IS!, in its declaration, rejects the basic Marxist notion that national independence is a condition for socialism in each country. For example, on page 16 IS! equates defence of national independence with social chauvinism: “Yet history has shown us in cases like this, with such strategies, (united fronts with imperialist bourgeoisies – RSC) it is imperialism which has profited from the division of the proletariat. The same proletariat which was led to defend its own homeland first, because, just like today, it was said that the road to socialism passes through national independence or the defence of the homeland”. Elsewhere they talk about an opportunist notion of national independence “taking priority” over the struggle against the bourgeoisie, (p. 15) What this ignores is that in some cases national independence exists, in others it doesn’t. IS! ignores the fact that in countries without national independence, the national struggle is in the interests of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. What defines an opportunist position is Marxist-Leninists giving over leadership of the national struggle to the bourgeoisie. This is what IS! should be concerning itself with.
One clear example in their declaration where IS! brings out the consequences of putting defence of national independence into contradiction to the struggle for socialism is their treatment of the recent events in Zaire.
On page 14 IS! equates the Soviet invasion of Angola (using Cuban troops) with the French and Belgian involvement in resisting Soviet aggression in Zaire. IS! in particular denounces the French, Belgian and Moroccan governments’ support for the Zaire state’s resistance to Soviet agression. All this is done because of the fact that Belgium, and France, like the Soviet Union, are not acting on the basis of the interests of the people of Zaire, no matter what they do. IS! accuses those who supported the assistance by these Second and Third World countries in defence of the sovereignty of a country struggling to overcome imperialist domination of having illusions about the motivation of these countries. Well, we have no illusions about any ’good Samaritan’ feelings on the part of (even secondary) imperialists, but we see that their interests lead them to seek various types of unity with Third World countries, which from time to time means they play a positive role in the global struggle.
But IS! again slanders other MLs in order to cover its own errors and wrong positions. By equating the role of Cuban troops in Angola with that of Moroccan troops in Zaire, IS! objectively serves the propaganda aims of Soviet imperialism. This superpower has been steadily mounting an offensive in Africa, attempting to enslave various countries through ’aid’ agreements (e.g. Egypt and Sudan until recently, Nigeria, etc.), scheming for control of the ’Horn of Africa’, making Angola its neo-colony, trying to divert the liberation movements and the struggle against apartheid in Southern Africa toward its hegemonic goals, suppressing revolutionary struggles in Ethiopia and elsewhere such as Chad, (where it is working closely with French imperialism against the liberation forces). The invasion of Zaire by Soviet-paid mercenaries must be seen in light of this overall offensive. Zaire is an immensely wealthy country, strategically placed in the centre of the continent. With it in its possession, the USSR would be in a position to slice Africa in two from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. This would be a serious blow to the people of Zaire, the peoples of all Africa and in fact to the peoples of the whole world. It would considerably increase the USSR’s ability to wage world war.
Cuban troops came to Angola to further this imperialist expansion, providing the bulk of the military force to overcome those liberation forces which refused to accept Soviet domination; they remain in Angola to prop up the pro-Soviet government in Luanda. Moroccan troops, on the other hand, came to defend the status quo of a country which admittedly possessed less than total independence, against an attempt to make it into a possession of a rising, aggressive superpower. With the defeat of the invasion, the Moroccan troops went home. There is no evidence that they would be willing to return if called upon to repress the struggles of the people of Zaire.
France and Belgium’s involvement in the conflict was limited to the supplying of arms. Has IS! forgotten that it is not arms which oppress people, that only other people can do this? The fact that arms came from two imperialist countries does not taint the arms. The fact is that these arms were used to repulse a Soviet backed invasion which, had it been successful, would have been a major setback for the people of the entire continent. We would ask IS! if they would have counselled the Vietnamese people to refuse to accept Soviet arms during their war with the United States. The Soviets certainly were as imperialist then as France and Belgium are in 1977.
Apart from wars which are part of the process of revolutionary transformation in a country, IS! is unable to see anything but inter-imperialist wars, for them the category of just national wars of defence has disappeared. Thus in the case of Zaire, they see only the contention between imperialist interests, and not the national struggle to maintain and strengthen the independence of the country. In refusing to support this just struggle, they objectively take the side of imperialism.
