page break

The revealing debate continues...

As could be expected, the debate around the exile of Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union has inevitably ranged into a number of broader issues. The two letters by Terry Auld and Don Franks in the March 27 issue of Salient give ample evidence of this.

Auld and Franks both comment on how revealing this debate is, and on that point I couldn't agree more. In this letter I wish to take up only three if the issues they raise, and in doing so point to how much they reveal about their sick brand of politics.

1) In my article I explain how in Stalinist Russia and China a system of monolithism has been established. There is one line—that of the leaders—and any divergence from it is labelled as "bourgeois" and crushed. It is interesting that neither Auld nor Franks seriously challenge this charge; and in fact Auld, with his customary clumsiness, gives us further evidence of its correctness. When admitting that dissidents will inevitably emerge in China and in the future, he blandly claims "They will be the bearers of bourgeois ideology, as the Soviet dissidents are". How convenient. Regardless of their political ideas and programme, Auld knows in advance that these people "will be bearers of bourgeois ideology". This kind of "logic" has a practical usefulness, of course; it is much easier to crush political opponents who have been tried and convicted in advance.

2) As a justification for the repression of dissidents in the Soviet Union and China, Auld and Franks attempt to hide behind "the dictatorship of the proletariat". As Mao or Brezhnev might say to the masses: "We are the dictatorship; and you are the proletariat".

But the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers simply to the working class having power in a society, as opposed to capitalist rule or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. And while socialist strive to preserve and strengthen working class power by any means necessary, this does not mean that opposition viewpoints should inevitably be suppressed. At times of intense crisis, such as during the civil war following the Russian revolution, it may be necessary to suppress opposition viewpoints; but Lenin and the Bolsheviks always saw this as a last resort, a necessary measure in order to ensure victory in the civil war.

In general, however, as Don Franks correctly quotes Lenin: "proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy". This means that different working class tendencies should have full freedom to publicise and win adherents to their views, and that there should be free debate and discussion of ideas. Slander and vilification of dissidents is, of course, incompatible with this.

Moreover, in today's Russia and China the stifling of dissent actually serves to weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism cannot be built around the suppression of all critical thought, around a system where the masses must adhere to one line which is set "for them", or else risk being labelled "reactionary".

3) In my article I explained that "when faced with critics, the Stalinist system does not debate with those critics ideas, and engage in open discussion". Auld seems to take exception to this point, declaring that "Readers will judge for themselves the validity of his assertion", so I think the time opportune for a few specific example. I refer readers to the slaughter of thousands of Trotskyist Left Oppositionists (indeed, any oppositionists!) in the Soviet Union during the late 1920s and into the 1930s; to the Chinese Trotskyists who are in exile or rotting in Mao's jails; and, no less significantly, to the fact that people like Auld and Franks proudly boast that if they have any say in the New Zealand revolution the "Trots" will be among the first to go to the wall. After all, Trotskyists are "counter-revolutionaries" and "agents of the CIA", aren't they?

In this debate we have seen again how those who choose to defend the Stalinist systems in the Soviet Union and China are reduced to mindlessly apologising for the outrages which have been committed in the name of socialism by Stalin, Mao, and company. People need large doses of blind faith in order even to attempt such an impossible task; but faith has never yet managed to overthrow oppression and build a socialist society. It only stands in the way.