Let me take up only two important questions:

  1. What is the single most important class basis for the betrayal of socialism in the Soviet Union?
  2. What is the future of socialism?

A. The Petty Bourgeoisie as the Class Basis for the Betrayal of Socialism

  1. The petty bourgeoisie is the lowest stratum and most numerous part of the bourgeoisie. It possesses the intellectual, professional and technical capabilities utilized by the big bourgeoisie for the functioning of capitalism. The urban petty bourgeoisie, which receives the crumbs from the table of the big bourgeoisie, must be won over by the proletariat in order to disable and defeat the big bourgeoisie. Its capabilities must be put into the service of the revolution if the proletariat is to win victory.
  2. The revolutionary party of the proletariat cannot strengthen itself, cannot seize power and cannot build socialism if it fails to win over the petty bourgeoisie in society and if it does not recruit into the Party those elements of petty bourgeois origin and socioeconomic status who are willing to remould themselves into proletarian revolutionaries and render service to the proletariat and people.
  3. Availing themselves of their facility in learning Marxist- Leninist theory or book knowledge, the intelligentsia are usually able to gain membership in a proletarian revolutionary party in greater proportion than their part of the population and the part of the proletariat. Marxist-Leninists have to consider the proper proportioning of Party members according to their class origins and status, with the objective of making sure that Party members of worker and peasant status are dominant within the proletarian party. At any rate, whatever is the proportion of party members of petty bourgeois origin and socioeconomic status, there are those who become genuine proletarian revolutionaries and there are others who fail to become so despite their nominal Party membership.
  4. Even at its best, the proletarian revolutionary party contains a certain amount of unremoulded petty bourgeois and a certain degree of petty bourgeois thinking. The unremoulded petty bourgeois is the social base of subjectivist and opportunist errors which are either put under restraint, rectification and repudiation or allowed to thrive in a party that is bound to degenerate and disintegrate.
  5. In Soviet history, the Left Opposition headed by Trotsky and the Right Opposition headed by Bukharin were petty bourgeois currents of thought within the Soviet party. At the same time, there were the old petty bourgeois retained in the reorganized state bureaucracy and in the economy under the New Economic Policy and the members of the old exploiting big bourgeois and landlord classes that lost properties but not their ideas and influence in society, which tended to conjoin with petty bourgeois thinking and even with the traditional social psychology of the politically backward section of the masses.
  6. When it was prematurely declared in 1936 that there were no more exploiting classes and no more class struggle in Soviet society, except the one intensifying between the Soviet people and the external enemy, the tendency of the new intelligentsia and bureaucracy to become petty bourgeois was glossed over and allowed to grow. Thus, the petty bourgeoisie grew and proliferated within the ruling party and the state. Stalin himself observed that the most dangerous bureaucrat was the one that carried the title of communist but was not at all a genuine communist.
  7. The petty bourgeoisie was generated by the dulled proletarian revolutionary stand and the waning sense of class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie within Soviet society. It became the social base for bureaucratism, the repressiveness of the state security agencies and eventually the rise of modern revisionism and the bureaucrat monopoly bourgeoisie to a predominant position. The bureaucrat monopoly bourgeoisie overthrew the proletariat in 1956 and converted socialism into state monopoly capitalism and social imperialism.
  8. The petty bourgeoisification of the class consciousness of the new intelligentsia and the bureaucracy (most of whom were already children of the working people) was accompanied by the abolition of the communist minimum (salaries of communists equivalent to the average of workers’ wages) and communist maximum (equivalent to the highest wage of skilled workers) and upward adjustment in the salaries of communist cadres equal to the level of salaries received by noncommunist professionals and technical experts (three times larger than those previously received by communist cadres). Communist bureaucrats in the party, state, public institutions and mass organizations, managers, engineers and technicians in state enterprises and collectives and personnel of academic, research and cultural institutions received privileges extra to their salaries. In the latter thirties, they started to get an overly large portion of the social product for their consumption.
  9. In the undermining of socialism and restoration of capitalism, the petty bourgeoisie used two hands. One hand committed acts of arbitrariness and the other hand went for an egoistic sense of freedom. One hand reached out for higher rungs in the bureaucratic ladder and the other flailed against bureaucratism. One hand pretended to uphold socialism which was already state monopoly capitalism and the other hand demanded the free marketplace of goods, services and ideas amidst bureaucratic corruption and privateering. In the end, the new bourgeoisie within and outside the ruling party and state agreed openly on the premises of anticommunism.
  10. The standard of living of the petty bourgeoisie is something to aim for as a general level of development, especially in countries where socialism has to rise from a low economic and technological level. In the course of socialist advance, the contradictions between physical and mental labor and between urban and rural life are resolved by uplifting the workers and peasants economically, socially and culturally. What is wrong is when the intelligentsia and bureaucracy become or remain petty bourgeois, instead of becoming proletarian in world outlook, and proceed to accumulate privileges and perks at the expense of the general level of socialist development and adopt the ideas and policies to restore capitalism and the bourgeois class dictatorship.

