Bankruptcy of the Non-aligned – Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
Return to Yugoslavia
Bankruptcy of the Non-aligned1
By
Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
January 2025
PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
When a man acts badly, it is not so much his fault as it is his misfortune. Our movement is well acquainted with such “unfortunates” who, in the midst of their own megalomania, give themselves the right to fervently spread their self-confident ignorance. Insofar as our “unfortunates” are not to blame for being deceived and overtaken by those who, endowed with fresher strength and greater determination, are nearer to objective truth, they are responsible for their own ignorant arrogance and the lack of courage required to accept their own mistakes. It is indeed difficult to admit that the scientific ideology of the proletariat is by no means suitable for building eclectic fortresses when your whole worldview is eclectic. And yet, it is precisely this eclecticism that philosophically drives those “materialists” who are trying to keep off the spreading of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
The reader will then be able to understand why we decided to write this polemical article. It is not the product of an “inner drive”, nor do we consider the influence of the organization that published this article to be in any way worth considering – rather, we are responding to the untenable philosophical dualism of these theoretical pearls which, whether they are aware of it or not, is supported by the entire comprador bourgeoisie and their masters. This dualism is not only characteristic of the Partija rada – the organization which we will primarily criticize in this article – but also of all those who challenge modern materialism and the concretization of proletarian ideology into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
The article that prompted this response was published on 25/11/2024 under the title “Partija rada‘s position on the National Question” , but the nature of the matter is such that we could not restrain ourselves to only that article. Unfortunately, until the eclectic lays down his eclectic weapon, he puts himself in an awkward position where he has to talk more and more nonsense in order to satisfy and justify those he has previously expressed. Nevertheless, despite the extensive nature of the subjects, we will remain quite restrained and precise in our criticism in order to gain some clarity on certain issues. Of course, there are many errors, but the reader only needs to understand the essential source of the scientific fallacies of our “unfortunates” and their internal unsustainability in order to be able to find the other errors himself.
We begin with the Achilles heel of the great thinker of Partija rada, which is set forth in the following paragraph:
“The position of the Partija rada is that at the same time the revolutionary movement in the world today is emerging from ideological confusion and strategic defensive and that a new revolutionary line is beginning to emerge. The need for new forms of ideological interpretation, both national and revolutionary, confirms that a new consciousness is also beginning to emerge in the Balkans, which springs from the working class itself, and which is conditioned by its new regrouping.
Non multa, sed multum. The author who has been grinding this article for Partija rada in his eclectic mill introduces, as is customary with the “unfortunates”, formal radicalism through the use of
“Maoist” phrases, but without understanding the Marxist criteria of them. This is a striking weakness which is shown every time Partija rada is confronted with questions of the development of history or the scientific ideology of the proletariat, and it arises from the fact that the Partija rada, in the midst of its comprehensive philosophical ignorance, conceals the essentially reactionary content of its position with leftist phrases. Partija rada does not recognize that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the scientific ideology of the international proletariat, but, by the force of facts, is forced to speak as the Maoists do, because the validity of Maoism is confirmed by life itself – the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
In this way, Partija rada manifests its complete lack of understanding that all parts of the proletarian ideology are most closely linked to each other, and that in the midst of this it is impossible to arbitrarily offer a “new form of interpretation”, placing this once glorious organization in the long line of revisionists who proclaim that Marxism needs new interpretations. Instead of proving that the scientific ideology of the proletariat has developed qualitatively as a unity into something higher, something that is still unknown to the International Communist Movement, but seemingly familiar to those who are by far the most advanced, Partija rada ignores the entire history of the International Communist Movement and calls for “new forms of interpretation!” Any reader with the slightest self-esteem would expect the gentlemen of Partija rada to explain exactly what they‘re talking about, that they would not support a “label” without explaining its contents. Such a reader would be naturally disappointed with the result. Even the basic lines of this so called “new revolutionary line” have not been presented.
It should be easy for the gentlemen of the Partija rada to prove things. After all, Maoists from around the world have already successfully proven that Chairman Mao Zedong made an enormous qualitative contribution to all the constituent parts of Marxism. But one has to be as naïve as the “unfortunate” to wonder why these gentlemen have not presented their evidence until now. Make no mistake, although the gentlemen of the Partija rada may have been initially mistaken, they nevertheless fully understand that they cannot challenge Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, that they do not have the slightest philosophical education which would certainly be necessary for such a great undertaking to take place. For them, this is an unattainable target. Therefore, they cowardly hide all their dullness, baseness and disgust behind borrowed terminology that is left-wing in form, right-wing in essence.
