http://www.rkrp-rpk.ru/ , mailto: rkrp-ck@yandex.ru

The future begins today. Communism is the struggle for workers' cause.

Theses of the report of the RCWP-RPC Central Committee's 1st Secretary Viktor Tyulkin at the Xlii international Meeting of Communist and Workers' parties in Athens, 9-11 of December 2011.

Dear comrades!

Let me greet all the participants of the meeting on behalf of the Russian Communist Workers' Party. Let me express our special gratitude to the Communist Party of Greece that has not organized today's event only, but initiated also all our regular meetings.

1. The subject of our current meeting has been determined by the workgroup as follows: "SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE!
The international situation and the experience of communists 20 years after the counterrevolution in the USSR took place. The tasks for the development of the class struggle under the conditions of capitalist crisis, imperialist wars, of the current popular struggles and uprisings, for working class-popular rights, the strengthening of proletarian internationalism and the anti-imperialist front, for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism."

I'm not sure about other languages but when thinking in Russian the name of our meeting's subject would be much better expressed using a different words' order: "The Future is Socialism!" It's not the matter of grammar; it's a dialectic understanding of task setting and its implementation. The slogan "Socialism is the Future!" presumes that one must wait till socialism is formed somewhere in the future, that this is not a matter of today, perhaps not even the matter of our generation but is rather a matter of the future generations. The XXI Century has only just begun to be followed by the XXII Century.
2. According to V.I. Lenin socialism is the destruction of classes. This means that socialism takes its roots in the class struggle of proletariat and continues in the form of class struggle by working class for the construction of classless communist society, for the total destruction of classes by means of development of socialism as an incomplete form of communism into fully developed communism. This means that socialism will not start tomorrow and doesn't even start today - it means that socialism actually started yesterday in every country where the class struggle against the bourgeoisie was unfolded in the form and to the extent as provided by our parties.
3. It's been 50 years since CPSU at their XXII Congress threw away the essence of Marxism - the dictatorship of proletariat from their party's Program which led in 30 years to the downfall of USSR. It's been 20. years since Gorbachev's CPSU discontinued to be a party of working class and gave birth to traitors of the socialist cause in the Gorbachev-Eltsyn's style. We've been all learning lessons from what happened and we make for us conclusions at present that are necessary both for our current and future struggle.
The main question direct and simple could be heard first of all from the working class: what are the reasons that the soviet socialism was defeated (I'm sure that the defeat is temporary)? The answer is simple - because CPSU lost its class nature and discontinued to be a party of working class

4. Let me back up my previous statement with some of my personal recollections and thoughts. I was an active participant of the events of 1987-1991, I used to organize the resistance to Gorbachev and to his perverted politics in particular during the XXVIII Congress of CPSU and in the course of the Constituent Assembly of Communist Party of RSFSR. I used to reflect in the past on the reasons of the downfall of such a giant as CPSU. Now when analyzing the events that followed the ban on CPSU activities by Eltsyn I come to a conclusion that judging by the state of the party by 1991 there couldn't have been any other outcome. I'm telling this based on the knowledge of the subject after having analyzed the careers of the professional party functionaries (of all levels, beginning from professional secretaries of primary party organizations - i.e. those who were on the party's payroll) after the counterrevolutionary coup of 1961-1991. Where are they now and what are their occupations? They can be found everywhere: in banks and in stock exchanges, in joint stock corporations and in the administrative bodies of corporations, they can be state officials on federal and local levels, they hold positions in the federal government and are MPs of Russian and regional parliaments, they hold positions in the compromising pro-government Trade Unions. They are everywhere except in the workshops behind machine tools together with workers, or among the organizers of the workers' movement (with the rarest exception). They had been extremely remote from the workers and the working class remained indifferent to the Eltsyn's decision to ban CPSU that had betrayed them.

4. Both we and the communist parties from other countries have more or less sorted it out with the mistakes of CPSU and its degeneration. Opportunism that hit CPSU after Stalin's death developed into revisionism that led to the rejection of Marxism's basic ideas such as the dictatorship of proletariat; the understanding of the State as a class mechanism; the recognition of the class struggle's existence in socialist society. When Khruschev's version of the party program was adopted at the XXII Congress of CPSU it was stated openly that the dictatorship of proletariat had become outdated. They alleged that "the working class of the Soviet Union has transformed the State of their dictatorship into the State of the whole nation, ail this done on their own initiative and in line with the task of communism's construction., .it's for the first time that we have a State that is not a dictatorship of a certain class...the dictatorship of proletariat has discontinued to be necessary".1 The party was also declared to be not the party of the working class, but a party of the whole nation, as opposed to the Lenin's concept of the party as a vanguard of the class.

