The theoretical and ideological restructuring of the international communist movement on a Marxist - Leninist basis demands the continue deepening in the study of socialist construction in the 20th century and scientifically analyze the causes of the triumph of capitalist counterrevolution in the USSR and the rest European socialist countries.

The capitalist restoration had internal and external causes. However, when addressing the latter, the analyses tend to focus on the study of the different lines of attack against socialism launched by the imperialist powers in the political, military, economic, ideological and psychological fields.

The external factors were decisive, and confirmed that the confrontation between the imperialist and the socialist camp was the genuine expression of the class struggle at international scale. [1] However, we should deepen in the study of trends, such as Eurocommunist one, that contributed to weaken the socialist power, acting within the labor movement and the international communist movement itself, and interacted often with the opportunistic policies of communist and workers' parties who were in power.

The imperialist ideological centers assisted and widely distributed Eurocommunist positions in front of the line that they contemptuously called “orthodox” or “pro-Soviet”. Eurocommunism, represented mainly by the parties of Italy, France and Spain, is named after the capitalist news agencies, who with this name, referred to organizations that shared the defense of a number of points of view:

• Opposition to the existence of an organized international communist movement, defending the thesis of so-called “polycentrism” in face of the experience of the Communist International (Komintern) and the Information Office of the Communist and Workers' Parties (Kominform).
• The denial of the “dictatorship of proletariat”, against which they defended the “plurality of paths to socialism”, and especially the parliamentary way, in cooperation with the Social-Democrat and Christian forces, assuming the multi-party politics in a democratic-bourgeois framework.
• The replacement of the category of “proletarian internationalism”, which they identified with the unconditional defense of the Soviet Union and the political line of the CPSU, with that of “internationalist solidarity” or “new internationalism”.
• The acceptance of the framework of the then called European Economic Community, under the call to defend their social rights within and workers' participation in its design.
• The constant and open criticism to the USSR and the socialist countries from the standpoint of human rights and individual freedoms in their bourgeois concept.
• The revision and destruction of the “party of a new type” coined by Lenin, as by denying in one degree or another the revolutionary tasks of the communist party at the same time were denied the revolutionary principles in what refers to organizatin and functioning.

Eurocommunism affected communist and workers' parties from different latitudes, some of them in power and, like other opportunistic currents throughout history, Eurocommunism had a clear international vocation, despite having as a thesis being a header phenomenon attending to the national particularities and conditions. In this regard, Enrico Berlinguer, Secretary General of PCI, said:

“We obviously are not who forged this term, but the very fact that it circulates so widely shows how the countries of Western Europe deeply aspire to see the affirmation and progress of new type solutions in the transformation of society in a socialist sense.”

And the Secretary General of the PCE, Santiago Carrillo, added:

“... there is no such thing as Eurocommunism, since some non-European communist parties, as the Japanese Communist Party, cannot be included under that label”. [2]

Despite the inconsistencies and falsifications that have characterized the life of Carrillo, who months after denying the existence of “Eurocommunism” he published his book entitled "Eurocommunism and State" saw the light, he was right on one thing: the phenomenon was not limited to Western Europe.

The basis for the birth of this revisionist trend had been stablished long before Eurocommunism was presented to society by Carrillo, Berlinguer and Marchais.

After World War II, a difficult stage starts for the world revolutionary movement. The destruction caused by the German invasion of the USSR, and the subsequent efforts devoted to its reconstruction, we amust add in the political field the loss of hundreds of thousands of communist cadres who had fallen in battle against Nazi - fascism, what affected in a decisive way the CPSU and other communist parties in Europe.

The capitalist powers, led by the United States that did not experience the war on its soil and became the strongest power in the imperialist camp, immediately unleashed the so-called “Cold War” and the arms race, implementing a whole battery of measures designed to undermine the socialist power.

The internal counterrevolution never relinquished to overthrow the workers' power. With the imperialist assistance, counterrevolutionary activities were organized in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1947-48), in the German Democratic Republic (1953) and in Poland and Hungary (Fall 1956).