So, for example, the author of the aforementioned article borrows the term “comprador bourgeoisie”, without even understanding how Chairman Mao Zedong developed Lenin’s theory of imperialism and what scientific significance this discovery implies. In the article “Partija rada‘s position on the National Question it is written:
“The national bourgeoisie possesses limited power and sovereignty by virtue of its comprador position in the imperialism system. Politically, economically, and militarily the national bourgeoisie is completely dependent on imperialism and multinational capital.”
It is not necessary for one to be a great connoisseur of political economy to admit the existence of a comprador bourgeoisie. Its existence is an objective and irrefutable fact, understood by the masses of the people, who have a fundamentally materialistic point of view when it comes to their daily lives. However, the existence of an enormous stratum of the middle bourgeoisie exploiting the proletariat, but standing in contradiction with imperialism, is completely denied. Instead, a complete break with reality is made and a priori it is established that “the national bourgeoisie… [plays] a comprador position in the system of imperialism.”.
This is a typical Trotskyist conception that stems from the petty-bourgeois tendency to blunt contradictions. The acceptance of this leftist deviation does not result from a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, but from the need of Partija rada to deny the existence of bureaucratic capitalism in all countries of the former Yugoslavia and thus deny the need for a new democratic revolution. First, a conception is established, then subsequently it is expected that real life will adapt to a given conception.
The correct attitude towards the national bourgeoisie, as expressed by Chairman Mao Zedong, is as follows:
“In countries under imperialist oppression there are two kinds of bourgeoisie–the national bourgeoisie and the comprador-bourgeoisie.
(…)
The national bourgeoisie is an opponent of ours. There is a popular saying in China, “Opponents always meet.” One experience of the Chinese revolution is that caution is needed in dealing with the national bourgeoisie. While it is opposed to the working class, it is also opposed to imperialism. In view of the fact that our main task is to fight imperialism and feudalism and that the liberation of the people would be out of the question unless these two enemies are overthrown, we must by all means win the national bourgeoisie over to the fight against imperialism. The national bourgeoisie is not interested in fighting feudalism because it has close ties with the landlord class. What is more, it oppresses and exploits the workers. We must therefore struggle against it. But in order to win it over to join us in the fight against imperialism, we must know when to stop in the struggle, that is, the struggle must be waged on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint. In other words, we must have just grounds for waging the struggle, be sure of victory, and use restraint when a proper measure of victory is gained. Hence the necessity of making investigations into the conditions of both sides, those of the workers and those of the capitalists. If we know only the workers and not the capitalists, we won’t be able to hold talks with the latter.
(…)
Throughout the historical period of the struggle against imperialism and feudalism, we must win over and unite with the national bourgeoisie so that it will side with the people against imperialism. Even after the task of opposing imperialism and feudalism is in the main accomplished, we must still keep our alliance with the national bourgeoisie for a certain period. This will be advantageous in dealing with imperialist aggression, in expanding production and stabilizing the market and also in winning over and remolding bourgeois intellectuals.
(…)
In countries under the oppression of imperialism and feudalism the political party of the proletariat should raise the national banner and must have a program of national unity by which to unite with all the forces that can be united, excluding the running dogs of imperialism. Let the whole nation see how patriotic the Communist Party is, how peace-loving and how desirous of national unity. This will help isolate imperialism and its running dogs, and the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie too.” 2
It is clear to the reader why the Trotskyist categorization of the national bourgeoisie as comprador has a detrimental effect. There is no left-wing terminology in the whole world with which Partija rada can cover the reactionary eclectic content of its one-sided formulation. It should be noted, however: this spirit of concealing one’s own prostitution of Marxism with leftist terminology permeates the entire article we criticize, and not only through it, but through every article that this political corpse publishes under its own name. Now that the reader is familiar with the facts and understands the modus operandi of the authors of Partija rada‘s articles, we will proceed to particularities.
On the question of contradictions in the former Yugoslavia, Partija rada to a certain extent makes its thesis more “acceptable” to the reader, because in their case one idea is not demarcated from another idea: contradictions as they are confused with contradictions as they could be. Thus, these pearls come to the following conclusion:
“From the presented material base, from the ideological form of present nationalism, and from the historical experience. Partija rada believes that in the immediate future in the territory of the former Yugoslavia the primary contradiction will not be international, but along the lines of inter-imperialist conflict and the imposition of new forms of fascist ideology, and the secondary – on the line of struggle between the working class and the national bourgeoisie within the republics themselves.”
