People's Democracy : It's Irrelevancy Today (history and Theory)

People's Democracy : It's Irrelevancy Today (history and Theory)

1. The rise and development of People's democracy should be examined in concrete historical conditions.

2. In the 1930s with the rise of fascism the world revolutionary movement received a setback and the worked proletariat had to take recourse to a defensive line of struggle. Fascism came as a great threat to mankind. It became the main obstacle in the path of historical development and unless it was destroyed mankind could not move forward. The struggle against fascism and the struggle in defence and restoration of bourgeois democracy determined the direction of the main blow and the alignment of class forces both in the international and national arena. Even those countries where the socialist revolution had been on the agenda, tasks of bourgeois democratic nature came to the fore. These were anti-imperialist, anti-fascist tasks and the tasks of national liberation and hence democratic.

3. The domination and the danger of domination of fascism meant regression in all fields of public life, whether political, social or national.

Politically, fascism liquidated even those pitiful democratic rights and liberties which helped the proletariat to open the gates of class-struggle. Socially, the domination of fascism meant the restoration of feudal serfdom and even slave from of exploitation.

Nationally, fascist domination meant regression on the national question on account of direct occupation of the nations by fascist forces.

Fascism meant that history had moved a step backward and the working class and the people were faced with completely new specific tasks to restore democratic order, democratic rights and liberties ON A NEW BASIS.

"The Hitler Party", said Stalin, "is a party of enemies of democratic liberties, a party of medieval reaction and Black-Hundred pogroms." Stalin further said: 'The German invaders have enslaved the peoples of the European Continent - from France to the Soviet Baltic countries, from Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Soviet Byelo-Russia to the Balkans and the Soviet Ukraine. They have robbed them of their elementary democratic liberties. They have deprived them of the right to order their own destiny, they have taken away their grain, meat and raw materials; they have converted them into slaves," (On the Great Patriotic war of the Soviet Union)

4. At the highest point of the anti-fascist democratic movement in Spain, in February, 1936, a Popular Front Government came to power, consisting of all democratic and Communist Parties, which began an anti-fascist democratic revolution, both from below and above. It at once became an international class-struggle between democracy and fascism, in which the middle strata, especially, the middle bourgeoisie, in alliance with the proletariat, became the active partner of the anti-fascist democratic revolution. The existence of the Socialist Soviet Union and her help to the Spanish democratic revolution on the one hand, and the existence of fascist dictatorship in a number of bourgeois states and their help to the Spanish Fascists on the other, determined the alignment of class-forces in the world and thus the question of the class-character of the then Spanish state was posed by the Communist International in different way. The genuinely popular form of anti-fascist democratic revolution by the Spanish Popular Front government could not be reduced to a simple antithesis between bourgeois and proletarian single class democracy. The Government that emerged in Spain was neither a proletarian one not a bourgeois one. It was, rather, an intermediary between the two, which was characterised by the Communist International as "People's democracy" or "New democracy" under the new historical international condition, when the growing role of the Soviet Union and the world proletariat became an important factor in shaping the world scenario against Fascism. Thus People's democracy was born as an intermediate stage facilitating the passing over to the dictatorship of the proletariat more or less peacefully without any break, like that of the 'Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry', on a broader social base under the leadership of the working class.

5. During the anti-fascist patriotic war the Soviet Union, routing German and the Japanese aggressors, released throughout the world, the huge revolutionary potentialities of the entire democratic forces, that had been so long suppressed. The direct presence of the Soviet army could foil the evil designs of Anglo-American imperialism as well as the launching of civil war by the internal counter-revolutionary forces. As a result, People's democracy, as the political organisation of society could arise in alliance with all the anti-fascist democratic forces.

6. Hence, the rise of People's democracy as a direct connecting link between the anti-fascist struggle and the struggle for socialism was the result of the development of world history in a period, when the Soviet Union, the land of socialism, acquired the unbeaten position of exerting almost a decisive influence in shaping the international situation, when the relation and alignment of class forces in the national and international arena had definitely shifted in favour of socialism, when the general crisis of capitalism reached its zenith and brought capitalism on the very verge of collapse, when the middle strata was vacillating between fascism and anti-fascism and finally, when the working class, in many countries was almost in an exclusive position to lead the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist straggle.