In the party program it was stated that allegedly "the dictatorship of proletariat had completed its historical mission and had stopped to be indispensable from the point of view of internal development in USSR. The State that had emerged as a State of proletarian dictatorship turned into the State of the whole nation on a later, modern stage...The party proceeds from the fact that the dictatorship of proletariat stops to be indispensable earlier than the State disappears"1

At the same time they carried out reforms that- hampered the development of the socialist industry as a directly social way of production whereas the market oriented parts of the economy were developed. The economic reform of 1965 had especially negative effect when the principle of work for the society and for ensuring the benefits and development of all members of society was replaced with the principle of obtaining maximum profits for separate industrial enterprises. Thus started the disruption and watering dawn of the socialism's economic basis. This can be viewed as one of the main reasons for the insignificant scope of active resistance to the demolition of workers' rule.

This movement to the right was further secured at the XXVIII Party Congress in the form of market orientation, i.e. capitalist orientation, as capitalism means commodity production on the stage when the labour force itself turns into commodity.

In the Declaration of Minority that 1 announced at the congress we warned the party and the people that "the transition to market in the form of a universal system encompassing both financial market and labour market would mean inevitable sliding down to the increase of capitalist relations. A forceful "treatment" of socialism with capitalistic measures while neglecting objective processes would not lead to an increase of industry and of the quality of life improvement, but to the quite opposite ~ to their inevitable fall that should lead to wide scale social protests and to grave suffering of people...We believe that this opinion of the minority must be recorded at the congress, so that a discussion of alternative projects could be initiated from the party's grass roots level and that we should get prepared to possible future disasters and should be able to avoid the total crash of the current economic course. To sum it up I should tell as follows: the main idea of my speech is that the party has no right to carry out a perestroyka that has led to grave deterioration of people's lives. As far as the communist party is concerned - the party shall not be able to withstand these disasters and there shall be nobody left to defend the final targets of the movement"(1259 delegates voted in favour of this proposal)

6. A communist party is the party of working class by definition. This is not yet the only condition, but also an indispensable one to turn the future into socialism. This is a task of a great complexity and tremendous historical importance. In his work "Economic content of narodniks' movement and its criticism in the book of Mr. Struve" dated 1894 Vladimir llyich Lenin (yet Voldya Ulyanov then) wrote about 'awakening of human being in a "working horse", the awakening that has so giant significance for the world history that any sacrifices in order to ensure it are justified'. This means that the party helps representatives of workers' masses to free themselves from the role of the working animal imposed onto them - to become human beings again; helps the working class to become a class for themselves instead of a class within itself, a class that consciously aims at their universal and historical targets. This is one of the orthodox principles of Marxism

7 The task of preserving Marxist orthodoxy includes not only retaining the name "communist" Unfortunately there are many parties that have next to nothing in common with communism but for name. Adherence to Marxism-Leninism, the retaining of communist orthodoxy'(V.!. Lenin considered this to be especially important task at the times of reaction) means as follows:
 theoretical recognition of the universal and historical role of the working class as the grave-digger for bourgeoisie and the creator of communist society; recognition of the necessity of proletarian dictatorship for the entire period that should be ended with the total destruction of classes, recognition of the pursuing the course of social revolution; creation of a classless society and the total destruction of classes;
 presence in the party's program of a clear understanding of ways to implement the dictatorship of proletariat, i.e. the concept of the organizational form of the working people's power. Soviets, i.e. the ruling bodies elected at industrial enterprises instead of territorial districts, proved to be the most stable form developed in accordance with the task of Bolsheviks' program to involve all working people in the process of mastering ways of the public management as well as in the process of public administration.
 carrying out current practical political work aimed at organizing workers1 movement, the movement that could give birth to future government bodies during capitalism, thai would turn into the dictatorship of proletariat after socialist revolution. That is the political struggle aimed at achieving power of working class that must be carried out as opposed to limiting themselves only to parliamentary activities on behalf of working people and in their interests.

8. There is only one workers' party in Russia today - this is RCWP. The party was found in 1991 by the forces that fought within CPSU against Gorbachev and his orientation towards market, i.e. towards capitalism. This was the first communist party registered in Russia and in the former Soviet republics of the USSR (January 1991). We've been carrying out the work aimed at organizing workers' movement using often the experience of KKE and PAME. The joining of forces with Russian Trade Union movement is complicated by the fact that the majority of the so called FNPR Trade Unions is pro-government and even has direct co-operation agreements with the ruling party "United Russia" (the leader of FNPR Trade Unions Mikhail Shmakov has joined the so called "People's Front" created by V. Putin for the sake of the parliamentary elections to be held this year). Our party helps to create and develop class workers' Trade Unions. As the danger of that type of our activities had been too obvious for Russian bourgeois authorities they cancelled our legal registration as a political party by a special ruling of the Supreme Court in 2007, thus making it impossible for us to take part in parliamentary elections.

9. After they had denied us the legal registration we developed a tactics of setting up a class workers' Front that we've been successfully going on to organize. Apart from our party the following organizations have joined the Russian United Labour Front (ROT FRONT): Komsomol, leaders of a number of workers' Trade Unions, some left and oppositional organizations of citizens The aim of the Front is as follows: a) organization of the working class as well as the organization of anti-imperialist struggle in general; b) registration of the Front as a political party to get a possibility to take part in parliamentary elections and to use parliamentary forms of struggle to develop a wide scale class movement of working masses.

