The creation of different alliances and, on this basis, the creation of broad popular fronts becomes an imperative duty, especially in the conditions when in many countries the danger of fascism is great and immediate, and the pressure and interference of the superpowers against all countries have increased. The fact that the national issue is assuming a special and steadily increasing importance in the revolutionary process today favours the achievement of this unity and these alliances.

This is linked with the intensification of the expansionist, hegemonic and aggressive policy of the imperialist powers. But the occupation of a country is not always done through military aggression. This enslavement, colonization, oppression and exploitation is also carried out in other "new", "modern", economic, cultural, political forms, which disguise savage imperialist domination.

That is why, when we say that the revolution is on the order of the day, this is also linked with the national issue, that is, with the occupation of one or some countries by the big capitalist and imperialist powers, either through direct military occupation or through indirect means and ways. In this sense, countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc., although they are not occupied by the armed force of foreign armies, still suffer from foreign domination and interference.

The Eurocommunists can prattle as much as they like that their countries are free and sovereign, but in fact the Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and other peoples are oppressed and exploited. A bourgeois democracy exists in each of their countries, but the state there is bound hand and foot to foreign capital. The people, the working class do not enjoy genuine democracy and sovereignty, they are not free because everything is controlled by foreign capital.

During the Second World War, at the time when many countries were occupied by the German nazi or the Italian fascist armies, the quislings and collaborators united with the occupiers. Today, too, other quislings and collaborators, with different disguises and slogans, are in power and are bound to the new modern occupiers, the neocolonialists and their capital, with a thousand threads.

Very important for the preparation and carrying out of the revolution is the revolutionary work in the ranks of the bourgeois armies, which Lenin called

"...the chief instruments of state power".

[V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 459 (Alb. Ed.)]

Lenin has provided the answer to many theoretical and practical problems linked with the necessity of revolutionary work in the ranks of the bourgeois armies and has defined the ways to attack, demoralize and disintegrate them. This question assumes special importance in the present conditions when the revolutionary situations in many countries are maturing rapidly. In general, the bourgeois army is the bourgeoisie armed to the teeth which confronts the proletariat and the popular masses.

The large armies of the capitalist countries create the impression that in such circumstances the revolution and the smashing of the state of oppression and exploitation become impossible. These views are spread and propagated especially by the Eurocommunists who do not attack the bourgeois army even with feathers. In regard to the number of troops in the army, this does not make any great difference to the revolution, while it creates worrying problems for the bourgeoisie. The extension of the army with many elements from various strata of the population creates more favourable conditions for demoralizing the army and turning it against the bourgeoisie.

In this way the revolution encounters two major problems. On the one hand, it must win over the working class and the working masses, without whom it is impossible to go into the revolution and, on the other hand, it must demoralize and disintegrate the bourgeois army which suppresses the revolution. In the trade-unions, the bourgeoisie uses the worker aristocracy for its own ends, while in the army it uses the caste of officers who carry out the same functions there as the trade-union bosses in the trade-unions.

The principles, laws and organizational structures in the bourgeois armies are such that they allow the bourgeoisie to exert control over the army, to maintain and train it as a means to suppress the revolution and the peoples. This shows the markedly reactionary class character of the bourgeois army and exposes the efforts to present it as "above classes", "national", "outside politics" "respecting democracy", etc. Regardless of the , "democratic traditions", the bourgeois army in any country is anti-popular and destined to defend the rule of the bourgeoisie and to carry out its expansionist aims.

However, the bourgeois army does not constitute a compact mass; there is not and cannot be unity in it. The antagonistic contradictions between the bourgeoisie, either capitalist or revisionist, on the one hand, and the proletariat and the masses, on the other, are reflected in the armies of these countries, too. The masses of soldiers, made up of the sons of workers and peasants, have interests diametrically opposed to the character of the army and the mission the bourgeoisie charges it with. Like the workers and other working people, the masses of soldiers are interested in the overthrow of the exploiting order, and that is why the bourgeoisie shuts it up in barracks and isolates it from the people, turning the army, as Lenin pointed out, into a "prison" for millions of soldiers.

