Eugene Varga, Democracy of a New Type. 1947
One of the most important political results of the Second World War is the emergence of democratic states of a new type: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and, also, Albania. We understand by a “democracy of a new type” a state of affairs in a country where feudal remnants-large-scale landownership-have been eliminated, where the system of private ownership of the means of production still exists but large enterprises in the spheres of industry, transport and credit are in state hands, while the state itself and its apparatus of coercion serve not the interests of a monopolistic bourgeoisie but the interests of the working people in town and countryside.
The social structure of these states differs from all those hitherto known to us; it is something totally new in the history of mankind. It is neither a bourgeois dictatorship nor a proletarian dictatorship. The old state apparatus has not been smashed, as in the Soviet Union, but re-organized by means of a continuous inclusion in it of the supporters of the new regime. They are not capitalist states in the ordinary sense of the word. Neither, however, are they Socialist states. The basis for their transition to Socialism is given by the nationalization of the most important means of production and by the essential character of the state. They may, with the maintenance of the present state apparatus, gradually pass over to Socialism, developing to an ever-increasing extent the socialist sector which already exists side by side with the simple commodity sector (peasant and artisan) and the capitalist sector, which has lost its dominant position …
The change in the character of the state-its transformation from a weapon of domination in the hands of the propertied classes into the state of the working people-this is what determines the real significance of the transfer of a decisive part of the means of production into the hands of the state in the countries of a democracy of a new type.
The change in the character of the state explains also why the influence of nationalization on the distribution of the national revenue is totally different in the democratic states of a new type from that in the bourgeois-democratic countries such as Great Britain.
Nationalization in the new democratic states signifies a special sort of economic revolution. The property of traitors to the country, of fascist capitalists, was confiscated without compensation. Other big capitalists received compensation, but their income after compensation was only a small part of the surplus value which they previously appropriated …
The second important feature of the economies of the countries of democracy of a new type is the complete and final elimination of large-scale landlordism, of this feudal survival inside the capitalist system of economy. The social and political power of the big landowners, dating back a thousand years, has been destroyed. The big landed properties were confiscated by the state and distributed among peasants having little land and landless agricultural laborers. The number of peasants households (i.e., private owners of land) increased very considerably in these countries.
The division of the lands among many hundreds of thousands of peasants who had little or no land has converted the overwhelming majority of these peasants into loyal supporters of the new regime. The mistake made by the Hungarian Communists in 1919, when they wanted to leap over an essential historical stage by converting the confiscated large landed properties into state farms, instead of dividing them up among the peasants and so satisfying the land hunger, has nowhere been repeated.
The cultivation of land by the peasants using their own resources and giving them the opportunity of selling their produce on the market (in some countries only after fulfilling tax payments and deliveries to the state) make possible the preservation or re-emergence of commodity capitalist relations in the economy of the country. As Lenin pointed out, “Small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale.”
Thus, the social order in the states of democracy of a new type is not a socialist order, but a peculiar, new, transitional form. The contradiction between the productive forces and relations of production becomes mitigated in proportion as the relative weight of the socialist sector increases …
As regards the class struggle, however, there exists a difference in principle between the states of democracy of a new type and the old bourgeois countries. In the old bourgeois countries the state is a weapon of domination in the hands of the propertied classes. The entire state apparatus-officials, judges, police and as a last resort, the standing army-is on the side of the propertied classes.
The opposite is to be seen in the countries of new democracy. Here the state protects the interests of the working people against those who live by appropriating surplus value. When conflicts arise the armed forces of the State are to be found, not on the side of the capitalists, but on the side of the workers …
In this connection an important theoretical question arises: the idea was widely held in the Communist parties that the political domination of the working people, as is the case in the Soviet Union, could only be realized in the form of soviet power. This is not correct, nor is it an expression of Lenin’s opinion …
The rise of the states of new democracy shows clearly that it is possible to have political rule by the working people even while the outward forms of parliamentary democracy are still maintained …
It is equally understandable that these countries maintain close, friendly relations with the Soviet Union. This is so not only because it was precisely the victorious troops of the Soviet Union that liberated their countries (Yugoslavia being, in part, an exception) from German occupation, and not only because they are all Slav states, but primarily because the present social order brings them close to the Soviet Union, because of all the great powers the Soviet Union alone is interested in the maintenance and further progressive development of the social order and political regime existing in these countries and can afford them diplomatic support against the reactionary offensive from outside.
The Soviet Union is at the same time interested in the maintenance by these countries of the existing regime and their further development in a progressive direction. The present regime in these countries provides the guarantee that they will not, in the future, again voluntarily serve as place d’armes for any power which tries to attack the Soviet Union …
Source: Labour Monthly, August-September 1947.