[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

III. The Process of Capitalist Restoration

The Commonwealth of Independent States

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

The commonwealth of independent states (CIS) that has replaced the Soviet Union is dominated by Russia, which is flaunting the old czarist flag of Great-Russian chauvinism, and is afflicted with serious contradictions between Russia and the other republics, among republics with common borders, between Russian enclaves and local nationalities in non-Russian republics and among different nationalities within each of the republics.

The contradictions involve political, economic, financial, security, ethnic and border issues. There is political chaos all over the so-called commonwealth. Serious differences between Russia and Ukraine have already arisen regarding economic and financial issues and on the question of dividing the Soviet army, navy and air force, the handling of nuclear weapons and border issues on land and sea. There are independence movements among minority nationalities in Russia and civil wars in Georgia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The economic chaos has been aggravated by liberalizing prices on January 2. The prices of many basic commodities have multiplied up to more than twenty times. The state stores are being emptied by backdoor sales to the free market. Even food aid from abroad has flowed into the free market. More than half of the population have fallen below the poverty line and are in danger of starving. Ninety per cent of the population is expected to fall below the poverty line. Under these circumstances, street demonstrations and workers' strikes are occurring against the openly capitalist regimes. The trade unions are agitated by the severely oppressive and exploitative conditions and have begun to conduct strikes on a wide scale. The Unity for Leninism and Communist Ideals, the United Front of the Working People, the Russian Workers' Communist Party and the Communist Party of Bolsheviks in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) have been among the most militant in staging mass actions against the Russian bourgeois regime of Yeltsin.

In the Soviet Union, more than 90 percent of the major industries are still owned by the state. This is also true in the case of the East European countries, with the exception of Poland whose privatisation has gone fastest and whose state-owned enterprises are still about 65 percent, according to one report. This continuing predominance of state-owned enterprises does not mean socialism. Since a long time ago, many of these enterprises have acquired a capitalist character. They have long come under the control and have become instruments of the bureaucrat capitalists and the private entrepreneurs although these are state-owned. The ongoing privatisation of these state enterprises is slowed down by the absence of genuine private venture capital, the disappearance of savings among the people and the lack of foreign interest in acquiring outmoded plants and investing in new ones.

The excommunist bourgeoisie and the foreign investors are most interested in acquiring at scandalously low prices those state assets that yield quick and large profits. Inefficient and decrepit state enterprises are maintained only as they are still needed and continue being the milking cows of private entrepreneurs (e.g., steel and other metals, energy and other raw materials, transport, etc.) Closures and reduced production are continuing at an accelerated pace. In the process, millions of workers are laid off. There is a process of deindustrialization throwing back the former Soviet Union or the republics of the so-called CIS and Eastern Europe into the quagmire of third world capitalism.

A strong political and economic center is absent in the CIS. But in the meantime, there is a strong military center because the central command of the former Soviet armed forces is retained. Even the leaders of the capitalist countries who are worried about the nuclear and other strategic weapons insist that these be under a single military command. However, the political and economic chaos can induce the military officers to take matters into their hands as the military rank and file and the broad masses of the people are already gravely discontented.

It is still a matter of conjecture for outside observers whether there will be a social upheaval in the tradition of the Bolsheviks (the military rank and file linking up with the workers' organizations) or a coup to install military fascism over the entire scope of the so-called commonwealth or in a series of republics (like now in Georgia). The prevalent view is that the new bourgeoisie inside and outside the armed forces is so powerful that for the time being the likelihood for military fascism to rise is greater than the return to the socialist road if there is going to be any new drastic development.