Reflections on the Role of the Communist Party in the Contemporary World
An abridged article by the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE) for #14 RCI
A Necessary Premise
The Communist Party (CP), with its distinctive characteristics, was forged and established its roots during the revolutionary period in Russia. That party, which has received and continues to receive different names—Bolshevik, Party of a New Type, Revolutionary Party of the Working Class, etc.—and which today is fundamentally known as the Communist Party, has had national expressions that, over more than a century of experiences adapted to those realities, as well as to the debates and disagreements within the International Communist Movement (ICM), have produced more or less significant mutations. These have affected the conception of the party itself insofar as changes have emerged in its ultimate objective.
The temporary victory of the counterrevolution in the USSR and the countries of popular democracy in Europe accelerated even further processes of mutation that had already begun decades earlier.
When, in the following pages, we reflect on the role and tasks of the CP within the framework of the present reality, we do so under the fundamental premise of not losing sight of the principal and ultimate objective. We are referring to a party that must ensure the political, ideological, and organizational independence of the working class and orient and lead it, both before and after the revolutionary victory, toward fulfilling its historic mission.
In other words, when we speak of the CP, we are speaking of a Leninist party, understanding Leninism, according to the classical definition, as Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution: the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution in general and of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.
The World in Which We Have Been Called to Struggle
The development of the productive forces has reached a level never before imaginable. The contradiction between the social character of labor and the appropriation of the products of labor by capital is sharper than ever before in history. The contradiction between labor and capital is intensifying, leaving hardly any spaces outside the direct exploitation of monopolies and finance capital, making the economic struggles of the working class increasingly ineffective.
Imperialism, which is nothing other than the stage of capitalism in which monopolies and finance capital dominate, and in which the export of capital acquires particular importance, generates competition among powers for markets, resources, and spheres of influence on a planet that has already been completely divided among the most important powers.
This dynamic of struggle for new divisions is a permanent source of conflict, which, in its current phase, produces wars in different parts of the planet, behind which the competing powers stand. Everything suggests that, in a later phase of greater intensification of these contradictions, a generalized war could emerge with the direct and open participation of these powers.
The examples of the First World War (WWI) and Second World War (WWII), as well as the conflicts that preceded them, are highly illuminating in this regard.
It is important here to bear in mind that the rise of the USSR as a major power after WWII and the creation of the socialist camp made it possible to exert significant influence, achieving important advances in the anti-imperialist struggle of peoples and in the processes of decolonization, although this could not mean a change in the essence of imperialism.
The Cold War was a struggle between the capitalist-imperialist system and the socialist system, but the rivalry among the powers of that period did not cease to exist, although it was clearly dominated by the United States and eclipsed by the Cold War. The rapid recovery of Japan and its technological specialization, as well as the process of creating the European Union in its various stages, are evidence of this.
Today, in the absence of the socialist bloc, inter-imperialist rivalry has moved to the forefront, once again bringing us to the brink of a generalized war in a scenario that includes among its principal actors the United States, China, Russia, the European Union, and other “regional” capitalist powers with their own positions within the imperialist system, such as India, Turkey, and others, competing for control of trade routes, energy resources, and technological domination.
For this reason, saying that we live in the era of imperialism, beyond being an observation, necessarily defines the character of our era and the role that the CP must play.
Imperialism raises the contradictions of capitalism to their ultimate limit, and beyond it there is only one alternative to barbarism and the more-than-possible end of humanity: the Socialist Revolution.
Any conception that moves the Party away from its duty to prepare the subjective conditions for revolution is an irresponsibility, if not a betrayal, toward humanity in general and toward our class in particular.
Helping place the working class under the foreign banners of the bourgeoisie of one or another imperialist bloc, when the conditions for revolution are becoming clearer than ever, means abandoning communist principles, learning nothing from history, crossing over to the dark side—to the side of the enemy—or simply capitulating in the face of the titanic task of revolutionary preparation.
Imperialism Generates War
For decades, the principal and most influential communist parties in the most developed capitalist countries developed their policies within a general framework of peace and bourgeois parliamentary democracy, while simultaneously operating within a so-called welfare system that undoubtedly influenced their conceptions of the role of the party.
During periods of economic expansion, when trade-union struggle was capable of winning gains and the parliamentary political action of social democracy appeared superficially to be a promising path—while at the same time maintaining capitalist exploitation and fostering illusions about dignified living conditions for the working class in those countries—many parties adopted an ideological shift whose principal expression was Eurocommunism.
They ignored the fact that workers in other countries were paying the bill, although at times they disguised this neglect through campaigns supporting struggles where capitalist exploitation was more blatant.
Nor did they understand, absorbed by their fetishism for bourgeois democracy, that capitalism is a living entity and that the laws governing its development would ultimately place us before the inevitable intensification of its contradictions, in which no gain won by the working class is permanent when confronted with the needs of capital.
Today, in a world where monopolies and financial oligarchies are omnipotent, neither parliamentary struggle nor trade-union struggle by itself can even halt social regression.
Along the way, these parties have been left behind, disappearing or becoming incapable of revolutionary struggle, because they violated the principle that the role of the CP in every historical period is to orient and lead the working class in the struggle for socialism, rather than toward the creation of islands of prosperity for one section of the class—above all, the labor aristocracy—which are submerged beneath the waters at the first wave of capitalist crisis.
The capitalist crisis once again brings war in its wake, making the times in which we live increasingly grim.
The Party has the responsibility to prepare itself for that immediate future, which is already knocking at the door, and it must do so through a rigorous analysis of events within the capitalist system and of what role its country will play in that future scenario, acting upon its reality and establishing its revolutionary objectives.
Each Party must conduct an in-depth study of its country's economy and its sharpest contradictions, its relations of production and which relation is dominant, its form of government, the balance of forces, its own history of working-class struggle, and also the revolutionary experiences that have taken place throughout the world.
Article republished from Number 22 of ORIENTACIÓN, organ of the Central Committee of the Argentine Communist Party (PCA).