WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT 25ยข
Volume 10, Number 10
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
November 30, 1980
[Front page:
On the 20th Anniversary of the 1960 Moscow Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties--CARRY THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MODERN REVISIONISM THROUGH TO THE END!;
Against Mao Zedong Thought!-- PART FOUR -- ON THE QUESTION OF "TWO-LINE STRUGGLE"]
IN THIS ISSUE
| From Enver Hoxha's Historic Speech at the 1960 Moscow Meeting................................................. | 3 |
| Vitality of the Leninist Norms Among the Marxist-Leninist Parties.................................................. | 4 |
| Enver Hoxha's New Book The Khrushchevites -- Memoirs.......................................................... | 7 |
| New Browderite Strategy of the MLOC/ 'CPUSA(M-L)'................................................................. | 8 |
| 'United Labor Front' of the 'CPUSA(M-L)' Means Unity with the Khrushchovite 'C'PUSA and All the Social-Democrats.................................................................................................................... | 9 |
| Scientific Session in Albania on the Struggle Against Soviet Revisionism........................................ | 10 |
On the 20th Anniversary of the 1960 Moscow Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties
CARRY THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MODERN REVISIONISM THROUGH TO THE END!
From Comrade Enver Hoxha's Speech at the 1960 Moscow Meeting
A Courageous Stand In Defense of Marxism-Leninism
Reference material: The PLA on the question of 'two line struggle'
From Enver Hoxha's new book "The Khrushchevites-memoirs"
Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement--Part 4
The New Browderite Strategy of the MLOC/'CPUSA [M-L]'
Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement--Part 5
The struggle of the PLA against the pressure and interference of the Khrushchovite revisionists
On the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the evolution of modern revisionism
The open clash between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and counter-revolutionary Soviet modern revisionism broke out twenty years ago in two historic confrontations. The first took place at the meeting of representatives of communist and workers' parties held in Bucharest, Romania in June of 1960. The second fateful confrontation took place at the international meeting of 81 communist and workers' parties held in Moscow during November of the same year.
The Khrushchovite revisionist counter-revolution was an enormous tragedy for the international proletariat. Socialism was liquidated in the Soviet Union and in all the European people's democracies with the exception of Albania. Khrushchovism split the international communist and workers' movements and destroyed many of the world's communist parties. Nevertheless, in spite of this terrible setback, the trend of world history could not be reversed and invincible Marxism-Leninism was not and could not be vanquished. The world's revolutionaries who remained loyal to Marxism-Leninism, with the Party of Labor of Albania in the forefront, came out with all their strength to put a halt to the Khrushchovite betrayal.
It was at the Bucharest and Moscow meetings that the Khrushchovite renegade clique was first condemned before the parties of the international communist movement. The Party of Labor of Albania exposed their true counter-revolutionary aims and methods, thus defending the.cause of Marxism-Leninism, the revolution and socialism. These events represented a major victory for the forces of Marxism-Leninism over modern revisionism. They marked the beginning of the open battle between Marxism-Leninism and Soviet modern revisionism. It was a critical turning point in the development of the international communist movement.
The principled and courageous stand of the Party of Labor of Albania and the other communist revolutionaries against the Soviet revisionist betrayal will always remain as a great inspiration to our Party and all the world's Marxist-Leninists. Bucharest and Moscow provide an example to all proletarian revolutionaries that the defense of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism must be put above all else. It must never be forgotten that the historic struggle launched in those difficult times is far from over. On the contrary, the uncompromising ideological and political struggle for the complete destruction of Soviet modern revisionism, along with Chinese, Yugoslav and the other revisionisms, must be carried through to the end.
The Khrushchovite Betrayal
The Soviet Union was the first country in history in which the working class had successfully consolidated its rule and built a socialist society, a society without capitalists and landlords and free of exploitation of man by man. Socialism in the Soviet Union was the victory of the epoch-making October Revolution, a victory which was heroically defended in the Great Anti-Fascist War. At the head of the Soviet working class stood the glorious Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin, the vanguard of the triumphant proletarian socialist revolution. The Soviet Union in the days of Lenin and Stalin was the beloved socialist homeland of the international proletariat and the working and oppressed masses of the world. At the same time the Soviet Union was the most implacable foe of imperialism, capitalism, fascism and reaction.
Following the tragic death of J.V. Stalin in 1953, the hidden traitor Nikita Khrushchov and the revisionist scum around him seized the helm of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet state. The 20th Congress of the CPSU held in 1956 was where the arch-revisionist Khrushchov set forth in detail his platform for the revisionist counter-revolution. It was at this infamous congress of betrayal that Khrushchov issued his "secret report'' which vilified the life and work of the great Marxist-Leninist J.V. Stalin in a most shameless and cowardly fashion. Khrushchov hurled mud at Lenin's loyal disciple Stalin and the 30 glorious years of socialist victories under Stalin's leadership in order to unleash a broadside assault against Marxism-Leninism and socialism. Meanwhile Khrushchov heaped praise on and made close ties with his ideological partner Tito and the Yugoslav revisionists who had earlier been correctly condemned by Stalin, the CPSU and the other fraternal parties as traitors and agents of U.S. imperialism. Friendship was also worked for with the chieftains of European social- democracy with whom Khrushchov also saw things eye to eye.
The Marxist-Leninist ideology and strategy and tactics of the revolution were discarded wholesale, rejected as allegedly manifestations of "Stalinism," "dogmatism," "sectarianism," etc. Accordingly, the buffoon Khrushchov introduced his revisionist theses at the 20th Congress as "creative developments of Marxism"! The platform of the 20th Congress was aimed directly at liquidating the class struggle, the proletarian revolution and the national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples. The. road of revolution as charted by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin had supposedly become "outdated" and was no longer suited to the "new historical conditions."
According to the Khrushchovites, world capitalism, with U.S. imperialism at its head, had changed its man-eating nature. Allegedly, only some isolated "madmen" were in favor of war, while Eisenhower, Kennedy and the other chieftains of imperialism were described as "reasonable men," "opposed to war," etc. Capitalism and the capitalist state was no longer the same exploiting system and oppressive apparatus which must be destroyed to its foundations through revolution as Marx and Lenin had taught. Instead, according to Khrushchov, the workers and the oppressed peoples could now realize salvation along the "peaceful road." Socialism was to be realized by securing a victory in the capitalist elections, by practicing class collaboration, striking bargains with the capitalist bosses and other means of "peaceful transition."
Moreover, the Khrushchovites proclaimed that the road of revolutionary and liberation wars had become "dangerous" because it could "provoke" U.S. imperialism into unleashing a thermonuclear war exterminating all of mankind. Therefore, they argued, the only way to avert such a catastrophe was to subordinate mankind to the "peaceful coexistence" of the Soviet revisionists with the U.S. imperialists. The world's people therefore were to docilely submit to the counter-revolutionary alliance of these two big nuclear powers so as to ensure that nothing would disturb the "balance of power," so that the superpowers could "peacefully" carve up the globe into spheres of influence between themselves.
Later on, at its 22nd Congress, the Khrushchovites declared that the CPSU was no longer a party of the working class but had become a "party of the whole people." The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat was replaced by the "state of the whole people." In this way, by proclaiming an end to the working class character of the Soviet party and state, the Khrushchovites were striving for the most rapid bourgeois transformation of the socialist order. A thoroughgoing capitalist restoration under the social-fascist dictatorship of the bureaucratic revisionist bourgeoisie was their immediate objective.
The "creative" theses of the 20th and 22nd Congresses were in reality borrowed from the worn out and thoroughly opportunist, pacifist and chauvinist scriptures of social - democracy. And Khrushchov proclaimed this the "new general line" of world communism! No small wonder that the U.S. imperialists and the entire world bourgeoisie clapped and applauded this charlatan clown.
Using the great prestige and authority of the CPSU which had been built by Lenin and Stalin, the Khrushchovite revisionist clique resorted to every sort of Machiavellian intrigue and conspiracy to impose its rotten line on all the communist parties and the world revolutionary movement. Those parties which had already been weakened by the revisionist corruption in their own ranks and had already lost their revolutionary vigilance, such as the CPUSA and many others, fell easy prey and were quick to get in step behind Khrushchov's baton. But the revolutionary communists who stood loyal to Marxism-Leninism and the cause of the working class and socialism, refused to submit to the brutal pressure and dictate of the Khrushchovite revisionist overlords.
In the first place, it was the Party of Labor of Albania which stood firmly opposed to the Soviet revisionists' savage attacks on Marxism-Leninism and the international communist movement. From positions of boundless devotion to Marxist-Leninist principle, the PLA, with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, rejected Khrushchov's road of betrayal from the outset. In 1955 the PLA informed the leaders of the CPSU that it would never agree with Khrushchov's rapprochement with Tito and the Yugoslav revisionists. Later on the PLA let the leaders of the CPSU know that it wasn't in agreement with the opportunist theses of the 20th Congress, the attacks on Stalin, etc. Publicly the PLA refrained from open polemics against Khrushchov's revisionist positions, while at the same time clarifying its stand towards these positions by stepping up the polemic against the Titoite renegades who shared a common modern revisionist platform. The contradiction with the Khrushchov clique did not mature overnight but went through a process of development. Therefore, in this period, the PLA held to the position that the contradictions that it had with the new Soviet leaders should be resolved away from the ears of the imperialists so as not to give the enemy any weapons.
The Khrushchovite Plot Foiled at Bucharest
But the Soviet revisionist chieftains were hellbent on splitting the ranks of the international communist movement and subordinating all the parties to their anti-Marxist line. With this objective Khrushchov organized a surprise plot at the Bucharest meeting held in June, 1960.
The Bucharest meeting of representatives of the communist and workers' parties was held on the occasion of the 3rd Congress of the Romanian Workers' Party for the purpose of setting a time and a place for a general international meeting of the fraternal parties. Khrushchov, however, had other plans. Only hours before the meeting was to be held the Soviet delegates distributed a lengthy document condemning the Communist Party of China. The CPC was accused of the most "grave crimes" because at that time it was taking positions in opposition to the revisionist platform of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. The Khrushchovites demanded that the party delegations take the decision on the spot to expel the CPC from the international communist movement for its alleged "dogmatism" and "anti-Sovietism." In this way, Khrushchov hoped to establish the revisionist line of the 20th Congress as "unanimously accepted" and herd the parties like so many sheep in a flock behind the Soviet revisionist "mother" party.
Khrushchov had prepared this major conspiracy in advance and behind the backs of his opponents. Those party leaders who had shown their servile allegiance to the Soviet renegades were informed beforehand that at Bucharest they would be asked to provide the rubber stamp of the "majority" to back up Khrushchov's demand for the expulsion of the CPC. At the same time, the PLA and the other parties who were not in agreement were supposed to be taken by surprise.
The PLA, however, did not fall into Khrushchov's trap. The delegate of the PLA at the Bucharest meeting, Comrade Hysni Kapo, with the guidance he received from Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, tore the mask off this criminal intrigue. He exposed the factional and conspiratorial methods being used for the purpose of imposing the will of one party on all the others and for expelling the CPC without even allowing the CPC a chance to prepare a response to its accusers. Hysni Kapo therefore condemned the entire proceedings of the Bucharest meeting as being in flagrant violation of the Marxist-Leninist norms which must govern the relations among the fraternal parties. The delegate of the PLA declared that the contradictions among the parties must be resolved in a Marxist fashion and not on the basis of the orders and dictate of the Khrushchovite bosses.
Thus, at Bucharest the PLA opened fire on the Soviet modern revisionists who were savagely attacking Marxism- Leninism and the unity of the international communist movement. The Khrushchovite ringleaders, blinded with their superpower chauvinist mentality, calculated that the PLA, which was a relatively new and small party at the head of a small socialist country, would have no choice but to submit to the "powerful." Therefore they were caught off balance by the courageous and principled stand of the PLA. The Khrushchovite plot was foiled in this first major confrontation between Marxism-Leninism and Soviet modern revisionism.
The Moscow Meeting Became a Platform for the Merciless Criticism of the Khrushchovite Revisionist Clique
What he failed to do in Bucharest Khrushchov attempted to accomplish at the Moscow Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties held that November. The Soviet revisionists wanted the parties to come to Moscow to get in line to endorse their revisionist course of betrayal, to declare that "modern revisionism has already been ideologically defeated," and to censure as "dogmatists" and "splitters" all those who remained loyal to Marxism-Leninism. But instead the Moscow meeting became a platform at which the Khrushchovite betrayal was mercilessly criticized.
The first defeats for the Soviet revisionists took place during the course of the drafting of the Declaration which was to be adopted by the meeting. In the final Declaration the main opportunist theses of the 20th Congress were rejected in favor of generally Marxist-Leninist positions despite the opposition of Khrushchov and his lackeys. This was due to the untiring work and sound Marxist-Leninist arguments of the delegation of the PLA. As well, a number of other delegations did not accept, to one degree or another, the rotten Khrushchovite line of submission to U.S. imperialism, class collaboration and abandonment of the revolution.
In the meeting itself, Comrade Enver Hoxha delivered his historic speech on behalf of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania. In his speech Enver Hoxha exposed in detail the chauvinist brutality exercised by the Khrushchov group against the PLA and socialist Albania. His speech scathingly criticized the violations of the Marxist-Leninist norms and the great-power chauvinism practiced by the Soviet leaders in their efforts to impose their revisionist course and place under their hegemony all the socialist countries and communist parties. Comrade Enver Hoxha's speech also sharply criticized the revisionist positions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. With numerous facts his speech showed how it was the opportunist line adopted by this Khrushchovite congress which was the source of the grave errors being made and the emerging split in the ranks of the world communist movement. Thus, before 81 communist and workers' parties, Comrade Enver Hoxha declared a "halt" to the Soviet revisionist betrayal.
A number of other parties too, in varying degrees, raised their voices in defense of Marxism-Leninism. The communist Party of China also declared its opposition to the Khrushchovites and its solidarity with the Marxist-Leninist positions of the PLA. But as it later became clear, the leaders of the CPC took this stand with quite different motives than the principled defense of Marxism-Leninism and the proletarian revolution.
Following the Bucharest and Moscow meetings, Khrushchov and his henchmen sought revenge against the PLA. All-sided pressure, stepped-up attempts at internal subversion, economic blockade and military blackmail were resorted to in a vain effort to bring the Albanian communists and working class and people to their knees. Khrushchov even attempted to starve heroic Albania into submission, refusing to sell the Albanians the grain they needed to feed the people in that year of a terrible drought. But the PLA and socialist Albania did not budge an inch from their Marxist-Leninist positions. As Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out at the time: "Even if we have to go without bread, we Albanians do not violate principles, we do not betray Marxism-Leninism. Let this be clear to all, friends and enemies."
In a rage Khrushchov lashed out against the PLA from the rostrum of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU held in October of 1961. The traitor Khrushchov accused the leadership of the PLA as being "agents of imperialism" who were "sold for 30 pieces of silver," and called for the overthrow of the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the PLA. In turn, the PLA mercilessly counterattacked with powerful Marxist- Leninist exposures of the Khrushchovite treachery. (Soon thereafter the Soviet revisionists carried their blockade of Albania to the unprecedented step of breaking all diplomatic and other relations.) The open polemic between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and Soviet modern revisionism had broken out in force.
The Fight Against Imperialism Is a Sham and a Humbug Without the Principled Ideological and Political Struggle Against Modern Revisionism
This chapter of the development of the world communist movement bears tremendous significance for today's struggle. It carries important lessons for the strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist parties in the course of the struggle against capitalist reaction and modern revisionism, and for the unity and consolidation of the international Marxist- Leninist communist movement. In the first place, the struggle waged at Bucharest and Moscow underscores Lenin's famous maxim that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.
The onslaught of Soviet modern revisionism dealt the world communist and workers' movements their greatest setbacks. Following the anti-fascist Second World War the socialist camp which made up a third of the world's population emerged and there was a big growth in the communist and national liberation movements. It was in this situation that world imperialism activated its "secret weapon" to take the fortress of the international communist movement from within -- modern revisionism. Titoite Yugoslav revisionism was set in motion to do its dirty work, continuing the work of Browderism which had emerged in the U.S. The modern revisionist cancer was undermining many of the communist parties and socialist countries. But the greatest tragedy was the seizure of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by the Khrushchovite revisionist clique. In this way, by means of the Trojan horse of the revisionist counter-revolution, world imperialism was accomplishing what it had failed to do by means of massacring and jailing untold numbers of communists and through enslaving wars. With the Khrushchovite betrayal and the spread of modern revisionism, the international bourgeoisie hoped that it had finally eliminated the Marxist-Leninist ideology, thus escaping the great danger facing it.