B. The Future of Socialism

  1. The basic teachings of Marx and Engels about capitalism and scientific socialism, those of Lenin and Stalin about modern imperialism and classical revisionism and about the socialist revolution and construction and those of Mao about imperialism, neocolonialism and modern revisionism and about socialist revolution and construction and continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship through cultural revolution have been proven correct in two ways: first by the great victories of socialist revolution and construction; and second by the disastrous conduct and consequences of the betrayal of socialism by the ideology of modern revisionism and the actual restoration of capitalism. Therefore, all Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations that now exist and will arise can be better armed than ever before with the correct principles and practical lessons to build socialism.
  2. Mao’s critique of modern revisionism and his theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship and combatting modern revisionism through proletarian cultural revolution to prevent the restoration of capitalism until imperialism is defeated and communism becomes possible deserve special attention. Without these, it would only be now that the Marxist-Leninist would be groping for the ideas about continuing the socialist revolution and preventing the restoration of capitalism through peaceful evolution. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was defeated at a certain point in time after succeeding, like the Paris Commune, but it is a great indispensable source of theoretical and practical lessons.
  3. The disintegration of the revisionist ruling parties and the sham socialist regimes and the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrate so clearly that these have resulted from a certain sequence of events: the premature declaration of the end of class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within socialist society; the conversion of the new intelligentsia and bureaucracy into a huge mass of petty bourgeoisie; the role of this new petty bourgeoisie as the social base for the rise of bureaucratism, modern revisionism and the bureaucrat monopoly bourgeoisie; and the adoption of political, economic and cultural policies of so-called reforms to restore capitalism and ultimately to disintegrate the revisionist ruling party and regime.
  4. The worst evils of capitalism now afflict the former Soviet republics. The class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is now riding roughshod over the people and exacting a heavy toll on them in the form of unbridled bureaucratic corruption, privatization or closure of enterprises, mass unemployment, breakdown of production, soaring inflation, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, fascist currents, rampant criminality and so on. The very worst of the big bourgeoisie is still to come. But in the course of the worsening of the situation, the revolutionary proletariat and people can recover their bearings and uphold the Marxist-Leninist legacy of Lenin and Stalin and wage the socialist revolution anew.
  5. A special word on the great mass of petty bourgeois in the former Soviet bloc countries is called for. While they were the social base for the rise of the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie, their social conditions conspicuously deteriorated, especially since the late seventies. These would deteriorate without cease from the second half of the Brezhnev period to the Gorbachov period through the current period. The worsening conditions of the petty bourgeoisie in the former Soviet bloc countries are similar to those in the general run of third world countries. Their illusions of enjoying more material comforts and freedom under capitalism are proven false
  6. The social turmoil and the disintegration of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes in the 1989-1991 period were part of the crisis of the world capitalist system. The Soviet Union was a social imperialist and neocolonial power vis a vis other countries under its control. But in fact it had become vulnerable to the manipulation of superior industrial capitalist powers, especially West Germany. The countries of Eastern Europe had fallen into the position of being like the countries of the third world, with overconsuming exploiters, deteriorating terms of trade and ever mounting debt burden, and had been subject to the manipulation of both Soviet and Western neocolonialism. But the longrunning depression of the East and South of the world has been recoiling upon the major industrial capitalist countries also in the 1989-1991 period and onwards.
  7. The ongoing crisis of the world capitalist system is a crisis of overproduction. The production of surplus industrial and agricultural goods is now coming on top of a long-depressed South and East of the world, which had earlier suffered from the overproduction of raw materials and deteriorating terms of trade for these and are reeling from mounting deficits and foreign debt. The crisis of overproduction has been accelerated by the unprecedented internationalization of capital since the end of World War II and by the application of high technology in the production of surplus manufactures and raw materials which cannot be disposed of profitably. Now, there is a depression of the world market as a result of the overproduction and the massive amount of bad debts. Overconsumption by the US has made it the biggest deficit-spender and the biggest debtor- country. The tighter integration of such huge markets as those of China, India and the Soviet Union in the world capitalist system in the eighties have only served to aggravate the crisis of overproduction.
  8. Contradictions are intensifying between the capitalist powers and their client regimes on the one hand and the oppressed peoples and nations, among the industrial capitalist countries over questions about investment, trade, monetary, credit and military policies and between the monopoly bourgeoisie on the one hand and the proletariat and people in capitalist countries and throughout the world. Because of the falling rates of profit and the depression of the world economy, the capitalist powers tend to consolidate their national and regional positions. They tend to redivide the world and move towards a multipolar world.
  9. Social turmoil is already raging in so many countries on an unprecedentedly wide scale and is taking the form of civil wars, protracted armed struggle, general strikes, one coup after another, mass uprisings and the like. These result from the depression of economies, the massive unemployment, inflation, the harsh austerity measures and social cutbacks, wider impoverishment, hunger and disease. There is gloom and disarray in the world capitalist system so soon after the euphoria and gloating over the so-called triumph of capitalism over socialism. Exactly at the point of unprecedented success in the employment of neocolonial methods, capitalism is in a dismal, turbulent and desperate situation.
  10. We are on the eve of social revolution on a global scale. Under the present world conditions, the Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations can arise and further strengthen themselves by taking advantage of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and by creating out of the widening and intensifying social turbulence a new and higher level of revolutionary struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism against imperialism and all reaction.