[PRWC Party Documents] Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade, April 22, 1972

Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade

Apologia for Soviet Revisionism

I. On The Proletarian Dictatorship

Basahin sa Pilipino

Amado Guerrero

April 22, 1972

Revolutionary School of Mao Tse Tung Thought, Communist Party of the Philippines

Marx wrote:

Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Under the guidance of Marxism and on the basis of the great practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, Lenin clearly pointed out:

The transition from capitalism to communism represents an entire historical epoch. Until his epoch has terminated, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope is converted into attempts at restoration.

In this regard, therefore, he repeaatedly stressed: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is essential."

Under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and on the basis of the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and abroad, Chairman Mao has stated even more explicity:

Socialist society covers a considerably long historical period. In the historical period of socialism, there are still classes, class contradictions and class struggle, there is a struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, and there is the danger of capitalist restoration. Our instruments of dictatorship must be strenghtened, not weakened.

Learning from the historical experience of the Soviet Union and other revisionist countries, Chairman Mao has put forward the theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to prevent the restoration of capitalism in a socialist society. These recent theoretical and practical contributions of Chairman Mao signalled by his famous work On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People as far back as 1957 have brought the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism to a completely new and higher stage. All these are in keeping with the Marxist-Leninist view that in a socialist society, lasting for an entire historical epoch, classes, class contradictions and class struggle persists.

What does Pomeroy say in opposition to the kernel of the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, which is the dictatorship of the proletariat? He says:

... opposing class have ceased to exist in the Soviet Union and that what prevails is a "state of the whole people". In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer thought of as the instrument to suppress counter-revolutionary tendencies within the country, but as instrument directed solely against enemies from outside.

This is unadulterated Krushchov and Brezhnevism.

Long before the blatant counter-revolutionary coup d'tat launched by Khrushchov, the capitalist-roaders in the Soviet Union had insisted that there were no more claases, class contracdictions and class struggle. (Comrade Stalin himself expressed too early in 1936 the view that there was no more class struggle in the Soviet Union but be rectified this wrong view in 1952.) It has turned out that to stop or obscure the waging of revolutionary class struggle is to allow the representatives of the bourgeoisie to sneak into the state and party of the proletariat, usurp leadership and restore capitalism. Not to put proletarian politics in command of everything consciously and vigorously is to allow bourgeois politics to take over in a socialist society. There are vestigial, latent and hidden agents of the big bourgeois (egged on by the imperialist policy of peaceful evolution) who are ready to spring into counter-revolutionary action under the cover of the techniquism and economism whenever the proletarian dictatorship lets down its vigilance and its determination to continue the revolution.

After the restoration of capitalism through peaceful evolution, the anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist openly flaunt the theory of "state of the whole people" and "party of the whole people" in order to denote the dissolution of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party of the proletariat, respectively. A dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie such as those of Khrushchov and of Brezhnev is set up. It is no surprise, thesefore, that the anti- communist scoundrel Pomeroy now admits that his Soviet revisionist masters no longer think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the instrument for supressing counter-revolutionary tendencies within the country. State power for them is itself the instrument for counter-revolution.

Throughout Pomeroy's book, it is clear that the kind of "people" who are now living it up in capitalist style in the Soviet Union belong to the bourgeoisie. They converted the socialist economy into state monopoly capitalism. They rob the state treasury centrally and in various enterprises and farms, live in a kind of luxury imitative of the bourgeoisie in the West, squander the social wealth accumulated for decades through the hard work of the Soviet laboring people and intensify oppression and exploitation in order to raise their profits. A monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie lords over the state and Party, operates the means of production as capitalist enterprises and poison education and culture to suit its capitalist ends. The Soviet neo-bourgeoisie rides roughshod over the Soviet proletariat, the people of various countries, especially a number of East European countries and the Mongolian People's Republic.

Pomeroy refers to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as an instrument "solely against enemies from outside". However, it is noteworthy that he does not make a single attack, not even a sham one against U.S. imperialism in his concluding chapter which is most concentrated way of presenting the revisionist view of the transition from socialism to communism. On the other hand, there is no let-up in his vicious but futile diatribes against the Lenin of the preset era, Chairman Mao, and what he stands for -- the world proletarian revolution in the present era, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Chinese proletariat and people and the Chinese Communist Party. So it is clear that the arms expansion and war preparations being conducted by the Soviet revisionist rulers are meant to be used against China, communism, the people and revolution.

The revisionist Pomeroy regards the question of political power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a mere short spell and as a mere preliminary after which it is all economic constructions that counts. So he chatters:

If a Communist cadre is asked about the romanticism of what he is doing, he will most likely reply that the exciting stuggle for power was only the initial struggle, the beginning of problems after which the hard weary work begins....

We say that the struggle for power does not cease after the seizure of power, that economic constructions does not make the struggle for power a thing of the past. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie continues in the entire historical epoch of the socialism. It is imperative for the proletariat to continue the revolution, take command of everthing and consolidate its class dictatorship.

Pomeroy falls deeper into self-contradiction in the following prattle:

After decades of highly centralized dictatorship of the proletariat that was necessary to push through and to protect socialist construction, there is now the problem of broadening democratic participation in all phases of life....

He seems to recognize here the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat in pushing through and protecting socialist construction. But his main interest now is to make this dictatorship appear as the strait jacket of democracy. He denies the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat, while suppressing the people's enemies, created during the time of Lenin and Stalin the broadest democracy among the workers, peasants and revolutionary. He prates: "An efficiently-run socialist enterprise may posess much greater revolutionary potential than the largest of demonstrations..." Only a counter-revolutionary will lay aside proletarian policies or subordinate it to economic work. Chairman Mao teaches us: "Political work is the lifeblood of all economic work."