But the bourgeoisie hoped in vain. The Soviet revisionist betrayal could not eliminate Marxism-Leninism. Instead, two lines became crystallized within the international communist movement: the Marxist-Leninist course of revolutionary struggle and socialism, and the modern revisionist course of betrayal, of capitalist restoration and submission to imperialism and the bourgeoisie. It was impossible for these two diametrically opposed lines to coexist within one international movement or within a single party. A life and death ideological and political struggle between these two lines was inevitable, as the very fate of mankind, of the revolution, of the victory of socialism over capitalism, was to be determined by the outcome of this struggle.
The proletarian revolutionaries all over the world who remained loyal to Marxism-Leninism, with the Party of Labor of Albania in the forefront, declared ideological and political war on Soviet revisionism. They worked for the complete separation, a clean break with the modern revisionist traitors. This arduous struggle was waged in the true Leninist spirit of total devotion to Marxist principles and merciless struggle against the violators of those principles. It was V.I. Lenin who, even though he and his Bolsheviks were a small minority within the international Marxist movement, brought about the ideological and political rupture with the opportunists and social-chauvinists of the Second International. And through tenacious struggle Leninism triumphed over social-democracy in Lenin's time.
It is to the PLA's everlasting merit that it has upheld the Leninist line of an uncompromising and open struggle against opportunism and modern revisionism, thus making an invaluable contribution to the world revolutionary movement. Though only a relatively small party of a small socialist country encircled on all sides by hostile capitalist and revisionist states, the PLA fought for principle with the courage attainable only with absolute confidence in victory. In the militant tradition of Lenin's Bolsheviks, the PLA knew that the difficult road of the unyielding anti-Khrushchovite struggle was bound to triumph because it had on its side invincible Marxism-Leninism and the interests of the working and oppressed masses of the world. All true revolutionaries must persevere along the same militant Leninist course of work and action in order to defend the cause of Marxism- Leninism and the working class.
Following Bucharest and Moscow, when the Khrushchovite revisionists had already imposed the open split within the international communist movement, the Marxist- Leninist revolutionaries had no choice but to open fire with all their strength on the Soviet renegades. To fail to do so meant playing the role of an accomplice to the Khrushchovite counter-revolution. Likewise to take an alleged stand against the Khrushchovite betrayal, a stand which was not inspired by the Marxist-Leninist ideology but by pragmatic and chauvinist aims, also meant to play into the game of the revisionist enemy.
At the 5th Congress of the PLA held in 1965, Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed:
"In the struggle against modern revisionism, as in all other problems, the only correct stand is the principled stand. There is no room for bargaining in matters of principle, in defending principles one must not stop half-way; must never adopt a wavering, opportunist stand. The struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism is an expression of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between socialism and capitalism. There is no middle road in this struggle. 'The golden middle way,' as the historical experience of thousands of years has shown, is the line of the reconciliation of opposites, which can never be reconciled. It is an unstable and temporary position. Nor can the middle course serve to disguise deviations from Marxist-Leninist principles, for if the struggle against revisionism is not inspired by ideological motives, but only by some economic and political contradictions and by national chauvinistic motives, it is but a bluff that will soon be called. Whoever holds to this line in the stand against the renegades from Marxism- Leninism will sooner or later be in danger of slipping into the position of these renegades himself."
The Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong took just such a wavering and opportunist stand. After Stalin's death, Mao and co. were among the most eager for the rehabilitation of Tito. In 1956 immediately following the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the CPC held its 8th Congress which adopted all the central Khrushchovite theses along with a number of peculiarly Maoist positions of blatant class collaboration. Then at the Moscow meeting held in 1957 Mao Zedong added his voice to Khrushchov's anti-Stalin chorus. The reason, therefore, for the CPC's apparent 180 degree turn and avowed anti-Khrushchovism at the time of the 1960 Moscow meeting was not immediately clear but was later to become evident in the course of the struggle.
After the Khrushchovites had already imposed the open break the CPC leadership showed a terrible fear of the open polemical struggle and strove to prevent the complete rupture with the Soviet revisionists. Among other things, the Chinese revisionists were in favor of an "anti-imperialist united front" including the Khrushchovites at a time when the Soviet revisionists had already joined with the U.S. imperialists in a counter-revolutionary alliance against the revolution and the national liberation movement. Moreover, Mao and his cronies did not put the defense of the Marxist-Leninist ideology and the revolution in the center of their opposition to the Soviet revisionists but territorial claims, bourgeois nationalism, and their desire for position within the revisionist fold. In recent years Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng have completely abandoned even the slightest pretense of ideological opposition to modern revisionism. On the contrary, the CPC stands in ideological wedded bliss with the Yugoslav and Eurocommunist ultra-revisionists. Social-imperialist China has emerged as a major enemy of Marxism-Leninism and the people, having integrated itself thoroughly into the camp of modern revisionism and imperialism. Such is the inevitable fruit of Mao Zedong's vacillating, conciliationist, middle course.
The Struggle Which Was Launched 20 Years Ago Must Be Carried Forward Through to the End
It was 20 years ago that the PLA launched the frontal counterattack against the Khrushchovite counter-revolutionaries. The correctness of this heroic stand has been borne out a million times over.
The Soviet revisionists have plunged the Soviet Union into capitalist darkness. The former socialist relations have long been thoroughly transformed into typical capitalist relations for the realization of maximum profits for the revisionist bosses. The Soviet working class and toilers have been placed under a brutal fascist dictatorship of unbridled exploitation and national oppression.
Externally the Soviet Union has emerged as a warmongering imperialist and neo-colonialist superpower, which, along with U.S. imperialism, is one of the two most dangerous and aggressive enemies of the revolution and the freedom of the people. The ugly face of Soviet social-imperial- ism was clearly revealed in its Hitler-style invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Later, the Kremlin engaged in numerous other aggressive adventures such as ordering Cuban and other mercenaries to Angola, Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa in order to subjugate the Angolan, Eritrean, and Ethiopian and other peoples. And today the Soviet social-imperialist chieftain Brezhnev has dispatched 100,000 Soviet troops to carry out a genocidal war against the freedom-loving people of Afghanistan, a war no different in purpose or methods than the barbarous U.S. imperialist war of aggression against Viet Nam.
The formerly socialist states of the Soviet revisionists' so- called "socialist community" have been transformed into mere vassal states of the new tsars, colonies for plunder and exploitation. At the same time, the former communist parties of the working class which followed the Khrushchovites on the road of betrayal have been transformed into social-democratic parties of the bourgeoisie, parties of class collaboration and social-fascism, agencies of imperialism and social-imperialism.
With each passing day the real ugly nature of Soviet revisionism becomes even clearer to the proletariat and progressive people of the world. In this process, the uncompromising polemic and condemnation of the Soviet revisionist treachery, both internationally and within each country, has played a crucial role in bringing about the exposure and bankruptcy of Soviet revisionism.
The Marxist-Leninist forces have won great historic victories in the struggle against the modern revisionists. Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat are being continuously strengthened in socialist Albania. On all continents numerous new Marxist-Leninist parties and groups are being consolidated and built up in the heat of the struggle against the class enemies and the modern revisionist betrayal. The world proletariat has not lost its faith in Marxism-Leninism which remains a colossal force.
These of course are enormous victories. Nevertheless there is no room for the slightest complacency. Right opportunism, modern revisionism remains the most dangerous threat to the international Marxist-Leninist movement. Modern revisionism along with social-democracy continues to sap the revolutionary fighting capacity of the working class and to disrupt its unity. It continues its work to sabotage the building up of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties of the working class and the international unity and solidity of the world Marxist-Leninist communist movement.
Among the various branches of modern revisionism, Soviet revisionism contains the most elaborated and sophisticated ideological system which is backed up by a vast political, economic and military power. Moreover, Brezhnev and co. still attempt to hide their treachery behind the mask of being the inheritors of the traditions of the glorious Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin, traditions which in reality Khrushchov and Brezhnev trampled into the mud long ago. In recent years, the Soviet revisionists have also attempted to capitalize on the craven betrayal of their Chinese counterparts and the emergence of the U.S.-China warmongering alliance in order to whitewash their own treachery. The pro-Soviet scribblers in the U.S. and elsewhere are crawling out of the woodwork to publish their treatises to the effect that: "The fierce polemical struggle against the Soviets was an 'ultra-left' excess of Mao's"; that "The Chinese rapprochement with U.S. imperialism was the inevitable consequence of the position that the revisionist/capitalist counter-revolution had triumphed in the Soviet Union"; that "compared to the Chinese there is at least something anti-imperialist about Soviet policy"; and so forth, ad nauseum.
The Workers' Advocateholds that there must be no illusions created about the role and nature of Soviet modern revisionism. The ideological and political struggle against the Khrushchovites and their followers in each country such as the "C"PUSA must not be slackened in the slightest. Rather the great polemic launched by the Party of Labor of Albania and the revolutionary communists two decades ago must be carried forward to the complete rout of Soviet revisionism. It is up to the Marxist-Leninist parties of the proletariat to bring about the total destruction of Khrushchovite, Maoist, Titoite and all other dangerous currents of modern revisionism as well as social-democracy and all opportunism. This task is an inseparable part of our great struggle for the triumph of the revolution, socialism and communism.
[Photo: Painting depicts Comrade Enver Hoxha of the Party of Labor of Albania condemning the Khrushchovite revisionists at the Moscow Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties.]
On November 16, 1960 Comrade Enver Hoxha delivered his historic speech in the name of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania at the Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties held in Moscow. Comrade Enver Hoxha s speech will always remain in the history of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement as a most courageous and revolutionary act in defense of Marxism-Leninism. In his speech Comrade Enver Hoxha mercilessly criticized the opportunist stands and activities of the Soviet revisionist leadership, counterposing them to the firm Marxist-Leninist positions of the Party of Labor of Albania on the major questions confronting the world Marxist-Leninist movement. The ideas in Comrade Enver Hoxha s speech, which of course must be read and understood today in its historical context, retain immense significance for the revolutionaries the world over, as the following passages demonstrate.
Revolutionary Struggle Against or Capitulation to Imperialism
At the Moscow meeting Comrade Enver Hoxha exposed at length the opportunist stand of the Soviet revisionists who strove to prettify U.S.-led imperialism. He also criticized the Khrushchovite concepts on the questions of war and peace which advocated capitulation to imperialism as the road to avert war. Today, the stand taken towards world imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, remains as a fundamental dividing line between the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists and the revisionists, opportunist cowards and social-chauvinists of all hues.
"The Party of Labor of Albania thinks that imperialism, and first and foremost, U.S. imperialism, has not changed its hide, its hair or its nature. It is aggressive, and will remain aggressive as long as it has a single tooth left in its head." ("Speech Delivered at the Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow on Behalf of the CC of the PLA," Enver Hoxha Selected Works, "8 Nentori" Publishing House, Tirana, 1980, Vol. Ill, p. 99)
"Let us look the facts straight in the eye. World imperialism, headed by its most aggressive detachment U.S. imperialism, is directing the course of its economy towards preparations for war. It is arming itself to the teeth.... It is accumulating stocks of nuclear weapons...and is feverishly engaged in inventing new means of mass extermination. Why is it doing all this? To go to a wedding party? No, to go to war against us, to do away with socialism and communism, to enslave the peoples.
"The Party of Labor of Albania is of the opinion that if we were to say and think otherwise, we would be deceiving ourselves and others. We would not call ourselves communists if we were afraid of the vicissitudes of life. We communists detest war. We communists will fight to the end to smash the diabolical plans for war which the U.S. imperialists are preparing, but if they declare war on us, we should deal them a mortal blow that will wipe imperialism from the face of the earth, once and for all." (Ibid., p. 98)
"Our view is that imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, should be mercilessly exposed, politically and ideologically, and at no time should we permit flattery, prettification, or coddling of imperialism." (Ibid., p. 95)
"Even now, when it sees its approaching doom,...world imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, is mustering, organizing, and arming its assault forces. It is preparing for war. He who fails to see this is blind. He who sees it, but covers it up is a traitor in the service of imperialism." (Ibid., p. 97)
The Khrushchovite View of "Peaceful Coexistence" Denies the Class Struggle and the Revolution
According to the Khrushchovite revisionist concepts,"peaceful coexistence'' was to be extended to the class struggle, the socialist revolution and the national liberation struggle. Among other things, this meant replacing the revolution with the "peaceful road to socialism. Comrade Enver Hoxha forcefully condemned this pacifist and opportunist line which the Soviet revisionists had adopted at their 20th Congress:
"In our view, the communist and workers' parties in the capitalist countries should strive to establish peaceful coexistence between their countries, which are still under the capitalist system, and our socialist countries... But their task does not end there. In these countries it is necessary to promote, intensify and strengthen the class struggle. The working masses, led by the proletariat of the country headed by the communist party, and in alliance with the proletariat of the whole world, should make life impossible for imperialism, should crush the bases of its military and economic potential, should wrest from its hands its economic and political power, and proceed to the destruction of its old power and the establishment of the new power of the people. Will they do this by violence, or in the peaceful parliamentary way?
"This question has been clear, and it was not necessary for Comrade Khrushchov to confuse it at the 20th Congress, and to do so in such a way as to please the opportunists. Why was it necessary to make all those parodies of Lenin's clear theses and of the lessons of the October Socialist Revolution? The Party of Labor of Albania is quite clear about and does not shift from Lenin's teachings on this matter. So far, no people, no proletariat and no communist or workers' party has assumed power without bloodshed and without violence.'' (Ibid., p. 101)
Revisionism Constitutes the Main Danger in the International Communist Movement
The Khrushchov clique held that the ideological and political struggle against modern revisionism was no longer necessary and that so-called dogmatism and sectarianism had become the greater danger. Hence they stretched out their hand to the Yugoslav revisionists. At the same time, the Khrushchovites and their followers were marching headlong down the road of revisionist counter-revolution. At the Moscow meeting Comrade Enver Hoxha called on the Soviet leaders to turn back from the disastrous course that they were following before it was too late. And he spelled out with Leninist arguments and numerous facts the great and real danger which modern revisionism, right opportunism, represents to the international Marxist-Leninist movement:
"In the 1957 Moscow Declaration, as well as in the draft statement submitted to us, it is pointed out that revisionism constitutes the main danger in the international communist and workers' movement today. In the 1957 Moscow Declaration it is rightly stressed that the existence of bourgeois influence is the internal source of revisionism, while capitulation to the pressure of imperialism is its external source. Life has fully corroborated that, disguised under pseudo-Marxist and pseudo-revolutionary slogans, modern revisionism has tried with every means to discredit our great doctrine, Marxism-Leninism, which it has dubbed as 'outdated' and no longer responding to social development. Hiding behind the slogan of creative Marxism, of new conditions, the revisionists have striven, on the one hand, to deprive Marxism of its revolutionary spirit and to undermine the belief of the working class and the working people in socialism, and on the other hand, to use all the means in their power to prettify imperialism, describing it as moderate and peaceful. During the three years that have elapsed since the Moscow Meeting it has been fully confirmed that the modern revisionists are nothing but splitters of the communist movement and the socialist camp, loyal lackeys of imperialism, avowed enemies of socialism and of the working class.'' (Ibid., pp.133-34)
"Has revisionism been totally exposed, as the Soviet comrades claim? No, in no way whatsoever! Revisionism has been and continues to be, the main danger. Yugoslav revisionism has not been liquidated, and the way it is being dealt with is leaving it a clear field for all forms of action.
"And can it be said that there are no disturbing manifestations of modern revisionism in other parties? Anyone who says no is closing his eyes to this danger, and one fine day we will wake to see that unexpected things have happened to us. We are Marxists, and should analyze our work just as Lenin did and taught us to do. He was not afraid of mistakes, he looked them in the eye and corrected them. This is the way the Bolshevik Party was tempered, and this is the way our parties have been tempered.
