The Red Herald has published an unofficial translation of a text published in Punalippu.
The editorial board of Punalippu publishes this text, which handles the upcoming presidential elections in Finland from a class point of view.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Elections no, revolution yes!
The bourgeois dictatorship of Finnish imperialism is choosing the 13th president of the republic of white Finland, who will act as its official head of State, the chief of the reactionary armed forces and the embodiment of corporativist reconciliation. To choose a president an election is held, the election day of which for the first round is on the 28th of January and for the second round is on the 11th of February.
In Finland the president of the republic is inseparably an institution of white Finland. The post of the president was founded in 1919 amid rampaging white terror, and no one who would have condemned the white terror has ever been accepted for the task. The main thing about the president of the republic is that it acts as the head of the bourgeois dictatorship, the white butcher command.
In carrying out this task the president of the republic has developed as a corporativist institution of reconciliation, which makes it especially vile and treacherous. The president is presented as a shepherd raising above the society teared apart by contradictions, even though as a politician with a long career the one chosen for president is largely a part of those contradictions. In the name of this “neutral” reconciliation the president enforces the most strict consensus which does not only exclude the revolutionary proletariat but also competing bourgeois positions. This role becomes the more important the more the parliament becomes unable to make decisions.
The stance of the communists in formation is to oppose the presidential institution as one of the important parts of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and consequently extend the stance of boycott also to the presidential election. Election boycott is always essentially struggle against revisionism and opportunism which promise change through the existing system and its elections. In the presidential election, which also some other Parties and organizations boycott, it is not enough to just reject participation in the elections but also show the difference of the communist election boycott to other boycott stances.
Some of the opportunists are steadily behind their own candidate: Andersson, Urpilainen or Haavisto. It is enough to say that all those say that Israel has the right to defend itself, which is justification of the Zionist State and the genocide it is carrying out. Therefore even the most rudimentary and vague anti-imperialist view forbids supporting any of the candidates. In addition each has more or less long list of other political sins, which are not necessary to be listed in this document.
After all candidates supported by the opportunists have been rejected, they will declare: it is necessary to vote for the lesser evil. This is a bottomless quagmire, in which the alternatives change for the worst time after time when even the worse alternative gets votes because it happens to be “the lesser evil”. Therefore in these elections the “lesser evil” accepts among others the genocide against the Palestinian people. Genocide is never “lesser evil”.
When one cannot vote for even one candidate with at least moderate conscience, not even in the name of “lesser evil”, some opportunist say the fault lies with the candidate. This is in fact a covered-up defense of the system – the problem is not the system, but the candidates. In this case one must ask: how is the system good if all nine candidates are this bad?
In the end the last line of defense of opportunism is: the presidential institution should be dismantled as undemocratic. This view comes straight from the old revisionist program of “expansion of democracy”. The so-called “expansion of democracy” (that is, the expansion of bourgeois democracy) in the existing conditions of the State of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is utopia, because the current tendency is against democracy, corresponding to the advanced decay of imperialism and that revolution is the main tendency in the world. “Expansion of democracy” leads to adapting to the system which is becoming the all the more reactionary and pulls one out of the struggle to crush it. To preach this democratic pseudo-evangelium is a call to the masses to not take up arms when the enemy is rushing to attack, it is luring the masses to the slaughter. Even if democracy could expand in the current conditions, it would only mean greater power of the exchange over the parliament and the intensification of white terror as Lenin has said.
None of the candidates is an option, getting better candidates is not an option and replacing the president with another bourgeois institution is not an option. The only option is the socialist revolution: defeating the bourgeois dictatorship and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is why the main slogan of the revolutionary proletariat in the presidential election is: Elections, no! Revolution, yes!
Setting revolution as the opposite of the presidential election, we want to reaffirm again the unchanging and still relevant lessons of the Workers’ Revolution of Finland, unwaveringly honoring the valuable sacrifice of the red class heroes by continuing their struggle.
The lessons of the Workers’ Revolution of Finland today
On the 27th of January it will be 106 years since the working class of Finland grasped the armed revolutionary struggle, founded the red Finland and started the brave and bloody civil war against the white butchers and their German imperialist masters and their Swedish imperialist accomplices.
The Communist Party of Finland, the founding of which was the most important achievement of the Workers’ Revolution of Finland, listed the most important lessons of the revolution in their unchanging and still relevant Founding Declaration:
“1. The working class must vigorously prepare for armed revolution, and not in the least return to the old parliamentary, union- and cooperative struggle, which was supported by the organizations of the workers also in Finland before the revolution.”
