The direction of the Soviet social-imperialists’ interest in Australia is quite clear. The use it makes of the “Socialist” Party of Australia and its relations with the Labor Party have been explained.
Lest there be doubt about it, lessons can be learned from Chile.
The Soviet social-imperialists aim to oust the U.S. imperialists even from the U.S. imperialists’ own back yard. Chile was a case in point.
There was in Chile a pro-Soviet “Communist” Party of Chile. This Party was a tool of Soviet social-imperialism. The Soviet social-imperialists aimed to maintain capitalism in Chile, but to bring Chile within the Soviet sphere of influence.
Hence the Communist Party of Chile sought to “heal the split in the working class”, that is, to enter into alliances with bourgeois parties to achieve “socialism”, that is, capitalism. It is correct in certain circumstances for Marxist-Leninists to join with bourgeois parties to pursue various struggles, but the Marxist-Leninists must maintain their own independence and initiative.
The Communist Party of Chile was not a Marxist-Leninist Party – it was a revisionist party and tool of Soviet social-imperialism. It therefore entered into alliance with Allende to gain power in the bourgeois parliament to implement a few liberal reforms, but mainly to bring to Chile a government that would depend upon Soviet social-imperialism.
That the Communist Party of Chile had nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism was demonstrated by its reliance upon the bourgeois parliament and bourgeois law rather than upon the people, and above all, a people’s army.
The bourgeoisie of Chile, assisted by U.S. imperialism and its CIA, overthrew Allende. The responsibility for that is that of the Communist Party of Chile. In the name of Communism it did nothing that was Communist. But because the Chilean workers were likely to take the question of Communism seriously despite the Communist Party of Chile and take matters into their own hands, the bourgeoisie struck against them. In other words, the “Communist” Party of Chile created a situation where it led the Chilean workers and working people to slaughter without their having the key answer of a people’s army and an armed people.
Once again Khrushchov’s plans for Soviet imperialism, and those of his successors, were put into operation with disastrous results.
The other side of it is that the U.S. imperialists are not fools. They were well aware that their bitter enemy Soviet social-imperialism was using the position to get Chile within the sphere of influence of Soviet imperialism and right in the back yard of U.S. imperialism.
This was certain to lead to bitter conflict between the Soviet social-imperialists and the U.S. imperialists within Chile as to whether or not it would be a Soviet or U.S. sphere of influence. Both the intelligence services were very active in counterschemes.
Any genuine Chilean revolutionary would have fought for Chilean national independence and people’s democracy, striven to build up a people’s army, arm the people, taken Chile out of the orbit of both superpowers. Their blows would have been directed at both superpowers.
But the so-called Communist Party of Chile supported one superpower, Soviet social-imperialism. Even on this sordid ground it made a complete mess of it, as did the Soviet social-imperialists themselves. The unfortunate Allende was but a pawn in this desperate struggle.
Hence most certainly one vitally important aspect of the Chilean affair is that it was an episode in the contention and struggle between Soviet social-imperialism and U.S. imperialism. The Chilean people suffered. They undoubtedly learned much and they will rise again.
A profoundly important feature of all this is that notwithstanding the tragedy of Chile, Khrushchov’s successors desperately defended what we have called Khrushchov’s plans for the foundations of Soviet social-imperialism. This is for the very good reason that Soviet social-imperialism still proposed to use the same “principles” and tactics in extending its sphere of imperialistic influence. This is so notwithstanding their failure in Chile.
The authoritative Soviet journal “New Times” in its issue No. 1 of 1974 strenuously argued in support of the “theses” of Khrushchov, and specifically as they applied to the Chilean events.
The following is a comment made at the time on this article:
This article is a review of the ’Communist Parties’ in what New Times calls the international Communist movement. This really means the role of revisionism in the world today. Revisionism is promoted by the bourgeoisie and opportunists in the working class movement. In Lenin’s words: ’They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of its doctrine (Marxism) its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie.’ Exactly this has happened in Australia and the capitalist world. And the New Times article promotes ’communism’ without a revolutionary soul.