The class struggle continued and deepened under new conditions, the imperialist system showed signs of strength and demonstrated its ability to restructuring, creating international organizations to try to mitigate its contradictions and increase pressure on the socialist bloc (NATO, IMF, World Bank, etc.).

Within the CPSU important discussions on the building of socialism in post-war conditions were initiated, particularly on the economic laws in socialism and their character. The Party's leadership actively participated in the debates. Stalin openly fought against opportunist positions in the controversy arising about the draft of the Handbook on Political Economy. [3] After his death on March 5, 1953, the struggle continued within the CPSU and increased in the preparation and discussions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, held in February 1956.

The opportunist bloc led by N. S. Khrushchev opened the gates to the thesis of the “plurality of forms of transition to socialism”, revising Marxist theory about the class character of the state and the Leninist theory of revolution. The Report of the CPSU Central Committee at the 20th Congress, presented by Khrushchev, stated:

“... the question arises on the possibility of also taking advantage of the parliamentary road to the transition to socialism.”

“... the working class, uniting around itself the working peasants, intellectuals, all patriotic forces ... can defeat the reactionary antipopular forces, win a solid majority in parliament and transform it, from being an organ of bourgeois democracy, to being the true instrument of popular will. In this case, this institution, traditional for many highly developed capitalist countries, may become the body of true democracy, the democracy for the workers” [4]

In the speech delivered by M.A. Suslov on February 16, he said:

“In the capitalist countries ... the working class and its political supporters have full ability to group around themselves, on only one democratic platform, the overwhelming majority of the nation, the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals and even patriotic layers of the bourgeoisie, thus undoubtedly facilitating the working class' victory.” [5]

The peaceful transition to socialism by parliamentary means were not known in any country. However, the subjectivity of this thesis and its impact on the strategy of some communist parties came forward immediately.

In his speech to the 20th Congress, A.I. Mikołaj clearly perceived that the thesis about the gradual and peaceful transition to socialism came perilously close to the position of social-democracy, and brought about the following justification:

“It is well known that, on some occasions, some socialist parties won the parliamentary majority and that in a number of countries there have existed and even exist socialist governments. But even in these cases, the case is limited to making small concessions to the workers without any socialist construction. The state management must be in the hands of the working class, the working class must be prepared not only from the standpoint of the organization, but politically and theoretically to fight for socialism, it does not have to comply with some crumbs capitalist table but, the majority, hast to the power and destroy the private ownership of the key means of production.” [6]

Marxism-Leninism and its differences with social-democracy are limited, therefore, to a matter of will: the socialists do not want to march from reform to reform towards socialism, we do want. Marxism was pulverized, the Leninist theory of state was buried and its place was taken by the most vulgar reformism and the complete falsification of Marxism.

These positions came together with opportunist approaches in economic matters, state organization and in external matters. The opportunis turn was completed with the so-called Khrushchev's Secret Report presented to the Congress by surprise, breaking the principles of collective leadership that were said to be respected.

After the 20th Congress, and once released the “Secret” Report, the process known as “de-Stalinization”started immediately and it was greeted with relief and without question by several parties of Western Europe deleted reference to Italian CP.

On 8-14 December 1956, ten months after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the 8th Congress of the PCI meets in Rome and approves after a proposal by Palmiro Togliatti, the so-called “Italian path to socialism”, that had been preceded of the so-called “British path to socialism” adopted in the Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain held in 1951, opposing the logics of “national paths” to the proven Marxits-Leninist theory of revolution.

This emphasizes in the deepening of the freedoms to achieve the economic and social democracy. Thus arises the concept of “advanced democracy” or “antimonopolist democracy” that the culmination of its development would then address the transition to socialism.

Togliatti, taking the lead of the European leaders so-called “renovators”, claims in his work known as “Yalta Memorial” that:

“Overall, we start, and we are always convinced that it must be like this, in the development of our policy, from the positions of the 20th Congress. [7] But those positions are in need today, to be deepened and developed. For example, a deeper reflection on the issue of the possibility of a peaceful road to access to socialism leads us to clarify what we mean by democracy in a bourgeois state, how the limits of freedom and democratic institutions can be expanded and what are the most effective forms of participation of the working and toiling masses in the economic and political life. This raises the question of the possibility of winning positions of power by the working classes in the area of a state that has not changed its nature of a bourgeois state and, therefore, whether it is possible to fight for progressive transformation from the inside of that nature”. [8]

While different parties begin to take such positions, attacks arise against the socialist countries, especially against the Soviet Union. The first major crack made public in the European communist movement takes place after the proletarian internationalist intervention of the Warsaw Pact countries in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The Italian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Spain and the Romanian Communist Party publicly condemned the intervention.

