Intensification of the class struggle under socialism

Part of a series on
Marxism–Leninism
show Concepts Administrative-command system Anti-fascism Anti-imperialism Anti-revisionism Central planning Soviet-type economic planning Collective leadership Collectivization Commanding heights of the economy Democratic centralism Dialectical logic Dialectical materialism Foco Intensification of the class struggle under socialism Labour aristocracy Marxist–Leninist atheism One-party state Partiinost' People's democracy Popular front Proletarian internationalism Protracted people's war Self-criticism Social fascism Socialism in one country Socialist patriotism Soviet Yugoslav State Socialist Theory of the productive forces Third Period Vanguardism Wars of national liberation
show Variants Castroism Guevarism Ho Chi Minh Thought Hoxhaism Husakism Juche Kadarism Khrushchevism Maoism Socialism with Chinese characteristics Stalinism Titoism
show People Joseph Stalin Mao Zedong Ernst Thälmann Khorloogiin Choibalsan Ehmetjan Qasim José Díaz Maurice Thorez Palmiro Togliatti Ho Chi Minh Võ Nguyên Giáp Earl Browder Nikita Khrushchev Walter Ulbricht Josip Broz Tito Mátyás Rákosi Lazar Kaganovich Georgi Dimitrov Bolesław Bierut Valko Chervenkov Klement Gottwald Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej Enver Hoxha Kaysone Phomvihane Khalid Bakdash Leonid Brezhnev Deng Xiaoping Pol Pot Nikos Zachariadis Che Guevara Fidel Castro Agostinho Neto Mengistu Haile Mariam Kim Il-sung Chin Peng Hardial Bains Sanzō Nosaka Nicolae Ceaușescu Gustáv Husák János Kádár Erich Honecker Władysław Gomułka Samora Machel Thomas Sankara Mathieu Kérékou Siad Barre Nur Muhammad Taraki Alfonso Cano Rohana Wijeweera Gus Hall Harpal Brar Gennady Zyuganov Xi Jinping
show Theoretical works Foundations of Leninism Dialectical and Historical Materialism The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR A Critique of Soviet Economics Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism Guerrilla Warfare Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung President Ho Chi Minh's Testament The Governance of China
show History Soviet Union 1927–1953 1953–1964 1964–1982 1982–1991 Great Break Collectivization in the Soviet Union Industrialization in the Soviet Union Great Purge Spanish Civil War World War II Great Patriotic War Greek Civil War Cold War Eastern Bloc Chinese Revolution China 1949–1976 1976–1989 1989–2002 2002–present Korean War Cuban Revolution aftermath De-Stalinization Warsaw Pact Non-Aligned Movement Vietnam War Sino-Soviet split Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Great Leap Forward Portuguese Colonial War Black Power movement Nicaraguan Revolution Cultural Revolution Prague Spring Naxalite insurgency Revolutions of 1989
show By country Afghanistan Albania Angola Benin Bulgaria Cambodia China Congo Cuba Czechoslovakia Czechia Slovakia East Germany Ethiopia Granada Hungary Laos Mongolia Mozambique North Korea Poland Romania Somalia South Yemen Soviet Union Armenia Azerbaijan Byelarus Estonia Georgia Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lithuania Moldova Russia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine Uzbekistan Vietnam Yugoslavia Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Slovenia
show Organizations Comecon Comintern Chinese Communist Party Communist Party of Cuba Communist Party of India Communist Party of Kampuchea Communist Party of the Russian Federation Communist Party of the Soviet Union Communist Party of Vietnam French Communist Party Indochinese Communist Party Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party Lao People's Revolutionary Party Nepal Communist Party Party of Labour of Albania Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Sandinista National Liberation Front Workers' Party of Korea
show Related topics Bolshevism Leninism Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Trotskyism
show See also All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Anti-communism Mass killings Cold War Crimes against humanity under communist regimes Mass killings Criticism of communist party rule Cult of personality Marxist schools of thought National Bolshevism New class Post-communism Red fascism Red Scare Second Second World State capitalism State socialism State ideology of China State ideology of the Soviet Union Third-Worldism Totalitarianism
Communism portal  Politics portal  Socialism portal
v t

The aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism is a component of the theory of Stalinism.

