Excerpt from “A Power to Share,” a book by Comrade Hardial Bains on the renewal of the political process after the Charlottetown Accord referendum.
Supreme power in the Soviet Union went through a metamorphosis, under conditions of the revolutionary transformation of the society, before finally becoming sclerotic. Great strides were made in providing the Soviet people with a voice and, for the first time in their history, with the economic, social, cultural and political wherewithal with which to participate in the transformation of their society. The content of this supreme power was the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat exercised jointly by the toiling classes under the leadership of the working class. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 is widely considered to be the single most important development in constitutional jurisprudence in over a century and a half. Yet, the deep-going transformation which had taken place in the country, and which enabled the Soviet Union to win victory over Nazi Germany and the axis powers, slowly ground to a halt and eventually began to reverse itself.
When the working class seized power in 1917, it was also expressing its disdain towards the inadequate and anachronistic notion of democracy prevalent in Russia and elsewhere at the time. It instead proclaimed a new basis for power. While the power in the capitalist countries based itself on the bureaucracy, the armed forces, prisons and the courts, the power of the working class based itself on the consciousness and organization of the working people on the basis of democratic centralism. Political power was combined with the enthusiasm of the people for determining their own affairs. For the first time in history, sovereign power belonged to the people. The Red Army arose as the instrument of this power and a new mechanism, a new political process came into being in which the workers, collectivised peasantry and people’s intelligentsia along with the communists could select candidates. All organs of supreme power were elected on the basis of universal suffrage.
According to Chapter XI, “The Electoral System”, of the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics adopted in 1936:
Article 134: Members of all Soviets of Toilers’ Deputies – of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics, the Soviets of Toilers’ Deputies of the Territories and Regions, the Supreme Soviets of the Autonomous Republics, the Soviets of Toilers’ Deputies of Autonomous Regions, area, district, city and rural (stanitsa, village, hamlet, kishlak, aul) Soviets of Toilers’ Deputies – are elected by the electors on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot.
Article 135: Elections of deputies are universal: all citizens of the U.S.S.R. who have reached the age of 18, irrespective of race or nationality, religion, standard of education, domicile, social origin, property status or past activities, have the right to vote in the election of deputies and to be elected, with the exception of the insane and persons convicted by court of law to sentences including deprivation of rights.
Article 136: Elections of deputies are equal: every citizen is entitled to one vote; all citizens participate in elections on an equality footing.
Article 137: Women have the right to elect and be elected on equal terms with men.
Article 138: Citizens serving in the Red Army have the right to elect and be elected on equal terms with all other citizens.
Article 139: Elections of deputies are direct: all Soviets of Toilers’ Deputies, from rural and city Soviets of Toilers’ Deputies up to and including the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., are elected by the citizens by direct vote.
Article 140: Voting at elections of deputies is secret.
Article 141: Candidates are nominated for election according to electoral areas. The right to nominate candidates is ensured to public organizations and societies of toilers: Communist Party organizations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organizations and cultural societies.
Article 142: It is the duty of every deputy to report to the electors on his work and on the work of the Soviet of Toilers’ Deputies, and he is liable to be recalled at any time in the manner established by law upon decision of a majority of the electors.1
This political process, even though qualitatively different and more democratic than that of the Czars and others, was only the initial step towards the building of the workers’ democracy. It was the most advanced democracy of that period and adequately addressed the flaw present in the political process of bourgeois republics like Britain, the U.S. and other countries. Democratic centralism ensured that the people directly participated in making rules and in government. Supreme political power was concentrated in the hands of the workers in the form of executive power and judiciary being subordinate to the legislative power. This, however, was to change. In the mid-fifties, after the period of post-war reconstruction when the economy had largely recovered its pre-war strength and was actually beginning to grow at a fast rate, the new Soviet leadership, while keeping the appearance of being socialist, substituted democratic centralism with bureaucratism of the same kind as that found in any capitalist republic. The application of the principle of democratic centralism meant the resolution of the contradiction in the supreme power. It allowed for the existence of centralized organs of power over which the people exercised democratic control. Democratic control was to be further extended in order to strengthen democracy. People were to constitute the government themselves as a prelude to the withering away of the state. However, liberalism and bureaucratism transformed the workers’ power into restored capitalist power. Supreme power of the working class was overthrown.