"But what is happening in the ranks of our parties? What is happening in our camp since the 20th Congress? Comrade Suslov may feel very optimistic, and he expressed this...when he accused the head of the delegation of the Party of Labor of Albania, Comrade Hysni Kapo, of pessimism in his view of events. We Albanian communists have not been pessimistic even at the blackest moments of the history of our Party and people, and never shall be, but we shall always be realists." (Ibid., pp. 154-55)
"...the fight against Yugoslav revisionism, the consistent and ceaseless fight to smash it ideologically and politically, was not conducted with the proper intensity. On the contrary. This has been and continues to be the source of many evils and much damage to our international communist and workers' movement. In the opinion of our Party, the reason for the failure to carry out the total exposure of the revisionist Tito group, for the raising of false 'hopes' about an alleged 'improvement' and positive 'change' in this group of traitors, is the influence of the trend of conciliation, the mistaken views, and the incorrect assessment of the dangerous Titoite group on the part of Comrade Khrushchov and certain other Soviet leaders.
"It has been said that J.V. Stalin was mistaken in his assessment of the Yugoslav revisionists and in sharpening the attitude towards them. Our Party has never endorsed such a view, because time and experience have proved the contrary. Stalin made a very correct assessment of the danger of the Yugoslav revisionists...." (Ibid., pp. 134-35)
"A great deal of pressure has been exerted on our Party over this stand. The Albanian leaders were considered 'hot- blooded' and 'stubborn,' 'exaggerating' matters with Yugoslavia, 'unjustly harassing' the Yugoslavs, etc. The attack against our Party in this direction has been led by Comrade Khrushchov." (Ibid., p. 142)
"... We do not consider it an offense when comrades criticize us justly and with facts, but we shall never accept that, without any facts they call us 'dogmatic,' 'sectarian,' 'narrow nationalists,' simply because we fight with persistence against modern revisionism, and especially against Yugoslav revisionism. If anyone considers our struggle against revisionism dogmatism or sectarianism we say to him, 'Take off your revisionist spectacles, and you will see more clearly.'"(Ibid., pp. 162-63)
An Historic Stand in Defense of J.V. Stalin
At the Moscow meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha strongly condemned the Khrushchovites' slanders and attacks on the life and work of the great Marxist-Leninist J. V. Stalin. This heroic stand in defense of Stalin will always remain as an immortal contribution to international communism:
"The Party of Labor of Albania thinks that it is not correct, normal or Marxist to blot out Stalin's name and great work from all this epoch, as is being done at the present time. We should all defend the good and immortal work of Stalin. He who does not defend it is an opportunist and a coward.
"As a person, and as the leader of the Bolshevik Communist Party after Lenin's death, Comrade Stalin was at the same time the most prominent leader of international communism, who helped in a very positive way and with great authority in consolidating and promoting the victories of communism throughout the world. All of Comrade Stalin's theoretical works are a fiery testimony of his loyalty to his teacher of genius, the great Lenin, and to Leninism....
"Viewed from this angle alone, Stalin belongs to the entire communist world and not only to the Soviet communists, he belongs to all the workers of the world and not just to the Soviet working people....
"...was it necessary and was it right to go to such lengths as to point the finger immediately at anyone who mentioned Stalin's name, to look askance at anyone who used a quotation from Stalin? With speed and zeal, certain persons smashed the statues of Stalin and changed the names of cities that had been named after him.... At Bucharest,...Comrade Khrushchov said, 'You are clinging to a dead horse.' 'Come and get his bones, if you wish.' These references were to Stalin.
"The Party of Labor of Albania declares solemnly that it is opposed to these acts and to these assessments of the work and person of J.V. Stalin." (Ibid., pp. 157-59)
Against the Chauvinist Brutality of the Soviet Revisionist Overlords
The Soviet leadership flagrantly violated the Marxist-Leninist norms which must regulate the relations among fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties. Khrushchov and co. pursued a policy of savage blackmail, bullying and interference in the internal affairs of the other parties in their attempts to impose their revisionist line on the entire international communist movement. Particularly after the PLA had exposed the factionalist and splittest conspiracy hatched by the Soviet revisionists at the Bucharest meeting, the Khrushchovites resorted to the most fiendish plots and economic, political and military pressure to liquidate the Marxist-Leninist line and leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania. In his speech before the 81 communist and workers' parties in Moscow, Comrade Enver Hoxha criticized in detail the anti-Marxist and chauvinist brutality of the Soviet revisionists:
"...meetings should be conducted according to the Leninist norms governing relations among communist and workers' parties, in a comradely, communist and internationalist spirit, and with lofty communist morality.
"The Bucharest Meeting did not comply with these norms; therefore, although it took part in it, our Party denounced and denounces that meeting as out-of-order and in violation of the Leninist norms.
"... The blame for this falls on the comrades of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who organized this meeting, who conceived those forms, and who applied those non-Marxist norms in this matter." (Ibid., p. 114)
"... In no way should the Bucharest Meeting be left in oblivion; rather, it should be severely condemned as a black stain on the international communist movement." (Ibid., p. 118)
"... Immediately following the Bucharest Meeting, an unexpected, unprincipled attack was launched, and brutal intervention and all-round pressure was undertaken against our Party and its Central Committee. The attack was begun by Comrade Khrushchov in Bucharest and was continued by Comrade Kozlov in Moscow....that 'the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania has betrayed the friendship with the Soviet Union,'...that 'an isolated Albania is in danger, for it would take only one atomic bomb dropped by the Americans to wipe out Albania and all its population completely,' and other threats of the kind. It is absolutely clear that the aim was to sow discord in the leadership of our Party, to remove from the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania those elements who, the Soviet leaders thought, stood in the way of their crooked and dishonest undertaking," (Ibid., p. 122)
"...our only 'crime' is that we are a small Party of a small and poor people, which, according to Comrade Khrushchov, should merely applaud and approve, but express no opinion of their own. But this is neither Marxist nor acceptable. Marxism-Leninism has granted us the right to have our say, and no one can take this from us, either by means of political and economic pressure, or by means of threats and the names they might call us."' (Ibid. j pp. 126-7)
"... For us it is clear, and we understand only too well, that our correct and principled Marxist-Leninist stand, that our courage to disagree with you and condemn those acts of yours which are wrong, impel you to attack our Party, to resort to all kinds of pressure against it, to pronounce the most extreme monstrosities against our Party. There is nothing comradely, nothing communist in this. You liken us to the Yugoslav revisionists. But everybody knows how our Party has fought and continues to fight the Yugoslav revisionists. It is not we who behave like the Yugoslavs but you, Comrade Khrushchov, who are using methods alien to Marxism-Leninism against our Party. You consider Albania a market commodity which can be gained by one or lost by another. There was a time when Albania was considered a commodity to be traded, when others thought it depended on them whether Albania should or should not exist, but that time came to an end with the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism in our country....
"The fact that Albania is marching on the road of socialism...is not determined by you, Comrade Khrushchov. It does not depend on your wishes. The Albanian people, led by their Party of Labor, decided this through their struggle, and there is no force capable of turning them from this course." (Ibid., p. 129)
Twenty years ago, the Party of Labor of Albania exposed the Khrushchovite revisionists in front of all the communist and workers' parties at the historic Moscow meeting of November 1960. The irreconcilable struggle between Marxism-Leninism and Soviet revisionism had broken out in force. An important front of this struggle to defend Marxism-Leninism was the struggle to uphold the Leninist norms that govern the relations among the Marxist-Leninist parties.
The last two decades of struggle by the world's Marxist-Leninists have completely confirmed the importance of upholding these Leninist norms. This has been particularly underscored by the struggle against the Chinese revisionists. This question remains of significance today in the continuing struggle to strengthen the unity of the international Marxist-Leninist movement.
The Khrushchovite Revisionists Trampled on the Norms of Relations Among the Communist Parties
The Khrushchovite revisionists arose as a gang of traitors within the international communist movement. They put forward a program aimed at undermining socialism everywhere that it existed and at sabotaging the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and oppressed peoples of the world.
The Khrushchovites actively worked to subordinate all the communist parties to their counter-revolutionary platform. Hand in hand with the promotion of their revisionist platform, they carried out savage attacks on the communist parties, completely violating all the Leninist norms of relations. They were extremely arrogant towards any disagreement or criticism of their views and actions. They subjected the parties to brute pressure and blackmail, interfered at will into their internal affairs, removed revolutionary elements from the leadership of other parties and set up revisionist leaders subordinated to themselves.
But although they succeeded in this vile activity with many of the parties, they were faced with a formidable opposition from the Party of Labor of Albania. The struggle of this courageous party against the Khrushchovite attacks is concrete evidence of the vitality of the Leninist norms of relations as a strong factor in the defense of the revolutionary cause.
The Khrushchovites abandoned proletarian internationalism and adopted instead a position of great-state chauvinism. On this basis, they mocked the Marxist-Leninist principle that all the communist parties are equal and independent. They divided the parties into a mother party and daughter parties, into a party that directs and others that obey and submit. Hence the Khrushchovites completely abandoned the Leninist position that each party must work out its own line, in accordance with the universally valid principles of Marxism-Leninism and the concrete conditions of its own country. Instead they declared the revisionist platform of the 20th Congress of the Soviet party as the common line for all the communist parties.
Proceeding from their chauvinist position, the Khrushchovites also trampled on the principle of Criticism and self-criticism among the parties. This is an,important norm allowing the parties to sort out differences and rectify deviations and errors that may be made. Since all the communist parties share a common ideology and a common cause, none can adopt an indifferent attitude to the international movement.
However the Khrushchovites considered that they had the authority to attack any party they chose to, while absolutely refusing to listen to the fraternal criticism of any other party. If any party dared to disagree or criticize them, such a party was automatically condemned as "anti-Soviet," "agents of imperialism" and "factional against the unity of the international communist movement," etc.
This was revealed in the attitude of the Soviet leadership towards the PLA. Through the mid and late 1950's, the PLA had repeatedly expressed its grave reservations towards a whole series of revisionist views and actions of the Khrushchovites. But the Soviet leaders only treated this with contempt.
Then came the Bucharest meeting in June 1960. When the PLA delegation arrived there, they found that the Khrushchovites had set up a surprise meeting to condemn and expel the Communist Party of China. This was in complete violation of the Leninist norms. It violated the previous agreements that the Bucharest meeting was to be solely for the purpose of setting a date and place for a full meeting of all the world's communist parties. Moreover, this meeting asked the parties assembled there to express themselves on the Soviet-Chinese disagreements without allowing any party adequate opportunity to make any preparations for this.
The PLA stood up and condemned this Khrushchovite maneuver. But the Soviet leaders refused to heed the PLA's criticism. Instead they launched a fierce attack to force the PLA to its knees. All kinds of abuse and slanders were heaped on the PLA. A major campaign was unleashed to brutally interfere into its internal affairs and overthrow its Marxist-Leninist leadership.
Indeed, brutal interference into the affairs of the other parties was a method used extensively by the Khrushchovites. They gave themselves the authority to overthrow the leadership of the other parties.
Towards this end, they utilized their slander campaign against the revolutionary life and work of J.V. Stalin. With this blackmail they forced the removal of what they called the "Stalinist elements," that is, those who stood loyal to Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. The Khrushchovites even organized the outright murder of many of these Marxist-Leninists. In his recent memoirs, The Khrushchevites and With Stalin, Comrade Enver Hoxha exposes how the Soviet revisionists eliminated certain key leaders of the communist parties of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, etc., through silent and mysterious methods. And in their place, the Khrushchovites set up new leaders who subordinated themselves to the Soviet revisionists.
The PLA too faced a hostile campaign to overthrow its leadership, especially after the Bucharest meeting. This was organized on many fronts. Great economic and military pressure was brought to bear on Albania. The Soviet embassy staff and other personnel in Albania were used to probe within the ranks of the PLA for any dissatisfaction that they could turn to their advantage. Members of the PLA's leadership who passed through the Soviet Union were worked upon to set them against their Party. The personnel of the Soviet embassy even went around to Albanians who had studied in the Soviet Union and tried to incite them against the PLA, demagogically speculating on their love for the Soviet people. The Soviet revisionists tried very hard to groom an anti-party faction within the PLA.
But Khrushchov's sinister campaign did not succeed. It came up against the steel-like unity of the PLA and the firm unity of the Albanian people around their Party. All the Khrushchovite provocations were given their proper reply, and the few degenerate factionalists were put in their place. Khrushchov's campaign became a total fiasco.
The Khrushchovite revisionists also intended to use this hostile activity to prevent the PLA from speaking out at the Moscow meeting in November 1960. But this plan also did not succeed. At Moscow, the PLA went before the world's communist parties and delivered a powerful criticism of the revisionist platform and hostile actions of the Soviet leaders against the PLA and the international communist movement.
At Moscow it became clear that the Khrushchovites were intent to proceed on their anti-Marxist and splittist course. They refused to mend their ways and increased the attacks on the PLA. Within a short time, they launched public attacks on the PLA and openly called for the overthrow of its leadership. They proceeded to take the unprecedented and savage step of extending the ideological differences to a complete break in economic, military and state relations between the Soviet Union and Albania.
By this point, it had been proven beyond doubt that the Khrushchovites had fully placed themselves in service to world imperialism. They had created and consummated the split in the international communist movement. They were not making some minor "errors" which could be corrected, but they had shown themselves to be diehard enemies of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. Allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and its norms demanded that open fire had to be directed at the Khrushchovite betrayal. It called for an irreconcilable fight against Khrushchovite revisionism. This was indeed the path that the PLA and the genuine Marxist-Leninists of the world embarked upon.
Chinese Revisionism Followed in Khrushchov's Footsteps to Undermine the Unity of the Marxist-Leninist Parties
To overcome the consequences of the split caused by the Khrushchovites, the world's Marxist-Leninist forces had to take up the task of reestablishing the unity of the international communist movement. Vigorous steps had to be taken to establish relations of unity and cooperation among the Marxist-Leninist forces on a world scale. This unity had to be built on a new and higher level, without the revisionist traitors and in resolute struggle against them.
The PLA considered this an extremely important question and gave its internationalist support to the Marxist- Leninist parties and organizations of the world. But the leadership of the Communist Party of China took the opposite stand. For a time, they too claimed to oppose Khrushchovite revisionism. But history has shown that the Chinese leaders fought the Khrushchovites not from the standpoint of Marxist-Leninist principle but from narrow, nationalist and pragmatic considerations. At the same time, the Chinese leaders refused to take an internationalist stand towards the other Marxist-Leninist parties. They trampled on the Leninist norms of relations among the parties. On this, they shared common ground with the Khrushchovites.
The Chinese leaders had no real belief in Marxism-Leninism. Hence they did not remain consistent on the question of waging the struggle against Soviet revisionism. They hesitated to launch the struggle in the first place. Even when they did take part in this struggle, they wavered, vacillated and tried to tone it down. They tried to remove the ideological content of the struggle. And on repeated occasions, they attempted to stop the polemic altogether and come to terms with the Khrushchovite revisionists.
The Chinese revisionists also spread the poisonous idea that it was permissible to unite in alliances with the revisionists. They advocated a "united front with the Khrushchovites" allegedly to fight U.S. imperialism. They also practiced allying with one revisionism to fight another, such as relying on the Titoites, Romanians and "Eurocommunists" to allegedly fight the Soviet revisionists. This fostered dangerous illusions in the revisionists and gravely undermined the struggle against imperialism and revisionism.
However, while the Chinese leaders advocated unity with the Khrushchovites and other revisionists, they had an attitude of contempt for the unity of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist parties. They slandered the revolutionary traditions of the Communist International and tried to limit the relations among the parties to bilateral relations only, while adamantly opposing all forms of multilateral contact, cooperation and joint actions.
But even the alleged support for bilateral relations among the parties was total hypocrisy. The Chinese leadership used these relations to pretend that they were internationalists, but the actual relations practiced by them showed their opposition to all the Leninist norms.
The Chinese revisionists even openly discarded the cardinal Marxist-Leninist principle that there can only be one Marxist-Leninist party in each country. Instead they advocated the theory of "many parties" and accordingly built links with numerous groups in many countries.
Following in Khrushchov's footsteps, the Chinese leaders put pressure on everyone to simply become links of a worldwide network to trumpet the Chinese positions. In fact they showered their greatest blessings on those who sang the loudest hosannas to the Chinese revisionists and followed each and every gyration of the Chinese policy. Where the Marxist-Leninist parties refused to submit to the Chinese revisionist pressure, the Chinese leadership organized all kinds of activities to split and wreck the parties, to groom anti-party factions, and used their lackey groups to undermine the work of the Marxist-Leninists. They also used their international network to establish links with the bourgeoisie and the revisionist parties, such as the "Euro-communists."
