So HAS the KKE moved away from the position that it , and it alone is the "vanguard party" of the working class in the classical Leninist sense, both before and AFTER the socialist revolution ? An important issue , given the vital need for the LEFT together to work in open sincerity to meet the dramatic needs of the crisis .
The very concept of the "vanguard party", leading party of the class, presupposes the unique role of
one party. There can be no vanguard role of 2,3,4 or more parties holding different strategic perspectives and leading the working class movement to different directions, if we accept that the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism is the goal. KKE has definitely not "moved away" from this cardinal Leninist principle - there is nothing in historical experience that can convince it that socialist revolution can be effected and carried forward without a leading Party.
I thought this piece from your KKE analysis/defence of the lack of even basic democracy (workers democracy I mean - I don't give a toss about capitalist's rights either ) in the Soviet Union during its entire history is illuminating :
Bourgeois and opportunist propaganda, speaking of lack of freedom and anti-democratic regimes, projects the concepts of “democracy” and “freedom” in their bourgeois content, identifying democracy with bourgeois parliamentarism and freedom with bourgeois individualism and private capitalist ownership. The real essence of freedom and democracy under capitalism is the economic coercion of wage slavery and the dictatorship of capital, in society in general and especially inside capitalist enterprises. Our critical approach regarding workers’ and people’s control and participation has no relation whatsoever to the bourgeois and opportunist polemics regarding democracy and “rights” in the USSR.
I think you are reading the excerpt above in the wrong light. It is indeed illuminating for two basic reasons:
1. It reaffirms the oft-forgotten, in today's climate of virulent anti-communism, teaching of Lenin (and before him of Marx) of the class nature of any democracy. The fact that there is no neutral "democracy", that democracy can be either bourgeois or proletarian. That bourgeois democracy, even under its most benevolent parliamentarian forms, is in fact a dictatorship of the forces of capital. This has become even more obvious today.
2. It makes clear that KKE's "critical approach regarding workers' and people's control and participation" (i.e critical about aspects of socialist construction in the USSR) does not start (and should not start) from the same premises as the bourgeois and opportunist polemics.
There are aspects of how KKE views the development of socialist democracy in Chapter D of its programmatic document about socialism. In addition, there are important elements about the historical developments in the USSR, as far as workers' participation is concerned, that require further study. This is mentioned clearly in the following passages:
"
On the basis of the preceding evaluations and directives, the new C.C should organize the deeper study and extraction of conclusions on a series of issues:
* The forms of organisation of workers’ participation, their rights and duties, during different periods of Soviet Power, such as the Workers’ Committees and the Production Councils in the 1920’s, the Stakhanovite movement in the 1930’s, in contrast to the “self-management councils” under perestroika. Their relationship to Central Planning and the realisation of the social character of ownership over the means of production.
* The development of the Soviets as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. How was the relationship “Party – Soviet – working class and popular forces” realized during the different phases of socialist construction in the USSR. Issues concerning the functional downgrading of the production unit as the nucleus of organisation of workers’ power, with the abolition of the principle of the production unit being the electoral unit and of the indirect election of delegates through congresses and assemblies. The negative impact on the class composition of the higher state organs and on the application of the right of recall of delegates."
By saying all of the above, I am not hiding the fact that KKE has a largely positive view on the role of Stalin in the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union. This view is not based on some blind faith on personalities, on survivals of some "cult of personality" (for several decades after the infamous 20th Congress of the CPSU, KKE itself was thouroughy cleansed of such survivals by the ideological followers of Krushchev in our Party). It is based on a historical materialist interpretation of the unfolding of socialist construction in the USSR, first and foremost in the field of economic relations, which reveals the unsurpassed ability of Stalin to understand the contradictions inherent in the building of socialism and to chart a basically correct path towards solving them. The 20th Congress in 1956 constitutes a point of opportunist turn, precisely because it adopted theoretical positions and implemented practical policies that led to a sharpening of the contradictions and eventually to the counter-revolutionary demise of the USSR.