In the fifties, there was an urgent need to deepen democracy by strengthening democratic centralism, in order to institute mechanisms for the working class and people to have a direct say in all matters of governance. Conditions for the electorate to exercise control of the elected already existed, as there were no rich or financial oligarchy in the Soviet Union at that time. Political power was already in their hands and working in their interests. In their names, however, Nikita Khrushchev concentrated the supreme power even further in the hands of the Party, bringing out the weaknesses of the system and strengthening aspects which should have, in due course, been eliminated. He called the Soviet state the “state of the whole people” but the power did not belong to them. Hidden behind Khrushchev’s boast that the Soviet state was the state of the whole people and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the “party of the whole people”, was the attempt to change the class content from being of the working class to being of the bourgeoisie. A party dictatorship, in place of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was imposed. Supreme power was held by the Party, the KGB, the Defence Ministry and internal security. Under the cover of “liberalization”, a new sort of restorationist process was set in motion which slowly undermined all the gains the people had made in nearly four decades of socialism, especially as regards the principle of democratic centralism in the sphere of the relations between the people and the state. In the sphere of politics, power continued to remain alienated from the electorate, while police and military measures, intrigue and factional fighting became the ways in which the state asserted its authority. Khrushchev himself defeated the “anti-Party group” in 1957 with the help of tanks which were deployed around the Kremlin. Nowadays it is openly conceded that he personally shot Y. Beria on December 23, 1953. His secret speech in 1956 to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU was the beginning of pushing ideological and political interests through gossip and rumour, a method typical of yellow journalism and of the bourgeoisie. Corruption and influence-peddling became the means of holding power. When Boris Yeltsin organised his coup in September 1993, it was only with the backing of the military. From the time of Khrushchev to the present, it is the Army which has been the force behind any change in jurisdictions. The working people were neither armed with political power nor with weapons to protect their interests. The final act of Boris Yeltsin in destroying the Parliament and the Constitution was the logical end to the anti-people policy followed since Khrushchev.
The weakness of the Soviet political process, which was used by the new political elite for its own ends, was not of the same calibre as that which existed in Britain, Canada, the U.S. and other countries. There was no Royal Prerogative in the Soviet Union and sovereignty rested with the people. In Britain and Canada, the Royal Prerogative continued to deprive people of sovereignty and gave supreme power to the executive, subordinating legislative power and the judiciary to it. In the U.S., even though it is a republic, the political process ensures that the Congress and the President deprive people of all their power. People in the Soviet Union had power in their hands. With the principle of democratic centralism, they had both rights and duties. There existed both democracy as well as centralism.
The principle of democratic centralism as the basis of all people’s organizations is the contribution of 20th century democracy. According to this principle, it is pre-supposed that all the members of a polity have the same rights and duties. All the differences or conflicts in such a political body are sorted out on the basis of democratic discussion and persuasion. While lower bodies are subordinate to the higher bodies, and the majority exercises leadership over the minority, it is the membership which is supreme and holds sovereign power. The working people, who have no interest which is not represented by society, could fully dedicate themselves towards the harmonization of individual interests with those of the collective, and individual and collective interests with the general interests of the society.
Under Nikita Khrushchev, the initial successes of this new democracy, where the supreme power belonged to the working class, were lost. Elections were held every few years in order to legitimate the Party dictatorship, as is done in Canada. Abandonment of democratic centralism meant the elimination of the right of the people to elect and be elected and to participate in governance.
