Russian Communist Workers Party

Compass of Marxism shows correct direction

Viktor Tyulkin, Secretary of Russian Workers’ Party Central Committee

Recently we celebrated together important anniversaries: Centennial Anniversary of October Revolution and Comintern, 200 years since the birth of Marx, 150 years since the birth of V.I. to be followed soon by the 200th anniversary of General of proletarian army Fridrich Engels (November 28). In materials of all communists parties (both by separate parties and in collaboration of several parties) there is unequivocally stated correctness of our teaching – Marxism-Leninism. This teaching with absolute precision reveals the exploiting essence of capitalism that cannot be changed by any humanitarian reforms or center-left models; it demonstrates cyclic economic crises, whereas Lenin’s theory of imperialism explains with great precision current endless conflicts as well as the toughest economic and “classic” external and internal wars. We all know famous saying of Lenin: “The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defense of bourgeois oppression”. Our practice, correctness of forecasts and quite materialistic explanations of what’s going on prove that it’s true. Still to find proofs that this teaching is omnipotent proved to be much more difficult, and now, after the defeat (and we are sure that it’s a temporary defeat) of socialism in USSR and the downfall of Soviet Union we’ve been in retreat. Why so? It’s because it’s not enough to know, one should also be able to turn one’s knowledge into practice. It’s because theory becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses, and it’s not so easy to achieve. It’s because it’s not enough to call yourself Marxist and communist, it’s not enough to swear and hour the fame of our great revolutionary teachers, we should adhere to the essence of this teaching, avoid losing its revolutionary spirit, avoid leaving science and coming over to dogmatism or primitivism.

To do this we have to correctly analyze our own mistakes of the Soviet period based on Lenin’s indication: Nobody can ruin us but our own mistakes. From our point of view nowadays both parties that are in opposition as well as the parties with communist names that are part of state power have been committing these mistakes, i.e. the crisis in communist movement has not only been overcome, it hasn’t been properly diagnosed. Largely the current situation resembles the general degeneration and decomposition of the old parties in the times of the 2nd International. We can say even more: modern opportunism and revisionism have turned into well-organized weapon directed by bourgeoisie, whereas in the past they used to be internal “benign” and natural delusions charac-

teristic for the period of extensive growth of communist community. This explains our general weakness, our general retreat despite certain examples of heroic struggle and a number of successes of different groups in various countries.

Current economic crisis of capitalism is often portrayed as a unique event while given it various definitions (systematic crisis, crisis of liberal model, mortgage crisis, the crash of financial management of society etc.). Nevertheless, we adhere to the classic definition and believe that this is first of all inevitable cyclic crisis of overproduction under concrete conditions of modern imperialism, a continuation of the crises that had started after October socialist revolution. This crisis entered its acute phase in 2008-2014. The crisis was predicted both by communists as well as by objective economists. Accumulation of contradictions, blatant difference between wealth and poverty inevitably ought to manifest themselves as the next stage of economy downfall and exacerbation of contradiction between imperialists. The fact that this crisis has been unrolling at the time of COVID-19 epidemics is rather a coincidence. Both these processes – i.e. the crisis and the pandemics seem like overlapping each other to the extent of merger into a joint interdependent process thus allowing bourgeois authorities and ideologists to try and give epidemics out for the crisis’ reason. Sure, that these are naked lies. In some instances COVID accelerated the process, it was as if to say a trigger, still the root cause is capitalism itself. The pandemics only aggravated the situation and revealed vividly all the contradictions and deficiencies of the existing capitalist social order. In Russia the authorities try to preset their struggle with coronavirus as a sort of example for the rest of the world. Development of vaccine is presented as fulfillment of the mission to save humanity. Meanwhile we can observe drop in production accompanied by growth of unemployment (both official and real), whereas local mortality rates this year if compared with 2019 have already shown an increase of 100 000 deaths and this is a clear indication that the authorities obviously cannot cope with the situation.

Meanwhile Russian authorities use the threat of pandemics as a pretext to introduce various obstacles to social-political activities, first of all to the actions of protest. Meetings, rallies, pickets and demonstrations are banned. Still, the authorities feel free to carry out their own events for their political and propaganda benefits under current circumstances. In 2018 they adopted a law increasing retirement age in Russia (the lowest in the world) by 5 years. We forecasted both increase in unemployment as well as in mortality rates then, still the reality proved to be even worse than the forecast because of the epidemics. Nevertheless, the epidemics didn’t prevent Russian authorities from carrying out pompous parade on June 24 2020 that was followed by a “popular poll” on constitutional changes (25.06 – 01.07.2020). We believe that the main aim of that poll was to enable Putin to run for presidency for the 5th time and even more, actually as many times as he wants (with the old constitutional norm stipulating 2 times only). We should mention that in parliament CPRF voted in favour of that process – the process of improving constitution in the direction of strengthening bourgeois dictatorship. This epidemics didn’t prevent the authorities from carrying out regional elections on September 13, though it was clear then that the second wave of the epidemics was coming.

