As we have already pointed out, and as we will have to point out again in this paper, for IS! the world is a very simple place. There is the bourgeoisie and there is the proletariat and nothing else need be said. This sort of revolutionary purity does nothing to elaborate strategy and tactics for the struggles on either a national or an international level.
What would IS! suggest that the revolutionaries should do in, for instance, a case where the national independence of their country is threatened and their bourgeoisie is prepared to oppose this, like in Zaire and quite possibly in various European countries? And there there is an additional problem with the approach IS! has chosen to take. In their zeal to defend their anti-Marxist-Leninist line and prove that they are the true inheritors of world communist experience, IS! distorts history and alters the positions of genuine revolutionaries to conform with their line.
In taking up the history of WWII (p. 16), IS! not only rejects the strategy of the united front altogether, but attempts to use both the Albanian and Chinese communists, against their will, to back them up.
IS! attempts to oppose the Chinese and Albanian Communists of the time to the revisionists in other countries (e.g. France) on the basis that the former opposed the anti-fascist united front while the latter upheld it. This is simply outrageous historical distortion. The history of the anti-Japanese united front in China is reasonably well-known, and the fact for instance that the agrarian revolution was basically halted in order to broaden the patriotic front clearly refutes IS’s fantasies in terms of the CPC.
These quotes from Mao also answer the assertion that the Chinese Communists were against broad anti-fascist unity: “To sustain a long war by long-term co-operation or, in other words, to subordinate the class struggle to the present national struggle against Japan – such is the fundamental principle of the united front. Subject to this principle, the independent character of the parties and classes and their independence and initiative within the united front should be preserved, and their essential rights should not be sacrificed to co-operation and unity, but on the contrary must be firmly upheld within certain limits. Only thus can co-operation be promoted, indeed only then can there be any cooperation at all. Otherwise co-operation will turn into amalgamation and the united front will inevitably be sacrificed. In a struggle that is national in character, the class struggle takes the form of national struggle, which demonstrates the identity between the two. On the one hand, for a given historical period the political and economic demands of the various classes must not be such as to disrupt cooperation; on the other hand, the demands of the national struggle (the need to resist Japan) should be the point of departure for all class struggle. Thus there is identity in the united front between unity and independence and between the national struggle and the class struggle.” (MSW, Vol. II, p. 215)
On June 23, 1941, Mao said: “For Communists throughout the world the task now is to mobilize the people of all countries and organize an international united front to fight fascism and defend the Soviet Union, defend China, and defend the freedom and independence of all nations. In the present period, every effort must be concentrated on combating fascist enslavement.”
In this same statement he clearly outlined a' task of the Chinese Communist Party as follows: “3. In foreign relations, unite against the common foe with everybody in Britain, the United States and other countries who is opposed to the fascist rulers.
This analysis of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party are in marked contrast to the ’analysis’ of In Struggle! despite the fact that the latter has the benefit of hindsight. On the situation in Europe at that time IS! states that since feudalism has been transcended all throughout Europe, socialism was irrevocably the immediate stage of revolution in each of these countries. For IS! the struggle against fascism and the united front was a revisionist trend! “.. .(T)here were the European communists, the ones who fell definitely into revisionism shortly afterwards, who rushed out to unite with all those who wanted, not to make socialist revolution, but rather to counter the foreign fascist danger.” (p. 16)
Did this make Enver Hoxha a revisionist? Here are some of his views at the time on the subject:
The directives the Communist International has sent us are as follows:of the Albanian people against the Italians and Germans.
2) Create and consolidate the National Liberation Front, bringing in all patriots, and avoiding, for the moment, all slogans that go beyond the framework of the National Liberation War of Albania.
3) Bring into the leadership of the partisan war, besides communists, as many sincere Albanian patriots and nationalists as possible.
.. .The Party has placed the National Liberation War at the top of its program and exerts all its energies to develop, organise and lead all the anti-fascist forces of our people against the Italian and German occupiers. The people hate the occupiers, and we must mobilise them, together with all the nationalists of different political trends, and neutralize all those forces that we cannot mobilize. No reserve of forces should remain in the hands of the occupiers.