Even though the trade unions, cooperativist peasantry and people’s intelligentsia, youth and women’s organizations continued to select candidates along with the communist organisations, this democracy was never deepened. Electors were not given the right to elect by dint of being members of the polity. The earlier qualification, the one needed at the lower stage of development, was not only kept in terms of the form but the content became hostile to the people’s interests. Electors did not have the right of selection irrespective of whether they belonged to any organization or not. The political process, in this respect, was soon to become of the same calibre as that of the British or Canadian systems, where political parties nominate candidates on the basis of constituencies and a party comes to power here. The parties of the establishment completely dominate the political process according to the law, as has been elaborated in earlier chapters.
The oft-repeated criticism of the Soviet political process that it recognizes only one party is invalid because, if the electors do not have the unrestricted right to select their own candidates, it is irrelevant whether the candidates are selected by one or many parties. It is still a party which comes to power, not the people. The first step in terms of the franchise is the right to elect and be elected. The process of candidate selection can either eliminate the possibility of empowerment or guarantee it. No present-day constitution in the world provides for a process which guarantees empowerment.
By demanding that the political parties must not be permitted to select candidates and that the people exercise power over the elected, the resolution of the contradiction in the supreme power will begin. The period in which society is being transformed from capitalism to socialism is a period of the dictatorship of the proletariat in which supreme power eventually dissolves or “withers away”. This process, once established, would open the path for the progress of society. People will have to bring about the democratic renewal of the political process. Enabling legislation would ensure:
1. The election of Constituency Committees as permanent bodies in the electoral district; and
2. Constituency Committees or equivalent elected bodies which could oversee and carry out selection, election, the initiation of new legislation, reporting to the electorate and recall. In the absence of these enabling mechanisms, the empowerment of the electorate cannot be fully realized.
The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (1982), on the other hand, as compared to the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, is a retrogressive document. Article 51 places the “interests of the state, of society and of the collective” above those of the individual:
The exercise by citizens of the People’s Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.2
How can the interests of the state be above those of the individual? The state is an organization which is established by individuals. At the same time, individuals are born to the society and, because of this, they have claims upon society. How can the state declare that an individual’s claim on society is not in the interests of the state or must be subordinate to the interests of the state? When the working class is in power, its interests are necessarily represented by the society and its state.
It is not acceptable to equate the general interest of the state with the general interest of the society and of the collective. In actual fact, the individual, the collective and the state or any other political formation, including the Communist Party, are all subordinate to the general interest of society. At the same time, the interests of the individual cannot be violated or compromised under the pretext that doing so is in the general interest of society. Once such a thing is done then the general interests of the society are compromised. The individual interests of the member of society, the citizen, must always be harmonized with the general interests of the society by paying utmost attention to the individual and the general interests.
Article 51 reveals the character of a state which is the same as the state emerging out of the opposition to feudalism but shying away from going further.
How is it possible to have Article 51 state that the “exercise by citizens of the People’s Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state”? The state should guarantee “freedoms and rights” and not limit them or interpret them in any way it likes. Unless the state guarantees rights and freedoms, it will not be democratic. The Constitution merely states that rights and freedoms can and will be solely interpreted by the state.
Furthermore, the collective cannot be put at a par with the state or the society. A collective is a transitional, a passing phenomenon as is the state. Neither society nor the individual are passing phenomena. An individual has rights and freedoms because she or he is a human being. This fact of being human supersedes any interpretation a state or a collective may give. The state can only guarantee those rights and freedoms and not demand that they be exercised in a manner that is approved by the state. Such a demand would necessarily be a step towards the denial of rights and freedoms. In the same fashion, a collective cannot be above the individual. If a collective functions in this manner, to speak of rights and freedoms of the individual makes no sense whatsoever. The general interest of society can supersede the interests of the individual only by harmonizing the two, not by putting one on top of the other in contradiction with each other.
Notes
1 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics adopted at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of the Soviets of the U.S.S.R., December 5, 1936, (New York: International Publishers, 1937), pp. 45-46.
2 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Adopted on December 4, 1982, at the Fifth Session of the Fifth People’s National Assembly of the Republic of China (Beiching: Foreign Languages Press, 1983), p. 25.
(A Power to Share: A Modern Definition of the Political Process and A Case for its Democratic Renewal, Canadian Renewal Party, Ottawa 1993, pp. 67-70.)