The most revealing statement in the New Times article concerns Chile. Although the passage occurs in the latter third of the article, we quote it now and in full because it shows the essence of the whole article. It reads: ’The reactionaries, as we know, struck savagely at the Communist Party of Chile which has played a signal role in the struggle of the Chilean working people for their national and social liberation. Taking full account of the situation that had developed in the country, the Communist Party of Chile opted for the peaceful path of development of the revolution, and subsequent experience confirmed the correctness of that choice. In the three years the Popular Unity government was in power, important democratic social reforms which undermined the domination of the foreign monopolies and the local bourgeois landlord oligarchy were carried out in the interests of the broad masses. However, the Chilean counter-revolutionaries, with the direct support of U.S. imperialist quarters, succeeded in disorganising the economic and political life of the country, seriously obstructing the functioning of the government headed by Salvador Allende, and finally overthrowing it and temporarily suppressing the democratic movement.
The Communist Party of Chile is making a thorough analysis of what happened in the country and drawing the necessary conclusions therefrom . . .
’A number of Communist and Workers’ parties have declared that the Chilean experience, notwithstanding the difficulties encountered and the temporary defeat of the revolution in that country, does not detract from the importance and value of the peaceful transition to socialism. The fraternal parties maintain that in our time the prospects for such peaceful transitions have improved, and they are taking due account of the lessons of Chile in working out their tactics.’ (Emphasis ours) “This statement proclaims the fundamental position of revisionism. It denies revolution. It denies that the key revolutionary question is the seizure of state power by the working class and the violent suppression by the armed workers of the armed counter-revolution. With barefaced audacity this Soviet revisionist journal utterly falsifies history and falsifies the events in Chile. By doing so it really condones the fascist seizure of power. It uses the technique of the big lie. Any person with a shred of honesty knows perfectly well that the Chilean experience completely exploded once again the theory of the so-called peaceful transition to socialism. This experience confirmed the fundamental Marxist-Leninist proposition that the monopoly capitalists will NEVER surrender their position peacefully nor even permit any serious interference with them. (Maybe in most exceptional circumstances it could happen but it is highly unlikely). Mrs. Allende herself recognised the fatal error of having no people’s army. Faced with the clearest refutation in life and in fact, in experience, of their ’theory’, the Soviet revisionists assert that this experience means its exact opposite.
The fact is that the Chilean revisionist ’Communists’ directly prepared the way to fascism. It is they who by affirming peaceful transition to socialism laid the foundation for fascist victory.
This is the most despicable hyprocrisy. Lenin long ago pointed out that Marx’s ideas on the state were the SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE. Chile’s experience fits in with the principles deduced by Marx from his summary of experience and in its lessons enriches that summary of experience.
The notorious Khrushchov himself did not have the effrontery ever to put the proposition of peaceful transition in the bald terms of his successors. This article shows that Khrushchov’s heirs, Brezhnev and Co. are even more despicable renegades than Khrushchov. They have out Khrushchoved Khrushchov – no small undertaking.
The New Times article is full of reference to ’contemporary times’. In contemporary times this article in its reference to Chile is saying the workers and working people must use parliament, confine themselves to it and confine the change to socialism to peaceful means. That is what it means in concrete reality. And this is at a period when parliament, parliamentary systems and the so-called western democratic way of life are increasingly falling apart and are being battered to pieces. What then is this Soviet revisionist call and comment about Chile but an attempt to rescue capitalism from collapse? What utter thoroughgoing complete treachery! This is the greatest service to imperialism and capitalism. It will never work, it will never succeed. But by making the attempt Brezhnev and Co. display nakedly their utter treachery.
This Soviet article is a world review, a review of the work of the ’Communist’ Parties. So what it does is to purport to extend what it regards as experiences of the Chilean peaceful transition to socialism to all ’Communist’ Parties. In other words, it serves the international bourgeoisie by using the ’Communist’ Parties in the countries where they are established to ’uphold’ the peaceful transition to socialism. Thus on a world scale and within each non-socialist country the bourgeoisie is given a guarantee in advance that the ’Communist’ Parties will never advance the cause of socialist revolution. What wonderful service to the bourgeoisie! No wonder Aarons, Clancy, Mundey, Halfpenny and Co. (all of whom champion ’peaceful transition to socialism’), are promoted by the bourgeoisie on Australian radio and television and in the press with such monotonous regularity!