Today, too, if the oppressed peoples do not combat fascism, their common enemy, their most dangerous foe, they will never gain their liberty, and the international proletariat will never carry out its revolution. Likewise the Albanian people will never be able to gain their liberty if they do not first eliminate fascism, the common enemy that oppresses the peasant, the worker, the intellectual, the merchant, and the small capitalist, in a word, the people. The Communist Party of Albania will never be able to carry out its maximum program if it does not first destroy fascism which oppresses the people, hampers their economic and political development, and denies them freedom. (“Directives of the Communist International and the National Liberation War, Report submitted to the meeting of the Central Committee of the CP of Albania”, Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 95-6)
This correct policy of anti-fascist unity could even extend to a reactionary organization like the “Balli Kombetar”, which had largely collaborated with the Italians and tried to split the national liberation movement, provided it met certain conditions:
We call on the “Balli Kombetar” to renounce its incorrect policy and join the ranks of the National Liberation Front, accepting the program of the Council. However, in order not to lose any opportunity for uniting the Albanian people, we are willing to accept even a looser co-operation with the “Balli Kombetar” organization, but this co-operation must be subject to the following minimum conditions: 1)immediate and continuous war against the Italian and German fascist occupiers; 2) joint struggle together with the great British-Soviet-American allies, with the oppressed peoples, and in particular, with the national liberation movements of the neighboring peoples of Yugoslavia and Greece; the acceptance of the policy of the people’s right to self-determination; in conformity with the common struggle of the freedom-loving peoples, and on the basis of the Atlantic Charter and the London and Washington Treaties; the solution of the question of Kosova (an ethnically Albanian area of Yugoslavia – RSC) in accordance with the wishes of the Kosova people; 3) recognition of the national liberation councils as the sole democratic people’s power, a point which must be insisted on; 4) the “Balli” must purge its ranks of those elements who have connections with the fascist invaders, of spies, criminals and speculators linked with the speculating cliques of the enemy in their efforts to take the food from the very mouths of the people in these difficult wartime economic conditions; 5) an immediate end to the fight against the Communist Party and the anti-communist propaganda, which is irreconcilable with the struggle to establish true people’s democracy in Albania.” (“Directive on the Situation created following the Capitulation of Fascist Italy”, Sept. 10, 1943, Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 197-8)
Contrary to IS!’s fantasies, we cannot find in this list the demand that to have unity with the “Balli” this latter organization would have to take up the struggle for socialist revolution.
What was the attitude of Hoxha and the Albanian Communist Party toward unity with capitalist and imperialist states to fight fascism? Did they take the ’class viewpoint’ and refuse to co-operate with a class enemy, or did they fall into ’revisionism’ in their desire to ’defend the fatherland’ from fascist aggression and occupation? Apparently it was the latter:
Zeri i Popullit (organ of the CP of Albania – RSC) will be the genuine tribune of the Call to Arms for the National Liberation War. in which our war against the bloodthirsty occupiers will be described and read about.
Zeri i Popullit will be the tribune where the people will learn the truth as it really is, the naked truth.
Zeri i Popullit will tell our people where our friends are, in Albania and abroad.
We know that in their fight for freedom, our people are not alone, but have many strong and resolute friends throughout the world.
All the freedom-loving people of the world, from heroic China to the heroic people of Yugoslavia and France, are with us.
The three great allies are fighting today for one aim: to crush fascism.
The Soviet Union, with the Red Army of workers and peasants headed by comrade Stalin, leads the way as the vanguard. Then come the two great democracies: Britain and America, two great powers with collossal economies, which are preparing for a second front in Europe. (“Zeri i Popullit First Issue Editorial”, Aug. 25, 1942, Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 41-2)
Hoxha, in a message to the heads of state of England, the US and the USSR after liberation, stated:
The Democratic Government of Albania has publicly stated its democratic principles; it has also stated that it is the only one that defends and guarantees the rights of man.
Our Government has publically declared its allegiance to the great Anglo-Soviet-American alliance.
Our army not only liberated our country, but also fought the German armies in the territories of Yugoslavia for the cause of the great alliance.
The Democratic Government of Albania – the true expression of the will of the Albanian nation and people – will continue to strengthen the great alliance of the anti-fascist bloc, as well as the relations of friendship between the Albanian people and your great peoples. (“Note to the Allied Powers”, Jan. 4, 1945, Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 415.
