Strategy and Tactics of the RCWP

V.N. Chechensev

Chairman of the Soviet Society for Friendship with Foreign Countries

The recognition of the realization of the symptoms of a revolutionary situation is something that vividly distinguishes revolutionary communists from opportunists. An opportunist, as a rule, does not get ready for a revolution. He might be ready to become a revolutionary when a revolution becomes a fact. Until then an opportunist is likely to reiterate a naked truth that a revolution cannot happen upon someone's order.

The arrival of a revolutionary situation depends on the overall progress of social development. A politician should be able to notice those hardly perceivable signs of crisis and make timely and appropriate conclusions. A revolutionary situation arrives unexpectedly for those who can only think in a routine way, for whom tomorrow is a simple repetition of today. To foresee the arrival of the revolution, you have to be a revolutionary.

This is what Lenin said on this issue:

"Marxism does not avoid illegal struggle, peaceful parliamentarism, or "planned" subordination to the historic work.... But a Marxist, using any basis, including a reactionary one, for the struggle towards the revolution, does not come down to apotheosis of the reaction, does not forget about the struggle for the best ground for the activity, so a Marxist is the first one to foresee the emergence of a revolutionary epoch and starts to get the people out of slumber and ring the bells when the philistines are still sleeping in a slave-inherent slumber of the obedient."
V.I. Lenin, Collected Works,
Vol. 14, p. 159).'

So if the gap between the peaceful period and the revolutionary situation is not that huge, the communists should get ready, and prepare the working class, for a sharp change of the vector of social development. It is riot just the revolutionary situation, but also the transition into the revolution, is very much dependent on an active and purposeful preparation of a proletarian party to the revolutionary battles of tomorrow.

In my view, it is not without an influence of pseudo-revolutionaries that the RCWP did not manage to detect the emergence of a revolutionary situation in the events of May to October 1998 and make practical conclusions. Not matter how deep a socio-political crisis in the country may be, a revolutionary explosion may take place at the time of maximally possible advantage of the revolutionary class forces over the bourgeois forces. To work in this direction, to concentrate the resources available, to forge the fist of the working class is the task of communists.

Today, when there is a widespread view in the communist movement that revolution is unlikely in the foreseeable future, here are some views to share, regarding the times of revolutionary emergence in Russia.

The dynamics of real GDP in Russia is characterized by a stable growth from 1998 onwards. The Russian economy is in the phase of the beginning of revival of the capitalist cycle, though the exhaustion of the growth capacity is quite realistic to happen.

The result of some new liveliness in the economy of Russia is the fall of unemployment levels. While in 2001, the level was (in different estimates) between 11.1 and 13 percent of the economically active population, in August the figure stood at 7.4 percent.

These statistics are a vivid confirmation that the economic growth was not accompanied by the growth of well-being of the working people. The sociology experts from the Academy of Labour and Social Relations give an estimate of the number of the poor in Russia at 43.5 million people (30% of the population) and those living in extreme poverty to be 51.5 million (35% of the population. This adds up to 94.5 million poor people, or 65%. At the same time the number of rich and super-rich stands at 7.2 million, or 5%.

There is a certain stabilization of the socio-political situation in the current period. This is confirmed by a sharp drop in the protest activity of the working class masses.

The results of parliamentary elections in December 2003 and of the presidential elections in March 2004 have confirmed that the political power in Russia is consolidated in the hands of the big bourgeoisie.

Based on the available material, I have to conclude a certain level of stabilization of the capitalist order in Russia. The sharpening of class contradictions and their transition into a revolutionary situation can be expected, once the phase of economic growth is over, in the conditions of the downfall of production. The emergence of a revolutionary situation may be accelerated as a result of political errors by the present regime.

The question of how the party is to prepare the vanguard of the working class and its masses for the epoch of decisive battles is becoming more and more appropriate. We consider it useless to indulge in debates with the hopeless opportunist position of reducing the problem to the victory in a parliamentary election, replacing the class struggle in all forms by the siege of faceless electorate.

Let us consider the features in the strategy and tactics of a revolutionary party. In practice we often come across the problem of the principal struggle directions being hindered by a number of unwanted factors, by the necessity to agree to compromise or to attract the "fellow travelers." All this gives rise to an illusion of uselessness of clarifying the principal direction of struggle.