The anti-Sovietism is integrated in the political line of the parties that embrace the “Eurocommunism” and becomes one of its main features. Any excuse is good as long as it is useful for a differntiation from the USSR, as long as it is presented to the public as a separate option from the main bastion of the international working class, although the anti-Soviet criticism openly matches with imperialist propaganda and objectively contributes to weaken the socialist camp.

The Italian path has a new stadium with the concept of “historic compromise” developed by Enrico Berlinguer. The road to socialism is conceived on the basis of a broad multi-party alliance, which in practice means for the CP's to abandon its leading role, its vanguard role. The so-called “democratic socialism” or “socialism in freedom” adopts its final shape in open antagonism with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Eurocommunist parties assume the so-called bourgeois “formal freedoms” as their own position and defend the possibility of deepening the bourgeois democracy - which they stop to call like that - to achieve socialism, abandoning the social revolution and the revolutionary power of the working class.

In this perspective, in 1975 the Italian Communist Party ((PCI) and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) made a joint statement on their model of transition to socialism in “peace and freedom”. That is the first step to the Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe held in East Berlin on 29 and 30 June 1976, whose results had a wide global resonance. The parties of Italy, France and Spain, supported at a greater or lesser extent by the intervention of some parties in power - as the Jugoslav party – openly presented in a common front the Eurocommunist platform.

The Italian Communist Party openly advocated for the dismantling of the communist movement, saying to the Conference of Berlin [9]:

“... in it, the principles of autonomy that now govern the collaborative relationship between the communist parties have been strongly reaffirmed ...

The success of that policy of peace and coexistence in Europe is a precondition for democratic and peaceful progress of the Italian people towards profound socialist type transformations.”

Enrico Berlinguer declared:

“... our Conference is not that of an international communist organization, which does not exist or can exist in any form nor internationally, nor at European level ...”

The French Communist Party [10] emphasized the so-called democratic path and the national particularities:

“... Our party has put before the Conference the main ideas of its 22nd Congress, and in particular the democratic road to socialism, which takes into account national peculiarities of France, inviting the workers, our people.”

After the Central Committee plenum held in Rome on 28 and 29 July 1976, the Communist Party of Spain made in a press conference the most complete exposition of these allegedly new revisionist positions [11]:

“The living conditions of the various communist parties, their characteristics, the same hisstory of each and their peoples, are different enough so that diversity is the crucial note that marks the mutual relationships ...

This diversity limits the issues on which it is possible to have a unity of opinion, as has been found during these two years of preparation.

But there's something deeper. This diversity creates a deep logical diversity of ideas especially on a set of key issues about the nature of socialism, on many contemporary problems, on many ideological issues, on political democracy ...

Also in Berlin has become clear that in Europe there is a group of communist parties whose political line, whose analysis, whose conception of socialism largely coincide ...

These parties are fighting for the democratic path to socialism, and for socialism in a democracy, with the full exercise of the rights of the individual, with multiple political parties, with respect to the alternation in power as the people express their will through universal suffrage. All of these parties are in favor of a socialism in which there is the most scrupulous respect for freedom of conscience and religious practice, freedom of expression, of assembly, scientific, literary and artistic freedom, the right to strike: a socialism in which the state has no official ideology.”

The “Eurocommunism” openly fully spoke as a right revisionist current, fully assuming the postulates of liberalism around the most varied political aspects: democracy, freedom, religion, etc.

Under the defense of political freedoms and of bourgeois democracy, especially the multi-party system and electoral vote, they buried the class struggle, denying the role of class domination of the state. They practiced a constant and increasing policy of aggression against the socialist countries and tried to blow by every means available the coordination and advancement of the international communist movement, becoming functional in the name of national particularities and democratic socialism in functional to the anticommunist strategy of the imperialist powers.

