The roots of the anti-imperialist strategy go back to the 60’s.
During the 60’s there were three main movements around which a new generation of radicals grew up: the civil rights movement, or black liberation movement as it became known in its later stages, the anti-war movement, and the student movement. There were other movements, but these were the main ones, and even the student movement was important more because of its connection with the other two than because of its own intrinsic importance.
In addition to waking up and beginning to fight the university system, the students almost at the same time began involving themselves in the civil rights movement and gave it much support through its various stages – up to and including the defense of the Panthers against the Government’s attempts to crush and murder them. Even more, the students became the backbone of the anti-war movement.
At the same time, the students became open to various radical ideologies, including Marxism. It came to pass that many students saw the war and the oppression of black people not as accidents, but as a result of a system, a system called imperialism. Black people came to be regarded as third world people by radicals,[1] and so both Vietnam and the black struggle were regarded as two parts of the struggle against imperialism.
Since the working class movement had not yet begun to stir, the radicals of the 60’s drew their chief inspiration, necessarily, from the third world struggles, including the struggle of black people here. Revolution began reviving in this country by seeping in through the edges so to speak.
In Marx’s time and during part of Lenin’s time, it was thought among Marxists that revolution would first break out in the advanced capitalist nations of the West. The Bolshevik revolution only partly upset this scheme. Although Russia was not one of the advanced capitalist powers, nevertheless, it was one of the Western capitalist powers from many points of view. The Bolshevik revolution remained the model for revolution in advanced capitalist countries. But, as history developed, the center of revolution shifted further to the East, to China and more recently, to Indo-China and indeed all of the third world. To a great degree, it seems that all of this happened because the Western powers were able to soften the contradictions with their own peoples through the super-profits gained by exploitation of the East, thereby retarding revolution in the West; but, on the other hand, accelerating revolution in the East because of the growing oppression of the third world.
The Chinese revolution has become the model for revolution in the third world. But it is often forgotten that while Mao Tse Tung was always a faithful Marxist, his genius was that he saw in many important specifics that the principles of Marxism would have to be applied differently in China than in the Soviet Union. For example, he fought very hard against those who mechanically followed the Bolshevik recipe and thought that revolution would first break out in the cities and from there spread to the countryside. It took a great many defeats and loss of blood before it was seen that Mao was not departing from Marxism in asserting that just the opposite had to be the case in China, and in other oppressed and backward nations.
But we have come on to an interesting point. The Soviet Union, after Stalin, ceased being a revolutionary socialist state and has in fact become a reactionary, capitalist imperialist state – and, has ceased to inspire radicals and revolutionaries. If we want to look to a socialist country for inspiration we have to look to China or Albania. And the developments of recent years prove that China is and can be an inspiration and model for more than just revolutionaries in this country, in spite of the fact that it is a third world country, and in spite of the fact that ours is an advanced imperialist country. Revolutionaries have justly come to regard Mao’s teachings as the most up to date development of Marxism-Leninism.
But, we have to say that there has been a tendency to forget that there are two parts to Mao’s teachings. There are those parts of Mao’s teachings which are universal and apply to all countries they represent an advance for all Marxists. Mao’s exposition of dialectics is such a universal contribution, the lessons of the cultural revolution and continuing the class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat have universal significance – and more. But, there is another part of Mao’s teaching which applies specifically to China and third world nations generally – his theory of the national democratic revolution, the anti-imperialist revolution, his theory of building bases in the countryside, and so on. Many of these things quite obviously do not apply directly in the imperialist countries, and so these teachings cannot serve as a direct guide to revolutionaries in the imperialist countries.
The fact is that, in all likelihood, the revolution in the advanced imperialist countries will come closer to following the Bolshevik model than the Chinese model. The tasks of revolutionaries in the imperialist countries is to study Mao’s teachings and gather everything of universal significance out of those teachings , and there its a great deal of such significance, hut at the same time see what does not apply to the imperialist countries; to go back and study the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin and Stalin, bearing in mind that some of the specifics may he more relevant than the Chinese model, but remembering that even here things have developed and advanced, and that Lenin and Stalin also can only serve as a guide to studying the U.S. revolution.
We feel that many revolutionaries have failed to go about things in this way. Because the original impetus for the revival of the revolutionary movement in this country has come from the third world; and, because the leadership of the communist movement has passed to China; revolutionaries have been inclined to make mistakes of blindly imitating parts of the third world movement and parts of Mao’s teachings that do not apply to the imperialist countries.
An obvious, if blatant, example of this was the anti-war activists who waved the Vietcong flag and burned the American flag. These activists identified with the Vietnamese revolution and were no doubt sincere in wanting to help the Vietnamese. But of course it is very doubtful if they did, because they did not express their opposition to the war in a way that was comprehensible to the American people.[2] Just the opposite. They did not approach the American people on the basis of their own interests first of all and from there show how in their own interest they needed to fight against the war, and support the Vietnamese.
But, if the above is an obvious example, then in our opinion the united front against imperialism strategy for revolution is but a less obvious but more important and more current example. What is more, there was to a certain extent some justification for such an approach in the 6o’s when the mass movement had not extended too far beyond the anti-war and civil rights movements. It is much less justified now, when the mounting attacks of first the Nixon and now the Ford administrations and the big monopolies on all the people (no longer just third world people as in the 60’s) are creating the basis and possibility of a much broader and deeper movement then ever existed in the 60’s; and, what is more, a movement which can have no other starting point than the interests of the U.S. working people. Under these conditions, mistakes of the 60’s, if not corrected in the 70’s, will lead to a criminal waste of opportunity.
The above, of course, is not yet a critique of the united front against imperialism strategy, but only a background to it. So we must pass on to the direct critique.
[1] This notion and terminology, which has become very widespread in the left, is a result of the “anti-imperialist” outlook and overlooks the fact that black people actually are a part of the U.S. It is a case of an overdrawn analogy to classify then as third world. But this usage is so common now in the left that it is useless for us to depart from it.
[2] We say in this respect because in other respects many of these same people did a great deal to promote and further the anti-war movement.