In fact, such clarity is absolutely necessary. In practice, whenever you divert from the principal direction, it is easy to follow the path of opportunism as well as the path of left-wing sectarianism.

The choice of the only direction leading up to the victory is only possible on the basis of applying creative Marxism-Leninism. "The strategy and tactics of Leninism constitute the science of leadership in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat." (J. V. Stalin, Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953, Vol. 6, p. 80)

Whoever arrives at the conclusion of the inevitability to overthrow the state power by a revolutionary method, will consider the preparation thereto to be of a very high priority in throughout all activity.

Of course, due to objective circumstances, the tactical moves by party organizations can be subject to amendments, but in their crux they should be correlated in a system of measures to consolidate the militancy of the of party ranks and to conquer the vanguard role for the working class.

We cannot be satisfied by the cheerless thoughts of the current passivity of the masses and of its inability to go beyond the struggle for its own survival. As seen from the surveys conducted amongst production workers in the Moscow district, the mass of the working people rejects the capitalist values and sympathizes with the ideas of socialism. Some 90% spoke in favour of introducing the workers' control over the administration and the production itself, while 32% believe that the most efficient method of counteracting the bourgeoisie to be the establishment of the working class dictatorship.

Thus even in Moscow, the capital of free-market capitalist Russia, the working class has not quite lost its class perception, not to mention the rest of the country, where the free market reforms have not quite brought much luxury into the lives of the working people.

A worker or a wage-labourer will take to an active action, given that a brave and politically sharp agitation is combined with a carefully thought-through organization.

If you do not set yourself a task to conquer the trust of the masses, then you may well be limiting yourself to pickets and demonstrations, sanctioned by the authorities and guarded by the police, which help the regime to portray the provision of broad democratic rights.

The weakness of the working-class movement is a serious disadvantage in the work by the party. It is caused by insufficient desire to get involved in the working people's movement to form structures therein and to impart it a revolutionary consciousness.

Tactics should be differentiated from strategy. Tactics is a constituent part of, and is subordinated to, strategy.

The art of tactical leadership is that depending on concrete conditions of political life those forms of class struggle and organization should be put forward, which would provide the most direct and accessible way for the working class masses to take on revolutionary actions.

Smart planning of street actions by the Moscow City Committee of the RCWP and by Trudovaya Moskva ('Working People's Moscow") movement in 1991-1993 made it possible for huge amounts of people to take to the streets capable of forcibly resisting to the policing bodies. The use of this model after 1993 led the Moscow Organization of RCWP to stagnation and to the loss of the struggle tempo.

In contrast, the method of organizing the working class masses in the suburbs of Moscow by the Moscow District Organization of the RCWP-RPC mastered recently, gathering people in front of administrative buildings, raising issues which really concern the population, gave a positive result. This was evident during the wave actions against anti-social reforms in the region of Moscow which escalated in January 2005. In many places these actions were initiated by the members of RCWP-RPC.

The relation to parliamentarism is the acid test for the characteristics of the revolutionary party.

Parliamentary activity can serve as a useful complement to the work to enlighten masses and as the arena of public class struggle when direct mass actions are hard to carry out. The propagation that substantial improvement of the working class living standard under capitalism is impossible, not fiddling with laws;- is what should be the work basis for communist deputies.

Creating a truly communist parliamentary fraction is a very complicated task the party has to face. It can and should be solved, if the party is to learn from the experience of past parliamentary elections.

How should the preparation for socialist revolution be implemented in practice? Our party has devised such a plan. It is based on forming the poles of resistance amongst the workers' collectives, which are to become the rank-and-file organizations of the Soviets of workers, specialists and the employees, on subsequent preparation of the general strike as a prologue to the overall uprising.

Life is certainly more complex than any theoretical generalization, and in its development the revolutionary party can be forced to amend these plan and tactics, but while we do not have any serious reasons to correct this plan, the duty of party members is to implement it selflessly in practice at the workplace, at the army barracks, at the place of living etc. Legal and illegal forms of work have to be combined flexibly.