From Kommunistisk Politik, No. 14, July 20, 2002
Written by Klaus Riis, Editor of Kommunistisk Politik.
Klaus Riis (1947-), who has been active in the communist movement in Denmark for more than 30 years, was the Chairman of the Communist Party of Denmark (Marxist-Leninist) (DKP/ML) from the foundation of the party in 1978 to its 7th Congress in March 1997 that marks the revisionist takeover of the DKP/ML.
Did you know that last year's national elections in Denmark resulted in the
poorest outcome for the "left-wing" since 1964? Neither did I before
I was told about a very serious feature article in The Worker (on July 4, 2002.
The Worker is the daily of the DKP/ML, translator's note). The article
begins with the following urging words:
"Today, the situation in the whole workers' movement is very serious. Last
year's national elections reflected how deep the problems are. The result for
the left-wing was the worst result since 1964."
What happened in 1964? Nothing special, really. To the author of the feature
article, it was "the time before the youth rebellion and before the struggle
against the European Union started getting parliamentary representation …
"
But, and more importantly, it was the time when modern revisionism broke through
for real, ravaging the world communist movement, and, from one country to another,
turning former communist parties into small Social Democratic parties dreaming
about a peaceful transition to socialism, hand in hand with the Social Democrats,
as the top revisionists in Moscow imagined. A few parties and countries as,
and most importantly, the Party of Labour of Albania and Enver Hoxha's socialist
Albania, kept the banner of Marxism-Leninism flying. To the Communist Party
of Denmark (DKP), it was the time when its decline began, a decline which 25
years later eliminated the party from being any serious political force although
it enjoyed a short period of rise in the 1970s.
It is Joergen Petersen (present Chairman of the DKP/ML, translator's note),
chairman of the faction, who in 1997 staged a coup against the DKP/ML - a revolutionary
party at that time - and split the party, who has written the above-mentioned
feature article about the serious situation. Of course, his article is not about
the global offensive of reaction headed by the Bush administration. It deals,
once again, with the unification of the small revisionist factions named the
DKP/ML, the KPiD (Communist Party in Denmark, translator's note) and
the DKP, a unification which, according to him, must happen as soon as possible.
The message of the faction's chairman is the following:
"For 11-12 years there have been warnings about moving ahead too fast.
Now time is up for turning the argument upside down. It is going too slowly,
not too fast.
The facts say it all. Fewer and fewer communists are organized in a party in
Denmark. If we are not united within a relatively short period of time, we will
face the danger of losing more ground.
The DKP/ML, the KPiD and the DKP must face reality: the main part of the
communists is not inside our own party, but outside it. It is not possible to
close the eyes for this deplorable fact or take it as a bold challenge."
This really has to be called a "serious situation": the DKP/ML, the
KPiD and the DKP are losing members. And that is some kind of confession from
Joergen who is always so optimistic and positive.
The thought that the current situation of the three small "communist"
parties is the result of the same thing, revisionism, leading to splits and
decline, and which lead to the big decline of the DKP in 1964, does not cross
his mind. Nor does he see that the situation has any connexion with the policies
of the three parties, policies on which they agree to an extent of 95 percent,
according to Joergen.
The memory of Joergen is short and changes according to present needs. In 1991,
at its 5th Congress, the DKP/ML, being a revolutionary party at that time, raised
the slogan "Unite the Danish Communists in One Strong Communist Party on
the Basis of Marxism-Leninism!" in order to try to overcome decades of
revisionist undermining of the communist movement. At that time, after the fall
of the Berlin Wall, this revisionist undermining had lead to the collapse of
the DKP as an independent party, and the party rejected Marxism-Leninism as
its ideological basis and allowed itself to be absorbed in the Unity List (Red-Green
Alliance), while its last chairman, Ole Sohn, continued his career in the Socialist
People's Party (SF). The KPiD emerged (in 1993, translator's note) in
order to preserve and recreate the DKP of the 1970s and the foundations of that
party.
Until 1997, the whole DKP/ML, including Joergen Petersen, rejected a unification
of the Danish communists by merely organizationally uniting the existing organizations
and parties calling themselves "communist" because revolutionary unity
is not created that way; it is not created by skating over principal differences
as questions like the strategy for the transition to socialism, the necessity
of armed revolution, the class analysis, the character and structure of the
communist party, etc.
Uniting in one single party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism implied, and implies,
the struggle against revisionism - and all kinds of revisionist legacies - which
is responsible for the global setback of the international communist movement
that was stronger than ever at the time of the international breakthrough of
modern revisionism after the death of Stalin.
Neither the DKP nor the KPiD to which Joergen Petersen is courting so ardently
have settled with their revisionist ideology, policy and practise. None of these
two organizations have learned from the catastrophe in the Soviet Union and
the former socialist countries. None of them have drawn any revolutionary conclusions
from the political failure of their common motherparty, the DKP. Both organizations
still adhere to peaceful and parliamentary transition to "socialism".
The DKP openly rejects Marxism-Leninism, and what the KPiD calls Marxism-Leninism
is the official Soviet revisionist doctrine of the 1960s and 1970s. The latest
contribution to a "creative development of Marxism-Leninism" made
by the KPiD is the reintroduction of the old revisionist class analysis that
makes the intelligentsia, from university teachers to journalists, part of the
working class.
