The ABC’s of Communism Bolshevism 2011

Jason W. Smith, Ph.D.

 

Chapter 17: U.S. Establishes Hegemony over the Capitalist World

The Lansky Kansas City flunkey, Harry Truman, assumed the Presidency with Roosevelt's death in April, 1945. Truman had been run by Meyer Lansky virtually all his life via the Tom Pendergast gang operation that controlled Kansas City; the way Big-eared Du controlled Shanghai. In fact, when Truman was first elected as a US Senator for Missouri, his Senate colleagues referred to him as “the Senator from Pendergast.”

Truman quickly became a favorite of the right wing of the Democratic Party, and with Lansky’s help replaced progressive capitalist, and US Vice-President, Henry A. Wallace (Iowa), as the Vice-Presidential running mate of FDR in 1944. Upon ascending to the Presidency, Truman did as his fascist bosses bid, and reversed FDR’s entire foreign policy, within about two weeks (See D.F. Fleming on the speed of the reversal in The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960, 1961, Doubleday, Garden City, New York.)

Truman would see to making the destruction of the Soviet Union his number one objective. What made this wild fantasy seem possible was the idea that the Gringo Regime had a monopoly on the atomic bomb. - And, although the US was only able to make about one bomb a month by 1947, the US ruling families thought that would do the job. (Stalin knew the US A-bomb production rate; the Japanese did not and had been fooled by Truman’s bragging after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about having many more A-bombs to drop on Japan when in fact he had no more A-bombs to drop at all. As a matter of continuing interest, the USA and USSR atom bomb production rate had increased to about one per month on both sides by 1949, with the possible superiority of the USSR in this rate.)

Henry Wallace tried to stop the fascistization of the US Democratic Party and the war-drive of the Truman Administration as Presidential candidate of the Progressive Party in 1948. (Idaho Democratic Senator Glen Taylor was Wallace’s running mate)  Wallace and Taylor failed, but their candidacy which united New Dealers with Communists (the CPUSA was instrumental in creating this Progressive Party) and Negro’s (as Africans were then called; Wallace and Taylor campaigned against segregation in the Apartheid South) did put the brakes on much of what Lansky, Truman, et. al. were trying to do – in many ways it was the Progressive Party alliance of progressive and Left forces which necessitated the US ruling families bringing out nutball Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy to terrorize the liberals in North America into silence. But by the time this reign of terror against the American people was fully extant the Soviet Union was out from under the danger of a first US atomic attack, as they had more than enough nuclear weaponry of their own.

To begin with, Stalin surprised the new US bosses in 1949 with the Soviet Atomic Bomb! Already Stalin had created a buffer zone of Peoples Democracies in East Europe (by 1948.) Then, Red China became The Peoples Republic in the fall of 1949. Even if the gringos had enough bombs they couldn’t get close enough to the industrial might of the USSR to use them. By 1950, Stalin was surrounded by friends! - And, he had his own bombs and the means to deliver them (intercontinental rockets.)

US Picks Up the Nazi Gauntlet

Nevertheless, having picked up the gauntlet dropped by the Nazi’s, the Gringo reactionaries thought they could still get the upper hand because they had more bombs than the Communists. Korea taught them that they were not going anywhere.

Stalin backed the Korean Communists with the Soviet nuclear umbrella, as he had earlier protected the Chinese Communists by distracting the US imperialists via Berlin, threatening Atomic War in Europe. {At that time in 1949, Truman was threatening to use A-bombs against Mao’s advancing armies}. This time, in 1950, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee balked, when Truman said he was going to use five A-bombs on the Korean Communist forces, Atlee saying “...if you do, you’re on your own!” (The bomb itself had been a joint US-UK undertaking and the British had to be consulted.) When I was in the US intelligence service in Europe (1960-1961) I became personally familiar with all of this history, as part of my work in Great Britain, as I have recounted in my book The Buccaneer.

Stalin seemed to be prepared to trade A-bomb for A-bomb in the event the Americans used theirs. The Chinese communists continued unfazed and along the road of national liberation – the first task before they could get on to national reconstruction.