Guided by similar great-state chauvinism as the Khrushchovites, the Chinese leaders were also opposed to the principles of consultation and criticism among the parties. They refused to accept any criticism from the fraternal parties. In fact, they considered any criticism to be actually a polemic against them. The PLA, which had criticized the errors of the Chinese party on many occasions, exposed the error of this view:
"Among the Marxist-Leninist norms which regulate relations among communist parties, there exists also
that of the correct and reciprocal, principled and constructive, criticism of mistakes which are observed in the line and the activity of this or that party. Such a comradely criticism cannot be called polemics, as the Chinese leadership interprets this norm. Polemics, as the word itself indicates, means a state of ideological and political struggle, it is a state in which non-antagonistic contradictions are transformed into antagonistic contradictions." ("Letter of the CC of the Party of Labor and the Government of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party and the Government of China, July 29, 1978," pp. 20-21)
For its disagreements with the Chinese revisionists and its refusal to capitulate to their anti-Marxist demands, the PLA faced all kinds of blackmail, pressure and splitting activities from the Chinese leaders. The Chinese leadership's violation of the Leninist norms played a major role in exposing their real revisionist character. The struggle of the PLA in defense of-these norms was a powerful factor enabling the PLA to defeat all the hostile actions of the Chinese revisionists. Once again this confirmed the importance of upholding the Leninist norms as a major front of the anti-revisionist struggle.
The Struggle for the Party in the U.S. Versus Chinese Revisionism
The Marxist-Leninist Party, USA had firsthand experience with the treachery of the Chinese revisionists. In fact the reconstitution of the proletarian party in the U.S. could only be achieved through years of a complex and arduous struggle against the Maoist sabotage of the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism.
In the mid-1950's, the Communist Party of the USA, which had long been corroded by the influence of Browderite revisionism, succumbed to the Khrushchovite betrayal. History placed the task of reconstructing the genuine proletarian party before the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists.
The Chinese leadership opposed the struggle of the U.S. Marxist-Leninists from the outset. They opposed the fight to build the Marxist-Leninist party and instead promoted the theory of building "pre-party collectives." This gravely damaged the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. It dispersed and factionalized the Marxist-Leninist forces and allowed the infiltration of the movement by all sorts of dubious elements. This factionalized situation was favorable to the Chinese revisionists to prop up their own lackey groupings in the U.S. and to spread confusion on every question of strategy and tactics of the revolution. Indeed they promoted and supported numerous anti-Marxist sects while developing very close relations with the neo-revisionist big shots of the October League (today the social-chauvinist "CPML") and the Revolutionary Union (today the "RCP,USA").
At the same time, the Chinese revisionists organized savage attacks on the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists who had set out to rebuild the Party, the predecessors of the MLP. They spread the foulest slanders against our Party through every channel at their disposal: through the neo-revisionist groups, through the Chinese mission at the UN, and through bourgeois visitors who went to China, etc. The Chinese revisionists claimed that our Party was "trotskyite," "dogmatic," "police" and "CIA agents" and other wild concoctions worthy only of the imperialist political police.
The Chinese leadership knew that even though our Party adopted for a time certain erroneous formulations from the Communist Party of China, we held nothing sacred other than Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. Despite the confusion-mongering of the Chinese revisionists, our Party refused to abandon the struggle against revisionism; it always held aloft the banner of the party concept; and it never gave up its revolutionary stand towards the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie and its state. Hence the Chinese leaders sought to discredit and smash our Party.
Since the Mao-Nixon tete-a-tete in 1971-72, the Chinese leaders were busy constructing the counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance. But as the Chinese leaders knew, our Party would not give up the struggle against U.S. imperialism and would not subordinate itself to the U.S.-China alliance. In contrast to this, all the neo-revisionist groups subordinated themselves to and became a "left wing" for this reactionary alliance. Indeed, today the "three worldist" followers of Chinese revisionism are the greatest champions of the U.S.-China alliance and of all U.S. imperialist war preparations generally.
Our Party has successfully fought the attacks of Chinese revisionism. Our Party's decade-long struggle against neo-revisionism has been a fight against the American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism. The powerful movement against social-chauvinism and "three worlds-ism" and the profound repudiation of Mao Zedong Thought have all been powerful blows against Chinese revisionism and its local followers. The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA was victoriously founded, and lives and grows, without the social-chauvinists and revisionists and against them.
The Question of Upholding the Leninist Norms of Relations Among the Marxist-Leninist Parties Remains of Vital Importance Today
The importance of the Leninist norms is once again verified today in the struggle that the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA is waging to defend itself from the savage attacks of the crusaders against ideological struggle. These gentlemen have provoked an unprincipled split with our Party. They call for the overthrow of our leadership and seek to strangle our Party.
The immediate reasons for their frenzy against our Party are twofold. First these gentlemen are opposed to our Party carrying the struggle against Chinese revisionism through to the end. They have opposed the vigorous leadership that our Party has given to the 'movement against social-chauvinism in the U.S. Second, these gentlemen make the preposterous demand that we submit to a "special relationship" with them, completely outside all the Leninist norms of relations among the Marxist-Leninist parties.
The "special relationship" sought by these gentlemen is one of the Maoist blunders that they have been making on a whole series of questions. This "special relationship" is closely related to their blatantly factional conception of the international Marxist-Leninist movement. These gentlemen do not believe that there is a single international communist movement based on the common ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Instead they have concocted the disgusting theory of "two (or more) trends" among the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties. This theory arbitrarily divides up the Marxist-Leninist parties into a special trend around the crusaders against ideological struggle versus all the rest of the parties.
Our Party rejects this dangerous and factional view. The theory of "two (or more) trends" is a theory which splits the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties into separate factional groupings. It is a theory of separate "spheres of influence" in the international movement, a poly centrist theory la Italian revisionist Togliatti. Our Party also rejects the attempts of these gentlemen to place our Party within what they consider to be their own special trend. We have always stood by the position that there is a single international Marxist-Leninist movement and the MLP is the American contingent of this movement.
Proceeding from their splittist outlook, the crusaders against ideological struggle have an attitude of complete contempt for the Leninist norms of fraternal relations. They make the astonishing claim that these norms, the vitality of which has repeatedly been proven in history, are allegedly "not concrete"! They claim that to demand the implementation of these norms is to be "formalistic" and even "centrist." And turning truth on its head, they claim that the norm of non-interference in other parties, instead of being a safeguard against the attacks of revisionism, is itself a "source of national and social-chauvinism"!
Indeed the crusaders against ideological struggle1 Wave repeatedly displayed a pragmatic attitude towards the organizational principles of Leninism. Only a short while ago, they declared: "Marxist-Leninists use organization as a force in their favor, not as a thing to paralyze themselves, to entangle themselves in so many rules and regulations that their hands and feet are tied in knots." This is straightforward ridicule of the norms of the party. It is to say that when it is "in their favor," the norms should be paid lip service to; but otherwise, when it comes down to being "concrete," these aristocratic gentlemen are quitยฃ above all these allegedly bureaucratic formalities.
Indeed the crusaders against ideological struggle replace the Leninist norms with a hypocritical double standard. This is quite natural considering that they have created the theory of "two (or more) trends" in order to place themselves at the head of their own special trend.
Take, for instance, their attitude towards the principle of independence of the parties. With respect to themselves, these gentlemen raise a big ballyhoo every so often, demanding absolute respect for their "independence." But this has nothing in common with the Leninist conception of independence. What these gentlemen demand is a polycentrist "independence" -- the right to be independent of Marxism-Leninism itself. Hence they interpret independence to mean the separation of the parties and go so far as to openly ban their members from even examining the line of the other Marxist-Leninist parties. Thus, not too long ago, they proclaimed that: "anyone who says that our line is not consistent with somebody else's line should be banned from the organization." Hence they convert the question of independence of the parties into a matter of counter- posing "our line" to "somebody else's line," irrespective of where these lines stand with respect to Marxism-Leninism.
But when it comes to other parties, such as ours these gentlemen have absolutely no respect for their independence and integrity. They demand a "special relationship" in which others are to submit to their positions, whether they are Marxist-Leninist or not. They refuse to listen to criticism and in fact consider any criticism to be "polemics" and "provocations." They give themselves the right to flirt with opportunist groupings in other countries. They have declared that they will not abide by the party principle in other countries -- that they will "never seek the approval of any fraternal party" for any of their actions affecting other parties' affairs, "either before or after taking such actions." Such is the nature of their contempt for the Leninist norms of relations among the parties.
Our Party condemns the factional concept of "special relationship." We uphold the Leninist norms as the only basis for relations among the parties. We consider them to be an important factor for the development of an active and militant internationalist unity of the Marxist-Leninist parties.
Uphold the Unity of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement!
Two decades since the 1960 Moscow meeting find a world situation in which the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists have successfully reconstituted true Marxist-Leninist parties in many countries. These parties have been built and strengthened in the course of tenacious struggle against Soviet and Chinese revisionism as well as all other brands of revisionism and opportunism. The cause of world revolution calls for the continuation of the relentless struggle against all forms of revisionism and opportunism. It requires vigorous efforts from all the Marxist-Leninist forces for the strengthening of the unity and cooperation among the Marxist-Leninist parties.
The Marxist-Leninist parties are contingents of a single worldwide movement, sections of the international proletarian army. The Marxist-Leninist parties are based on a common class, the proletariat, which suffers from the yoke of capitalist wage slavery throughout the capitalist-revisionist world. They fight to fulfill the common mission of the proletariat, the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The Marxist-Leninist parties face a common enemy in the forces of imperialism, revisionism and reaction which are united in their attempts to strangle the revolution. Hence the unity of the international Marxist-Leninist movement is a powerful weapon for the victory of the world revolution. This unity is realized on the granite foundation of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the 1960 Moscow meeting, it is important to recall the courageous struggle waged by the PLA against the Khrushchovite splitters. The PLA fought for a sound and revolutionary unity of the international communist movement. As part of this, it pointed out the role of upholding the Leninist norms of relations in order to ensure a revolutionary and monolithic unity of the Marxist-Leninist parties.
Our Party has always drawn great strength and inspiration from the study of the revolutionary experience of the PLA and the writings of Comrade Enver Hoxha. In particular, the study of the materials of Volume XIX of the Works of Enver Hoxha, which describe the revolutionary struggle of the PLA during the period from the Bucharest to the Moscow meeting in 1960, has played an important role in the struggle of our Party to uphold its organizational integrity and the norms of fraternal relations. These materials, most of which are also contained in the recently released Volume III of the Selected Works of Comrade Enver Hoxha, are a great contribution to the struggle for the strengthening of the unity of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement.
This year the PLA has also published Comrade Enver Hoxha's memoirs, With Stalin and The Khrushchevites. These works are a further contribution to the exposure of and struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionist betrayal. In these works, Comrade Enver Hoxha reveals in detail the anti-Marxist and chauvinist nature of the Khrushchovites and contrasts this to the magnificent internationalist stand of the great Marxist-Leninist revolutionary J.V. Stalin. They are a powerful call to carry the struggle against modern revisionism through to the end.
The Party of Labor of Albania has waged an inspiring struggle against Chinese revisionism, the "three worlds" theory and Mao Zedong Thought. This struggle has been a powerful defense of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. As part of this struggle, they have denounced the Maoist theories of the inevitable existence and struggle of opposing lines inside the party. The views of the PLA have been discussed and welcomed by the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists all over the world. Our Party has studied the polemics from the PLA closely and learned much. We regard these works as great achievements of contemporary revolutionary Marxism-Leninism.
The crusaders against ideological struggle have savagely attacked our Party in part because our Party stands for carrying the struggle against Chinese revisionism through to the end. These gentlemen have at the same time speculated on and vulgarized the Marxist-Leninist critique of Chinese revisionism. They have for example vulgarized the denunciation of the Maoist theory advocating the inevitable existence of opposing lines and headquarters inside the party into a denunciation of the term "two-line struggle" torn out of any context. They have done this in order to denounce "ideological struggle," the struggle against opportunism, a serious attitude towards theory, etc., as allegedly all manifestations of Maoism. Of course, our brave crusaders do not elaborate their views, but instead present their anti-Marxist blunders by fiat. In straightforward Khrushchovite fashion, they call any disagreement with their ultimatums as "an attack on the international movement." Thus, they try to live off the prestige of others. In particular, on the question of the Maoist theory of several headquarters in the party, they pretend that their views on "two-line struggle" are the same as those of the PLA.
But this is just a crude fraud. A study of the views of the PLA reveals that the crusaders against ideological struggle are vulgarizing the question of "two-line struggle." They distort it in the same way that the Maoists of the "RCP, USA" do when they attack Comrade Hoxha's brilliant work Imperialism and the Revolution. Both the "RCP,USA" and the crusaders vulgarize the matter and equate the Maoist theory of opposing lines and headquarters inside the party with ideological struggle, the struggle against revisionism, and so forth. Then the "RCP,USA" denounces its own vulgarized straw man and slanders the PLA as allegedly against the inner-party class struggle, etc., while the crusaders against ideological struggle take the vulgarized straw man as correct and put forward such Khrushchovite blunders as negating the ideological struggle and the struggle against opportunism, advocating the extinction of the inner-party struggle, and so forth.
In order to combat these vulgarizations, a careful study of the important works of the PLA on the struggle against Chinese revisionism is of great value. Such a study reveals the power and grand sweep of the works by Comrade Enver Hoxha and the PLA. To help such a study, we therefore present these reference notes. These notes include as excerpts a number of the key passages dealing with the subject of the Maoist theory of two or more lines or headquarters inside the party.
From this study, we shall see that the key documents of the PLA in the struggle against Chinese revisionism denounce the Maoist theories of several headquarters in the party as factionalism and not as an exaggeration of the ideological and polemical struggle or of the struggle against revisionism. Indeed, these documents call for the broadening and deepening of the ideological and polemical struggle against modern revisionism. These documents do not denounce the inner-party class struggle either, but instead distinguish between the principled inner-party struggle and the unprincipled coexistence and strife of factions advocated and practiced by the Chinese revisionists. In brief, these documents give a diametrically opposite view of the Marxist-Leninist critique of the Chinese revisionist theories on the "two-line struggle" than do the various vulgarizations fashionable among the crusaders against ideological struggle and the "RCP,USA."
*****
The Historic Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania(November, 1976)
Let us begin by examining Comrade Enver Hoxha's Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA. This work was a clarion call for struggle against Chinese revisionism and the "three worlds" theory and caused a sensation all around the world. Because of the year in which it was written, this document could not and did not denounce Mao Zedong Thought by name. Nevertheless it opposes many of the basic theses of Mao Zedong Thought through giving the correct thesis in positive form. On the question of several lines in the party, Comrade Enver Hoxha states:
"Our Party has not allowed and will never allow the existence of factions within its ranks. It has had and has one line only, the Marxist-Leninist line, which it has loyally defended and resolutely implemented." (Ch. Ill, sec. 1, p.80)
Comrade Enver Hoxha thus opposes the Maoist factional theories on opposing lines inside the party. However, he resolutely refuses to counterpose the monolithic unity of the party to the vigorous internal life of the party or even to ''the struggle of opposites in the ranks of the Party." On the contrary, it is precisely both the vigorous inner-party life and the tempering of the party in the flames of constant revolutionary struggle that are indispensable in order to preserve and strengthen the monolithic unity of the party. He incisively and pointedly stresses that the monolithic unity of the party is a " unity of action, a unity of revolutionaries." He writes:
"The unity of the Party is a militant unity, a unity of action, a unity of revolutionaries. The active life of our Party cannot tolerate the existence of such basic organizations with only formal unity, where an atmosphere of 'peace and quiet' and a life of ease prevail, where all are in agreement at meetings but fail to mobilize themselves to carry out the tasks outside and remain unconcerned about this. The genuine and durable unity of the Party of the working class and of each of its organizations is preserved and strengthened constantly only through the struggle of opposites in the ranks of the Party, through debate, principled criticism and self-criticism, by implementing the line of the Party, its decisions and directives, its proletarian principles and norms, to the letter." (Ch. Ill, sec. 1, p. 81)
Comrade Hoxha also does not engage in the empty game of condemning as revisionist anything that fits the formal pattern of a struggle of two entities. He refuses to confuse factionalism with the struggle between two roads. He writes:
"The construction of socialism is a process of stern class struggle between the two roads, the socialist road and the capitalist road, a struggle waged on all fronts, political and economic, ideological and military." (Ch. IV, sec. 1, p. 108)
Furthermore, Comrade Enver Hoxha is free from the slightest hint of counterposing the monolithic unity of the party to the ideological and polemical struggle. On the contrary, Comrade Enver Hoxha stresses the ideological struggle and includes an entire chapter of the Report Chapter IV, on ''The Struggle of the Party on the Ideological Front." He also calls for the ''continuation and extension" of the ideological struggle against modem revisionism and deepening of that great polemic which began after the I960 Moscow Meeting. " (Ch. VI, p. 226) Comrade Hoxha's discussion of the ideological and polemical struggle and of party-building in the Report are of great value, but it is unfortunately beyond the scope of these notes to discuss these topics further.