The theory was one of the cornerstones of Stalinism in the internal politics of the Soviet Union. Although the term class struggle was introduced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the aggravation of the class struggle was an expression originally coined by Vladimir Lenin in 1919 to refer to the dictatorship of the proletariat,^[1] the theory itself was put forward by Joseph Stalin in 1929 and supplied a theoretical base for the claim that ongoing repression of capitalist elements is necessary. Stalin believed that residual bourgeois elements would persist within the country and that with support from Western powers they would try to infiltrate the party.

A variation of the theory was also adopted by Mao Zedong in China.^{[citation needed]}

Exposition and origin[]

Vladimir Lenin believed that the Russian Civil War represented the peak of the aggravation of class struggle which found its representation in the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat and that by war's end and the victorious establishment of a workers' state in Russia the bourgeois class was effectively rooted out and therefore the theory no longer applied in that country. On the other hand, Joseph Stalin argued that the further the country moved forward in constructing socialism, the more acute the forms of struggle that would be used by the doomed remnants of exploiter classes in their last desperate efforts. Therefore political repression was necessary to prevent them from succeeding in their presumed goal of destroying the Soviet Union.

Part of a series on
Stalinism
show Concepts Aggravation of class struggle under socialism Anti-revisionism Collectivization Cult of personality Great Break Marxism–Leninism Popular front Self-criticism Socialism in one country Soviet socialist patriotism
show People Joseph Stalin Bolesław Bierut Mátyás Rákosi Walter Ulbricht Valko Chervenkov Enver Hoxha Kim Il-sung Nicolae Ceauşescu
show Theoretical works Foundations of Leninism The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) Dialectical and Historical Materialism Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism
show History Soviet Union 1927–1953 Great Break Collectivisation in the Soviet Union Industrialisation in the Soviet Union Great Purge Spanish Civil War Great Patriotic War Greek Civil War Cold War Eastern Bloc Chinese Revolution First Indochina War Korean War Doctors' plot
show Parties All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks Albanian Party of Labour Communist Party of New Zealand Communist Party of Vietnam Communist Party of Romania Communist Party of the Russian Federation National Bolshevik Party The Other Russia Stalin Bloc — For the USSR
show Related topics Anti-Stalinist left De-Stalinization Rise of Joseph Stalin Stalin and antisemitism Stalin era Stalin Society Stalinist architecture Neo-Stalinism Great Purge Hoxhaism Maoism National Bolshevism National communism Patriotism Red fascism Sino-Albanian split Sino–Soviet split Soviet–Albanian split Tito–Stalin split Totalitarianism
Communism portal  Socialism portal  Politics portal
v t

Stalin put forth this theory in 1929 in the special section of his speech "The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.)" at the plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, C.P.S.U.(B.) held 16–23 April 1929, which concluded:^[2]

The dying classes are resisting, not because they have become stronger than we are, but because socialism is growing faster than they are, and they are becoming weaker than we are. And precisely because they are becoming weaker, they feel that their last days are approaching and are compelled to resist with all the forces and all the means in their power. Such is the mechanics of the intensification of the class struggle and of the resistance of the capitalists at the present moment of history.

Stalin believed that the class enemy could even worm its way into the Bolshevik Party claiming to lead a socialist state. He evaluated his associates of the day based on whether they acted on that belief or the belief that a party could have no enemies inside it. Tolerance inside the party to those who disagreed with the official party line was called "rotten liberalism" by Stalin.^[3] He believed such tolerance would make the party weak and eventually lead to its destruction. As a result, he argued that purges were sometimes necessary.

The notion of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism stands in contrast to the ideas of other communists^{[citation needed]} such as Nikolai Bukharin (against whom Stalin argued in the 1929 speech) or Leon Trotsky, who argued that there was no longer any bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union to have to struggle with and that the very definition of socialism implies there are no longer antagonistic classes in struggle.^{[citation needed]}

Maoism[]