We know now the Soviet Union’s production rate of A-bombs had matched in 1949 the USA rate and probably surpassed that of the USA (See the Russian Academy of Sciences 1996 Report: American and Soviet H-bomb development programmes: historical background. [In Physics - Uspekhi 39 (10) 1022 – 1044 (1996)] As a matter of interest today both the USA and Russia produce 4 new warheads per day.

The Chinese Revolution Establishes the People’s Republic

Having dealt with the Japanese imperialists the Chinese Communists turned their attention to the regime of the fascist Chiang Kai-shek and his new sponsors, the U.S, imperialists; the would-be puppet masters replacing the Japanese. However, there are puppets and there are puppets.

The Green Gang, of which Chiang was still just one member among the elite bosses of this Shanghai crime commission, saw an opportunity to make even more money with the disappearance of their major ally (Japan) and leached themselves onto the US imperialists. Now they really made some money.

Harry Truman would later estimate that Chiang stole at least 22 billion dollars directly from the US Government between 1945 and 1950. Far more than Chiang and the Green Gang had ever made with the Japs. All they had to do was to put up some kind of show for the Yanquis and the trough was open, and did they help themselves! Remember this is when a billion dollars was a billion dollars. A legitimate question could be who was the puppet – the comprador regime of Chiang and the Green gang, or the USA?

Chiang bought California Republican U.S. Senator William Knowland (Senate majority leader) for a hitherto unheard of exorbitant amount of cash. With their ‘bought and paid for’ “China Lobby” in the US Senate the Green Gang soaked Ma and Pa Kettle for all that cash, and much much more down the road. The dumb gringos lived up to their reputation; rubes like my parents kept forking over the cash for “‘never give a sucker an even break’ Chiang,” so that Big-eared Du, and his gangster pals in Shanghai could score again, like never before.

From the standpoint of Bolshevism, Chiang was less and less of a problem because he was so busy stealing from the stupid and naïve Americans that he had less and less time to spend fighting communism. Spending most of his spare time looting his own country and shipping the loot and the cash to Taiwan, the Philippines, Switzerland and so forth, Chiang was less and less of an obstacle to the liberation of the country. Thus, as the peace negotiations with the Communists failed (Chiang had to keep a war going to keep soaking the dumb gringos) the Peoples Liberation Army advanced steadily, freeing province after province, until Chiang (and the Green Gang including, of course, Du) finally had to give up the Golden Goose, and flee for good, to safety behind Yanqui ships, establishing himself (and themselves) on Taiwan, where they proceeded to establish the same type of fascism they had used to rule Shanghai and the rest of China they could get their hands on.

As we have seen Mao had the weapons of the Japanese that had been captured in 1945, and Stalin’s support, and could mobilize the Chinese masses in the millions, so it had always been just a matter of time until the Reds wrapped up the fascist forces in China and established a broad national front government. They did so, in the form of the People’s Republic of China, in October, 1949.

In the Countryside

Now the challenge for the Communists would really begin, because China was technologically far more backward in 1949 than Russia had been on the eve of the First World War in 1914. Mao and the Chinese Party politburo understood, even given the great historical task they had just accomplished, in terms of world socialism they were now right back where they would have been in 1927 if things had gone their way then, instead of the way they did go. In other words, the time had come when they would have to face the question of China’s technological backwardness and what to do about it.

While the US press went crazy inventing stories about the evils of Chinese communism, because the US bosses now thought they understood, even though the communists were moving in a broad national front way, in the end they would take China along a road similar to that of the Soviet Union. However, the truth was far different. China was as far from socialism of the Soviet type as it was from communism.

Mao and his associates had had decades now to think about Lenin’s initial analysis. They were in agreement with it then, and continued to be throughout the Civil War, and now in power it was their task to act on that initial assessment. For the technological situation had not changed for the better, with the possible exception of certain parts of China having been further equipped with constant capital (Japanese industrial plants exported to Manchuria and elsewhere to utilize cheap Chinese labor; the very reason for Japan’s invasion of China to begin with.)