But IS! is forced to cover over this conclusion by appearing as the champion of the revolutionary struggles in the Third World. In particular they accuse the defenders of the Three Worlds analysis of opposing colonial freedom for the possessions of France and the other lesser imperialist powers, supposedly since this would strengthen the Second World against the superpowers, (p. 14)
Can IS! offer even one shred of evidence that this is where the Three Worlds analysis leads? Is IS! going to answer our evidence of the attitude of the PCMLF of France (a supposed ringleader of the “social-chauvinist” trend), which has always been to support the struggles of the Indochinese, Algerian, Guadeloupean peoples and recently the peoples of Chad and Corsica, all of whom are oppressed by French imperialism?
The program adopted by the PCMLF in 1975 contained certain errors, as we explain in our pamphlet, coming out of an over-estimation of the imminence of war. Yet even at this time the French Marxist-Leninists were clearly rejecting the social-chauvinist notions IS! attributes to them. Has IS!, so quick to denounce the PCMLF, read the following note to the commentary on this program in the PCMLF’s “Proletarait”, no. 10?...:
Thus before and during the anti-fascist war, the dominant line within the (French) bourgeoisie and the number of representatives of the bourgeoisie who followed it varied.
On the eve of the war with Germany, the French government supported by the majority of the bourgeoisie opposed Nazi Germany in order to defend its capitalist interests while only a minority was in favour of capitulation. But with defeat and Occupation, things changed: the mass of bourgeois representatives followed Petain while only a handful lined up behind de Gaulle in London. By following a policy of collaboration, the bourgeoisie hoped to hold onto some profits, but things didn’t happen that way: the conqueror pursued a policy of total enslavement and only vendors and a certain commercial bourgeoisie lived freely.
Elsewhere, the world antifascist united front continued to gain strength, notably with the decisive victory of the USSR of Stalin at Stalingrad in 1943, and on the internal level, the Resistance led by the Communist Party became a reality with which the occupier had to reckon: these three conditions brought about a progressive weakening of the Vichy regime and the reinforcement of the provisional government in London.
This shows that the stronger the camp of the Resistance is, the more the bourgeoisie tends to resist. This is why, today, in the anti-hegemonic struggle, it’s the Third World which plays the motive role on the international level and proletariat which does likewise internally: the more the Third World is powerful, the more this favors the resistance of the Second World to hegemonism; the more the revolutionary proletariat and its party are strong, the better are the conditions for the resistance of the bourgeoisie. (p. 11)
As CAPT (Third World Peoples’ Anti-Imperialist Committee) pointed out at the Third Conference of Canadian MLs, how does IS! explain the fact that the Communist Parties of, for example, Thailand, Malaya and the Philippines all firmly defend the Three Worlds analysis and yet still wage fierce armed struggle against imperialism and its local allies, in some cases continuously for 30 years?
By its condemnation of Third World unity and through its attitude of no involvement in any struggle where different imperialisms conflict – an attitude which objectively serves the interests of the imperialsims– IS! is taking social chauvinist positions. Despite the good intentions of its so-called ’class viewpoint’ IS! falls into social chauvinism because they fail to understand the relationship between national and class struggle and that the present period is one of superpower hegemonism.
IS!’s negation of national struggles in the Third World comes clear when they equate national revolutions not under communist leadership with revisionism.
In discussing the lessons of WWII IS! comments on the positions taken by European communists in general after the war and goes on to say: “To the great dismay of these communist heroes of the antifascist struggle and artisans of the reconstruction of imperialist and colonial Europe, the liberation movement of the colonies of Asia and Africa continued. Unfortunately, the ravages of the second revisionist split were felt there as well and in many places the struggle stopped in mid-course. And instead of taking the socialist road as in China or Albania, it took the capitalist road For there is no middle or third road.” (p. l6)
Such a statement simply sidesteps the real issues at hand and tells us nothing about what IS! would suggest that revolutionaries do in an actual concrete situation. Rather they spread real confusion and cast doubt. For instance, in Indonesia the national revolution was led by the national bourgeoisie. The failure of the Indonesian communists to move the revolution further, toward total independence and socialism, is largely attributable to certain revisionist errors in the late fifties and early sixties, such as relying on Sukarno and preaching class peace and ’peaceful transition’. In many ways, the united front involved all unity and no struggle. But is IS! trying to tell us that the Indonesian communists should never have participated in a national-bourgeois-led revolution against the Dutch? Sukarno took the capitalist road right from day one. Did this mean that the national revolution wasn’t progressive? We would say it was.
On p. 15, IS! talks about how national independence has wrongly been considered as good in itself, whereas in fact it is only good if it “serves the revolution”. Did the 1945 national revolution in Indonesia “serve the revolution”? Certainly it wasn’t led by the proletariat and didn’t result in socialism. Would IS! prefer then that the Indonesian masses had stood aloof from this bourgeois-led national revolution and either fought the Dutch alone or fought to overthrow Sukarno at the time of his victory? Or should they have fought for socialism directly while still a Dutch colony?