Coronavirus expectedly caused collapse of Russian healthcare, that had been predicted by communists long ago and that is now obvious for the majority of our citizens, especially for those who have caught coronavirus. Now we can observe in Russia the expected and true result of the so called “reforms” of public healthcare.

It proved out that timely rendered professional complex medical assistance (eg. PCR, CT of lungs), in particular under condition of hospital, cannot be ensured for everybody, whereas the thin layer of officials with their guaranteed access to the system as well as the representatives of propertied classes capable of buying personal doctors and VIP wards, don’t have such problems.

Millions of ordinary people, even those who live in big cities are doomed to waiting for a doctor, or even a paramedic for many days. Millions of people have to treat their diseases, viral pneumonia included, themselves at home. When they ask about hospitalization they are answered as usual: “in case you feel really bad, just call ambulance”! For obvious reasons such self-treatment can result in subsequent complications or even in premature death.

Under these conditions with the healthcare system collapsing, the power as represented by officials, MPs, tamed journalists goes on lying that “everything is under control”, that one should keep clam. Sure that this “elite” has no reasons to worry!

The authorities have to keep lying that everything is under control because otherwise they would have to recognize that they have failed to forecast the scale of the current epidemics and that instead of getting ready for the pestilence, the authorities, especially regional ones, were busy organizing the poll on consti-

116 tutional changes enabling Putin to be elected indefinitely as well as organizing equally silly elections on

September 13. Still, the main reason why the authorities go on lying that everything is under their control is their reluctance to recognize, that the whole reform of public healthcare that meant destruction of the Soviet system proved to be total failure, indispensable parts of this reform being the notorious “optimization” (i.e., reduction of both hospitals and the personnel), imposing of paid medicine, promotion of private medical clinics that have been pumping both specialists out of the public sector, as well as the money from citizens’ pockets. Modern system of Russian healthcare is essentially a mechanism of pumping colossal means out of the state budget as well as out of people’s savings; these means intended to replenish pockets of the so-called

“medical mafia” that controls both medical institutions as well as financial flows in this branch. We should recall that this reform began with the active promotion of private healthcare. It is only natural that private medical clinics from the very beginning were not healthcare institution, but rather commercial enterprises. Their aim was not rendering medical assistance and strengthening heath of our citizens, it was nothing else but trivial making profit for their owners. This goal is not to be reached by making population healthier, it is attained providing paid services to ill people, the more ill people is there in the country, the higher are the profits. The situation in local healthcare has been further and intentionally aggravated by way of conducting criminal politics of healthcare “optimization” when the authorities sacked hundreds and thousands of qualified doctors and paramedics in state owned clinics, simultaneously kicking the doctors out of their flats earlier provided by the hospitals. The same situation can be observed also in pharmaceutics that has been almost completely privatized that resulted in skyrocketing prices in drug stores. The goal of drugs’ manufacturing is again not the treatment of patients, but their sales. The corruption in this branch is so high that former Russian healthcare minister, Mrs. Tatyana Golikova got a nickname “Madame

Arbidol” (Arbidol – dubious drug with supposed antiviral activity that has been never proved in real trials, still actively promoted by healthcare authorities) All this manifested itself with ruthless obviousness in the situation with coronavirus. Was this epidemic unexpected? No, it was not. Epidemiologists are well aware that epidemics of various extent are regular occurrence, whereas pandemics occur approximately every 10 years. That’s why we can claim that the current pandemic has been used by imperialism to justify the next economic crisis and to explain all its abomination. The current pandemic has been paid so much attention of the media to enrich these, who have something to do with medical business and can use this opportunity to get their share of the state funds and to merge with the less lucky smaller competitors who went bust. Apart from this the epidemics has been used as a pretext to save from responsibility those, who organized that “optimization” that resulted in Russian healthcare being on the verge of catastrophe, while being obviously unprepared for this calamity.

The virus does exist, this illness is dangerous, and it affects and kills many people. Still, there were similar situations in the past. Soviet healthcare used to be totally prepared for such epidemics and successfully fought for the health of every citizen, not only the chosen ones and wealthy. We can still observe the robustness of Cuban medicine. In the People’s Republic of Korea, the number of infection victims is negligible. Even China that has not yet been entirely “capitalized”, has managed to quickly localize and successfully curb the infection. Meanwhile the so-called developed capitalist countries proved to be incapable to ensure treatment for their entire citizen. Still they are perfectly adapted to cash in on people’s troubles and sufferings.

Russian billionaires similar to the moneybags in other countries have accumulated huge riches despite the fact economics in their countries are in deep crisis. Their wealth has increased whereas the rest of the population has fallen on evil days. This process exactly corresponds to the basic law of both nature and society: if something is lost somewhere, it can be found elsewhere.

We can find a lot of examples. For example, the production of hygienic masks has been indeed greatly increased, but before the epidemic they were much cheaper, though they should have been free of charge. The rise in price of the drugs has been already mentioned above.

Both the analysis and the treatment are charged dearly for in case they are urgently needed. The rest has been also risen up in price: foodstuffs, fuel, fare as well as the rest of essential goods and services. If small shops inevitably go bust, this means that the big ones will not have to compete with them any longer and they will be free to increase their prices even