The study of the processes and conditions in which bureaucratic capitalism finds itself in the territory of the former Yugoslavia is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, the exposition of the authors has the character of a dead dogma which transforms dialectics into the vilest, the lowest sophistry. It goes without saying that, when talking about the contradictions of a phenomenon, thing or process, fundamental contradictions must first be analyzed, and then it must be determined which of these contradictions is the principal one at a given moment and which are secondary. The author does not try to do that. We can assume that this omission is a mere coincidence, which means that Partija rada believes that “in the immediate future” there will be two basic contradictions in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, the first, which is also the principal one, and the second, which is secondary. Now the only thing left to do is to explain what these contradictions are, but this knot is difficult to untie due to the author’s extraordinary ability to unnecessarily complicate everything he says. Thus, we end up with the idea that the principal contradiction will be: “on the line of inter-imperialist conflict and the imposition of new forms of fascist ideology” – we merge at least two, and perhaps more, contradictions into one, but without clearly defining them. On the other hand, it is established that the contradiction between the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie will be a secondary contradiction in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
This extremely hilarious analysis is based on several Trotskyite dogmas that were then taken up by Bob Avakian and which today play an important role in revisionist organizations such as Partija rada. Let us try to reason as follows. Partija rada assumes that imperialism implies the transformation of the world into one and the same productive process; From this it follows that the contradiction between the imperialist states is the principal contradiction which creates the conditions for the class struggle; Thus, the “internal” condition for revolution in every country is the development of the international situation, not the internal contradictions of those countries.
In short, the conclusion drawn from the analysis of Partija rada that the contradiction between the imperialist states will be the principal contradiction in the territory of the former Yugoslavia means that the imperialist war will decide the future of our revolution. This conviction, no matter how much Partija rada tries to justify it with its ridiculous analyses, is the conviction of a capitulator who ignores the reality of our society. Ignorance is primarily to blame for this, and in order to prevent this error, the dialectical relationship between the universal and the specific must be studied and understood.
What, then, are the fundamental contradictions in the former Yugoslavia? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to first outline the main features that characterize our society: All South Slavic countries are characterized by the unevenness of economic and political development and their semi-colonial, semi-feudal character. This state of affairs is conditioned by imperialism, as Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out. Three fundamental contradictions arise from this characterization: 1) The contradiction between the oppressed nations of the former Yugoslavia and imperialism; 2) The contradiction between the masses of the people and bureaucratic capitalism; 3) The contradiction between the masses of the people and feudality. Of these, at least at a given moment, the third contradiction, even considering the ruined peasant economy and the mass exodus of the peasantry to the cities, is the principal contradiction that plays a decisive role in the development of other contradictions. The solution of these contradictions is inevitable, not in the midst of an imperialist war, but in the midst of the strictest logic of reality and the most natural functioning of our present socio-economic organism.
To be convinced of the correctness of this attitude, let us see how these contradictions relate to each other. No one who has left the city at least once can deny that in the countryside the contradiction between labor and capital is not expressed with special importance. Instead, the class struggle of the rural peasant population is directed against the large landowners and their enormous concentration of land, and demands a fair distribution of land to those who toil that land. This is because imperialism in oppressed countries suppresses capitalist land rent and ensures the existence of a semi-feudal land monopoly. In all the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the tendency is not to transform this unproductive monopoly of land into productive units, not to increase the productive forces of the countryside, but to expand and monopolize the unproductive land, land which the large landowners then use as a means of gaining political power. Imperialism, which finds in the large landowner a reliable ally, benefits from maintaining this situation, which is a source of constant exports of the population to urban centers and which allows them to exploit the natural resources of the oppressed land much cheaper, recent events prove this very well! Feudal relations in the countryside, therefore, constitute an obstacle to the real industrialization of the country and the development of its productive forces.
It is already beginning to become clear to the reader that the development of the contradictions between labor and capital depends to a certain extent on the development of the contradictions between the masses of the people and feudality. This is the rotten foundation of our societies on which bureaucratic capitalism rests. It is well known, of course, that such a situation can only be solved by a new democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat, which is confirmed by the fact that where feudalism disintegrates, it disintegrates into bureaucratic capitalism that maintains semi-feudal forms of exploitation. To emphasize once again, Chairman Mao Zedong analyzed this situation in oppressed countries, and his analysis was further elaborated by Comrade Gonzalo.