Now, the entire agricultural population had to be freed from the Feudal-Fascist regimen it had been living under (outside the Red liberated areas); a 3 stage process that would take them until about 1958. Thus first, a massive agrarian reform was undertaken to eliminate gentry-capitalist owned agriculture, followed quickly (secondly) by collectivization and then finally (thirdly) a super-collective; one we would come to know as the People’s Communes. Then, or simultaneously, China would have to industrialize.

In the Cities

Starting from scratch the Chinese communists would have no choice but to begin industrialization in the cities. They knew to start with, that even when successful, 90% of the country would still be in an agrarian setting, (unless the transformation of the countryside, which was underway and much smoother than it had been in Russia, should help in not only mechanizing the countryside, but in the freeing of hundreds of millions for wage-labor in the country towns as well as the cities) and the resulting situation would probably be unrealistically unbalanced. That is, full of inherent antagonistic contradictions among the working population.

Trying to spread industrialization throughout the country was a task that would take 30 years before it would successfully get underway. China’s struggle to modernize would take up the remaining part of the 20^th century and was all along terribly complicated by attempts of its own New Class to go the route of the Soviet Revisionist bosses. The latter taking control of the USSR, in a slow and sneaking way, the minute Stalin died in 1953. Further complicated because the reality of New Class take over of the Soviet Union did not become fully apparent until perhaps 1958 to 1960; at least to Mao and associates, who had no previous experience to draw upon. Like the Russian Bolsheviks in 1921 they would have to improvise.

In the end, the Chinese Communist Party would succeed in finding a new way to speed up industrialization. “New” compared to what Stalin had had to do in the Soviet Union, anyway. But only after experimenting with the Great Leap Forward, and then the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, would they find their way. This “new” way was initially just the NEP of Soviet times but would be allowed by history time to develop fully. A process which began under the leadership of China’s “Old Bolshevik” cadre led by Deng Xiaoping. These are other stories for another time and book.

The process of completing the industrialization and modernization of the Chinese nation would get underway once again under new CP leadership in the post-1975 (and Mao’s death) period and would be headed by Deng Xiaoping. This would amount to a “return” to the NEP of the pre-1928 years in the USSR. This time the strength of the socialist world camp would be sufficient to offset the threat of imperialist intervention, giving time for a mixed economy to develop and prosper.

Stalin Has the First H-Bomb!

As if to allow history a brief respite, Stalin was told on New Year’s Day 1953 that he would soon have the world’s first militarily useable hydrogen bomb. Stalin died that spring, but the process he had set in motion to make the USSR the nuclear and now thermonuclear, equal to the USA came to fruition over these coming months. This is not widely known to North Americans who get little more than a daily diet of propaganda, but the American Hydrogen Bomb explosion, November 1, 1952, in the South Pacific was the size of skyscraper and weighed 70 tons! On August 12, 1953, nine months later, the Soviet’s triggered their first one, air-dropping the first militarily deliverable H-bomb from an airplane 27 months after that! The Yanks, already checkmated in Korea and aware of Stalin’s H-bomb progress, gave up on the strategy for a pre-emptive strike against Socialism.

Eisenhower officially withdrew the US from the Korean War on June 8 1953, only two months before the first Soviet successful H-bomb test, and a policy of belligerent containment was adopted toward World Socialism. In the US, with the pressure for containing the American people off, for the moment, McCarthy was retired and a more “traditional” form of thought control resumed prominence in US political life.

The 1957 launching of the two Soviet space satellites (Sputnik I and II in October and November) confirmed what the Pentagon thought it knew: the Soviets did have the rocket lifting and aiming capability to launch hydrogen bombs against US targets without ever having to launch a single bomber! I remember this so clearly as we in the Boise, Idaho, Astronomy Club, gathered nightly to view the Soviet satellite from the offices of one of our members father’s, who had installed a telescope, which he allowed us to use, to witness the rapid, night-time, trans-skyline flight of the Sputnik.