In their struggle against Marxism-Leninism, they revived the theories of Kautsky that “the opposition of the two socialist currents” (ie, the Bolsheviks and the non-Bolshevik) is “the opposition of two radically different methods: the democratic and dictatorial” [12], and, as Kautsky, they tried to convert Marx in an ordinary liberal. They furiously attacked the Leninist premise that Marxist is who extends the appreciation of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the problem of the attitude of the proletarian state against bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy against bourgeois democracy.

As a revisionist current, the “Eurocommunism” was expressed as a continuation of the ideological struggle of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary ideas on the basis of formal recognition of Marxism, and as Kautsky did with respect to the theory of the state, they called the same Bernstein to fight in their ranks, hoisting again the flag that “the ultimate goal is nothing, the movement is everything”, or, which is the same, “the socialist revolution is nothing, the reforms are everything”. Thus, they stopped any revolutionary attempt in the interests of a broad alliance with Social- Democrats and Christians meant to win a parliamentary majority that, reform after reform someday would reach socialism using as a weapon the bourgeois state apparatus, even in alliance with the bourgeoisie itself joined into a national antimonopoly front.

And, they threw themselves to destroy the Leninist character of their respective parties and the communist militancy. [13] How could it be otherwise taking into account the organic link that, in the words of Lenin, exists between the issues of organization and programmatic revisionist views, their politics and tactics.

After the defeat in the national revolutionary war against fascism (1936 -39), the political leadership of the PCE did not undertake a rigorous analysis of the causes of the defeat and the role of the Party in the final phase of the war. The party leadership, with Comrade Jose Díaz [14] seriously ill and being itself dispersed in different countries, failed to articulate a strategy for continuing the war against fascism until the beginning of the Second World War. There was no fallback plan, and even less, a forecast that allowed to continue the organized struggle underground.

From 1932 to 1954 no Congrses of the PCE was held [15], allowing a constant and progressive weakening of the Leninist principles of collective leadership and an ideal setting for all types of maneuvers made without considering the organicity and the struggling basis and militants of the party. Situation further enhanced by a Political Bureau, whose members lived thousands of miles away from each other and without the presence of an articulate and effective political leadership inside the country.

Parallel to the formulation of the “Italian path to socialism”, the PCE adopts in Spain the so-called “policy of national reconciliation”, while undertaking a disastrous retreat of the guerrilla struggle. With such precedents, a hard battle begins in the leadership of the PCE.

Led by Carrillo, appointed Secretary General at the 6th Congress, held in Prague in December of 1959 and January 1960, the leadership prepares the so-called “democratic way out”, designs the so-called “alliance of labour and culture forces” and progressively imposes a revisionist and anti-Soviet line, eliminating prominent leaders, removing the cadres who, in the party leadership remained loyal to Marxism-Leninism, and expelling thousands of honest communists who heroically fought inside the country.

The Eurocommunist fraction relied all the time on the results of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, especially in the thesis that asserted the plurality of forms in the transition to socialism and the criticism of Stalin contained in the Secret Report, which served as a pretext to defame the USSR and move away from the teachings of the October Revolution in the revolutionary transition and the building of socialism. They also relied for that purpose in the counterrevolutionary events of October-November in the Popular Republic of Hungary and especially in the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia, used together with the above to undermine the confidence of the militants and the working class in socialism and reduce the immense prestige of the USSR.

The opportunism of the Eurocommunist leadership of the PCE knew no bounds. In 1970 Santiago Carrillo said to the French daily Le Monde:

“We conceive a socialist Spain where the Prime Minister would be a Catholic and where the CP would be a minority ... Spanish socialism will march with the sickle and hammer in one hand and the cross on another.” [16]

Since then, the wording of the so-called “covenant for freedom” comes to the forefront in the PCE. As in the PCI with the “historic compromise”, the above mentioned covenant, the maximum expression of the triumph of interclassism in the PCE, is not conceived as an alliance of classes or political organizations to overcome the dictatorship, but in its Eurocommunist application, it becomes the desperate search for recognition by the ruling classes, especially of the oligarchy that opposed their interests to Franco's autocratic tendency and struggled within the regime for the Spanish integration in the European Economic Community, which at the political level required a change in the form of domination, a protected passage from dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy.