“The imperialist powers have made the feudal landlord class as well as the comprador class the main props of their rule in China. Imperialism “first allies itself with the ruling strata of the previous social structure, with the feudal lords and the trading and money-lending bourgeoisie, against the majority of the people. Everywhere imperialism attempts to preserve and to perpetuate all those pre-capitalist forms of exploitation (especially in the villages) which serve as the basis for the existence of its reactionary allies”. >> Imperialism, with all its financial and military might, is the force in China that supports, inspires, fosters and preserves the feudal survivals, together with their entire bureaucratic-militarist superstructure. <<” 3
The ideologues of the Partija rada, of course, do not understand that imperialism is reaction all along the line, instead, they believe that imperialist domination leads to the overcoming of pre-capitalist forms, the growth of productive forces and the withering away of the nationalist ideology of the “national bourgeoisie.”
” The reindustrialization initiated by the imperialists themselves has quantitatively and qualitatively changed the working class in Serbia. Guided by their needs, the modernization of industry and infrastructure began the process of organizing a new post-Yugoslav working class. Such a working class is still ideologically disoriented, scattered and divided, without a significant workers’ movement, but the objective social laws of the development of capitalism will necessarily lead to the further centralization of the working class in the cities themselves and its strengthening in the struggle against foreign and national capital. (On the agenda again, 11/06/2023)
There are people who physically exhaust themselves for the sake of knowledge and suffer all possible deprivations. It seems that the gentlemen of Partija rada do not care enough even to deal with these basic realities of the South Slavic countries. That is why these contradictions are completely alien to them, and these Trotskyites attribute the development of our revolution to the development of the international situation. True, the contradiction between nation and imperialism may become the principal contradiction, but this is only in the case of direct occupation or military intervention by imperialism.
As for the “secondary contradiction” from the analysis of the Partija rada, the reader is already familiar with the scientific fallacy of their formulation and does not require a re-explanation. We can only advise the gentlemen of Partija rada to study, and perhaps they will abandon their foolish ideas and understand the full validity of Chairman Mao Zedong’s contributions and the position of comrade Vlado Dapčević that: “Today [on] the agenda is a democratic revolution for the establishment, not of formal, but of true democracy.”
Let’s move on to the other misconceptions of Partija rada. In its assessment of the international situation, Partija rada declares that: “the revolutionary movement in the world today is emerging from ideological confusion and strategic defensive and that a new revolutionary line is beginning to emerge.”
For us the important part is the general conclusion from the above, that the World Proletarian Revolution is at the stage of strategic defensive, and we shall deal with the “new revolutionary line” later. At first glance, this argument sounds convincing – can anyone deny that the International Communist Movement is in a very weak position? Nevertheless, such an attitude shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the thesis that the communists are “just a drop in the ocean” and equates the position of the International Communist Movement with the phase of the World Proletarian Revolution, thereby exaggerating the possibilities of the subjective factor of the class struggle.
Communists, above all else, must analyze the current state of production and distribution relations, the current state of the productive forces, and the current position of social classes relative to each other. Let us remember the well-known: consciousness is determined by being! This is because what we want to achieve and what we can achieve are not one and the same. What communists can achieve depends not on their subjective will, but on their level of social development. This does not mean, however, that what the Communists can achieve and what they actually do achieve does not constitute a contradiction. We are proponents of the theory that today the world is in the strategic offensive of the World Proletarian Revolution. Does this mean that we should see news of a new proletarian revolution on the morning news every day? No, it does not, because at present the subjective forces of the International Communist Movement are lagging behind the objective conditions of the world. The stage of the World Proletarian Revolution refers to the balance of objective class forces, not to the immediate strength of the International Communist Movement.
The sin that Partija rada has committed is that it has not materialistically analyzed the balance of class forces, that it has not even noticed that the proletariat, from a class which was a small minority of humanity forced to support bourgeois democratic revolutions, has become the largest and only leading class, that as the leading class, the task of this proletariat becomes to seize power and not only in a few states but all over the world. All this leads Partija rada to a subjectivism which equates the balance of political forces with the balance of class forces. The reader then understands why Partija rada today, when the world is going through a general counter-revolutionary offensive of imperialism and revisionism (we emphasize, precisely because revolution is the main tendency in the world today), considers the entire World Proletarian Revolution to be in the stage of strategic defensive. Again and again, we see how the Partija rada borrows terms without understanding them!
It is important for us to point out to the reader the germ of truth in the position of Partija rada. When these gentlemen say that we are coming out of strategic defense, they are in a sense describing a real phenomenon. Their problem is that they do not understand this phenomenon, so we will explain to them: We are in the defensive phase of the strategic offensive of the World Proletarian Revolution – the subjective factor in this formulation can always change, and it is currently in the process of overcoming the general counteroffensive of imperialism and revisionism.