While all this had been going on in the international political and military arena the US ruling families consolidated their mechanisms for economic hegemony via financial engineering of the post-War global monetary system. For example:

“The United States came out of the Second World War as the major and with the exception of Switzerland, the only creditor nation. For the first time since the rise of capitalism, all of the world’s trade relied on a single currency and was financed from a single epicenter. Recognizing this remarkable opportunity to achieve unhindered dominance (and to challenge the Soviet Union; a non-capitalist entity which, at the time, the best western economists thought of as a miracle-in-the-making), the United States took upon itself the role of reconstructing the capitalist world. The grandiose project soon acquired two strands.

   First, American policy makers were keen to end the dollar’s monopoly as the world’s single convertible currency. This monopoly was undesirable because a world trade system relying on a single currency (supported by a single real economy which is only a subset of the global economy) is inherently unstable and prone to major upheavals during the unsavory parts of the business cycle. Initially, they toyed with the idea of propping up the pound sterling and using it as a potential shock absorber for the dollar zone. However, with sterling’s collapse in 1947, U.S. officials gave up on the idea.

   Instead they favored, supported and cajoled the rise of two important supporting pillars for the dollar: one in Europe (the deutschmark) and one in Japan (the yen). The architects were three men: Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, Secretary of State James Byrnes and George Keenan. In their eyes, extending credit to Europe and Japan was to become a crucial component of U.S. policy as it would enable these two zones to buy technology and energy products, fundamentally oil, as well as to attract and utilize (often) migrant labor.

   The choice of Germany and Japan seemed entirely logical. Both countries had been rendered dependable (thanks to the overwhelming presence of the U.S. military), both featured solid industrial bases (with ample human capital), and both offered considerable geostrategic benefits in relation to the Soviet Union….

   Secondly, the creation of two non-dollar currency zones was to be underpinned by political measures to ensure the parallel creation of free-trade areas within these zones so as to carve out crucial vital space for real economies growing around the new currencies.” (From, the Global Minotaur, by Joseph Halevi and Yanis Varoufakis in Monthly Review, Vol. 55 No. 3, July-August 2003.)

Our Problems

Still, a central problem with which we are concerned is the same one that existed when the first worker’s government came into existence in 1917. That is, how long will it be necessary to have this highly regimented, constantly prepared, forever alert, rapidly building, military force in the hands of a working class dictatorship. Because, there is no substitute for keeping state power in one’s hands, nor for assuring the most rapid continuing industrial and scientific growth, regardless of the political, social and economic sacrifices required to do so; and consequences, once having done so.

Probably workers of the early 20^th century, from anywhere in Europe or North America, had never had any choice but to go the Stalinist Socialist route. I mean, specifically, even if workers of the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy or Japan, had been able to seize political power, the level of development of the productive forces in those countries was still far from sufficiently advanced to provide the technological component of the Socialist Mode of Production. That seems clear now. Certainly the capitalist countries then had not advanced enough to create the economy that could produce “from each according to her ability to each according to her needs.”

I suspect this was not understood in the early years of the century by any of the sincere leaders.  We know none of the Bolsheviks prior to October, 1917, would have subscribed to any view other than the one that said (to paraphrase) “...once workers have state power in their hands and the evils of capitalism are part of history, people will create a paradise on Earth in this country (whatever country.)” At the most some of them (like the Russians) would have admitted “...the necessity of linking up with the advanced capitalist countries for technical assistance from workers in those countries, who like us, will have seized political power, and be anxious to help.”

But, the lessons of the 19 teens and the 19 twenties combined with the pre-October real life experiences of Bolshevik leaders like Stalin (and many others who had gone to prison and fought in the Civil War) prepared them to see the world in a less naive, more sophisticated, indeed objective, way. When they did, the Bolshevik leaders realized they had to create the industrial infrastructure needed to support autochthonous Socialism: “Socialism in one country.” They had no choice.

Many of the Bolshevik bosses had realized by 1924, perhaps unconsciously, that even if they hadn’t had “no choice but to go it alone”, it was going to take a lot longer than any of them had thought to change the ideological nature of people, suffering from a mental template of selfishness and sadism, raised in poverty, scarcity and oppression for many millennia. Particularly as poverty and scarcity would continue as Worker’s Governments poured money into industrialization and defense. No other route than the one that Stalin (and indeed earlier, Trotsky) had proposed for massive industrialization and agricultural collectivization, was available.