And in this passage the revisionist PCE was committed. First accepting the “Moncloa Agreements” which subjected the interests of the working class and popular sectors to the economic interests of the oligarchy, in the middle of the economic crisis, playing a role of containment of workers' struggle. After that, accepting the monarchy, burying the history of anti-fascist struggle of the working class and the Spanish people, giving up the re-establishment of republican legality and supporting the Constitution of 1978, which consecrated the change from one form to another in the exercise of the dictatorship of capital.

In parallel, from the CC plenary held in 1976 in Rome, the Leninist conception of the Party, its place and the its role in society, its functions and essential tasks, its organizational principles, were attacked. In a party with thousands of purged members, the doors of the party were opened wide to thousands of new members without any control or revolutionary monitoring. All conditions were stablished in order to formally approve, in the 9th Congress, held in Madrid in 1978, the abandonment of Marxism-Leninism and the consecration of the revisionist policy imposed after a long process to the Spanish communists.

The Party of the national revolutionary war, the guerrilla warfare, whose militants formed in the resistance against Nazi-fascism in all European countries and fought without mercy together with the Soviet people in the battles of Leningrad and Stalingrad, had been liquidated.

The PCE had mutated beyond recognition in an organization that, even until today, is against the historical necessity of socialist revolution and the revolutionary power of the working class - the dictatorship of the proletariat - in the transition period and the construction of socialism; a party that is opposed to the Leninist principles of organization, especially to democratic centralism; a party that renounces to the experience and lessons of socialist construction in the twentieth century, which qualifies as a sort of “state capitalism”, rejecting in particular the period known as “socialist attack or assault against capitalism” in which the Soviet Union, with Stalin at the head of the CPSU, demonstrated the superiority of socialism over capitalism and achieved major successes; a party that accepts the imperialist framework of the European Union, claiming for a social and democratic version of the same under the opportunist postulates of the European Left Party; and a party that rejects all forms of recomposition of the international communist movement structured on firm ideological foundations.

In the Iberian Peninsula, the fraternal Portuguese Communist Party withstood all kinds of pressures that, seeing among others the Spanish example, sought to end the Marxist-Leninist line of the PCP. Comrade Alvaro Cunhal, Secretary General of the PCP responded always firmly and decisively:

“This campaign appears frequently with a paternalistic tone. They lament what they call the “inflexibility”, the “dogmatism”, the “sectarianism”, the “Stalinism” of the PCP and do hope that the PCP will become a “modern” and “western” party...

And what are the modifications that the PCP would do to “prove its independence”?

The conditions are pointed provocatively. They all revolve around six major points: stop being a Marxist-Leninist party, breaking the friendly relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, criticizing the Soviet Union and the socialist countries, breaking with proletarian internationalism, abandoning in Portugal the structural reforms of a socialist character and adopting an internal operation that allows trends and divisions and breaking the unity of the Party.” [17]

In the Spanish communist movement, unlike the Portuguese, the revisionist positions promoted by the leaders of the PCE became hegemonic, and throughout this process the PCE was divided into two main forces: those who resisted the Eurocommunistoffensive and defended Marxism-Leninism grouping in 1984 in the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain, and those who persisted and persist in wallowing in the revisionist swamp, without having made a serious and rigorous self-criticism, a simple analysis that goes beyond mere lamentations about what the “Spanish transition” could have been but was not and continue to defend in the practice the path of bourgeois parliamentarism wrapped up, nowadays, with the same Republican flag that once they betrayed.

Let us give an example of this. In the organ of expression of the PCE from April 2010, under the title “Political offensive towards the Republican Conference of the PCE”, the Republican Movement Secretary of the PCE says among other niceties:

"In the PCE we understand that the republican project should not be pigeonholed in terms of terminology referring to spaces in the political spectrum. We must give the word Republic an entity of proposal to make it more accessible and appealing; the Republic is the economic, social, political, ideological reform and the reform of new values to the real situation.”

