First Published: Canadian Worker, Vol 1, No. 5, August, 1969
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Nixon went to Asia because he thinks he is beginning to get some breaks. The imperialist two-pronged strategy of bombs for the people and Soviet revisionist ’advice’ to the leaders paid off. (He sure isn’t there to count heads for a withdrawal.) Not only has Brezhnev and Co. (Realtors) worked overtime to convince the opportunist leadership of Vietnam to ’go for’ a negotiated settlement in Paris, they have also been scouring Asia in search of reactionaries to join their anti-China alliance (a Soviet-style S.E.A.T.O.). Naturally, Nixon is flattered with the Soviet effort, though, no doubt, he figures on them for ’bigger and better’ sell-outs.
The Soviets imported their counter-revolutionary influence to Vietnam via ’aid’. Many have cynically argued that the Soviets could be ’used’, as if Brezhnev and his crowd are dummies and don’t know what they are doing. “Besides,” the argument goes, “the Vietnamese can’t win without the Russian hardware.” If that were true then People’s War would be a hypocritical phrase and revolution would be unthinkable – since the Soviets are opposed to both.
Taking ’aid’ from the Soviet revisionists is like writing your own death warrant. Trace Soviet ’aid’ around the world and you will see a string of shattered revolutionary movements, all the way from the Congo, through the Middle East to Indonesia.
As Lin Piao pointed out to achieve victory in People’s War it is necessary to oppose Khrushchovite modern revisionism. This was not done in Vietnam; far from it. The Vietnamese leaders have gone to the point of upholding the Soviet social-imperialist invasion of Czechoslovakia as a ’noble deed’, praised Brezhnev as a ’great Marxist-Leninist’, and, of course, have been at pains to boost the so-called ’Communist Party’ of Canada – a weatherbeaten mob which prides itself on being “the first” to attack Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China. Not only did the leaders of the D.R.V. bring Tim Buck to Vietnam to raise the sagging reputation of the Canadian revisionists, the Vietnamese came themselves to Canada to parade around on the arms of these fakers who had made a farce of the peoples’ bitter struggles by staging ’picnics’ and ’vigils’ in favour of an “end to the fighting”.
But the Vietnam deal is just one aspect of the joint US-Soviet effort in Asia. The main object, quite simply, is to ’get China’. Twice in recent months the Soviet bosses have directed attacks against the Peoples’ Republic of China to prove to their partners in crime that they are prepared to ’draw blood’. Both are shaking in their boots at the prospect, but they know the main obstacle to their plans for redivision of the world is the indivisible proletarian dictatorhsip in China. The Ninth Congress of the Communist Party of China closed a final door on their dreams of a “Khrushchovite turn”.
Once again at the Ninth Congress the C.P.C., under the leadership of Mao Tsetung, the Lenin of our era, has called for an irrevocable struggle against imperialism and Soviet modern revisionism. Hence, Nixon’s ’ace in the hole’ won’t do him any good.
This will be a life or death struggle for all the stakes. Canadian Marxist-Leninists have to be sharp and get rid of all revisionist nonsense about ’third roads’ and ’independent Marxism’. Revisionism can’t be laughed off or ignored. It has to be explicitly identified and defeated. Given that, proletarian revolutionaries can be really united and victorious in their struggle for socialism.