The national conference of our party in August 1993 discussed and adopted a document entitled "Contribution to the Balance of the Economic Construction of Socialism in the USSR". The text which has been enhanced by this national conference will be available soon. It was presented at the international conference of Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations which took place in Quito last August. We will have the opportunity to come back to this document in the next issue of the bulletin "Unity and Struggle".
During our own conference, after having discussed questions related in fact to our own strategy, namely the question of socialism, we have analysed the situation of the workers' and popular movement in our country. We have described it as being in a "phase of retreat", pointing out that "this retreat, which does not mean the absence of social struggles, can be mainly explained by the lack of a credible political perspective at middle term as well as at long term".
At that time, this evaluation led to some questions: By speaking of a retreat, would not the party contribute itself to the retreat of the movement? Was not the party giving up because of the pressure of the bourgeoisie which had declared urbi et orbi the "end of history", the impossibility of surpassing capitalism.
These kinds of questions have also been raised in the international communist movement. One of the matters of polemics which manifested itself during the international conference in Quito was dealing with this same question extended to the analysis of the world-wide situation.
It does not reduce itself to the question of defending a more or less optimistic vision about the workers' movement, the revolutionary movement and the communist movement in particular. The word itself and by itself does not indicate that we must refuse to analyse the reality of the movement and to recognise its weaknesses. Nor is it because the bourgeoisie has stated that struggling for socialism is worthless or because they are preaching for an overall ideological and political surrender. To be able to analyse on a materialist dialectical base the situation of one's own country as well as the international situation and their reciprocal reaction is an indispensable condition for the elaboration of the policy of a communist party or the policy that communist parties and organisations are trying to elaborate about different questions of the international class struggle.

The revolutionary flow in the seventies
In the seventies, all the parties and organisations -as far as we know- have made themselves the appreciation made by the Party of Labour of Albania, a position expressed in 1976 at its seventh congress and reformulated in 1978 in Enver Hoxha's book "Imperialism and Revolution" in these terms: "It is precisely by relying on the fundamental teachings and on the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the process of the actual world-wide evolution that our party has stated the thesis according which the world is in a phase in which revolution and national liberation of the peoples is a problem posed and to be solved. ("Imperialism and Revolution" page 150 in the French edition)
In other words, this meant that the objective conditions for revolution had come to maturity but that the subjective conditions were delaying on the objective ones. It is worthy to quote Stalin in relation with this:
"The workers' movement is made of two elements: the objective or spontaneous one and the subjective or conscious one. The objective-spontaneous element represents the group of processes which develop independently of the conscious and regulating the will of the proletariat. The economic development of the country, the development of capitalism, the collapse of the old power, the spontaneous movements of the proletariat and its surrounding classes, the conflicts between the classes, etc. all these phenomena the development of which does not depend on the will of the proletariat represent the objective aspect of the movement. The strategy has nothing to do with all these processes, in so far that it can neither eliminate nor modify them; it can only take them in consideration and base itself on them. (...) But the movement has also a subjective aspect, a conscious one. The subjective aspect of the movement is the reflection of the spontaneous process of the movement in the mind of the workers; it is the conscious and systematical movement of the proletariat towards a given goal. The interest we have in this aspect of the movement lies precisely in the fact that, as distinct from its objective aspect, it depends entirely on the leading action of the strategy and tactic. (...) To accelerate or to slow down the movement, to ease it or to hinder it are the limits and, at the same time, the field for the appliance of the political strategy and tactics. (On the question of strategy and tactic of the communists of Russia, March 1923)
The evaluation made in the seventies based itself effectively on the aspects of the situation that conducted to speak of a period of revolutionary flow objectively and subjectively. The victory of the heroic people of Vietnam over the US imperialism had been one of its culminating points. In the capitalist countries of Europe, in Japan and even in the core of the imperialist American metropolis big protest movements with anti-imperialist, democratic and even ,in certain cases, pre-revolutionary features had developed. In addition to this, one must stress the development of a certain number of broad revolutionary anti-imperialist struggles, as those that developed in Iran, Nicaragua, Salvador, etc. only to speak of these ones. To sum up, we could speak of a revolutionary process that was concretely illustrating the Leninist thesis about the weakest link of imperialism, in so much that the imperialist system itself was sinking in a profound crisis which evidently was going to last long.
A great number of parties and organisations which adhered to Marxism-Leninism and to the struggle against modern revisionism, social imperialism and, afterwards, Chinese revisionism arose and developed in the heat of these struggles or in their immediate context.
Notwithstanding, its ideological, political and organisational weaknesses, the international M-L movement which formed itself was a testimony of the advance of the vanguard; the element whose role was precisely to define and put in practice "the leading action of the strategy and tactic", in other words, to gain and assume the strategical and tactical leadership of the revolutionary movement.
The international communist movement (ICM) showed political and ideological weaknesses and shortcomings that prevented it from playing a decisive role in certain of these revolutionary processes. In fact, in two cases, namely Iran and Nicaragua, the parties of these countries which adhered to Marxism-Leninism did not gain the leadership of the revolutionary movement. The cause of this remains an open question, although there are elements of an answer. However, in these two cases, the concretisation of a M-L leadership in action, which would have permitted a victory, had not taken place. In addition to this, we must stress the weakness of the support given by the ICM to these parties, a weakness (which may be an understatement) that cannot be justified by arguing the mere limitations, errors of those two parties. This raises the question of the capacity of the ICM to influence and struggle for the leadership of the revolutionary movement in such situations where there are parties adhering to Marxism-Leninism. This negative experience must serve us to draw lessons because such possibilities do not present themselves at will.