This is the basis of the conflict which grows constantly deeper between the soldiers, who are the sons of the people, and the commanding body, the officers, who are the executive hand of the capitalist bourgeoisie, trained and educated to serve the interests of capital zealously. The work of the Marxist-Leninist party aims to make the soldier revolt against the officer, so that he does not carry out the orders, does not observe the discipline and the laws of the bourgeoisie, and sabotages the weapons in order to prevent them from being used against the people. Lenin said,

"Not a single great revolution has ever taken place, or ever can take place, without the 'disorganization' of the army. For the army is the most ossified instrument for supporting the old regime, the most hardened bulwark of bourgeois discipline, buttressing up the rule of capital, and preserving and fostering among the working people the servile spirit of submission and subjection to capital."

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 321 (Alb. Ed.)

Of course, the methods, forms and tactics to bring about the disorganization and disintegration of the army are many and varied, depending on the concrete conditions. The conditions are not identical in every country today and, therefore, the tactics of the Marxist-Leninists differ from one country to another. There are countries where fascist dictatorships and terror have been established openly, and there are others where those few legal forms of bourgeois democracy can and must be utilized. In general, however, personal work with individual soldiers, both inside and outside the barracks, the stern struggle of the workers, the continual strikes, demonstrations, rallies, protests, etc., play an important role, both for the mobilization of the masses and for the disorganization of the bourgeois army.

"...all these, so to say, test battles and clashes," pointed out Lenin, "are inexorably drawing the army into political life and consequently into the sphere of revolutionary problems. Experience in the struggle enlightens more rapidly and more profoundly than years of propaganda under other circumstances."

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 402-403 (Alb. Ed.)

Work must be done with the soldier, the son of the people, before he joins the army, and later, when he is carrying out his military service, which is the most decisive phase, and finally, when he completes his service and becomes a reservist. Work with the lower ranking officers, in order to separate them from the caste of senior officers and to convince them not to raise their hand against the people, must not be excluded, either.

Of course, political work in the army is as dangerous as it is important. Whereas the worst that can happen to you for political activity and propaganda in the ranks of the trade-unions is to be dismissed from your job, in the army where political work and propaganda are sternly prohibited, the punishment could be to f ace the firing squad. However, revolutionary communists have never lacked the spirit of sacrifice, or the conviction that without working in this sector the way to the revolution cannot be opened.

At the same time, the disorganization of the bourgeois army is a component part of the strategy aimed to ruin the war-mongering plans of the capitalist bourgeoisie, to sabotage its predatory wars and transform them into revolutionary wars. This is how the bolsheviks acted with the czarist army in the time of Lenin. The overthrow of Kerensky and his government which wanted to continue the imperialist war, Lenin's policy on peace, on the agrarian question and the distribution of the land among the poor peasants, etc., brought the soldiers over to the side of the revolution, while the officer caste remained with the White Guards, on the side of the counter-revolution. The Leninist strategy and tactics of struggle against the bourgeois army make it easier to encourage and mobilize the working class and the peoples for the revolution, for the anti-imperialist and the national liberation wars.

The world revolutionary movement has rich experience of work in the ranks of the bourgeois armies. In the czarist army in Russia in 1905, revolutionary committees of soldiers were created under the leadership of the Russian Social-democratic Party, of which Lenin was the leader.

In the February Revolution of 1917, and especially in the October Revolution, party cells and soviets of soldiers and sailors were formed in the detachments and units of the czarist armed forces, and these played the decisive role in taking the bulk of the bourgeois army over to the side of the revolution.

During the Anti-fascist National Liberation War in Albania, the Communist Party of Albania worked in deep illegality within the ranks of the army, and even in the gendarmerie, police, etc., in order to paralyse those weapons and to bring about disorder in and desertions from their ranks. This compelled the enemy to distrust, and in some cases, to intern whole detachments of the old Albanian army which was in the service of the occupier. At the same time, many militarymen from the old army went over to our National Liberation Army.

Let us take another more recent example, that of the army of the Shah of Iran and his caste of officers, which notwithstanding that it was armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons, was incapable of operating effectively and suppressing the anti-imperialist and anti-monarchist uprising of the Iranian people.