There is another aspect to this matter. The Soviet revisionists through this international ’Communist’ movement of which they speak aim to paralyse the revolutionary movement and the liberation struggle all over the world. This is to assist the Soviet revisionists extend their own imperialist exploitation in the world, to prevent the people in the capitalist countries and the Third World from rising in struggle against Soviet imperialist expansion itself. Hence it directly serves Soviet social-imperialism IN ITS OWN IMPERIALIST IDEAS. It is aimed to assist the struggle and collusion of Soviet social-imperialism and U.S. imperialism for world domination.
Similarly it is aimed at the people within the Soviet Union and within the countries of Eastern Europe in an attempt to paralyse their struggle against the Soviet fascist overlords. By misrepresenting themselves as Communists and in favour of socialism and spreading an atmosphere of no struggle, the Soviet revisionists aim to create an internal and external atmosphere of detente under cover of which they intensify their own exploitation of the people and expansionism.
It is a natural corollary to this that the New Times article should attack Marxist-Leninist parties and groups. New Times refers to them as ’splinter groups’ whose main task was ’to obstruct the activity and undermine the prestige of the Marxist-Leninist Parties’. This means that the Soviet revisionists regard it as intolerable that anyone should espouse the Marxist-Leninist principle of violent overthrow and smashing of the capitalist state machine and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The article slanders the great Communist Party of China and its great leader Chairman Mao precisely because it is the Chinese Party which has fearlessly championed and espoused the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism. This drives the Soviet revisionists to absolute frenzy. The Chinese Communist Party drives the Soviet revisionists to fury precisely because the Chinese Communists have smashed scoundrels like Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao who attempted to subvert the Chinese Communist Party with revisionism. In whose interests do the Soviet revisionists attack the Chinese Communists and Chairman Mao? Only in the interests of the Soviet new bourgeoisie and the international bourgeoisie. But they can never harm the Chinese Party and Chairman Mao because they uphold Marxism-Leninism which is indestructible.
It is around the two sides of this question that the whole article proceeds. In other words, the article is simply a vehicle to put forward this attack on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary struggle for it.
The article brags about the unity of the international movement. In the first place there could not possibly be unity in such a movement. Unity can only be achieved in the struggle for correct Communist principle: it can never be achieved in a struggle to agree on treachery. Thieves do in fact fall out. In the second place, this unity has not in fact been achieved. The very article reveals expulsions, breakaways, disorder, chaos in this so-called international Communist movement. It could not be otherwise because revisionism is a reflection of capitalism and must of necessity reflect the chaos of capitalism.
Chile revealed the activity of Soviet intelligence services and U.S. intelligence services. Each of them is a weapon in the contention and struggle between the two. For the moment it is the Soviet intelligence service that warrants attention.
In Australia this intelligence service is very active. It is still another Soviet social-imperialist weapon to bring Australia within its sphere of imperialist interest. This is a world-wide technique of imperialism, and Soviet social-imperialism is certainly no exception. The Soviet intelligence service has been revealed as having plotted for coups within Yugoslavia, the Sudan, Egypt. Its spying activities have been exposed in Australia (Skripov), New Zealand, Ghana, Tunisia, Tanzania, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Britain, China. This is subversion and spying by imperialism. It has nothing whatever in common with the principles of proletarian internationalism by which workers of all countries support each other. Soviet social-imperialism’s activities are underhand, clandestine, cloak and dagger striving to extend Soviet imperialist influence.
Hence Australia can learn much from the Chilean events and from these other events. Already the contention and struggle of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism is deep: already the C.I.A. is entrenched and active in Australia; so too Soviet intelligence operations.
Australians must fall victims to neither of these superpowers. The menace of U.S. imperialism is comparatively clear but the menace of Soviet social-imperialism is not yet so clear.