The retreat of the eighties
The period since the end of seventies has been marked by the collapse of the USSR and its bloc, all this being the ground for an anti-communist offensive the intensity of which still does not decline. Every day the bourgeoisie puts forward new "proofs" about the so-called dictatorial character of socialism, "proofs" that they find in the archives of the KGB, with all the possibilities of manipulation they offer. The particularities of this period can roughly be described as follows:
- The imperialist system is suffering the largest and most profound crisis of its history. The collapse of the USSR and of the other revisionist regimes of Eastern Europe signifies a very limited respite for the system, a respite that cannot be compared with what happened at the end of the fifties, when socialism had been liquidated in the USSR. This treachery signified a historical retreat for the communist movement, the revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement and for the people in general. The collapse of social imperialism at the end of the eighties intervened in a context of crisis of the world imperialist system to which it belonged yet. It aggravated the contradictions and rivalries between imperialist powers for a new redivision of this zone. So, for instance, the underselling of raw materials and elaborated products (from aluminium to the products of nuclear technology) means a greater disorganisation of the market. It permits at the same time comfortable benefits for some monopolies which have brought these products at low price and which take the advantage of an underpaid but skilled labour force. The more striking example of this is illustrated by the swallowing of the ex-Eastern Germany by the monopolies and the state of Western Germany which will come out of this process reinforced, a process paid by the workers of both parts of the reunited Germany and by the people of Europe -through the monetary policy of the Bundesbank- and the people dominated by the German and European imperialism. The crisis in the Eastern countries and in the ex-USSR reaches very high levels and throw large numbers of the population in misery. The "paradise" of the capitalist consumptive society turns into hell for millions of human beings. This largely explains why these people look for the "renewed" revisionist parties which present themselves fraudulently as ramparts against the neo-liberal policy crudely applied by the governments which have replaced them. The electoral popularity of these "ex" does not signify that the masses would be interested in going back to the previous situation. It is mainly a manifestation of the resistance of the working class and the people to the open and cynical policy of the capital.
- The recrudescence of local and regional wars in a context of exacerbated nationalism reflect, above all, the great struggle for a new redivision waged by the big powers manipulating the people. These wars hit the African continent as well as the Middle East, Europe and the ex-Soviet empire. They are the first steps of a general imperialist war which can only be empeached by revolution and the development of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle. In this sense, the actual situation presents analogies with the situation that prevailed at the eve of the First World War.
- A process of fascistisation is observed in all the bourgeois states, a manifestation of which is the activism of fascist parties and groups. This process of fascistisation is marked by the print of the domination of the state through the monopolies, a domination in a context of sharp concurrence between monopolies at national and international level. These monopolies claim for the direct leadership ever all the economic activities controlled by the state -the wave of privatisation- and for a greater amount of the funds that were previously intended for the social redivision by the state -questioning of the social welfare and of all the social budgets. This concentration of economic power in the hands of the monopolies goes along with a modification of the rules of the bourgeois democracy in a more and more repressive, anti-democratic trend, which is the most visible aspect of the process of fascisitation.

Multiform resistance and the preperation of the vanguard
All these evaluations have fundamentally nothing new in the essence. They confirm the analysis made by Lenin about the thoroughly reactionary character of the imperialist system. They provoke in return the resistance of the working class, the masses, the youth and the people. These movements of resistance will develop along with the strikes given by the bourgeoisie. In other words, if all these movements cannot yet be assimilated to a period of flow of the revolutionary movement, they constitute, nevertheless, a process of accumulation which will at one moment or another produce a qualitative jump. It is not possible to tell where or when it will occur, but because of rising inter-dependence between countries, especially on the economic level, the consequences of this qualitative jump will spread broader and faster along the chain of imperialism.
This analysis, as incomplete as it is, makes us raise the decisive question of the preparation of each party and of the communist movement as a whole to assume their leading role, today in the face of accumulating forces and tomorrow in the face of more decisive conflicts.
The movement that adheres to Marxism-Leninism has been crossed by an intense ideological struggle. Just as what happened among the workers' movement, the communist movement has mainly resisted to the multiform pressures which tried to make it give up its ideology and strategy. This pressure has not finished, on the contrary.

