Capitalist Party Could Arise, Pravda Says

A senior editor of the Communist Party daily Pravda suggested Monday that a new opposition party preaching capitalist values could win power and change the country’s social system.

Yuri Shabanov, deputy chief of the newspaper’s ideological department, in an article appearing amid a heightening debate on the party’s future, said the country could move toward capitalist-style or other forms of development.

“I think we have to calmly understand and accept the fact that what is happening now is not just a struggle of views and opinions but a struggle for power,” he wrote.

“In principle, it is a natural situation for an open society and marks movement toward progress when a ruling structure has an opposition pushing it toward more radical political measures that reflect the will of the masses.

“There is of course one ‘but.’ And that is if this struggle has a democratic and parliamentary character,” he said in a report of a recent discussion between Communists and other political groups.

“Today our ruling party is the Communist Party . . . which has openly declared in its platform that it is wed to the socialist choice and to the ideas of the October (Bolshevik) Revolution,” he wrote.

“Another social force--which we can call a party, because I think we will not avoid having a legalized multi-party system--could argue for capitalism or some other social structure.

“Whichever of these programs is supported by the people, that will be the road society will take,” Shabanov said.

His comments appeared to be the clearest public sign yet that supporters of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s drive to reshape the party on more democratic lines recognize it could lead not only to loss of power but to changes in the country’s underlying social system.