On the other hand, the DKP/ML has changed. The party has openly adopted the
same positions as modern revisionism. The DKP/ML emerged and developed, until
1997, in the struggle against modern revisionism whose Danish representative
was the DKP, first and foremost. Today, Joergen Petersen's faction "has
cancelled" this principal struggle, and doing that is the same as going
over to the same positions, which the DKP/ML was fighting earlier.
Now, it goes like this:
"The Danish communists have one common strategic objective. We want to
build a broad, popular alliance against the monopolies in order to overthrow
capitalism and begin the socialist construction."
At its time, around 1975, the DKP named this "anti-monopolist democracy"
and peaceful transition to socialism. This is still the strategic vision of
the KPiD and the DKP.
The revolutionary DKP/ML had another strategy: to build the unity of the working
class against monopoly capital and its state (Joergen Petersen happens to forget
the struggle against the bourgeois state), against imperialism and in the struggle
against reformism and revisionism, and to create a broad, popular unity around
the working class with the objective of preparing a revolution (an armed popular
uprising) in order to crush the bourgeois state and build a socialist Denmark
under the class rule of the workers, under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This remains the strategy of the revolutionary communists in Denmark.
No matter how many times Joergen Petersen declares the three petty parties "communist",
their common strategy is anti-Leninist and anti-communist.
But what kind of party is Joergen Petersen imagining can save the "serious
situation"? In the phrase store of whimper and misinformation, he has picked
up the following: "The situation is worsened by the fact that the trade
unions are much weaker than earlier. The bourgeois parties are beginning to
take root in the working class. The communists are divided and do not represent
a credible alternative for the broad section of the working class. If this party
is not created in short time, the working class will become hit further. We
only have a raison d'être if we are capable of taking up this challenge."
It is not a coincidence that he, apart from the slogans of "a credible
alternative" and "a strong communist party", avoids any further
definition of what that really means.
It was Lenin who developed the Marxist-Leninist conception of the party: The
communist party is the vanguard party of the working class, a party capable
of taking root in the working class, of leading its struggle for carrying out
the armed revolution, and of working under legal as well as illegal conditions.
In this way, the communist parties developed after the October Revolution in
1917, and this model developed further in the period of Stalin, of the Comintern,
and of the first part of the 20th century with its revolutions and wars and
massive persecution of communists. In this way, the new Marxist-Leninist parties
developed in the struggle against the revisionist "mass parties" which
became the model for a series of former communist parties after the death of
Stalin. In his book, "Eurocommunism Is Anti-Communism" (1978), Enver
Hoxha gives a detailed account on the Leninist conception of the party:
"The Marxist-Leninist parties and the proletariat of each country never
underestimate the pressure of the bourgeoisie and its ideology, the oppressive
force of capitalism, imperialism, social-imperialism and deceptive revisionist
ideologies. This pressure and these negative influences become harmful, very
dangerous, if the party of the proletariat does not wage a resolute struggle
against them and does not have a strong organization and iron proletarian discipline,
and if it is not characterized by a steel unity of thought and action, which
excludes any spirit of factionalism and groups.
This is why, along with raising their ideological level and waging the struggle
against revisionism and the influences of the bourgeois ideology, the Marxist-Leninist
parties devote the greatest care to their internal organizational strengthening
on the basis of the Leninist norms and principles. The party is and becomes
revolutionary when tested, active, dedicated, revolutionary elements militate
in its ranks. They resolutely combat the sectarian intellectualist concepts
which frequently, hiding behind the requirement to admit "trained elements",
close the doors of the party to the workers and sound elements from the other
strata of the working masses who, by militating in the ranks of the party, can
gain all those qualities which must characterize the vanguard of the revolutionary
proletariat. (…)
The Marxist-Leninist party … is not a party of words, but a party of revolutionary
action. If its members are not engaged in concrete actions and struggle it will
not be a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, but a Marxist-Leninist party only in
name. At given moment such a party will certainly be split into different factions,
will have many lines which will coexist, and it will be turned into a liberal,
opportunist and revisionist party. Such a party is neither suited to nor needed
by the working class."
The three petty parties - the DKP, the DKP/ML and the KPiD - have rejected this
conception of the party long time ago - and rejected it consciously. Therefore,
Joergen Petersen is doing nothing else but trying to put up a smoke screen for
this when he writes: "In the opinion of the DKP/ML, it is very important
that the communist party is open and brought to work as a mass party and not
as an elitist cadre party. However, this must not have the effect that the fundamental
character of the party is water downed."
All three parties are already wide open and are trying, without any success
at all, to act as "mass parties" hunting members in vain without understanding
that the quality of the members is more important than the quantity and decisive
for the character of the party itself. That attitude is part of the legacy of
the revisionist DKP, which was a little bigger. More lines and views are coexisting
in all these parties. Combining them will not create a strong communist party,
but only create a revisionist party that will be a bit bigger. Because none
of them are parties of revolutionary struggle, it is impossible for a united
party to be that.
A united party of that kind will not be strong, but weak. It will not be communist,
but revisionist. It will be a parliamentary party - and be doomed to a new failure.