"Had there been no Soviet Union", Mao Tse-Tung wrote, "had there been no victory in the anti-fascist Second World War, had Japanese imperialism not been defeated (which is particularly important for us), had there been no People's Democracies in Europe. then the pressure of the international reactionary forces would, of course, have been much stronger than it is today. Would we have been able to achieve victory in those circumstances? Of course not. So, too, it would have been impossible to consolidate victory after it had been achieved." (On the People's Democratic Dictatorship)

7. The establishment of People's democracy solved the question of power in the sense that the big bourgeoisie and landlords were overthrown. However, that was still not the complete solution of the question of power. In the initial period of People's democracy, the middle bourgeois and the rich peasants could not be politically isolated and defeated and the problem of winning over the majority of the population was not fully solved. The middle bourgeoisie and the rich peasants were allowed to participate in governing the country side by side with the working class and the peasantry. The bourgeoisie existed as an independent, politically organised force, with its own parties, press, representative in the government, in the legislative bodies and in the state apparatus.

8. Hence there were two stages of the People's democratic revolution - democratic and socialist. The task of the preliminary first stage was directed at eliminating the political and economic bases of the pro-fascist bourgeoisie and big landlords upon the basis of the political alliance of the working class, the peasantry as a whole and the anti-fascist middle bourgeoisie including all the middle strata. In this period, the People's democratic form of the state could not and did not exercise the function of the dictatorship of the proletariat as power was shared with a section of the bourgeoisie. As such,People's democracy was not and could not be synonymous with the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor the People's democratic bloc and its mass organisation could be the political organisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat IN ALL ITS PHASES as propagated by the revisionists and crypto-revisionists.

9. The People's democratic regime exercised the function of the dictatorship of the proletariat only in the second stage of the revolution. This second stage had to begin before the maturity, before the completion of the exposure, isolation of the middle bourgeoisie and the rich peasants and before the consolidation of the working class power, exactly like that of the introduction of war communism by Lenin. Despite the existence of the mighty Soviet Union, the middle bourgeoisie and the rich peasants dared to launch subversive activities in league with the defeated big bourgeoisie and big landlords, instigated and inspired by the Anglo-American conspiracy of cold and hot war against the Soviet Union. They sabotaged the implementation of political and economic reforms, planned one counter-revolutionary conspiracy after another, energetically organised espionage and wrecking. Not only had this bourgeoisie no desire to co-operate with the regime of People's democracy, but persistently sought to overthrow the People's power. Experience showed that the middle bourgeoisie strove to utilise the participation in the united bloc and government apparatus in order to hinder the progress of revolution and restore its own power. The People's democratic regime could exercise the function of the dictatorship of the proletariat after having exposed, isolated and expelled the parties of the middle bourgeoisie and the rich peasants from the government and united bloc and after having expropriated their capital and land. Only on this basis People's democracy, with the assistance of the Soviet Union - including military assistance - could initiate the programme for laying of the foundation of socialism by the policies of industrialisation and establishment, on a voluntary basis, of agricultural co-operatives.

Experience of the People's democracies clearly shows that the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by sharing power with a section of the bourgeoisie or vested interests and laying of foundation of socialism was quite impossible without the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Unless one understands this, the classical tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, he can understand neither Titoite brand of socialism nor Khruschovite brand of modern revisionism nor the CPI(M)'s hollow and abstract illusion - mongering talk of People's democracy with broader social base.

10. People's democracy did not triumph in certain countries, though the internal conditions of those countries were most favourable. The internal conditions of Greece, France, Italy and Belgium were ripe for the establishment of People's democracy, but the Anglo-American imperialists sought to land their troops in Albania and Bulgaria, to break through Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary and to reach there before the Soviet army. Had the British and American troops entered those countries before the Soviet army, they would have done their utmost to prevent the victory of People's democracy.

11. People's democracy triumphed as a result of the defeat of fascism by the common front of the international struggle against the common enemy - fascism. Naturally, the social base of anti-fascism and of the first stage of the People's democratic revolution was much broader, which was not the case in the second stage.

12. One must note with care that with the degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1953, its Titoite distortion and with the recognition of Yugoslavia as a socialist country (though no tasks of the second stage were completed there), the degeneration of People's democracy and the socialist camp began.

13. Today, there is no common enemy like that of fascism nor is there any common front. There is no socialist country, (which decisively influences world politics) under whose umbrella People's democracy may develop into the second stage. The genuine Communists must realise that in the absence of those above-stated conditions and in the heyday of imperialism, deceptive bourgeois democracy and the much trumpeted free enjoyment of the 'right' of private property, if a firm and resolute proletarian policy is not pursued and if the victorious proletariat does not deal very resolutely with rich peasants, and non-big bourgeoisie, the cause of the revolution would be severely jeopardised. (Without such a policy neither would it be possible to exercise hegemony nor stop the vacillation of the non-proletarian working people already corrupted by profiteering and proprietary habits.)

14. Our main article on the stage of the revolution has clearly shown that only the socialist revolution in India today can solve both the anti-imperialist and the task of uprooting the vestiges of feudalism.