Part of a series on
Maoism
show Concepts Agrarian socialism Antagonistic contradiction Anti-imperialism Anti-revisionism Cultural Revolution Marxism–Leninism Mass line New Democracy People's war Proletarian nation Revolutionary base area Self-criticism Social imperialism Three Worlds Theory
show Variants Gonzalo Thought Maoism–Third Worldism Mao-Spontex Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Prachanda Path
show People Mao Zedong Harry Haywood Charu Majumdar Chen Boda Pierre Mulele Jiang Qing Ted Hill Afzal Bangash Akram Yari Siraj Sikder Charles Bettelheim Zhang Chunqiao Muppala Lakshmana Rao İbrahim Kaypakkaya Huey P. Newton Faiz Ahmad Yao Wenyuan Chin Peng Samir Amin Norm Gallagher Abimael Guzmán Jose Maria Sison Bob Avakian Pushpa Kamal Dahal Bo Xilai Li Minqi Mohan Baidya
show Theoretical works Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan On Contradiction On Practice On Guerrilla Warfare On Protracted War A Critique of Soviet Economics Quotations from Chairman Mao Historic Eight Documents
show History Chinese Soviet Republic Chinese Revolution People's Republic of China 1949–1976 1976–1989 1989–2002 2002–present Korean War Sino-Soviet split Great Leap Forward Black Power movement Cultural Revolution New Communist Movement Naxalite–Maoist insurgency Communist rebellion in the Philippines Sino-Albanian split Maoist insurgency in Turkey Internal conflict in Peru Nepalese Civil War
show Organizations Communist Party of China Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path National Democratic Front of the Philippines Communist Party of the Philippines New People's Army Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) Communist Party of India (Maoist)
show Related topics Anarchism in China New Left in China Guevarism Left communism in China Nanjie National Democracy Movement Naxalite Red Guards Socialist ideology of the Kuomintang Thought reform in China
China portal  Communism portal  Socialism portal  Politics portal
v t

This theory is similar to Mao Zedong's slogan "Never forget class struggle!" once plastered all over the walls in China.^[4][5] Mao developed Stalin's idea further, saying that there is the possibility of an entire bourgeoisie developing inside the communist party leading a socialist state before the establishment of communism. Mao stressed the supposedly domestic roots of that bourgeoisie while Stalin focused more on presumed Western spies. According to Mao, the bourgeoisie inside the party aimed at the restoration of capitalism. Mao also held that peaceful evolution was the goal of the foreign capitalists and that the restoration of capitalism could happen from within without war, if there were an ebb in the class struggle.^{[citation needed]}

Upon coming to power, Deng Xiaoping rejected Mao's theory of the bourgeoisie in the party and as a result introduced the socialist market economy, justified by the theory of a primary stage of socialism.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism[]

Martemyan Ryutin, a staunch opponent of Stalin, eventually repressed in 1937, argued in his manuscript "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship", secretly circulated and known as the Ryutin Platform, that this theory is a merely declarative one, without any analysis in its support. In particular, Stalin's claim, in fact the only cornerstone of the theory, that not a single class defeated in a revolution known to cease its struggle, is ungrounded. Stalin gave not a single example of this and in fact the opposite was true in bourgeois revolutions. Ryutin concludes that this theory serves for the "justification of the civil war against the principal masses in the countryside".^[6]

Historian Timothy Snyder has argued that the theory served the Stalinist regime both as self-justification for the failures of its policies of collectivization (which were to be blamed on saboteurs rather than on the implementation of the programme) and as an ideological tool for the continuation of mass repression:

Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress.^[7]

Similarly, György Lukács criticized the theory in 1968 as non-Marxist and as a vehicle to serve Stalin's tactical maneuvers:

The idea that the class struggle intensified during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat was another case of historical falsification. [...] Prioritizing the idea of the aggravation of the class struggle served to exclude every factual theoretical discussion over the true nature of the political situation under Stalin. Russia was considered to be in a state of permanent civil war, government decisions were made on purely tactical grounds, and those who did not give their agreement were branded as open or hidden enemies of the state. It was not sufficient to logically refute such enemies, but they had to be morally defamed and socially stigmatized as "detrimental." The maintenance of the Stalinist system can easily lead to a renewal of the thesis of the aggravation of the class struggle and its attendant secret police state. If the powerful bureaucracy remains in place, and if this bureaucracy feels itself threatened, regardless of the falseness of the aggravation thesis, it can be renewed as a way of maintaining the power of the bureaucracy. The twentieth Party Congress rejected the aggravation thesis, but if the Stalinist structure of government remains intact it is possible that it can again be used.^[8]

See also[]

• Cult of personality
• Cultural Revolution
• Maoism
• Socialism in one country
• Stalinism

References[]