We publish this english translation of the article "‘Teoria das forças produtivas’ é a base do revisionismo do pecedobê" of the issue 201 of A Nova Democracia:
‘Theory of the productive forces’ is the basis of pecedobê revisionism
The revisionist fraction [of the Single Party] pecedobê [refering to the "Partido Comunista do Brasil - PCdoB], held its 14th Congress during November 17 to 19. the falsification parade and traffic with the Brazilian and other peoples' proletarian and popular struggle was based on the worn out and mossy "theory of the productive forces", so many times crushed by the most consequent revolutionaries inside the International Communist Movement.
In it's electioneering counter-propaganda, pecedobê adopted the slogan "for a new independence of Brazil" in the attempt of fooling the people. But for its internal consumption the chosen deceit was "A new struggle for socialism". This was the title and concept worked by the hardened revisionist Renato Rabelo, ex-chairman of pecedobê and current chairman of Maurício Grabois Institution.
A slurry is dumped there, which is dedicated to show that the struggle for socialism today, far from passing through revolution, has its world vanguard in imperialist China, but only "starting from 1978" in the words of Rabelo. And what means this date? It was exactly when the capitalist restoration won State policies entitled of "reforms" meant to transfer all the socialist economy, in the hands of the proletariat at the time, to an eager bourgeoisie control, who had already taken the State through a coup following the death of Chairman Mao Tsetung, the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the arrest of his closest comrades and defenders of his revolutionary line. So, the destruction of socialism is the most advanced thing in socialism nowadays according to pecedobê. Indirectly also worships the deepening of the semicolonial condition of Vietnam and Cuba.
such absurd is grounded in alleged "structural dilemmas" of the socialist societies, appealing to a revisionist interpretation of the work of Marx to justify "the centrality of the development of the productive forces in the socialist experiences". Some parts of the speech of Rabelo:
"the soviet proletarian revolution in the 20th century had to develop and to consolidate in exceptional and singular concrete historical circumstances, from which resulted structural dilemmas which demanded innovative and heroic historic solutions."(…).
"These structural dilemmas – which are decisive for the construction of the socialist societies – has today, in the Chinese (since 1978), Vietnamese (since 1986) and later the Cuban (since 2011) experiences their own alternatives that are managing to overcome the structural impasses and provide materiality to socialism in the current historical season." (…)
"the Popular Republic of China was the one who gave the first steps to conform the transition to socialism in the current epoch, starting from the consecrated alternative entitled 'Reform and Opening', after thirty years of search and of alternative. Vietnam followed the alternative entitled 'Renovation' which opened the way for its impetuous national development of the productive forces and advance and socialist modernization. And Cuba, more recently, starting from the systematic debate in all society drew the outlining of the 'Socialist Update', which imprint a new impulse to its economy and in its socialist modernization.".
"First issue: When returning to Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, he outlines that socialism is an extensive historical period in the transition between capitalism and communism, whom wealth distributor principle in socialism is 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need'." (…).
"So, in this long transition it can take place, from the beginning, the adoption of various forms of property, the persistence of the market economy, under guidance of the socialist State, being work the measure of the income and wealth. And also from Marx, the outlined view that the new society is born from 'the entrails of the old society'.".
"The second issue that improves the discussion is when the historical context comes to the surface: Socialism from the beginning of the 20th century erupts in relatively backward capitalist or pre-capitalist societies, imposing to the leading forces as a primary task to create (develop) the material wealth and not to socialize the (in)existent material wealth – this is why the centrality of the development of the productive forces in the socialist experiences.".
Basing on these arguments the hardened revisionist finishes his speech with what he thinks be a synthesis of the main developed struggles "in a way or in another" in the direction of a "new socialism". Magically, to pecedobê, the main struggles follows the path of parliamentary cretinism, electioneering and affiliation into projects of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie translated as "National Projects", preferably at the tail of China.
"1) A struggle among the workers movement and the advanced forces in the most developed capitalist countries against the dismantling of the welfare state, and the retaking of a strategy to uncover the path to overcome capitalism;
2) A growing struggle for the advancement of a National Development Project in the countries in the semi-periphery and periphery of the world capitalist system. The ill feeling generated by the neoliberal globalization crisis shows the urgency of the national question, of anti-imperialism and the popular demands as a tendency of the people's struggle.
3) A struggle on a world level whose vanguard are the country that work on the contemporary socialist construction, capable of reducing the disadvantage and backwardness regarding the capitalist countries, is China the most developed experience.".
Believing the struggle against the rotten theory of the productive forces is always actual, seen that it always reappears with different disguises, the AND newspaper reproduces the article From Bernstein to Liu Chao-chi, a milestone in the struggle against revisionism published during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China.
From Bernstein to Liu Chao-chi
KAO JUNG
The "theory of the productive forces" is an ideological tendency of the international revisionism. According to this "theory" socialist revolution is absolutely impossible in a country where capitalism is not highly advanced, where the productive forces had not reached a high level and the rural economy is disperse and backward. According to it socialism will develop naturally in the case of allowing capitalism to fully develop first and that the productive forces had been enormously developed.
For more than half a century, from Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky and Chen Tu-siu and Liu Chao-chi this bunch of renegades of the proletariat wanted this absurd theory to look like historical materialism, using it as theoretical argument to oppose the proletarian revolution.
It was not by chance that the "theory of the productive forces" had emerged in the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX century. So, world capitalism had developed to its agony stage, or imperialism stage, in which the proletarian revolution shifted to an immediate task. The revisionists of the old type of the II International – Bernstein, Kautsky & Co. – to satisfy the need of the imperialists, spread this fallacy in the attempt to suffocate the proletarian revolution starting from the core of the worker movement.
Bernstein was the first to present this fallacy in 1899 in his book The premisses of socialism and the tasks of the social-democracy. He stated that capitalism could enter pacifically into socialism as long as the social productive forces was highly developed. So he said the revolution by armed force would convert in pure phraseology. Arbitrarily declared that the victory of socialism could only depend of the general progress of society, specially the increase of the social wealth or the increase of the social productive forces, followed by the ripening of the working class in terms of knowledge and morality. Concluded: concerning the capitalist system, it should not be destroyed, but its development promoted.
Neither the renegade Kautsky saved efforts to advocate the reactionary "theory of the productive forces". In his book The path for power, written in 1909, alleged that only where the capitalist mode of production was highly developed there was the possibility to transform, through state power, the capitalist property of the production means into public property.
Lenin embarked in repeated and forceful struggles against the reactionary "theory of the productive forces" before and after the October Socialist Revolution. Pointed out that the victory of the socialist revolution would be conquered first in Russia, the weak link of the capitalist world. The triumph of the October Revolution plainly confirmed the certainty of the brilliant conclusion of Lenin.
After the victory of the October Revolution, Kautsky continued brandishing the wear out weapon of the "theory of the productive forces". Became even more unrestrained opposing the October Revolution and that the soviet people followed the socialist path. Closing the eyes to reality, Kautsky even claimed in 1930 that the revolution which occurred in Russia could only serve to open the path to the full development of capitalism and only when capitalism became highly developed it would be possible to establish a socialist society.
So, alleged the industrialized countries of West Europe inevitably preceded the Eastern Europe countries in its march to socialism. Also cackled that without a relatively high educational level neither a highly developed industry it was absolutely not possible to achieve and maintain a massive agriculture production and because of this the agriculture collectivization in Soviet Union was nothing more than a pointless experiment that would definitively find failure. This meant that because of the productive forces backwardness the Russian proletariat could not keep the power it had just taken in its hands, having to let the bourgeoisie control it.