Today armed revolution means the People’s War, which is the military theory of the international proletariat found by Chairman Mao and its strategy for waging revolution. We reject the revisionist falsification of People’s War as peasant war or only as guerrilla warfare. People’s War in Finland means raising the proletariat to arms part by part, in leaps and increasingly waging even more People’s War and at the same time establishing base areas/new Power as the essence of People’s War. According to the Maoist principle, before war, everything has to serve the preparations for it and concretely in our moment it means the struggle for the reconstitution of SKP (Communist Party of Finland) for the People’s War.
“2. Only such a workers’ movement and action, with which it can be guaranteed that it advances spreading communism and the achieving of victory of the future workers’ revolution, is acceptable and it has to be vigorously promoted – action in the other position appearing among the workers has to be strictly condemned, denounced and opposed.”
Lenin has taught us that the condition to revolution is relentless and inseparable struggle against imperialism and revisionism and all opportunism. Chairman Mao has given a description of our time: the day by day greater decay of imperialism at the same time as revolution has become the main tendency. Revisionism and opportunism promote pessimism, defeatism and capitulationism by trying to present imperialism as vital and trying to deny revolution as the main tendency. Instead of revolutionary politics they push the most lame electoral opportunism. The communists in formation must strictly condemn, denounce and oppose this, promoting faith in the class and struggling for the reconstitution of SKP to make revolution.
“3. Through a revolution all power must be taken into the own hands of the proletariat and an iron dictatorship of the proletariat must be established, – it must be striven to destroy the bourgeois State and not for democracy, not before the revolution and not through revolution.”
The opposite of the existing dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is not “expansion of democracy”, with which the modern revisionists, the renegades of SKP, wanted after the second world war replace the revolutionary thesis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, the opposite is the dictatorship of the proletariat, which can only be conquered with weapons in hand through the People’s War crushing the bureaucratic-military machine of the bourgeoisie and establishing a new, proletarian State apparatus. Chairman Mao took up the defense of Marxism, unmasked the positions of the revisionists and led the left in the International Communist Movement. He also developed further the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat as an answer to the question opened by Lenin about the continuation of class struggle in socialism by shaping the proletarian cultural revolution.
“4. Through the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat a communist society must be created by confiscating all land and capitalist property and with the own actions of the organized proletariat all production and distribution of produce must be organized; – this does not mean that through a revolution nor before it should be striven to fix the capitalist system of exploitation to be more endurable. “
Today one hears again that in the name of “socialism” the State should intervene in the economical life. This is nothing new. After the second world war the renegades of the SKP, the modern revisionists, proposed that the State should monitor or gradually take into possession the large companies without revolution, which would be the economical side of capitalism slowly turning into socialism. Chairman Mao revealed that this means state-monopoly capitalism which is not even slightly more socialist than capitalism relying on non-monopolies, but on the opposite means the increasing of exploitation. In addition, he further developed the Marxist political economy among others for the part of the economy of socialism.
“5. The creation and victory of the international workers’ revolution should be advanced as vigorously as possible and with all strength the Socialist Soviet Republic of the Russian proletariat should be supported.”
After the death of Chairman Mao and the revisionists usurped the power in China the Communist Party of Peru took up the defense of Chairman Mao, defined that Maoism is the new, third and higher stage and rose to be the red fraction in the International Communist Movement. As the red fraction it has united around communist principles in their purest form to lead the struggle for the reunification of the communists of the world. After the imprisonment of Chairman Gonzalo and the blowing up of the Central Committee the PCP has however not been able to fulfill its role as the red fraction, and thus today our proletarian-internationalist duty is to struggle for the general reorganization of the PCP so it can again fulfill its duty.
Analyzing through these five points the main lesson of the Workers’ Revolution of Finland for today is to firmly grasp Maoism in the struggle for the reconstitution of SKP. The fundamental thing in Maoism is power, in our case power to the dictatorship of the proletariat in the socialist revolution, power that will be conquered through an armed struggle led by the Communist Party, that is, People’s War. This is totally opposite to the peaceful, parliamentary road proposed by the revisionists, which means negating the lessons of the Workers’ Revolution of Finland.
We call upon all revolutionaries and communists in formation to oppose the presidential election of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by spreading the boycott stance among the masses and cherishing the heritage of the Workers’ Revolution of Finland by uniting under Maoism in the struggle for the reconstitution of SKP.
Elections, no! Revolution, yes!
Long live the Workers’ Revolution of Finland 106 years!
Eternal honor to the class heroes of the year 1918!
Long live the 130 years from the birth of Chairman Mao!
Unite under Maoism in the struggle for the reconstitution of SKP!
The editorial board of Punalippu
January 2024
