Camillo and 'La Pasionaria" (Sell] at Spanish CP congress SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 20 July 1978 page B power?
workers state?
principles of revolutionary Marxism -apparats.
this. He argues that Eurocommunism, despile the avowedly reformist strategy which it involves, GOVEDDIE countries and democratic characier of the trans too components of the average consciouswarkers."
DEMOCRACY Europe have succeed in challenging the Communist parties hold over workers.
democracy than either the bureaucratic parhamentary West SO Tar so good cratic rights (froodom assembly democratic Institutions (c.p. parlia ment, ere.) THE MAIN issue raised by the development of Eurocommunism is that of the nature of the transition to socialism. Can the capitalist state be gradually transformed into an instrument of working class Are the institutions and mechanisms of bourgeois democracy [parliament, universal suffrage, the independence of the judiciary] an essential bulwark against the development of Stalinism within a Ernest Mandel addresses himself to these questions. Much of what he says is simply the reiteration of the classical that socinlist revolution requires the destruction of the bourgeois state Eurocommunists limication However, Mandel goes further than 15 a posilive AMBIGUOUS The Western European Communist 'socialise in stressing the to socialism in their own countries, are anti-hereaucratic name of "democrac ness of the combutive lagers of the First of question of In other words, workers in Western calmly discuss decisively Staliniam. I revolutionaries are to socialist democracy. bave to sbow that the revolutionary However, greater CRIST democracies the that the workers Mandel distinguishes between denioand bourgeois between the prolecariat He argues that socialist democracy based upon workers councils would involve the extension of the former, while bourgeois parliamentary demo cracy of the sort espoused by the rests because it involves the exclusion of the masses from active participation in political life.
Now, as it stands, this distinction B absolutely valid. It is an important DULLESS BUSE CALUE Spanish and italian CPs are supporting 'anti-terrorist laws" in the However, Mandel is either ambigu bus or silent on two crucial questions.
all, he leaves open the 1975 whether parliamentary institutions are compatible with the existence of a workers state: "We can whether or aD assembly clected by universal sulfrage is necessary, alongside a congress of workers councils, in the framework of a the experience of the TULAR DUESS IS UNILED! countries — Russia 1917-18, Germany the 1918-19, Portugal 1974-75 ob-existence of organs workers eiz.) and purliamentary institutions represents only a tempor ary and extremely fragile compromise bourgeoisie