Now another question arises: what is the “new revolutionary line” which, as Partija rada claims, is beginning to emerge? Partija rada does not offer an answer to that question in this article, but another article explains the essence of their position:
“At the same time, Partija rada sees the new revolutionary line of the world proletarian movement in the synthesis of everything that the previous lines have shown to be correct in practice – from the very conception of the Party, its organization, the way in which the class struggle is waged and the class war…”
A synthesis of everything that the previous lines have proven to be correct in practice! We are sure that this attitude will sound like an essentially materialistic approach to the question to those well-intentioned, but not so smart people. In fact, our “unfortunate” people understand things completely backwards. They would like to begin their analysis from the end; considering that the process that has yet to take place in each country should be explained in advance before the conditions for its explanation are created. The word “line” in a political sense means a systematized set of positions.
In this context, it is absurd to speak of a “line” as abstractly as the ideologues of Partija rada do. The truth is always concrete, and instead of asking the question of for whom something turned out to be right and in what conditions, the ideologues of Partija rada separate tactics from the politics that guide them. They do not understand, or convincingly pretend not to understand, that the political line is born with the concretization of the universal scientific ideology of the international proletariat through the application of the ideology to concrete conditions. As this line leaps from lower to higher forms, it becomes a living expression of concrete conditions in which universal ideology is applied and thus a guiding thought arises, such as, for example, Mao Zedong’s thought in China. Only in such an application, and consequently in the concretization of the universal scientific ideology of the proletariat, will our theory retain its living, dialectical character and will not turn into a set of dead dogmas. As such they insult and degrade the international ideology of the proletariat, once again showing that they do not understand that Marxism is by no means suitable for their eclecticism. That the ideology of the proletariat is a solidly constructed edifice that does not need “new interpretations.” As the great Lenin explains it:
“The sole conclusion to be drawn from the opinion of the Marxists that Marx’s theory is an objective truth is that by following the path of Marxist theory we shall draw closer and closer to objective truth (without ever exhausting it); but by following any other path we shall arrive at nothing but confusion and lies.” 4
So, what did the poet want to say? We believe that there may be two explanations, both of which are equally bad for the author of the lines we previously quoted above. The first explanation assumes that we have understood them correctly, and that they really believe that a new world “revolutionary line” is developing. In this case, they consciously or unconsciously prescribe a “recipe” to the international proletariat, without subjecting it to a comprehensive discussion on the basis of the concrete details of all countries. This so-called “line” would be developed on the basis of the also “so-called” Marxism-Leninism. The second explanation assumes that the authors are even more stupid and self-confident than we have assumed so far, and that this “world revolutionary line” is only a synonym for ideology. This should not surprise the reader either, nothing is too unusual considering that our friends like to give words completely new meanings. This would then mean that Partija rada considers that the international ideology of the class has developed as a whole, but not from Marxism-Leninism-Maoism but from Marxism-Leninism, and that we will soon witness a new stage in its development. The problem, perhaps, is that we fighters of the International Communist Movement are still too blind to recognize it! But since time immemorial, nothing new has been accepted in the beginning, keep struggling, comrades!
CONCLUSION
We have nowhere near exhausted all the errors that run through the articles of Partija rada. A much longer, much more penetrating article could be written that fully exposes the revisionist underpinnings of this organization. However, we believe that there was no need for that. Our aim was, first of all, to expose the untenability of the eclectic positions of those “Marxists” who swear to fight revisionism while at the same time challenging Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the new democratic revolution and the semi-colonial, semi-feudal character of oppressed countries, and Partija rada was the best embodiment of this tendency. We believe that through these few paragraphs that we have criticized, we have effectively exposed the reactionary style of Partija rada, its right-wing opportunism and its complete lack of understanding of modern materialism. To keep writing on about revisionism of Partija rada would not make sense at the present moment – this organization is a political corpse with no future – and the very content of their views is so shallow and riddled with errors that the allocation of our time and energy to this task cannot be justified.
We emphasize that the main task of the conscious socialist proletariat in the former Yugoslavia is the reconstitution of its class party. This article is written with this in mind because we believe that unity at the national level can only be achieved through a two-line struggle against revisionism and opportunism, especially that hidden behind the mask of “friends”. This document, therefore, does not sow schism in the revolutionary movement, but serves to end it, because the revolutionary movement can only unite by sending revisionism to the dustbin of history.
DEATH TO REVISIONISM!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, PRINCIPALLY MAOISM!
FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA!
UNITE UNDER MAOISM!
4 Footnotes
