Defence of the Post-revolutionary States Central to the Vanguard’s Strategic Choices
The Soviet Union, and later China, found themselves confronted with a dominant capitalism and Western powers systematically seeking to isolate them. Let us just recall that, for a third of the short history of the United States, the strategy of this hegemonic power of the capitalist system has focused on the goal of destroying its two enemies, whether truly socialist or not; and that Washington has managed to draw into this strategy its subaltern allies in the other centres of the triad (Europe and Japan) and the countries of the periphery, gradually substituting the rule of comprador classes for that of classes with roots in the people’s liberation movement.
It is easy to understand that, since revolution was not on the immediate agenda elsewhere, the priority was usually given to defence of the post-revolutionary states.
This became the central issue shaping political strategy—in the Soviet Union under Lenin and then Stalin and his successors, in Maoist and post-Mao- ist China, in the national-populist regimes of Asia and Africa, and among the Communist vanguards (whether lined up behind Moscow or Beijing or neither).The Soviet Union and China experienced the vicissitudes of a great revolution at the same time that they faced the consequences of the uneven expansion of world capitalism. Both post-revolutionary regimes gradually sacrificed their original objectives to the immediate requirements of ‘catching up’—a slide which, by substituting state management for Marx’s communist goal of social ownership and by using brutal (sometimes bloody) dictatorial methods to stifle popular democracy, paved the way for the later rush towards capitalist restoration that is common to the two countries (despite the different roads they have travelled). The instruments deployed internally for ‘defence of the post-revolutionary state’ went hand in hand with external strategies that prioritized the same goal.
Communist parties were asked to line up behind these choices, not only in their general strategic direction but even in their day-to-day tactical adjustments. This could not fail to produce a rapid weakening of their capacity for critical thought, as abstract talk of revolution (still supposedly ‘imminent’) and the maintenance of quasi-military forms of organization come hell or high water detached them from analysis of the real contradictions of society.The vanguards that refused such a crippling alignment, in some cases daring to look the post-revolutionary societies in the face, did not give up the original Leninist hypothesis of the imminence of revolution, even though it had been ever more visibly refuted in reality. This was the case with Trotskyism and the parties of the Fourth International. It was also true of many activist revolutionary organizations: from the Philippines to India (Naxalites inspired by Maoism), and from the Arab world (Arab nationalists and their followers in South Yemen) to Latin America (Guevarism).
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