The Pahlavi regime was one of the most barbarous, blood-thirsty and corrupt regimes of exploiters of the modern world. The savage Pahlavi dictatorship was based on the feudal lords and the very wealthy stratum which the regime created, on the reactionary army and its officer caste, and on SAVAK which, as the Shah himself described it, was a "state within the state". The Pahlavis who ruled through terror were partners with and sold out to the American and British imperialists, the most heavily armed gendarmes of the Persian Gulf under the orders of the American CIA.

Nevertheless, the great terror, the army, SAVAK and all the rest were unable to quell the revolt of the Iranian people, which in different forms and intensities continued until it was raised to quality and overcame the stage of fearing violence. In this process the army and SAVAK, the shields of the blood-thirsty regime of the Shah, disintegrated, part of the army went over to the side of the people who seized the weapons and are holding on to them. This is an experience which proves that the army and the police, however numerous and well armed, cannot stop the revolution when the people rise in a united bloc, when careful work is done for the demoralization and disintegration of the bourgeois army and police.

It has now become fashionable in the capitalist countries for all sorts of people to speak about the "revolution" and to carry out allegedly revolutionary activities. The so-called "leftists" scream for "revolutionary measures" but then immediately set a limit to them. They "explain" that revolutionary measures should not be undertaken everywhere and in every field, but only some "alterations" should be made. Hence, an illusion should be created to deceive the masses that are seeking radical revolutionary changes.

Like the bourgeoisie, the "leftists" see the army as an "impregnable fortress" and never even raise the task of disintegrating, demoralizing and destroying it. The Marxist-Leninist parties, however, without neglecting the other directions of the struggle, regard the struggle for the unity of the working class and the disintegration of the bourgeois army as two directions of decisive importance for the triumph of the revolution.

"Of course," said Lenin "unless the revolution assumes a mass character and affects the troops, there can be no question of serious struggle."

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 183 (Alb. Ed.)

The purpose of the work of the Marxist-Leninists in the ranks of the bourgeois and revisionist armies is to draw the militarymen into conscious revolutionary activity, and not simply to organize coups d'état. Marxist-Leninists have never regarded the overthrow of the capitalist order as a question of putsches and military plots, but as a result of the conscious activity and active participation of the masses in the revolution.

Coups d'état, plots organized by the officer caste have become fashionable in many countries of the world. By these means the monopoly groups bring down one government and replace it with another in their service. By means of military coups, the American imperialists and Soviet socialimperialists have placed reactionary cliques in their service at the head of the state in many countries of the world. In these cases, the mass of soldiers has frequently blindly served the interests of the local ruling classes and imperialist superpowers.

In such instances, the genuine revolutionaries make things clear to the masses of soldiers, so that they will not be deceived by the reactionary propaganda which presents the military coups as actions "in the interests of the nation", "in the interests of the people and defence of the nation", etc. They make clear also that anarchism, terrorism and gangsterism, which are assuming extensive proportions in the capitalist and revisionist countries, have nothing in common with the revolution, either. Daily facts prove that the groups of anarchists, terrorists, and gangsters are used by reaction as an excuse and a weapon for the preparation and the establishment of the fascist dictatorship, to intimidate the petty bourgeoisie and to make it a tool and a hotbed of fascism, to put pressure on the working class and keep it bound with the chains of capitalism under the threat that it will lose those few crumbs which the bourgeoisie "has given it".

All these currents and groups are disguised behind alluring names, such as "proletarian", "communists", "red brigades" and other labels which sow total confusion. The activities of these groups have no links with Marxism-Leninism, with communism.

In its propaganda, the bourgeoisie accuses the communists, those who are genuinely for revolution and socialism, for the overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie, of being terrorists, anarchists and gangsters, and tries to build up opinion against the genuine revolutionary organizations of the proletariat and its vanguard. This is one of the main purposes for which it incites terrorism and gangsterism, which in such countries as Italy is assuming major proportions.

The Marxist-Leninists always take account of these manoeuvres and tricks of the bourgeoisie and struggle to expose and defeat them. They reject the attacks, accusations and slanders of the bourgeoisie and its lackeys who call the illegal activity of the Marxist-Leninist parties terrorism and gangsterism.