The 20th Congress of the CPSU is ecstatically hailed by Pomeroy as the starting point of "democracy" in the Soviet Union. This was the black congress in 1956 in which the modern revisionists launched a surprise attack, a counter-revolutionary coup, against the dictatorship of the proletariat and which tried to spread throughout the world the poisonous revisionist ideas of "parliamentary road", "peaceful transitions" and class collaboration with U.S. imperialism. Khrushchov worked out his revisionist purposes under the cover of "combatting the personality cult of Stalin".

Chairman Mao made a timely criticism of the Soviet revisionist renegades, when he sharply pointed out:

I think that there are two "swords": One is Lenin and the other Stalin. The sword of Stalin has now been abandoned by the Russians.... As for the sword of Lenin, has it too now been abandoned to a certain extent by some leaders of the Soviet Union? In my view, it has been abandoned to a considerable extent. Is the October Revolution still valid? Can it still be the example for all countries? Khrushchov's report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU says it is possible to gain political power by the parliamentary road, that is to say, it is no longer necessary for all countries to learn from the October Revolution. Once this gate is opened, Leninism by and large is thrown out.

In keeping with the anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist stand of the 20th Congress, Pomeroy takes any act or attitude having the character of "combatting the personality cult of Stalin" as "democratic". The entire historical epoch preceding the counter-revolution of the Soviet revisionist renegade clique is completely negated by him through the simple trick of heaping all blame on Comrade Stalin, the leading representative of the proletariat after Lenin and before the usurpation of power by the revisionist rascals. Like his Soviet revisionist masters, he does not have the least respect for the Marxist- Leninist theory of classes, masses, parties and leaders. The complete negation of Comrade Stalin is nothing but a vicious attack on the great leader of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the international communist movement for nearly thirty years. The logic of the revisionist renegades would subject even Lenin to the filthiest calumny for being the great and venerated leader of the Soviet and world proletariat and for having the ruthlessly combatted the counter-revolutionaries.

What Pomeroy considers "democracy" is the bourgeois coup d'tat executed by his Soviet revisionist masters, the widespread fascist purges carried out in all the Party and government organizations, from the higher to the lower echelons, and the replacement of proletarian cadres in leading positions by the bourgeois intelligentsia and the worst dregs of Soviet society. Nearly 70 per cent of the CPSU Central Committee members elected at the 22nd Congress in 1961. This big purge at the top reflected the bigger purges below. The 22nd Congress systematized the Khrushchov revisionist programme of "three peacefuls" (peaceful coexistence", "peaceful competition" and "peaceful transition") and "two wholes" ("party of the whole people" and "state of the whole people"). By the time of the 23rd Congress in 1966, nearky 60 per cent of the CPSU Central Committee members elected in the 20th Congress were purged. The 23rd Congress sanctified the "new system" or "economic reform" which was first approved in the September 1965 plenum of the Brezhnev-led CPSU Central Committee and which further pushed the full-scale restoration of capitalism.

Pomeroy considers it "impressive" that all kinds of ogres have crept out of their holes in the Soviet Union. He is extremely elated that in Soviet elections the revisionist-dominated Communist Party has lost prestige and out-and-out counter-revolutionaries are being voted into office; that bourgeois managers are in control over the means of production and are skimming the cream of the social wealth with their high salaries and allowances, big bonuses and other special privileges; and that a bourgeois intelligentsia is imitating what is most decadent in Western bourgeois culture under the guise of "internationalism". He hails the entire rigmarole as "liberal atmosphere" and as the "braodening of democracy".

In pursuit of What Pomeroy calls "socialist legality", the Soviet revisionist renegades have sent genuine Communists in great numbers to mental hospitals, prisons and concentration camps since the liquidation of the proletarian dictatorship by Khrushchov. Outright assassinations have occured. Tanks and armored cars have been dispatched to suppress the resistance of the revolutionary masses of various nationalities against the oppressive revisionist rule. The Soviet army has been indoctrinated with revisionist ideology and revolutionary elements have been purged. Fascist laws and decrees such as the "regulations of the work of people's control", "amendments to the basic principles of the criminal code", "law on the basic principles of the corrective-labour legislation" and "regulations on preliminary detention" have proliferated. The police and spies have greatly increased in number and have run berserk. The army, the police, the prisons and courts are relentlessly used to enforce the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie against the the Soviet people. Under the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique, social-fascism, social- militarism, and Great-Russian chauvinism have become even more vicious than during the time of Khrushchov.

Pomeroy actually equates "democracy" with bureaucratism and pictures it as a "guided process" "through channels" designed by the revisionist renegade clique. The revolutionary mass movement is anathema to him. Thus, he states:

The overcoming of Stalinism and the expansion pf democracy have been astonishing. The implication of the present economic reform,with its predicted effects on bureaucratic tendencies, is that it will lead to extensive changes. Such processes have not been reflected in mass struggles among the Soviet people.

Pomeroy admits that the anti-Stalin campaign of velification and the "economic refrom" have never been reflected in mass struggles but merely imposed on the masses.

Under the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique, Soviet social-imperialism has fully emerged to invade the territory of other countries and abuse other peoples. It has exacerbated its new tsarist and colonial rule over a number of East European countries and the Mongolian People's Republic. It has invaded the Czechoslovakia and abused the people there. It cannot tolerate the slightest difference of opinion with the leadership of other revisionist countries and is wont to using the the Warsaw Pact and COMECON to threaten and blackmail other countries. Also, it has not relented in its efforts to sabotage and subvert the People's Republic of Albania. It has repeatedly made aggressive incursions on Chinese territory and has tried to outdo the old tsars. In various other parts of the world, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, it has always tried to collude with or outbid U.S. imperialism in exploiting and oppressing the people.