The Scientific Sessions in Albania of October 1978 Problems of Current World Development
Now we shall pass on to the Scientific Sessions held in Albania in October 1978. We shall discuss the reports from these sessions published in the Albanian book Problems of Current World Development,Tirana, 1979. At these sessions, Comrade Agim Popa denounced the Chinese revisionist theories on several lines in the party as follows:
"The Marxist-Leninist parties in various countries have successfully waged a resolute struggle to safeguard the sound ideological, political and organizational unity of their ranks, against factionalism and splits. They reject those anti-Marxist preachings and practices which justify the existence of two or more lines in the party, and defend, in theory and practice, the view that the party has only one line, the revolutionary line, based on Marxism-Leninism, because only this line leads the proletariat to its triumphant revolution." (p. 84)
Comrade Agim Popa then goes on to describe the vigorous internal life of the party, including, within the possibilities allowed by the concrete situations facing the Marxist-Leninist parties, that the parties "have fought and continue to fight for the most effective implementation of democracy in the party....(emphasis as in the original). Furthermore, the Scientific Sessions called for the continuation and deepening of the struggle against all trends of revisionism. This was stressed both in Comrade Agim Popa s speech on the Marxist-Leninist parties, in Fiqret Shehu 's speech entitled "Broadening and Deepening of the Struggle Against All Currents of modern Revisionism -- An Historical Necessity, '' and all throughout the Scientific Sessions.
Imperialism and the RevolutionFirst edition for inner-party circulation in the PLA -- April 1978 Publicly available in English in the U.S. -- February 1979
Comrade Enver Hoxha's brilliant work Imperialism and the Revolution also dealt with the question of Mao's theory of several lines inside the party. We shall quote the relevant passage at some length in order to present Comrade Hoxha s idea in its full context and in order to collect here in one place the main key passages on this question. Comrade Hoxha wrote:
"There has been and there is no true Marxist-Leninist unity of thought and action in the Communist Party of China. The strife among factions, which has existed since the founding of the Communist Party of China, has meant that a correct Marxist-Leninist line hasnot been laid down in this party, and it has not been guided by Marxist-Leninist thought. The various tendencies which manifested themselves among the main leaders of the party were at times leftist, at times right opportunist, sometimes centrist, and going as far as openly anarchist, chauvinist and racist views.... Mao Tsetung himself has advocated the need for the existence of 'two lines' in the party. According to him, the existence and struggle between two lines is something natural, is a manifestation of the unity of the opposites, is a flexible policy which unites in itself both loyalty to principles and compromise. 'Thus,' he writes, 'we have two hands to deal with a comrade who has made mistakes: one hand to struggle with him and the other to unite with him. The aim of this struggle is to uphold the principles of Marxism, which means being principled; that is one aspect of the problem. The other aspect is to unite with him. The aim of unity is to offer him a way out, to reach a compromise with him.'
"These views are diametrically opposed to the Leninist teachings on the communist party as an organized vanguard detachment which must have a single line and steel unity of thought and action.
"The class struggle in the ranks of the party as a reflection of the class struggle going on outside the party, has nothing in common with Mao Tsetung's concepts on the 'two lines in the party.' The party is not an arena of classes and the struggle between antagonistic classes, it is not a gathering of people with contradictory aims. The genuine Marxist-Leninist party is the party of the working class only and bases itself on the interests of this class. This is the decisive factor for the triumph of the revolution and the construction of socialism. Defending the Leninist principles on the party, which do not permit the existence of many lines, of opposing trends in the communist party, J.V. Stalin emphasized:
'...the communist party is the monolithic party of the proletariat, and not a party of a bloc of elements of different classes.'
"Mao Tsetung, however, conceives the party as a union of classes with contradictory interests, as an organization in which two forces, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the 'proletarian staff' and the 'bourgeois staff,' which must have their representatives from the grassroots to the highest leading organs of the party, confront and struggle against each other. Thus, in 1956, he sought the election of the leaders of right and left factions to the Central Committee, presenting to this end, arguments as naive as they were ridiculous.... While renouncing principled struggle in the ranks of the party, Mao Tsetung played the game of factions, sought compromise with some of them to counter some others and thus consolidate his own positions." (Book form, pp. 399-401; Proletarian Internationalism edition, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 109, col. 1-2)
In the above passage Comrade Hoxha repeatedly denounce s Mao's concepts on "two lines in the party." It is however very striking that in this passage and in Imperialism and the Revolution in general Comrade Enver Hoxha does not even use the formula 'two-line struggle'' in denouncing Mao Zedong Thought, although he does refer to Mao's views on "the existence and struggle between two lines '' inside the party. Thus in this passage Comrade Hoxha brings up the question of the "struggle between the two lines" solely with reference to the fact that the formula of struggle between opposing lines in the party implies the existence of several lines in the party. This is characteristic of the entire body of theoretical literature of the PLA on this subject. As well, Comrade Hoxha defends the inner-party struggle and denounces Mao for 'renouncing principled struggle in the ranks of the party and instead playing the game of factions.
As well, clearly Comrade Hoxha does not denounce Mao s theory of the inevitable existence of several lines in the party as exaggerating the ideological and polemical struggle. For that matter, the book Imperialism and the Revolution itself is a brilliant example of intensifying and deepening the ideological and polemical struggle against revisionism.
Reflections on China Volumes I and II, 1979
Comrade Enver Hoxha's monumental work Reflections on China gives a painstaking and penetrating account of the various stands and actions of the Chinese leadership from the beginning of 1962 to December 1977. In these extracts from Comrade Hoxha's political diary, there are many revealing passages on the question of the Chinese revisionist theory of several lines inside the party. Unfortunately we only have space to quote a few of them.
The entry of April 28, 1967 has the following revealing passage on the liberalism and social-democratic opportunism of the Chinese leadership with regard to the coexistence of different lines inside the party. Comrade Hoxha wrote:
"As I see it (and maybe I am wrong, because we are still in the dark about many internal facts of their party), the Chinese comrades have a pronounced dose of liberalism and opportunism in their activities. Naturally, this is very harmful. These tendencies cannot be either new or accidental. The fact that for seventeen years two lines have been observed in their party and have co-existed without a great deal of friction between them (recently, it has been alleged that there was friction, although they seem to be so adjusted to each other, that they appear to be a single whole), proves the social-democratic opportunism in their line." (Proletarian Internationalism edition, Part "A," p. 98, col. 1, emphasis as in the original)
"The fact is that the Communist Party of China has gone on for tens of years on end tolerating two lines in its ranks. If it proceeds from the principle that two active lines are necessary in the party, then the party cannot be a Marxist-Leninist party. Even within the party a class struggle must be waged, indeed a stern struggle, to totally liquidate the anti-party, anti-Marxist faction as quickly as possible. We have not seen such a struggle in the Communist Party of China, even when some leaders (who have not been alone) have been condemned as factionalists. On the contrary, they have remained not only in the party, but even in the main leadership.
"Even now,...we see that same sort of dilettantism, soft-heartedness, slowness to act and liberalism towards anti-party elements opposed to the working class." (Ibid., col. 2, emphasis as in the original)
These passages bring out vividly that Mao's theory of several lines inside the party did not arise from his wanting to fight too hard against deviations and wrong lines, but on the contrary from his liberal and social-democratic view on the desirability of the coexistence of factions inside the party. For years and decades on end the Chinese leadership manifested "soft-heartedness, slowness to act and liberalism.'' This fundamental aspect of Mao Zedong Thought is negated by our crusaders against ideological struggle who vulgarize the Marxist-Leninist critique of Mao's opposition to the monolithic unity of the party into a Khrushchovite denunciation of struggle, whether on the ideological front, on the inner-party front, or so forth.
The entry of January 22, 1976 also deals with this question. Comrade Hoxha points out that deviations and factions appeared "in the party of Lenin, too," but that Lenin acted against them "with clear Marxist ideology and an iron hand." This entry characterizes Mao's factionalism not as an excess of struggle, but with Mao's liberal, social-democratic dictum about a ''hundred flowers." Maoist coexistence of factions is thus contrasted to Lenin struggle on the ideological and organizational fronts against all deviations and factions. The anarchist and factionalist methods of struggle manifested in the Chinese Communist Party, the chaos and ''struggle of clans," is the inevitable flip side of the liberal, social-democratic stands on the coexistence of factions. Comrade Hoxha writes:
"We see that until Mao came to the leadership of the party, deviations and factions like those of Li Li-San, Wang Ming, etc., etc., appeared in its organization, ideology and practice. Of course, such things occurred in the party of Lenin, too, the enemies attacked the Bolshevik Party from within and from without; but Lenin acted against them with clear Marxist ideology and an iron hand; he tempered the party and gave it the immortal norms which guide and will always guide the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and the revolution in the world correctly.
"I believe that when Mao came to power he established some sort of order, created and led the army and the war, but in the organization of the party and its stands, neither the Leninist basic principles nor the Leninist norms were properly established." (Proletarian Internationalism edition, Part "C," p. 55, col. 2)
"... This party [the Communist Party of China -- ed.] grew up with factions and continued with factions, both leftist and rightist." (Ibid.)
"Its own leadership says that there are two lines in the Communist Party of China. It accepts their existence and, it seems to me, makes it a condition for the existence of the party, and calls it the class struggle in the party. However,I think that there are not just two lines in this party, but manylines which are clashing with one another for power. The party is chaotic and does not wage a class struggle on sound Marxist-Leninist revolutionary principles, or, to put it better, the party does not wage the class struggle at all, but a struggle of clans goes on within it.The clans are in the party and the state, at the base and in the leadership. All the supporters of factionists, who have allegedly been condemned, can be found within the party and are operating. All this development has been and is being carried out in the name of Mao, who is being made a taboo, his quotations are learned, but each faction is going about its own business on the quiet. Mao himself permits the 'two flowers,' if not 'a hundred flowers.' 'Let there be two or three factions and let them co-exist,' he says, 'then we shall make a revolution each seven years and shall see who will triumph. If the rightists win, the leftists will rise and overthrow them.' This is 'the brilliant theory of Mao'!!" (Ibid., p. 56, col. 2, emphasis as in the original)
In various entries Comrade Hoxha denounces Mao as a centrist for coexisting and balancing the various factions. Note that the following entries, as well as the previous one, are from 1976, well after the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.'' In other entries, Comrade Hoxha scathingly comments on the excesses and anarchist phenomena during the "Cultural Revolution.'' Yet he does not regard the problem underlying the failure of the "Cultural Revolution" as being that the Chinese leadership fought too hard against the ultra-revisionists. On the contrary, in one entry after another he flails them for not fighting seriously. He finds the problem in that, despite Mao's phrasemongering about contradictions and so forth, "the class struggle in China, in practice has not been waged sternly and consistently. In this direction, too, Mao proved to be liberal and a moderate." Mao merely "overthrew some leaders of these currents, but left their base untouched." Hence "the liberal, moderating situation always continued." Is this the way the vulgarizers present the issue of ''two-line struggle"? Of course not. They vulgarize everything to the term "two-line struggle" precisely in order to obscure and hide this penetrating analysis of Comrade Hoxha on the social-democratic opportunism in Mao Zedong Thought.
Thus Comrade Hoxha wrote:
"Mao has always been a centrist, an onlooker, a Marxist-Leninist (I I'eau de rose(rose-watered), as the French say." (Proletarian Internationalismedition, Part "C," entry of August 17, 1976, p. 72, col. 2, emphasis as in the original)
"Mao Tsetung spoke with revolutionary catchwords about the 'revolution,' the 'class struggle' and other questions of principle, but in practice he was a liberal, a dreamer, a centrist in the direction of the manipulation and balancing of the various currents which existed and intrigued within the Communist Party of China and the Chinese state. With such characteristics, Mao Tsetung was easily influenced by one or the other current; sometimes supported the one, sometimes the other." (Proletarian Internationalism edition, Part "C," entry of October 12, 1976, p. 76, col. 2)
"... He [Mao -- ed.] wrotea good deal about the class struggle, about contradictions, etc., but the class struggle in China, in practice especially,has not been waged sternly and consistently. In this direction, too, Mao proved to be a liberal and a moderate. He permitted rightist revisionist elements to take power and to establish deep roots in the party, the state and everywhere. Mao coexisted with them, simply looked on, and frequently approved them. In the end, he overthrew some leaders of these currents but left their base untouched. His authority, created during the war and after the victory, brought about that the factions 'were defeated,' but the problem was only partly solved and the liberal, moderating situation always continued. Mao Tsetung was a centrist, he kept people of various currents close to him, people who called themselves Marxists but who were not Marxists and who fought on their own line under the umbrella of Mao Tsetung. When they upset the balance, Mao Tsetung intervened and 'put things in order.'
"There was instability in the thoughts and actions of Mao and I think that his interpretation and application of Marxism was done rather in the way the fancy took him." (Ibid., emphasis as in the original)
"The Class Struggle Within the Party" Albania Today, No. 1, 1978
Comrade Ndreci Plasari 's article in issue No. 1, 1978 of Albania Today also deals with the question of Mao's theory of several lines inside the party. This article defends the principled inner-party struggle and is entitled 'The Class Struggle Within the Party -- a Guarantee that the Party Will Always Remain a Revolutionary Party of the Working Class." This article points out that the class struggle inside the party "is not necessarily a struggle between two opposing lines " (p. 13) because the party should be vigilant to prevent the crystallization of the negative phenomena into factional trends and revisionist lines. Thus the article opposes the formula of the ''struggle of lines'' inside the party solely from the point of view that this formula implies the existence of more than one line in the party. The party should be vigilant and the inner-party struggle should aim to prevent the creation of factions and opposition lines. The article states that "... objectively, there is a great and continuing danger of the creation of factional trends and anti-Marxist opposition lines in the ranks of the party of the working class. At the same time,... the emergence and crystallization of these trends and lines is not decreed by fate to be inevitable, (p. 13) Such a thing "emerges and develops only in certain conditions, '' for example, 'when the party of the working class does not wage a correct, determined and consistent class struggle within its ranks all the time.
If such a thing should occur, the party should not tolerate the existence of the factions and opposing lines in the slightest.
Thus the article does not identify "two-line struggle" in the party as ideological struggle. On the contrary. Not only does the article defend the inner-party struggle and go into great detail into how it should be waged, but it stresses the role of the ideological struggle. does not counterpose ideological and organizational measures, but defines the relationship between them. Among the passages on this question are the following:
"The class struggle within the party is, in the first place, an ideological struggle for the Marxist-Leninist purity, of its theory, of its general line, and of the communists themselves.
"But it is also a political struggle. The fight against traitors and hostile activity in the party ranks cannot be confined to the ideological field alone....
"...this struggle is correct and complete only when it is waged as a combined ideological and political struggle, and is accompanied with the appropriate organizational measures.
"Only through such a struggle can the party work out, preserve and apply a correct Marxist-Leninist line;..." (pp. 10-11)
"There is no doubt that, the struggle against anti-party elements, groups and views, like the entire class struggle within the party, is an ideological struggle in the first place. Through this struggle, which has continued even after the smashing of one or the other group, their anti-Marxist views have been exposed and refuted, and profound convictions have been created among the communists and working people about the hostile character of these views which have led the traitors into activity against the party and the socialist order. But the ideological struggle never fully achieves its purposes if it is not accompanied with organizational and political measures." (p. 14)
Enver Hoxha, Speeches 1967-68
The stand of the PLA in opposition to allowing several lines inside the party is not a new stand. It was not first elaborated at the 7th Congress in 1976 or taken only in the course of the present polemic against Mao Zedong Thought. On the contrary, this stand is a characteristic feature of the Leninist party of a new type, a feature which distinguishes it from the old style social-democratic parties, which were corrupt and unfit for revolution. The PLA has been built right from the start as a genuine communist party, a party of a new type, and so has continually adhered to this basic Leninist principle. This principle can be found in a number of writings of the PLA such as in the History of the PLA and elsewhere. Here we quote from speeches of Comrade Hoxha 's delivered almost a decade prior to the 7th Congress. This helps illustrate the unvarying stand of the PLA in defence of the Leninist monolithic unity of the party, a unity achieved and maintained only through the vigorous and continual waging of the class struggle, both inside and outside the party.