Whether the Marxist-Leninist party is illegal, either partly or completely, depends on the concrete conditions of a particular country. Irrespective of these conditions, however, the organization of illegal work is the greatest guarantee that the victory will be secured. Without this organization the great striking force of the bourgeois dictatorship wreaks havoc and gravely damages the proletariat and its vanguard at the moments the dictatorship finds it suitable to do so.

A party of the working class,, which does not foresee moments of fierce attacks and clashes with the forces of the capitalist bourgeoisie, is not a genuine revolutionary party. For such a party, the theoretical principle that power cannot be seized from the bourgeoisie except by violence, by fighting and making sacrifices, remains an empty phrase, a mere slogan. Moments of fierce struggle are inevitable and in these moments of fierce struggle legal propaganda bases alone are not sufficient. At these moments , the communist party must have its fighting bases, must have created its striking forces, must have its rear secure and equip them with the necessary political, ideological and material means. The coming action will require sacrifices, there will be people who are hurt, who are killed or imprisoned. Therefore, work must be done to build up around the party a great mass of dedicated people, resolute revolutionaries who listen to the party and will hurl themselves into revolutionary action together with it.

Meanwhile, the Marxist-Leninist parties know they must also take advantage of bourgeois "democracy" and the possibilities which legal work and struggle provide for the preparation of the revolution. Even when they operate legally, they make efforts to ensure that their activities serve to fulfil the requirements and tasks of the revolution, the ideo-political, organizational and military preparation of the party and the masses for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, regardless of what the bourgeois laws permit or do not permit.

On all occasions and under all conditions, the genuine revolutionary parties know that they must combine the organization and development of illegal and legal struggle correctly, using only those forms of work and revolutionary tactics which do not obscure their strategy with illusions about bourgeois legality and democracy.

"In all countries, even in those that are freest, most 'legal', and most 'peaceful' in the sense that the class struggle is least acute there," said Lenin, "it is now absolutely indispensable for every Communist Party to systematically combine legal and illegal work, legal and illegal organizations."

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 211 (Alb. Ed.)

At first sight, it seems that the working class in Western Europe is bound tight in the chains which social-democracy and the revisionists called Eurocommunists have rivetted on to it, and that the workers' movement is strongly under the influence of bourgeois and revisionist ideology. However, this appearance does not reflect the reality. Moreover, it does not indicate the tendencies of social development, the processes which are seething in the ranks of the working masses, the historical necessity and imperative demands of the time.

The bourgeoisie, the revisionists and all the other opportunists are trying to restrain the revolution and to extinguish the communist ideal. At given stages and in special historical conditions, they even manage to bemuse and confuse the proletariat and working masses, and to obscure the prospects of the socialist future to some degree. But this is a temporary and passing phenomenon. The revolution and socialism as a theory and practical activity cannot be imposed on the masses from outside by isolated individuals or groups of people. The revolution and socialism represent the only key which the proletariat and the masses need to solve the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalist society, to put an end to their exploitation and oppression and establish genuine freedom and equality. As long as there is oppression and exploitation, as long as capitalism exists, the thinking and struggle of the masses will always be directed towards the revolution and socialism.

The Eurocommunists have rejected the banner of Marxism-Leninism, the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They preach class peace and sing hymns to bourgeois democracy. However, the ills of bourgeois society are not cured and its contradictions are not resolved with sermons and hymns. History has already proved this and its lessons cannot be set aside. The proletariat, the oppressed and the exploited are moving naturally towards the revolution, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. Just as naturally they are seeking the road which leads to the fulfilment of these historical aspirations, the road which the immortal theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin shows them. It is the duty of the new Marxist-Leninist communist parties to take over the leadership of class battles which the Eurocommunists have abandoned, to provide the proletariat and the masses with that militant fighting vanguard which they are seeking and accept as their leadership.

The situation is not easy, but let us recall the optimistic words of Stalin, that "there is no fortress which the communists cannot take". This revolutionary optimism stems from the objective laws of the development of society. Capitalism is an order condemned by history to liquidation. Nothing, neither the frenzied resistance of the bourgeoisie nor the treachery of modern revisionists can save it from its inevitable doom. The future belongs to socialism and communism.