10. This tactic was met with a fierce resistance of bourgeois authorities As for today we've had 6 rejections of our registration applications (since February 2010) by the Ministry of Justice, as a result our party hasn't been permitted to take part in the elections of this year as well.

We should also mention that the tactic of creating Workers' Front has met the resistance not only from the authorities but also from political circles that service these authorities, first of all from the successors of Gorbachev. The statement of Zyuganov that the workers' front is allegedly a project by Kremlin is a typical example of their intrigues.

11. Gorbachev's political trend, i.e. anti-workers' politics carried out under the guise of communist name could be met both in Russia and in the international communist movement nowadays. In the times of Gorbachev the degenerated functionaries of CPSU used to pay lip service to the idea of serving the working class in their function of the ruling party and did something to give at least some proof to their words; today when being an opposition and having seats in the parliament the Gorbachev's successors exploit the idea of defending the interests of working class on behalf of the workers. Their current politics both in terms of theory and in terms of the practice is much more a petty-bourgeois politics than a workers' one. Similar to the critical analysis of different varieties of non-scientific socialism (Utopian, Christian, bourgeois etc) presented by Marx and Engels in their "Manifesto of the Communist Party" we should now analyze and pinpoint the main features of the market (Gorbachev's) socialism as a modern variety of the petty bourgeois socialism. From our point of view these are the following features:
 recognition of the bourgeois parliamentarianism as a form of sovereignty of the people and putting main focus of attention on the struggle for the so called honest parliamentary elections and on winning these elections,
 adherence to the model of market socialism, based on mixed economy that is actually a system of capitalist private property under conditions of political power belonging to bourgeoisie. Most of the parties adhering to this model take as an example the politics of the Communist Party of China. Nevertheless this example of creating socialism combined with private and capitalist private property proved to be absolutely not attractive to the striking workers servicing oil wells in Mangystauz region of Kazakhstan, where the reactionary authorities together with the Chinese owners use not only local police, courts and prisons to suppress the strike, but don't hesitate to resort even to killings of the workers and members of their families. We also believe that this idea is not so much attractive to Chinese workers who came to Russia in search of job and have to toil under hideous conditions for miserable salaries.

We'd like to warn our comrades - communists of China that CPC shouldn't follow the way of Gorbachev who dragged our country into capitalism when brandishing a red banner

12. The opposition of communists to the Gorbachev's trend observed in the left movement of Russia has reached the degree of a direct class confrontation. CPRF for example declared the web sites of our party, sites of ROT FRONT as well as the sites of our allies to be sites belonging to ideological enemy of their party. This year in the course of the election campaign we tried to reach an agreement with CPRF pertaining to the inclusion into their parliamentary candidates' lists of some workers' movement's leaders (nobody from our party leadership among them). The leadership of CPRF rejected our proposal. One can hardly find a worker in their candidates lists (only 20 industrial workers from the total number of 594 candidates, whereas the positioning of the workers in the lists gives no one of them a chance of winning). This is the 6,h convocation of the State Duma (Federal Parliament) in the history of capitalist Russia There have been only two workers elected to the federal parliament from the very beginning: Korsakov and Shandybin, the last one left CPRF right before his death because of his disappointment. At the same time there is more than enough businessmen and officials in the CPRF lists, these are a general of police (a personal friend of Putin), an oil tycoon with the annual income of 14 million USD as well as the leader of Zyganov's Komsomol Mr. Afomn whose annual income exceeds the joined annual incomes of all 20 CPRF worker candidates.

(Even the bourgeois party "Fair Russia" did include into their regional candidates' lists 3 leaders of workers Trade Unions). Correspondingly the elections' program of Zyuganov and CPRF is in fact a dream about creation of a Center-Left government that could allegedly realize various good programs and implement good wishes of comrades, whereas this program doesn't say a word about the development of the working people's class struggle itself.

13. The struggle for socialism goes on and further aggravates under the conditions of crisis. Orthodox parties on the territory of the USSR have been joining their forces in the form of the purified and recreated CPSU. A resolute separation from opportunists and revisionists has been taking place. We see the rehabilitation of the name communist as one of our main tasks as well as the bringing back the confidence of working class in communist party

To conclude my speech I'd like to cite Vladimir llyich Lenin once again who said: ' ...awakening of human being in a "working horse", the awakening that has so giant significance for the world history that any sacrifices to ensure it are justified"

Let's stress - any sacrifices are justified. We proceed from this principle in our struggle and we shall not come to a stop and shall not falter on our chosen way1

1ХХIIсъезд Коммунистической партии Советского Союза 17–31 октября 1961 года. Стенографический отчет. М., Госполитиздат, 1962. Т.I, с.210–211, 212.

2 ХХIIсъезд Коммунистической партии Советского Союза 17–31 октября 1961 года. Стенографический отчет. М., Госполитиздат, 1962. Т.III.c. 303.