IS! is quite right in identifying the revisionist political line of many European CPs after the Second World War. But they are misleading people in claiming that this revisionist line was inherent in the strategy of united front. We can see how the parties in the Soviet Union, Albania and China upheld this strategy just as much as those who soon became revisionists. In fact, there are many complex reasons for this degeneration having mainly to do with the history of each party, and in particular a right opportunist tendency to promote only alliance and not struggle in united front work. (For example, Maurice Thorez, leader of the French CP, admitted in 1947 that the error of the Popular Front period in the 1930’s consisted in unity from above only and not unity from below, which prevented independent Communist action in this united front with the Socialist Party.) An honest appraisal of the revisionist betrayal of, for example, the French Party, would take up the attempt of the Soviet Party under Stalin to get the French CP and other parties to lay down their arms and form governments of “national unity”. This advice proceeded from the notion that the peoples of these countries should be bound by the wartime agreements made between the Soviet Union and imperialist states, in Yalta, Teheran and Potsdam. It was rejected by the Chinese Party, and accepted by the French and others. After the Liberation of China, Stalin admitted his error in attempting to force Mao to liquidate his army.[1]
These factors were compounded by the rise to prominence in the Yugoslav and American parties of notions of the end of wars and the possibility of the peoples working peacefully with the ’progressive, anti-fascist’ US bourgeois democracy. The French Party, for example, continued to ally with the Gaullist national bourgeoisie long after the liberation of France and the defeat of Nazi Germany. They won the largest number of seats of any party in the first post-war national elections, and joined the ensuing coalition government with a number of ministries. The fact that they served the French bourgeoisie by exhorting the working class to produce more and refrain from wage demands, all for the ’national economy’, shows that they had basic illusions about the nature of French imperialism. Thus, although they followed the same wartime strategy as the Albanian communists, they lost their initiative and independence within the united front and ended up making bourgeois democracy their maximum program.
Why did events develop differently in Albania? Two factors are of importance: 1) they relied on their own forces and made it a point of principle to accept no foreign control of their country; 2) they practised both unity and struggle with the other elements of the united front. The following quote, for example, illustrates that Hoxha and the CPA united only with the progressive, objectively anti-fascist aspect of the western imperialist democracies, while vigilantly opposing them in their fundamentally imperialist and reactionary aspect:
First and foremost, we must be aware that Britain and the United States are not trying to crush reaction in Europe, they only want to take it over from Hitler. They still recognize Drazha Mihailovich (a reactionary Yugoslav who opposed Germany – RSC), and even help him. The Sikorsky (a reactionary Polish leader – RSC) affair and the activities of the British mission in our country, show that they are trying to strengthen the reactionary movement and to mobilize it against the national liberation movements. This has undoubtedly been one of the points of discussion at the Moscow Conference. (“Directives of Nov. 3, 1943,” Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 222-3)
Again, with the question of the chauvinistic betrayal of Leninism by the French CP and others after the war, IS! has mechanically tried to assert that the cause was the strategy of anti-fascist united front. Certainly the failure of the PCF to connect the national struggle to the class struggle played a part. But this failure is not inherent in the strategy itself. Both the Chinese and Albanian Communist Parties supported the united front against fascism on the national and international level. Yet neither of these Communist Parties failed to maintain proletarian independence or to connect the national struggle to the class struggle. And neither Party was led to take social chauvinist attitudes and actions as a result of their support of the united anti-fascist front. The united front itself, therefore, cannot be the cause of social-chauvinism.
In fact, the social chauvinism of the PCF was not a product of their role in the united front against fascism. Social chauvinism existed in key elements of the PCF leadership before the war and going right back to its earliest days (see La Revolution Nationale Algerienne et Le Parti Communiste Francais by J. Jurquet).
[1] Mao said in 1962 that the Russian Party “did not allow China to make revolution. This was in 1945, when Stalin tried to prevent the Chinese revolution by saying that we must collaborate with Chiang Kai-shek. Otherwise the Chinese nation would perish. At that time, we did not carry this into effect, and the revolution was victorious.” (“Speech at the Tenth Plenum of the 8th Central Committee”, Shram, Mao Tse-Tung Unrehearsed, p. 191; Stalin’s self-criticism can be found in Conversations with Stalin, by Milovan Djilas, p. 141: “...when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to agree on a means of reaching a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek. They agreed with us in word, but they did it their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck. It has been shown that they were right and we were not.” This quote is referred to by Kang Sheng and Mao Tse-Tung on p. 217 of Mao Tse-Tung Unrehearsed, “Talk on Questions of Philosophy”)