Then, the Director of “Mundo Obrero”, in his article entitled “Building the Republic” gives us even more clear signs of complete confusion within the reformism:

"We are not against the Constitution whose deep reform we are asking for, we are clear that the goal is against an archaic monarchy, obsolete and guarantor of the values of neoliberalism. We do not want any republic, but a federal and democratic one with the values of the 1st and 2nd Republics applied to the current situation...

The future republican Constitution should be focused in the contents of the solemn declaration of the UN Human Rights from December 10, 1948, and must also adopt the three covenants signed in 1966 and accepted by Spain which develop those contents...

Democracy as a permanent agreement between free and equal beings to keep agreeing permanently has a range and depth that enables the public accessibility to making all kinds of decisions ...”

The old revisionist content, adopted in Spain and other countries as “Eurocommunist”, thus fits with the times. New language for old approaches and no trace of Marxism. The theses of the 18thCongress of the PCE say:

“At this 18th Congress, the PCE is reaffirmed in the defense of socialism as a coherent development and full implementation of democracy. Therefore it includes the recognition of the value of personal freedoms and their guarantee, the principles of secular state and its democratic articulation, the plurality of parties, trade union autonomy, freedom of religion and worship practiced in the private sphere and the total freedom of inquiry, and artistic and cultural activities.”

Exactly the same as the Eurocommunist PCE said after the Central Committee plenum held in Rome in 1976, whose quote we have reproduced above.

The so-called Socialism of the 21st Century is the new flag of our present republicans and yesterday Eurocommunists. [18] A proposal whose most elaborated versions depart from these revisionist theses that have crossed the central debates of the labour movement since it entered in History, from Bernstein to Eurocommunism, opposing to scientific socialism an exercise of eclecticism mixed with liberal – bourgeois positions.

Therefore it is not surprising that the parties heirs of Eurocommunism have warmly greeted the proposal of a 5th International [19], where their revisionist approaches can coexist naturally with forces that have fully renounced to the class struggle, with all kinds of social democrats, Trotskyists and every modern variety of opportunism, both right and left, as they already do at a regional level in the European Left Party.

Eurocommunism was a right-wing revisionist current opposed to scientific socialism and therefore an enemy of Marxism-Leninism that, as at other times throughout the history of class struggle, served as a vehicle for the penetration of bourgeois ideology in the ranks of the working class and the communist movement.

Eurocommunism interacted with the opportunist policies that, especially after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, were imposed in several communist parties in power. Eurocommunism based its performance on the cracks opened up by those opportunist positions and at the same time, betrayed the proletarian internationalist principles by practising a crude anti-Sovietism, that contributed to undermine the confidence of the working class in socialism.

Opportunist positions in both the communist parties in power and those which were not, were not sufficiently fought from the Marxist-Leninist positions. Unlike what happened in the days of Lenin and Stalin, a rigorous ideological debate was not opened within the international communist movement, where the “diplomacy” prevailed instead of the support to the consistent revolutionary positions who faced revisionism.

The facts have not confirmed any of the Eurocommunist claims. Eurocommunism led to the working class in their respective countries to the dead end of interclassism, extremely weakened the revolutionary positions and led to the liquidation of the communist parties that adopted it as revolutionary detachments, destroying the Leninist model of party.

The communist parties which embraced Eurocommunism, and have not been completely liquidated, have not made any rigorous of their past positions. Currently they are trying to adapt the same revisionist positions with the times, grouping in Europe around the European Left Party.

The development of the class struggle internationally, with the progress of the working class, the peasants and the anti-imperialist positions in different countries, particularly in Latin America, has made a new variety of opportunism enter the scene. The so-called Socialism of the 21st Century, based on the eclecticism and the denial of the categories and principles of scientific socialism, is called to occupy the same position as the so-called “Eurocommunism” held in the second half of the twentieth century in Europe and elsewhere.

The Marxist-Leninists should be actively involved in the ideological struggle now being waged in the world anti-imperialist revolutionary movement, contributing decisively to the urgent reorganization of the international communist movement to ensure the success of social revolutions to come.