Thus in the speech ''The Further Revolutionization of the Party and Government," (February 6, 1967) Comrade Hoxha defended the Leninist unity of the party. He stated: "...our Party is not an arena of classes in which each class has its proportional number of representatives defending the individual interests of each class,..." (p. 31)
"This means that our Party is a monolithic Party with steel-like unity of thought and action; there is no room in it for anti-Marxist, revisionist, Trotskyite, liberal, social-democratic and other fractions and opposition. " (p. 32)
"A Marxist-Leninist Party which is respected as such cannot tolerate the existence of two lines in the Party; it can, therefore, not tolerate the existence of a faction or of many factions. If a thing of this kind is manifested the Party cannot and should not tolerate its existence, not even for a short period of time. A faction in the Party runs counter to the Marxist-Leninist unity of thought and action, tries to transform the Party into a social-democratic one, and the socialist country into a capitalist one." (pp. 36-37)
This does not mean that there is no inner-party struggle. On the contrary, the correct waging of the inner-party struggle is one of the prerequisites for the monolithic unity of the party. Comrade Hoxha pointed out:
"...although the Party is not an arena of classes, its members...bring with them non-proletarian survivals which must be purged and fought against; and this is the form of the class struggle which we constantly insist should be waged against these vestiges within the Party. In this great battle some communists get tired, at times they succumb. Thus, it is because of this that they can become dangerous elements, therefore, the Party should continually educate its cadres ideologically and politically, at work and in battle so that they may never succumb, that they may always be revolutionaries." (p. 37)
The speech continued on to discuss in detail various measures for the continued revolutionization of the Party and government, such as the struggle against bureaucratism. This subject is of great interest, but it is beyond the limits of these notes. These teachings on the monolithic unity of the party were reiterated in the article 'Carry out the tasks of revolutionizing our Party and the life of our country with persistence and in a creative way. (December 21, 1968) Here too Comrade Hoxha called for a monolithic unity, but not just any kind of unity, not a 'unity for the sake of unity, "but a genuine communist unity, a unity that is not formal only but which manifests itself in all the party's members acting with a single will in the revolutionary struggle. He stated:
"The unity of our Party has always been based on principles, it has never been an opportunist unity, a 'unity for the sake of unity,' a kind of rank, superficial unity. Our great experience has shown that sound Marxist-Leninist unity is attained when the norms of the inner life of a proletarian party are carried out in a revolutionary way in its ranks, when there are fiery discussions on all problems, when opportunist and revisionist degeneration in politics and ideology are not allowed to its members, when petty bourgeois arrivists and bureaucrats are not allowed to find shelter or vegetate within its ranks." (p. 240)
"We should keep waging a principled and concentrated class struggle, especially in the Party. " (p. 241)
[Photo: "Our Party holds that the continuation and extension of the ideological struggle against revisionism in general, and of Soviet revisionism in particular, the deepening of that great polemic which began after the 1960 Moscow Meeting, constitutes an important and imperative duty for all the Marxist-Leninists, for all true revolutionaries.''
-- Enver Hoxha, Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, November 1,1976, p. 226]
(Below we reprint the introduction and table of contents of Enver Hoxha's new book.)
Two decades have gone by since the Meeting of 81 communist and workers' parties of the world, which has gone down in history as one of the most important events in the struggle which is being waged between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism. At this Meeting our Party opened fire on the revisionist group of Khrushchev which was ruling in the Soviet Union and struggling in every way to subjugate the entire international communist movement, all the communist and workers' parties of the world, and set them on its road of betrayal.
Our open and principled attack on Khrushchevite modern revisionism at the Meeting in November 1960 was not a surprise move. On the contrary, it was the logical continuation of the Marxist-Leninist stand which the Party of Labour of Albania had always maintained, was the transition to a new higher stage of the struggle which our Party had long been waging for the defence and consistent application of Marxism-Leninism.
From the time the Khrushchevites took power to the moment when we came out in open confrontation with them, the relations of the Party of Labour of Albania with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union passed through a complicated process, with zig zags, with periods of exacerbation and periods of temporary normalization. This was the process of each getting to know the other through encounters in the course of the struggle and the continual clash of views. After the Khrushchevite revisionist-putschists came to power, our Party, basing itself on the events that were taking place there, on certain stands and actions, which were ill-defined at first, but which, step by step, were becoming more concrete, began to sense the great danger of this clique of renegades, which hid behind a deafening pseudo-Marxist demagogy, and to understand that this clique was becoming a great threat both to the cause of the revolution and socialism as a whole, and to our country.
We became more and more aware that the views and stands of Nikita Khrushchev on important questions of the international communist movement and the socialist camp differed from our views and stands. The 20th Congress of the CPSU, in particular, was the event which made us adopt a stand of opposition to Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites. As Marxist-Leninists and in a Marxist-Leninist way, time after time we had pointed out to the Soviet leaders our reservations and objections to their conciliatory stands towards the Yugoslav revisionists, about many aspects of their unprincipled foreign policy, about many of their wrong and completely un-Marxist stands and actions on major international problems, etc. Although they sometimes feigned a retreat, they continued on their course, while we refused to swallow what they served up to us, but on the contrary, defended our views and implemented our internal and external policy.
With the passage of time this brought about that we became better acquainted with each other's positions, and neither side trusted the other. For our part, we continued to preserve our friendship with the Soviet Union, with its peoples, continued to build socialism according to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin, continued as before to defend the great Stalin and his work and to fight unwaveringly against Yugoslav revisionism. Our existing doubts about the Soviet revisionists increased and deepened from day to day, because day by day Khrushchev and company were acting in opposition to Marxism-Leninism.
Khrushchev was aware of our reservations about the 20th Congress, and about the policy which he followed with the Titoites, imperialism, etc., but his tactic was not to hasten to exacerbate the situation with us Albanians. He hoped to profit from the friendship which we displayed for the Soviet Union to take the Albanian fortress from within and to get us into the bag through smiles and threats, through giving us some reduced credits, as well as through pressure and blockades. Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites thought: "We know the Albanians. However stubborn they are, however hot-tempered they are, they have nowhere else to turn to, because we have them pinned up and, if they prove difficult, if they don't obey us, then we will show our teeth, we'll cut them off and boycott them, and overthrow all those who oppose us.''
The Khrushchev group prepared this course of action, promoted and deepened it, thinking that it would achieve its aim "quietly and gently'' and "without any fuss." However, the reality was convincing them that this tactic was yielding no fruit, and thus their impatience and arrogance began to emerge. The situation became tense. Then it was "eased" only to grow tense again. We understood where this course would lead Khrushchev and company, therefore we strengthened our vigilance, and while replying to manifestations of their despotism, we tried to prolong the "peace" while safeguarding our principles.
But the moment came when the cup was full to overflowing. The "peace," which had seemed to exist before, could continue no longer. Khrushchev went openly on to the attack to subjugate and force us to follow his utterly opportunist line. Then we told Khrushchev bluntly and loudly "No!," we said "Stop!" to his treacherous activity. This marked the beginning of a long and very difficult struggle in which our Party, to its glory and the glory of the people who gave birth to it and raised it, consistently defended the interests of its socialist Homeland, persistently defended Marxism-Leninism and the genuine international communist movement.
At that time many people did not understand the stand of the Party of Labour of Albania; there were even well-wishers of our Party and country who considered this action hasty, some had not yet completely understood the Khrushchevites' betrayal, some others thought that we broke away from the Soviet Union to link up with China, etc. Today, not only the friends, but also the enemies of socialist Albania have understood the principled character of the uninterrupted struggle which our Party has waged and is waging against opportunists of every hue.
Time has fully confirmed how right the Party of Labour of Albania was to fight the Khrushchevites and refuse to follow their line. To this fight, which demanded and still demands great sacrifices, our small Homeland owes the freedom and independence it prizes so highly and its successful development on the road of socialism. Only thanks to the Marxist-Leninist line of our Party did Albania not become and never will become a protectorate of the Russians or anyone else.
Since 1961 our Party of Labour has not had any link or contact with the Khrushchevites. In the future, too, it will never establish party relations with them, and we do not have and will never have even state relations with the Soviet social-imperialists. As up to now, our Party will consistently wage the ideological and political struggle for the exposure of these enemies of Marxism-Leninism. We acted in this way both when Khrushchev was in power and when he was brought down and replaced by the Brezhnev clique. Our Party had no illusions, but on the contrary, was quite certain that Brezhnev, Kosygin, Suslov, Mikoyan, etc., who had been Khrushchev's closest collaborators, who had jointly organized and put into practice the revisionist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, would persist in their former line.
They eliminated Khrushchev with the aim of protecting Khrushchevism from the discredit which the master himself was bringing upon it with his endless buffoonery, eliminated the "father" with the aim of implementing the complete restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union with greater intensity and effectiveness.
In this direction Brezhnev and company have proved to be "worthy pupils" of their ill-famed teacher. Within the Soviet Union they established and strengthened the dictatorial fascist.regime, while they turned the foreign policy of their state into a policy of great-state chauvinism, expansion and hegemonism. Under the leadership of the Brezhnev Khrushchevites, the Soviet Union has been turned into an imperialist world power and, like the United States of America, aims to rule the world. Among the bitter evidence of the utterly reactionary policy of Soviet social-imperialism are the tragic events in Czechoslovakia, the strengthening of the domination of the Kremlin over the countries of the Warsaw Treaty, the deepening of their all-round dependence on Moscow and the extension of the tentacles of Soviet social-imperialism to Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
The correct assessments and forecasts of our Party about the reactionary internal and foreign policy of Brezhnev have been and are being constantly confirmed. The most recent example is Afghanistan, where the Brezhnev Khrushchevites undertook an open fascist aggression and now are trying to quell the flames of the people's war with fire and steel in order to prolong their social-imperialist occupation.
The fact that our small Homeland and people have not suffered the tragic fate of all those who are now languishing under imperialist or social-imperialist slavery is the best testimony to the correctness of the consistent, courageous and principled line which our Party of Labour has always followed.
The merit for this correct course belongs to the whole Party and, in particular, to its leadership, the Central Committee, which, imbued with and loyal to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, our guiding theory, has always led the Party and the people correctly. In the great tests which we have had to withstand! the unity of the Party with its leadership and the unity of the people around the Party have been brilliant and have become further tempered. This steel unity gave the Party support and strength in the difficult but glorious struggle against the Khrushchevite revisionists, too. This unity has been and is the foundation of the stability and confidence with which Albania has marched and is marching forward, withstanding the pressure and blackmail, the blandishments and demagogy of enemies of all hues.
As a communist and leader of the Party, I, too, have had to take part actively and make my contribution to ah this heroic struggle of our Party. Charged by the Party and its leadership, since the liberation of Albania, and especially during the years 1950-1960, I have headed delegations of the Party and the state many times in official meetings with the Soviet leaders and with the main leaders of other communist and workers' parties. Likewise, many times we have exchanged reciprocal visits, I have taken part in consultations and international meetings of communist parties at which I have expressed and defended the correct line, decisions and instructions of the Party. In all these meetings and visits I have become closely acquainted with glorious, unforgettable leaders, like Stalin, Dimitrov, Gottwald, Bierut, Pieck and others, and likewise, I have had to enter into contact with and know the Khrushchevite traitors, who, through a long and complicated process, gradually usurped power in the Soviet Union and in the former countries of people's democracy respectively.
The relations with them and the stands maintained by our Party during this period have been reflected in the documents of the Party, in my writings which are being published by decision of the Central Committee, as well as in other documents which are found in the Central Archives of the Party. Now I am handing over these notes for publication as my reminiscences and impressions from the many contacts and clashes with the Khrushchevites, which cover the period from 1953, after the death of Stalin, to the end of 1961, when the Khrushchev group broke off diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of Albania. Taken together with other published materials and documents covering that period, these notes, too, I believe, will serve to acquaint the communists and working masses better, both with the counter-revolutionary activity of the Soviet revisionists inside and outside the Soviet Union, and with the always correct and consistent struggle of our Party in defence of Marxism-Leninism, the people and our socialist Homeland.
1980
CONTENTS
1. In-fighting among the Top Soviet Leaders
Stalin dies. Next day the top Soviet leadership divides up the portfolios. Khrushchev climbs the steps to power. Disillusionment from the first meeting with the "new" Soviet leaders in June 1953. Ill-intentioned criticism from Mikoyan and Bulganin. The end of Beria's short-lived reign. The meeting with Khrushchev in June 1954: "You helped in the exposure of Beria. " Khrushchev's "theoretical" lecture on the roles of the first secretary of the party and the prime minister. The revisionist mafia spins its spider's web inside and outside the Soviet Union.
2. Khrushchev's Strategy and Tactics within the Soviet Union
The roots of the tragedy of the Soviet Union. The stages through which Khrushchev passes towards seizing political and ideological power. The Khrushchevite caste corrodes the sword of the revolution. What lies behind Khrushchev's "collective leadership." Khrushchev and Mikoyan -- the head of the counter-revolutionary plot. The breeze of liberalism is blowing in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev and Voroshilov speak openly against Stalin. Khrushchev builds up his own cult. The enemies of the revolution are proclaimed "heroes" and "victims."
3. Not Marxist-Leninists but Hucksters
Mikoyan, a cosmopolitan huckster and inveterate anti-Albanian. Difficult talks in June 1953 on economic matters -- the Soviet leaders are bargaining over aid for Albania. Khrushchev's "advice" one year later: "You don't need heavy industry," "We shall supply you with oil and metals," "Don't worry about bread grain, we'll supply you with all you want." Quarrels with Mikoyan. Discontent in Comecon from the revisionist chiefs. Ochab, Dej, Ulbricht. The June 1956 Comecon consultation in Moscow -- Khrushchev: "...we must do what Hitler did." Talks with Khrushchev again. His "advice": "Albania should advance with cotton, sheep, fish and citrus fruit."
4. The Touch-Stone
Khrushchev has his eyes on Yugoslavia. The first sign of the flirtation: the Soviet letter of June 1954; Khrushchev blames the Information Bureau for the Yugoslav leadership's betrayal. Intense exchange of cordial correspondence between Khrushchev and Tito. Khrushchev decides to rehabilitate the renegades. Our clear-cut opposition: the letters of May and, June 1955. Talk with Ambassador Levichkin: "How can such decisions be taken so lightly and in a unilateral way?" Insistent invitation to go to the Soviet Union "on holiday"! Meeting with Suslov. Mikoyan telephones at midnight: "Meet Tempo, iron out your disagreements," The meeting with S.V. Tempo.
5. The "Mother Party" Wants to Be the Conductor
Khrushchev seeks hegemony in the world communist movement. His attack on the Comintern and the Information Bureau. The Khrushchevites extend their tentacles to other parties. The sudden deaths of Gottwald and Bierut. Unforgettable memories from the meeting with Dimitrov and Kolarov. Correct but formal relations with Rumania. The opportunist zig zags of the Rumanian leadership. Pleasant impressions from Czechoslovakia; wandering at will and visits to historical sites. Suffocating atmosphere everywhere in the Soviet Union. The chinovniki surround us everywhere. Our relations with the East Germans.
6. The Official Proclamation of Revisionism
The 20th Congress of the CPSU. Khrushchev's theses -- the charter of modern revisionism. The "secret" report against Stalin. Togliatti demands recognition of his "merits." Tito in the Soviet Union. Molotov is dismissed from the task of foreign minister. Abortive attempt of the "anti-party group." The end of the career of Marshal Zhukov. Another victim of the Khrushchevites' backstage manoeuvres: Kirichenko. May 1956: Suslov demands that we rehabilitate Koci Xoxe and company. June 1956: Tito and Khrushchev are displeased with us. July 1957: Khrushchev arranges a dinner in Moscow so that we meet Rankovic and Kardelj.