- And, when it is all said and done, if Stalin had not done what he did within Russia, the course of history would quite possibly have led all of us into World Nazism. - And, from that the working people might never have recovered. We never should forget that we are free agents; free to win and free to lose.

Our Lesson: The Evil Imprinting of the Servitude Epoch

This by the way is the weak point for almost all contemporary schismatic Marxist theoreticians. An exception would be Herbert Aptheker in the USA, who recognized the evil nature of the world as currently constructed and in the last years of his life he said so to his Communist Party USA colleagues. The autobiography of his daughter (Bettina) tells us that Aptheker had his own culturally imposed demons which presumably helped him come to this correct conclusion. That is, the failure of schismatic Marxists, to recognize the at-bottom evil nature of contemporary mental imprinting that affects ALL classes not just the oppressing classes.

People are not born with a blank slate – at least not for long. Imprinting begins with birth and proceeds rapidly apace so that by the time a child is a few years old it is well set in. It is for this reason that attempts to jump into the social organization of communism have failed. That is, first or simultaneously, we need to have the fully accomplished technological gains of the Capitalist Stage firmly in hand.

The founders were right, as usual. Modern communism requires the fully modernized industrial base of the capitalist stage. You either inherit it or you build it. There is no short cut. We know. We have tried. We found out the hard way. It is not our intention to return to primitive communism. From our theoretical standpoint we would be better off sticking with capitalism which is far more advanced in sociocultural evolution, as you have seen in this book. Until the time arrives when we have a fully developed technological base for a communist society we will continue to see all sorts of (historically) left over crimes and injustices in everyday social life. This is not an excuse for what was done to Bettina Aptheker, because there can be no excuse, but it is an explanation.

US Imperialism on the Rampage

Meanwhile, the gringo capitalists had established a kind of 20th century helotry over Europe. A phrase used by MP Michael Foot to me in the British House of Commons over dinner in June, 1961. (For the details of that conversation see the first volume of my autobiography, The Buccaneer). They confronted communists everywhere with extreme aggression; had no compunction about instituting fascism in their own image throughout the world.

Running wild and virtually unopposed by the other capitalist classes and countries, the Gringo imperialists’ wreaked havoc throughout the 1950’s on the people of the world, especially in what they considered their own “backyard” – Latin America. – And, here they badly stumbled. Perhaps most importantly in Guatemala where E. Howard Hunt, (later of Bay of Pigs, and then Watergate, fame) masterminded the overthrow of Guatemala’s first democratically elected government on behalf of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) and his own bosses at the CIA, in 1954.

The Cuban Revolution: New Years Day 1959

It was shortly thereafter that I walked onto the stage of history. I have told that story in the context of a history of the Cuban brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, Che Guevara and the pantheon of Cuban hero’s who learned from the “success” of US fascist intervention in Guatemala and prevented the same thing from happening once again in Cuba. (See the first volume of my autobiographical series “Idaho Smith’s” Search for the Foundation, entitled The Buccaneer, 2003, Jason W. Smith, Writers Press, Boise, 330 pp. The series is available in University libraries across the US and Canada, or can be purchased directly from Foundation Press at). Suffice it to say for our purposes that the Cuban Revolution put the brakes on US imperialism, once and for all, “South of the Border,” and to a degree in Africa as well.

(Note the dialectical conundrum in practice experienced by the US imperialists: their “success” in Guatemala insured their “failure” in Cuba – which in turn led to their defeat over broad swathes of this planet and the current wave of anti-Gringo regimes in Latin America!)

Confronted with the success of the Cuban Revolution, the permanence of Socialism in China, and a Soviet Party leadership rejuvenated, if temporarily, the richest US oligarchs could not decide upon a common strategy for a “final solution.” – And, the Soviet bosses would have to do what they had previously absolutely not wanted to do, namely, stand-up to US imperialism.

As we have seen in my autobiography the US ruling billionaire families would not finally resolve their attitude toward Socialism, among themselves, until they played one last hand. That of the Indochina War. - And, with the rather quick demise of that strategy in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, it was all over for the camp that advocated a violent solution to the problem of Bolshevism - at least for the moment.