China and Albania took the socialist road, IS! tells us. Very good. What about Vietnam? Was it revisionism on the part of the Vietnamese communists in 1946 when they signed agreements to keep Vietnam in the French Union in order to achieve peace? (Thus stopping the revolution ’in mid-course’.) Were Mao Tse-Tung’s negotiations with Chiang Kai-Shek in 1945 similar “revisionism”? We think that Ho Chi Minh was a genuine Marxist-Leninist and a great patriot. But IS’s ’hard and pure’ attitude would probably place both his and Mao’s actions in the revisionist category. Their lack of understanding of the revolutionary struggles of the colonial regions, like that of the struggle against fascism, indicate to us that ISPs analysis leads them to oppose objectively revolutionary movements solely because they aren’t aimed at the immediate establishment of socialism.
The element of truth in what IS! says is that in many cases where communists have been involved in united fronts they have made errors of not maintaining their independence and of not advancing to the next stage of the struggle once the stage for which the united front was created has been achieved. But to use the errors of some to attack the communist principle of isolating a main enemy and rallying all those who can be rallied for whatever reason to oppose the main enemy, is opportunism.
IS’s declaration is infused with a spirit of opposition to national struggles. They constantly counterpose the struggle for national independence to the struggle for socialism. Their confusion on this question is rooted in their understanding of the inter-relationship of the four fundamental contradictions of the imperialist era. On p. 12 their correctly identify the labour-capital contradiction as being the most fundamental of tne four – it lies at the very basis of capitalism and its highest form ’ imperialism. But then IS! puts forward the very ambiguous formulation that “...in the era of imperialism, the key to social progress, the key to the proletarian revolution, resides in the overthrow of the power of capital and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Certainly anyone who bases their strategy on the notion that mankind can progress other than by passing from imperialism to socialism is no Marxist. But IS! is saying something different – that we have only to solve the basic contradiction and the others will follow in its wake. For IS! the fundamental contradiction is always the principal contradiction. Rather than being the overall framework within which the contradictions of the era must be seen, it is changed by IS! into the contradiction which must be pushed to the forefront everywhere and at all times.
IS! makes the defence of national independence into the sole property of the bourgeoisie, when in fact it is only the proletariat which has a firm and fundamental need to maintain this advance. No matter how national a bourgeoisie, its fundamental interest remains in private profit, and when all is said and done, it will sell out the national interest to foreign capital when this coincides with its desire for profit. Stalin, for example, spoke in the late forties of the need for the proletariat in Western Europe to defend the national independence that the bourgeoisie would not defend from the onslaught of American imperialism in the form of the Marshall Plan, etc. But in ’quoting’ the supposed social-chauvinist trend, IS! makes it seem like defence of national independence, particularly in an imperialist country, serves always and only the interests of the bourgeoisie: “...our country (might) lose its independence because our bourgeoisie is less powerful. So support our bourgeoisie, because one fine day it might discover that it needs us to resist the more aggressive superpower. And then, once again, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will find themselves united to defend their common interests, that is, the homeland, or rather, national independence.” (p. 13)
For IS!, all talk of defending national independence is equivalent to the revisionist betrayal by the Second International which backed the aggressors in an imperialist war. Since defending imperialist France against imperialist Germany is reactionary, therefore any national struggle which isn’t headed straight for socialism is also reactionary. This comes out clearly in IS!’s attitude to the question of Zaire. Likewise in the case of World War Two, IS! believes that the struggle against the fascist foreign occupiers was irrelevant, since the European countries had passed the feudal stage and were clearly capitalist –and after all, the ’key to social progress’ is proletarian dictatorship.
IS! ridicules the communist movement and genuine anti-fascists of the early forties, equating them with capitalism and colonialism. And then they hypocritically give their “respect and esteem” (p. 16) to those who made the ultimate sacrifice in fighting fascism and defending national independence.
IS! simply can’t have it both ways. Either it was correct to build the broadest possible front to save the world’s peoples from fascist enslavement, or it was not. The people suffer and make sacrifices in all wars, but this doesn’t make all wars just. Either the war waged by de Gaulle’s forces against Germany was a just war, like the war that the French people (led by the CP) waged for national liberation, was a just war, like Sukarno’s war against Dutch colonialism was just, like Ho Chi Minh’s was against French colonialism was just.. .or else none were just. Which is it,comrades?