7. Designing the Empire
Towards turning the socialist countries into Russian dominions. Changes in the Bulgarian leadership dictated by Moscow. Zhivkov's "clock" is wound up in Moscow. The Danubian complex and the Rumanians' "fall-out" with the Soviets. The official elimination of the Information Bureau. The reformist illusions of the Italian and French parties -- Togliatti, the father of "polycentrism." Unforgettable meeting with two beloved French comrades, Marcel Cachin and Gaston Monmousseau. The vacillations of Maurice Thorez. Destruction of the unity of the communist movement, a colossal service for world imperialism.
8. My First and Last Visit to China
Our relations with the CPC and the PRC up till 1956. Invitations from China, Korea and Mongolia. An astounding event in Korea: two members of the Political Bureau flee to...China! Ponomaryov defends the fugitives. Mikoyan and Peng Dehuzi "tune up" Kim II Sung. The meeting with Mao Zedong: "Neither the Yugoslavs nor you were wrong," "Stalin made mistakes," "It is necessary to make mistakes." Li Li-san at the 8th Congress of the CPC: "I ask you to help me, because I may make mistakes a- gain." Disappointment and concern over the 8th Congress of the CPC. Meetings in Beijing with Dej, Yugov, Zhou Enlai and others. Bodnaras as intermediary to reconcile us with Tito.
9. The "Demons" Escape from Control
The counter-revolution in action in Hungary and Poland. Matyas Rakosi. Who cooked up the "broth" in Budapest? Talk with Hungarian leaders. Debate with Suslov in Moscow. Imre Nagy's "self-criticism." Rakosi falls. Reaction surges ahead. Khrushchev, Tito and Gero in the Crimea. Andropov: "We cannot call the insurgents counter-revolutionaries. The Soviet leadership is hesitant. The Hungarian Workers' Party is liquidated. Nagy announces Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Treaty. Part of the back-stage manoeuvres: the Tito-Khrushchev letters. Poland 1956 -- Gomulka on the throne. In retrospect: Bierut. Gomulka's counter-revolutionary program. What we learn from the events of 1956. Talks in Moscow, December 1956.
10. Temporary Retreat in order to Take Revenge
The Soviets demand "unity." The Moscow Meeting of 1957. Khrushchev's negotiations to bring Tito to the meeting. Khrushchev's short-lived "anger." Debate over the formula: "Headed by the Soviet Union." Gomulka: "We are not dependent on the Soviet Union." Mao Zedong: "Our camp must have a head because even a snake has a head." Togliatti: "We must open new roads," "we are against a single leading centre," "we do not want to use Lenin's thesis 'the party of the new type.'" Mao's sophistry: 80 per cent, 70 per cent, and 10 per cent "Marxists." The Moscow Declaration and the Yugoslav reaction. Khrushchev disguises his betrayal under the name of Lenin.
11. "The Carrot" and "The Stick"
Our Party and Government delegation goes to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's manoeuvres: the "carrot" in evidence -- the Soviet government converts the credits into grants. Leningrad: Pospyelov and Kozlov censor our speeches. "We should not mention the Yugoslavs." Our official talk with Khrushchev and others. Khrushchev gets angry: "You want to take us back to Stalin's course," "Tito and Rankovic are better than Kardelj and Popovic. Tempo is an ass..., is unstable." A chance meeting with the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow, Micunovic. Khrushchev's visit to Albania, May 1959. Khrushchev and Malinovsky ask us for military bases: "We shall control the whole Mediterranean from the Bosporus to Gibraltar." The adviser on the extermination of dogs. The Soviet Embassy in Tirana, a centre of the KGB.
12. From Bucharest to Moscow
February 1960: Mikoyan on the Chinese-Soviet differences. Exacerbation of the situation between Moscow and Beijing. Kosygin pays a "visit" to Mehmet Shehu in Moscow. The Bucharest plot. Hysni Kapo does not bat an eyelid at Khrushchev's pressure. The Soviets set their secret agents in motion and establish the blockade to starve us. The struggle in the preparatory commission for the Moscow Meeting. Our delegation in Moscow. Icy atmosphere. The Soviet Gargantuas. Pressure, flattery, provocations again. The Kremlin marshals. A brief meeting with Andropov. Khrushchev's tactic: "There should be no polemics." The mercenaries react against our speech. The last talks with the Khrushchevite renegades.
13. The Final Act
Steel unity in the Party and our people. The Soviets want to occupy the Vlora base. Tense situation at the base. Admiral Kasatonov goes off with his tail between his legs. The enemies dream of changes in our leadership. The 4th Congress of the PLA. Pospyelov and Andropov in Tirana. The Greek and Czechoslovak delegates get the answer that they deserve to their provocations. Khrushchev's envoys to Tirana fail in their mission. Why do they "invite" us to go to Moscow again?! Khrushchev's public attack on the PLA at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU. The final breach: in December 1961 Khrushchev cuts off diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of Albania.
Barry Weisberg's MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" is nothing but an agency of social-democracy trying to smuggle itself into the Marxist-Leninist movement. Examination of the political positions of the MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" reveals that Weisberg's social-democratic sect is walking in the footsteps of Earl Browder. Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA in the 1930's and early 1940's, worked to destroy the revolutionary character of the CPUS A by corroding it with liberal-labor politics and American exceptionalism. Ever since, Browderism has remained a deadly curse subverting the working class movement and a byword for ultra-opportunist, revisionist politics. Weisberg has taken up the teachings of Browder precisely because Browderism is social-democracy disguised as communism. The Browderite teachings are tailor-made to serve the social-democratic efforts to infiltrate the Marxist-Leninist movement.
In the past two years or so, the MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" has set forth a new Browderite strategy to replace the equally Browderite formulas of the "three worlds'' theory that they were reluctantly forced to abandon. The MLOC/ "CPUSA(M-L)" has in effect taken up Browder's American exceptionalist banner of U.S. imperialism being allegedly a still young and vigorous capitalism. They have put forward the Browderite perspective that "reindustrialization'' will open a path for the harmonious, peaceful and crisis-free development of U.S. imperialism and its "unrivalled'' hegemony over the entire capitalist-revisionist world abroad and the working masses at home for "the next 10-20 years.'' In line with this opium dream, they have drawn the conclusion that revolutionary action is futile, if not downright "infantile leftism,'' and that the communist program is only of "educational'' significance. Slavishly following Browder and Khrushchov, they oppose the struggle against opportunism tooth and nail under the banner that allegedly ultra-leftism, sectarianism and leftist impetuosity form the main danger to the communist and workers' movement. Their plan is to fight revolutionary Marxism-Leninism while building a "united labor front'' with the open social- democrats, with the Khrushchovite and Browderite revisionists of the "C''PUSA, and with the other soldout forces, forces that all combined form the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. Sabotaging the struggle against the growing and dangerous fascization being carried out by the monopoly bourgeoisie, they regard the Democratic Party and its "left" flunkeys as allegedly a barrier against the fascism of the Reaganites. They find fascism among the working masses, but not among the big bourgeoisie as a whole. In line with Browder, they find that fascist reaction in the big bourgeoisie exists only in an ultra-right fringe concentrated in the Republican Party. In short, they have elaborated an all-sided system of Browderite politics.
Liberal-labor politics is the common platform of the entire opportunist marsh that forms a "left" tail of the Democratic Party, including: the pro-Chinese "three worlders"; the pro-Soviet revisionists of the "C"PUSA; and the social- democrats. The MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" has allied now with one section of the liberal-labor bog and now with another section, yesterday with the "three worlders" and today in the "united labor front" with the Khrushchovites and social-democrats, but it has always stayed within the confines of the Browderite swamp. It was precisely because the MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" recognized the social-democratic, Browderite essence of pro-Chinese "three worlds- ism" that they spent years singing hymns to the new Browderite "directors of the main blow against Soviet social- imperialism" of the OL/"CPML."
Indeed, the MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" has always been the close class brothers of the social-chauvinist OL/"CPML." The Weisberg sect worshipped the OL/"CPML" from the founding of the MLOC in 1975 to the MLOC's appeal for unity in a single party with the "three worlders" in the notorious "Open Letter" of March 15,1978. It was only under the fierce pressure of the struggle of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists against social-chauvinism and "three worlds-ism" that the MLOC grudgingly gave up direct advocacy of the "three worlds" theory in late 1977. But even then the MLOC remained diehard opponents of the struggle against Chinese revisionism or any revisionism. They issued their "Open Letter" for unity with the "three worlders"; they vacillated on the question of the "main blow" and continued to babble on about whether Western imperialism was "adequately rearmed" or not; they denounced our Party for fighting social-chauvinism and called this "The heart of the difference between the MLOC and COUSML [predecessor of MLP,USA -- ed.], in many ways...." (Class Against Class, August 1978, p. 43); and so on. Indeed, in an editorial on March 1, 1979, their journal Unite! was still insisting that the Klonskyite "three worlders" had not yet given "a direct call to the U.S. working class to set aside its struggle against U.S. imperialism." In 1979, mind you!
The MLOC/"CPUSA(M-L)" has never been able to disassociate itself from the renegade politics or the sorry fate of the "three worlders." Thus the struggle against Chinese revisionism was a tremendous blow to the MLOC/"CPUSA (M-L)." Not only is the Chinese revisionist OL/"CPML" in the throes of severe crisis, but the social-democratic Weisberg sect too sees total collapse staring them in the face.
The Policy of "Retreat"
In December 1978, while racked with crisis and degenerating from day to day, the MLOC crossed its fingers and took the desperate gamble to declare itself the so-called "CPUSA/ML." But within just a few months, Weisberg's sect faced utter catastrophe. Desertions and splits wrecked their already miniscule ranks. All the schemes they had cooked up fizzled into thin air. From then on, they have been following the policy of "retreat," as the Second Plenum of their Central Committee in June 1979 called it (as cited in their journal Organize! for October 1979). But this "retreat" has turned out to be like crossing a pool of quicksand for them. Squabbles and dissension have led to further splits and disintegration. Social-democracy is once again proving to be synonymous with splits, lack of unity, chauvinism and anarchy.
As a result, the "CPUSA/ML" cannot even pretend to be anything but an empty shell. It barely hangs on in two cities, and even there lacks the organization to maintain the most minimal presence among the masses. They themselves acknowledged last year that in each locality ' 'the distribution of Unite! can be measured in dozens" and that even the "distribution of free materials has dwindled to an all-time low." (Organize!, Sept. 1979, pp. 24,13)
They also confess that "there is very little contact with white workers," while "In addition, contact with Chicano, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Japanese and Filipino workers, as well as Native Americans, are all negligible." Overall, they sum up that "It must be frankly admitted today that our Party is largely isolated from the majority of workers" and that "Seldom does the Party attend major demonstrations, pickets, forums, etc. Let alone initiate them." (Ibid., pp. 14,16, 24) Actually, even to say that they seldom attend mass actions is a gross exaggeration on their part.
Since these confessions, things have gone still further downhill for them. Thus, a month ago, Unite! wrote that "Since the split in the Party one year ago, various aspects of the Party's work have been curtailed...." (Report from the 6th Session of the CC, Unite!, Nov. 1, 1980) Indeed, they have even evacuated their one bookstore, hardly a year after it was opened in Oakland. This was probably just as well for them, for the continued display of Maoist material and of social-democratic works, such as books written by Richard Barnet, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, would sooner or later have proven too big a scandal. And their press is today more anemic than ever, as they prove to be zeros theoretically, unable to speak to any of the burning questions facing the revolutionary movement. For example, despite the fact that they have made a big fuss about alleged Maoist "infantile leftism," to this day they have been unable to articulate their views on the question of Mao Zedong Thought.
This tiny sect of vagabond intellectuals is caught in this acute disorder, the disorder that caused the self-proclaimed policy of "retreat," because of the intensification of the class struggle. In particular, the sharpening of the struggle against Chinese revisionism and the denunciation of Mao Zedong Thought blew up the grab bag social-democratic federation that Weisberg had pulled together. The "CPUSA/ML" proved to be a mere federation whose "unity" was devoid of any principles. Hence the principled struggle against revisionism caught them in a vise-like grip. A major role in their fiasco was played by our Party's powerful polemics, which they repeatedly cursed and fumed at.
Fighting the Left in Order to Unite with the Right
In order to extricate itself from this crisis, the Weisberg sect has launched the slogan "Defeat the Left in Order to Fight the Right." With this slogan, the "CPUSA/ML" announced a new phase of its permanent crusade against "the Left," that is, against Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary struggle. The particular feature of this slogan is that it is a call to throw away everything that might block practical unity with the labor bureaucracy, the social-democratic coalitions of chieftains, and the "left" wing of the Democratic Party.
Today the bourgeoisie is stepping up the activation of social-democracy to oppose the revolutionary movement. Social-democracy paints the plans of the bourgeoisie in general and the Democratic Party in particular with a faint "socialist" tinge. It seeks to keep the masses under bourgeois influence, to wipe out any spirit of revolt and any revolutionary sentiment, and to attach the mass movement as a tail to the liberal-labor politics of the Democratic Party. The Weisberg sect's new slogan and strategy are part of this increased activation of social-democracy.
In these activities, the "CPUSA/ML" is, however, not original but a mere echo. It is following a parallel course of action with its long-time Browderite brothers of the OL/ "CPML" "three worlders." Today the "three worlders" are rapidly merging with open social-democracy, one day hailing the UAW's "Progressive Alliance" and the next day jumping into the Citizens Party's Carterite donkey cart.
Like the "CPUSA/ML," the OL/"CPML" is combining this with a continuous stream of diatribes in its press against "ultra-leftism." It moans and groans about its pitiful condition today and blames it all on an alleged past of "ultra-left" sins. But coming from the Pentagon-socialists of the OL/"CPML," who criticized Carter for not being warmongering enough, this talk of an alleged "ultra-left" past is indeed a very sick joke. The real purpose of this campaign is to throw up a fiction of "leftism" yesterday in order to fight the revolutionary left politics today. In this vein, they even denounce the very idea of mass actions in favor of what they consider the more "flexible tactics" of electoral cretinism and coalition with the social-democratic chieftains.
The Weisberg sect is marching in step with the "three worlders" once again. The "CPUSA/ML" too is flagellating itself for alleged "ultra-left" sins in the past. They are on the same path of prettification and merger with open social-democracy. Just as the baby kangaroo never strays too far from its mother, so today the baby social-democratic Weisberg sect is bounding back into the pouch of the mother that raised and fostered it. As part of this, they are flaunting the most ultra-rightist Browderite positions Their current campaign could thus more aptly be called: "fight the left in order to unite with the right."
We shall elaborate the various features of the new Browderite strategy of the "CPUSA/ML" in detail. The rest of this article condemns the "CPUSA/ML's" Browderite perspective of the crisis-free development of U.S. imperialism through "revitalization" of industry and their support for this savage capitalist offensive. This social-democratic perspective serves them as another reason to denounce the revolution. In the following parts of "Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement," we shall then examine the strategy and tactics that follow from this perspective, including the "united labor front" with the Khrushchovite "C"PUSA and the social-democrats; the replacement of revolutionary action with Browderite "education"; the prettification of the Democratic Party, or its "liberal" wing, as a bulwark against fascism; and so forth.
* * * * *
A Classical Browderite Assessment of U.S. Imperialism
As a fundamental cornerstone of its contribution to the present-day activation of social-democracy in the U.S., the "CPUSA/ML" is advancing a classical Browderite assessment of the strength and character of U.S. imperialism in the world today. They are putting forth the picture of an invincible U.S. imperialism on the verge of overcoming its crises and contradictions. They are conjuring up this vista with their cowardly imagination as the basis to justify their opposition to revolutionary struggle and to advocate the most flabby liberal bourgeois politics under the banner of being realistic, of being "sober and factual."
This is just like Browder. At the end of the Second World War, U.S. imperialism unfolded its plans to dominate the entire world. Browder became an early apologist and enthusiast for the U.S. drive for world hegemony. In 1943-44 he published his notorious "Teheran theses" which showed U.S. monopoly capital virtually ruling over the whole world, peacefully, without contradictions either with the masses of people or with rival imperialist powers. Similarly he visualized a crisis-free evolutionary advance for American capitalism at home. From this Browder concluded that revolution was impossible, and unnecessary at any rate. He elaborated an entire system of liberal-labor politics in which the communists were supposed to abandon the revolution and instead simply play an "educational" role within an all-embracing unity with the "liberal" bourgeoisie.
