If all this is true, doesn't that tend to support the argument that there are few genuine Stalinist parties around anymore? Haven't them evolved basically into Social - Democratic parties and some into centrist parties least, aren't they rapidly evolving along these To answer this question, it is necessary to determine: is there something essential that every one of these parties, regardless of its professed independence from and criticism of the Soviet CP, holds in common. is yes, and that is what defines them as ist organisations.
The first principle that these parties stand on is that the degenerated Soviet Union their model for democracy. They reject workers' democracy. They reject the Marxist & Leninist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat with its immensely democratic forms. This dismissal is not just a matter of terminology or of electoral cosmetics; it concerns the heart of the revolutionary-socialist programme. Every single one of the Stalinist parties reject the most democratic of regimes yet developed, and Trotsky stood for and fought the democratic rule of the workers themselves in and through council-type organisations. Their model for a socialist regime remains the bureaucratised Soviet Union - perhaps cleaned up and reformed a little, without insane asylums used as political prisons etc. But no socialist Brezhnev with Italian CP leader Berlinguer who said NATO could help his party build 'socialism in one country' try. To be sure, it would be very nice if all the other countries could enjoy the advantages that are to be seen in countries like the USSR and But pending that far-off event, it is possible to establish socialism in one country, if the workers sacrifice enough, if the workers leaders are flexible enough, if the advanced workers abroad have a high enough level of class consciousness. Without exception this theory - or rather rationalisation - of socialism in one country is accepted in principle and practice.
Second, peaceful co-existence & popular frontism are accepted by every Stalinist party. National and international class-collaboration is a fundamental guideline. They see no violation of Marxisi principles or working class interests in such a Third, without exception, every Stalinist party accepts the 'two stage! theory of the development of the class struggle. They may not call it that any more; they talk less and less about the second stage. But that is what it amounts to. Next on our century's agenda is the 'anti-monopoly coalition', 'advanced democracy', 'Peoples! Power! - or whatever the code name may be in any particular country for the Stalinist goal of class-collaborationist capitalist regime that is friendly to the USSR. That is considered to be the indispensable next stage without exception. Someday, somehow, it will be followed by the second stage 'socialism' like in the Soviet Union.
Fourth, and this is important for differentiating Stalinists from the Social Democracy - they all claim to trace their roots back to the October revolution in Russia. They try to justify their policy in Leninist language or Marxist theory. While the Social Democrats as a rule tend to justify what they do in the name of Western or parliamentary democracy, the Stalinists guise their iwists and turns in the name of socialism & marxism. This results in a gross perversion of the language of Leninism. dictatorship of the proletariat, instead of signifying the democratic class rule of the overwhelming majority of the people, turns into its opposite: the brutal totalitarianism of a small minority, a bureaucratic caste...
Finally there are two organisational principles that all Stalinist parties hold in common. One is explicit, the other is not.
First, the emergency measures taken by the Tenth Congress of the CPSU in March 1921 10 temporarily prohibit factional activities is viewed as a permanent injunction rigourously enforced to this day. This includes those parties such as the Italian CP that claim to be the most democratic internally. Of course, the inevitable result is permanent secret factionalism, ramp -ant cliquism and continuous internecine warfare. The rest of the world and the party the winners and losers are only when the fight is over and the 'winners' explain what the losers really were - capitalist roaders, agents of foreign powers, revisionists etc. Second, every Stalinist party, regardless of some final authority to ajudicate conflicts within their own leaderships, and in their relations with the Soviet bureaucracy... That is the role played by Marchais in the French CP and Berlinguer in the Italian...