The Vietnamese Revolution

Ho Chi-minh had been an early member of the Communist movement. Joining the Communist Party of France while in Paris in 1920, as a founding member, and then becoming closely associated with the Comintern, he had welded together a Party and a fighting force that fought the Japanese and established their own government in Hanoi with the end of World War II. Only, of course, to run into French imperialism (supported financially and militarily by the US) that reinvaded Vietnam in 1946 after a successful landing of troops in Hanoi; the French imperialists fighting to win back the colony they had had prior to their expulsion by the Japanese imperialists in 1941. For the moment they succeeded.

However, with the Chinese Communists now butted up against their northern frontier, the Vietnamese communists were able to obtain all the supplies and advisors they could use. The French were defeated by the Vietnamese revolutionary army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, expelled from Indochina, and Ho re-established his revolutionary Government in Hanoi. Big Power talks brokered the French exit and provided for free elections to reunify the country.

The Americans knew Ho would win a free election, so they prevented elections in 1956, after establishing their own puppet regime in Saigon; it would take another twenty years to militarily defeat US imperialism and liberate the entire nation. But the Vietnamese did so, with the help of the entire Socialist Camp and the international communist and working class movement, as we all know.

Consequences of the Defeat of US Imperialism in Indochina

After the ignominious defeat of the vaunted US military forces under the fascist grouping in command of Washington DC by the communists, the not-so-fascist Rockefeller brothers resumed command of the US Government and military, and sent their flunkeys Kissinger and Nixon to make peace with the leader of the World Stalinist Socialist Stage, Mao Zedong, in 1972. The Vietnamese army put paid to the gringos unwilling to get out, in April, 1975, and their silly puppet government in Saigon!

The New World Order as envisioned by the Rockefeller led US oligarchy featured a retreat from the policy of total war against Bolshevism, and an acceptance of what was now reality. Bolshevism on a world basis was here to stay – Socialism as a distinct system was one which the capitalists of the West, under the hegemony of the US bosses, recognized as irreversible.

For the Americans, without a revolutionary Party with a strong base in organized labor and the working class movement, a retreat from the advances in political consciousness that had occurred during the massive US Anti-War movement (always under the leadership of one or another of the Left parties in the USA – CPUSA, PLP, SWP, etc.) was inevitable. The Anti-War movement had been fueled by the youth of the nation revolting against forced conscription (the draft) to fight the imperialist war. With the war gone the cannon-fodder was gone too. The revolutionary tide in North America ebbed as the Rockefellers knew it would, and the American people were reduced once again to decades of exploitation by their own ruling class.

However, after 1975, with the pressure off, Socialism in China was able to advance into its Second Stage. The Chinese Communist Party led China into an Advanced Socialist Stage featuring the devotion of its resources to industrialization and the modernization of every aspect of the Chinese economy, in an NEP (Soviet Union 1921-1928) fashion

Meanwhile, although the Soviet leaders still mouthed socialist ideas, they set about doing the opposite. Their ultimate, if temporary, success in 1989-1991, in this regard was simply the end of long program of de facto capitalist restoration that began with the death of Stalin in 1953 and really got underway after 1975.

Other than the liberation of Vietnam and much of Indochina these were the three major consequences of the Great Anti-Imperialist War of the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian Communist Parties. That is to say, revolutionary stagnation in the USA, tremendous advances in Socialist construction in China, the final, if temporary, defeat of Bolshevism in the Soviet Union by the modern revisionists of post-Stalin CPSU variety (e.g. Khrushchev et al.)

We shall return below to a discussion of the current Second Socialist Stage and what comes next. For now let us recap the position of the class struggle for Socialism on a global context in terms of the phase periodization of the Stalinist Socialist Stage.

1917 - 1920    Strategic offensive

1921 - 1943    Strategic defensive

1943 - 1949    Strategic offensive

1950 - 1975    Strategic stalemate Part 1

1976 - 1990    Strategic stalemate Part 2      

      1991 - 2009    Strategic Imbalance