Retreat or surrender ?
One of the lessons we can draw from the struggle against modern revisionism, despite all its limits and errors, is that the questioning of the Marxist-Leninist principles has almost always been carried out in the name of the "new conditions of the struggle". It is rare that the opportunist positions manifest themselves quite at once in open opposition to the Marxist-Leninist principles. Furthermore, they found themselves on gaps, shortcomings and errors in the development of the theory and the practice of Marxism-Leninism. The opportunists do not fail to claim their verbal fidelity to the objective of the revolution. However, in the name of the "new conditions", they put in practice a policy which, in the first step, deviates from these objectives and ends in total opposition to them.
In this case, the retreat of the workers' movement serves as a pretext to the questioning of the strategy, the struggle for socialist revolution and for socialism. A deep cliff is established between the political tactic, which must obviously take into account the objective and, above all, the subjective state of the workers' movement and the strategy, attesting that "today, the conditions are not fulfilled for revolution". However, if those who adhere to Marxism-Leninism do not openly claim this objective now, if they do not strive to organise the most conscious elements on this same base and for this same objective alleging the fact that they address themselves to the "masses" in general, they will just avoid to bring the theoretical and practical weapons to the most conscious elements, weapons that would enable them to understand that the only issue to the crisis of the imperialist system is precisely the proletarian revolution and to turn this consciousness into a transforming political and social force which is able to attract the large masses of people.

The priority of the communist work of the day
We can consider the international conference of Quito as the largest survey of the questions to be discussed and deepened collectively, at the level of strategy as well as that of tactics.
In fact, it represents a first sorting out because this meeting took place after years of difficult and intermittent links between parties and organisations. It constitutes the base on which we must work, each party individually and the movement as a collective. However, it is necessary to point out the priorities.
In our opinion, the priority on the ideological level lies in the necessity to deepen the theory of the proletarian revolution and educational socialism by integrating the positive and negative lessons of the first historical experience of the October Revolution and of the edification of socialism in the USSR. In this field, we must combat two conceptions that nourish each other.
The first consists in considering this theoretical work as yet solved, especially by the great theoreticians of Marxism-Leninism. Those who defend this point of view, who appear as the "guardians of the holly temple" contribute consciously or not to congeal the reflection by exerting some kind of pressure towards all kinds of materialist and dialectical proceedings which submits the theory and its appliance to the Marxist-Leninist critical in order to take a step forward, understand what happened and theorise this experience for the actual struggle.
This dogmatic tendency gives arguments to those who are giving up before the pressure of the bourgeoisie and look desperately for something "new", even if this means following revisionist currents as far as those ones proclaiming freedom for every party to have its own way of thinking. This tendency is theorising the fact that it would only exist particular experiences, specific to each country , of the revolutionary struggle and above all, of the edification of socialism, as if there would not exist objective laws in socialism, as they do in capitalism. According to this point of view, it would have little interest to analyse the experience of the USSR in the recent time and there would exist as many varieties of socialism as the number of countries. The slogan "no model" (but who has ever pretended that there existed one that had only to be applied?) permits all kinds of ideological and political contortions, such as to assert that China is socialist or to pretend that it is impossible to give an answer on this matter which would only concern the people of China and which would be of little importance for the struggle of the other peoples. This ideological "tolerance" only increases the confusion and disorganisation. The groupings it permits are heterogeneous and are based on "the smallest common denominator" between all the varieties of revisionism.
The deepening of the theory of revolution also implies that we have to analyse the developments of imperialism since the sixties. The conference has listed the questions that we have to deal with by putting all our capacity to analyse in common.
On the tactical level, we must sort out the fields of concrete common actions, concentrate our forces on actions decided collectively and act in a resolute and continuous way until we obtain some concrete results. The choice of the field of action depends on the real political stake, the political, ideological and organisational impact it may represent for the party or the parties involved and of their capacity to draw benefit out of it. This means that it is better to choose a field of action in a country in which there is a Marxist-Leninist party or organisation.
What is the most important today is not to try to intervene in all the questions of the international class struggle. This is out of the reach of the communist movement today. What is important is to accumulate forces together in learning to lead collectively the process of always greater struggles.
To conclude, we can say that the international conference, its decisions and their appliance give new weapons to the communist parties and organisations to launch a counter-offensive. In other words, in the subjective factor, what can yet pass to a phase of flow is the most conscious element, the vanguard who has decided to equip itself with the theoretical and practical weapons, to organise itself better in order to struggle and to provide the spontaneous movement of the working class and of the masses with a revolutionary leadership.