Mr. Weisberg has resurrected these teachings of Browder. The social-democrats of the "CPUSA/ML" are preaching the same theory of the harmonious development of American capitalism by painting a panorama of a crisis-free U.S. imperialism. For some time now, the pages of Unite! have been laced with stories about the invincibility of U.S. imperialism, about its "recovery" from this or that crisis, and with speculations on whether U.S. imperialism is stronger than Soviet social-imperialism. The basis for this agitation was spelled out at the Second Plenum of the Central Committee of the "CPUSA/ML" in June 1979 where the Weisberg clique argued that: "there is a possibility for U.S. imperialism to stave off the crisis and through modernization of industry and other means as pushing the crisis onto the colonies to emerge again the unrivaled leader of the western imperialist bloc" and that "the overall strength of the U.S., if the question of revitalization of industry is resolved, could place the U.S. in an unrivaled position regarding these other imperialist powers in the next 10-20 years." (Organize!, October 1979)
There it is, in brazen form: the pipe dream of the Weisberg sect for the stabilization and "recovery" of U.S. imperialism through the "reindustrialization" of American capitalism. With this pipe dream, they are negating the most fundamental teachings of Leninism on the question of imperialism.
Renouncing the Revolution in the Face of the "Invincible" Bourgeoisie
First of all, it is strikingly evident that the "CPUSA/ML" is preaching its Browderite sermons about the vitality of U.S. imperialism in order to justify a renegade attitude to the revolution. They are taking the defeat of the revolution as the basis for their strategy and tactics. Just imagine! Here we are in a period of unprecedented crisis of the capitalist-revisionist order. The general crisis of capitalism is deepening before our very eyes. Economically the present crisis in the U.S. can only be compared to that of the Great Depression of the 1930's -- and within the present crisis, an even greater crash is being prepared. Furthermore, this crisis is an all-round crisis affecting politics, culture, industry, finance, and so on. The stage is being set for gigantic class battles.
And what do we find? The Weisberg social-democratic sect has already granted the U.S. imperialists decades of recovery. Even the bourgeoisie is singing funeral dirges and moaning that it can't see "the light at the end of the tunnel." But Weisberg is already playing a lively polka for capitalism. For example, when starting in November 1979 Carter did his best to whip up a chauvinist war hysteria against the Iranian revolution, the "CPUSA/ML" did not waste any time in pronouncing that U.S. imperialism had made a miraculous recovery from its political crisis. According to Unite!, "The recovery was a capitalist's dream." Allegedly national "unity" was achieved behind U.S. imperialism and the "political crisis had been resolved." The "CPUSA/ML" eagerly drew the moral that "This class of exploiters has proved that even under deteriorating economic conditions it is still powerful enough... to restore the people's delicate confidence in the system of capitalism. " ("1979, A Stumble and a Recovery," Unite!, Dec. 15, 1979, p. 7, col. 2-3; p. 1, col. 1; emphasis as in the original)
Of course, this recovery turned out to be another pipe dream of Weisberg's sect. It rapidly blew up in the face of the failure of the hysteria campaign, the holding of numerous mass actions in support of the Iranian people, the uprisings of the black people in Miami and elsewhere, the emergence of the mass movement against the reintroduction of the draft, and other manifestations of mass ferment.
Yet on the pretext that there is a "possibility" to stave off the crisis, the Weisberg sect has already denounced the revolution. Following the timeworn path of the Maoist "three worlders," Weisberg expresses his renunciation of revolution through pontificating about the absence of a revolutionary situation. Thus Weisberg himself stresses that: "There is nothing more absurd than the wild proclamations...that a revolutionary situation can be predicted for the 1980's. A sober and factual presentation of the actual motion of classes and balance of class forces leads to the conclusion that a revolutionary situation is not on the horizon in the U.S. in the next few years." ("The November Elections and...the Future of U.S. Imperialism," Unite!, Oct. 15, 1980, p. 6, emphasis as in the original) Weisberg's "sober and factual" tired-out platitudes about how the present is not yet the time for the uprising are empty and irrelevant. They are nothing but the typical code words used by Chinese revisionism over the last decade to denounce revolutionary work and struggle, pledge loyalty to the American bourgeoisie, and blame the alleged "backwardness" of the masses for one's own renegacy. Sure enough, true to form, the CC of the "CPUSA/ML" huffs and puffs that "a careful and detailed evaluation of the alignment of class forces in the present period" shows that "the majority of the working people...are moving toward the right." (5th Plenum of the CC, Unite!, May 15,1980, p. 4, col. 1) The social-democrats are "soberly and factually" tacking up a sign over the class battles of the 80's: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here!"
Of course, Weisberg and his sect prefer to hide the fact that their "careful and detailed evaluation" and "sober and factual" analysis are code words for their support for the wonder-working powers of "reindustrialization." Hence they raise all sorts of straw men. The issue is not whether the exact hour or year of revolution can be "predicted." Nor is the issue whether there is a possibility for U.S. imperialism to temporarily escape from any particular crisis. Leninism teaches that in all situations, even the most revolutionary, there is always a possibility for setbacks and zigzags. The revolution does not come automatically, nor does it ever come with a money-back guarantee in advance. No, the revolution requires vigilance, persevering preparations and heroic struggle and sacrifice. Still less is the issue whether or not the insurrection should be started today. On the contrary, the issue is that the Weisberg sect is seeking to stamp out the ferment among the masses, to demoralize it, to subordinate it to the needs of capitalist "reindustrialization," to tie it to the tail of the "reformists," labor bureaucrats, opportunists and the entire "left" wing of the Democratic Party. The issue is that in all spheres of work the Weisberg sect pursues the path of social-democracy, the path of treachery to the revolution, and seeks to justify this by complaining about the "backwardness" of the masses and the absence of the revolutionary situation.
Lenin contemptuously denounced this feeble whining of the opportunists. He taught that:
"...a Marxist, while utilizing every field, even a reactionary one, for the fight for the revolution, does not stoop to glorifying reaction, does not forget to fight for the best possible field of activity.Therefore, the Marxist is the firstto foresee the approach of a revolutionary period, and already begins to rouse the people and to sound the tocsin while the philistines are still wrapt in the slavish slumber of loyal subjects. The Marxist is therefore the firstto take the path of direct revolutionary struggle, marching straight to battle and exposing the illusions of conciliation cherished by all kinds of social and political vacillators. Therefore, the Marxist is the lastto leave the path of directly revolutionary struggle, he leaves it only when all possibilities have been exhausted, when there is not a shadowof hope for a shorter way, when the basis for an appeal to prepare for mass strikes, an uprising, etc., is obviously disappearing. Therefore, a Marxist treats with contempt the innumerable renegades of the revolution who shout to him: We are more 'progressive' than you, we were the first to renounce the revolution!''("The Crisis of Menshevism,"Collected Works,Vol. 11, p. 351, emphasis as in the original)
The Weisberg sect has already denounced the revolutionary struggle in advance for, forsooth, there is a possibility of defeat, a possibility that U.S. imperialism will stave off the crisis. The battle has barely begun, and the social-democratic sect is down on its knees cowering before the "invincible" bourgeoisie and pledging its loyalty over and over again.
An American Exceptionalist Dream of the Vitality of American Capitalism
Of course the "CPUSA/ML's" talk "a possibility" for American capitalism to stave off the crisis is just a ruse. In fact they are putting forward the crisis-free development of American capitalism via "revitalization" not as a mere "possibility," but as the basic perspective for the future. They hold that the general crisis of capitalism may wreak havoc elsewhere, the revolution may be on the agenda in other countries, but not for the U.S. They are singing hallelujahs to the vitality of American capitalism.
The "CPUSA/ML's" perspective on the crisis is utterly social-democratic. They are prettifying the capitalist "reindustrialization" and pretending that the development of capitalist technology, the further rationalization of production and so forth will overcome the inherent contradictions of capitalism. In reality, "reindustrialization" only further sets the stage for the massive revolt that is swelling up in the midst of the working masses.
The "CPUSA/ML's" prettification of the savage capitalist program of "reindustrialization" is a repetition of the stand of the social-democrats of the 1920's, who also held that the rationalization of production and technical progress were the cure to capitalism's ills. They too prettified the brutal capitalist offensive of speeding up the workers, cutting their wages and throwing them out on the street. They advocated that the rationalization of production would prolong the temporary capitalist stabilization of the 1920's, while today the "CPUSA/ML" is preaching that it will bring American capitalism out of its crisis. Stalin punctured these illusions and pointed out in 1928 that:
"The Comintern holds that the present capitalist stabilization is a temporary, insecure, shaky and decaying stabilization which will become more and more shaken as the capitalist crisis develops.
"This by no means contradicts the generally known fact that capitalist technology and rationalization are advancing. More, it is just because they are advancing that the inherent unsoundness and decay of the stabilization is developing." ("The Right Danger in the German Communist Party,"Works,Vol. 11, p. 308)
In direct opposition to these Marxist-Leninist views of Stalin and the Comintern, the renegade Lovestone group took up social-democracy under the theory of "American exceptionalism." In 1928-29, Jay Lovestone, a leader of the CPUSA who was justly expelled and condemned by the Party, advocated that the capitalist stabilization in the U.S. was firm and unshaken. He opposed the Marxist-Leninist assessment that stabilization was giving way to a period of new crises and class battles. The October 1929 Wall Street crash and the vigorous outbreak of class struggle in the early 1930's smashed Lovestone's theory of "American exceptionalist" (and Weisberg-like) "sober and factual" analysis to smithereens.
"American exceptionalism" was then taken up by Browder. During World War II he set forth a dream world of a "young" and rejuvenated American capitalism. While Lovestone speculated on the temporary capitalist stabilization during part of the 1920's, Browder speculated on such features as the growth of state monopoly capitalism, the militarization of the economy and the growth of employment and jobs in World War II. But history would be no kinder to Browder's modern revisionism than to Lovestone's social-democracy. Browder's pipe dream was exploded after World War II by the outbreak of the post-war economic crisis, the development of the strike movement in the U.S. in 1947-48, the emergence of a new wave of anti-imperialist struggle around the world, the ferocious reaction and fascization under the Truman administration, the jailings of communists and the purging of the unions, and so forth.
The "CPUSA/ML" is following in the footsteps of Love- stone and Browder when it attributes to "reindustrialization" the possibility of overcoming the contradictions of capitalism. Indeed they attribute such power to "revitalization" that they picture it not just resolving the domestic crisis of the big bourgeoisie, but also subjugating the rest of the world. They paint a picture of "unrivaled" U.S. imperialist hegemony over the entire capitalist-revisionist world, an "unrivaled" hegemony that is to last for decades. This too is a denial of Leninism, which teaches that the imperialist era is marked by the revolt of the oppressed peoples, by the social revolution of the proletariat and by bloody clashes and rivalries among the imperialist powers.
"CPUSA/ML" Supports the Savage Capitalist Program of "Reindustrialization" Under the Code Word of Supporting "Automation"
Of course, the "CPUSA/ML" is not just assessing the effects of "reindustrialization," but actively supporting it. They go to the extent of insisting that the struggle of the proletariat must not harm the general progress of "automation," their code word for the "reindustrialization" plan. Thus the Second Plenum of their Central Committee, in discussing their program for the auto industry, reached the conclusion that "we support automation in general" and, on this basis, considered that "the slogan 'defend every job' is confusing and incorrect." (Organize!, October 1979) With this thesis, the "CPUSA/ML" is insisting that the proletarian struggle must be subordinated to the bourgeois program of "revitalization" and must only make minor amendments and improvements on this program.
Once again, the "CPUSA/ML's" stand is nothing but classical social-democracy, which has always supported the rationalization schemes of the capitalists as progressive. In the 1920's, the social-democrats championed the alleged triumph of "Fordism" over Marxism. And today the social- democratic labor bureaucrats heading the United Auto Workers sell the workers down the drain while preaching that increased productivity is the key to the millennium for auto workers. It was on this basis that President Doug Fraser of the UAW, following in the footsteps of Walter Reuther and Leonard Woodcock, sold out the auto contract struggle in 1979 and then tore up the contract in order to give another half billion dollars in concessions to Chrysler.
But just imagine the utter shamelessness of the "CPUSA/ ML." First they preach that "reindustrialization" will bring about the "unrivaled" triumph of U.S. imperialism. And then they support that "reindustrialization," that same "automation." This means that the Weisberg sect is supporting the very capitalist programs that it itself claims are designed to subjugate the world and smash the revolutionary movement.
The "CPUSA/ML's" advocacy of "reindustrialization" explains why they have started a big discussion in the pages of Unite! on whether or not automation is progressive. To create confusion, they have put forward the idea that there are two types of automation under capitalism, a good type advancing the interests of the workers and "eliminat(ing) a tremendous amount of the human drudgery and toil involved in production" and a bad type "to increase...profits" and lay off workers. (Weisberg, "Science Must Serve Proletarian Revolution, Part Two," Unite!, May 1, 1980, p. 8) The conclusion of this sophistry is to support "reindustrialization" in general. Thus Weisberg demands that: "The proletariat support(s) automation in general when it genuinely advances the material well-being of the working masses." (Ibid.) A recent article continues this indecent praise of "automation" by lauding it as "unleashing human labor from the hardest, most tedious work to make progress for all in other realms." ("No Loss of Jobs Through Automation!," Unite!, Nov. 1, 1980, p. 3) What prettification of capitalism! What lackeys! They write this at a time when capitalist rationalization and automation are associated with increasing overtime and speedup and squeezing the workers dry in the shortest period of time. Of course, Unite! does grant that "in the long run, most advances of technology under capitalism are used for the purpose of increasing the capitalist rate of profit, and used against the working class." (Ibid.) Only a casehardened social-democrat could imagine that capitalists only seek profits "in the long run," and not immediately, and only in "most" cases, and not in all investments. This nonsense is spewed forth to further reinforce their plea that there are two types of automation, the good and the bad, so that "each situation must be taken individually." (Ibid.) Unite! then goes on to elaborate what is in effect the program of the UAW and of Carter himself for dealing with automation.
The job of communists is of course not to smash machines and pretend that capitalism will be fine if technical progress is stopped. But it is equally not the job of communists to help the capitalists "revitalize" their industry by promoting the most vulgar illusions about how a "reformed" "reindustrialization," a "reformed" productivity drive, will "genuinely advance the material well-being of the working masses," shorten the workday, lighten labor, etc. The job of communists is to advance the revolutionary organization of the proletariat in struggle against the capitalist offensive. It is in this field, the class organization of the proletariat, that communists seek to ensure the maximum "technical progress," so to speak, and the maximum application of Marxist-Leninist science. The fairy tales about automation in the pages of Unite! might just as well be taken from Business Week or the Wall Street Journal.
But the "CPUSA/ML's" love for "revitalization" is unbounded. It was manifested again in their impotency in the face of the UAW's chauvinist hysteria about imports. Unite! "countered" this demand for restriction on imports of autos by demanding "No Export or Import of Capital!" ("Unite to Fight Layoffs and Plant Closings in Auto," Unite!, June 1, 1980) Don't worry too much about restricting imports; oh no, just ban the import or export of capital altogether. Behind this jingo nonsense lay the "CPUSA/ ML's" implicit stand that the "real problem" was not the imports of autos, oh no, but the lack of adequate domestic investment to carry out the sacred program of "revitalization." Unite! amusingly attempted to paint up this stand in all sorts of internationalist colors, but the rabid chauvinism peeked through as they backed up their plan for banning the import or export of capital by explaining that it would ensure that "production remain here, providing jobs for workers. No runaway shops!" (Ibid.)
Naturally, having a chauvinist stand themselves, Unite! couldn't really oppose import restrictions either. Thus Unite! qualified its alleged opposition to the UAW's plans on imports by stressing that "The trade among the capitalist countries does not benefit the international working class." ("Signs of the Capitalist Crisis, Plant Closings and Lay-Offs in Auto," Unite!, May 15,1980, p. 3) All in all, the social-democrats of the "CPUSA/ML" outdid even their social-democratic class brothers in the UAW leadership. The UAW labor traitors demanded import restrictions, while Unite! suggested the, complete end of foreign trade and dreamed of a domestic capitalist market filled only with American-made autos built in 100% American-owned factories. That is how the ultra-chauvinists of the "CPUSA/ ML" "fight" the chauvinist hysteria of the UAW leadership.
In supporting "reindustrialization," the "CPUSA/ML" is supporting the program of the big bourgeoisie. "Reindustrialization" has today become the common theme song for all the capitalist parties, Democrat and Republican, Carter and Reagan. The "left" wing of the Democratic Party, true to its role as lackeys of the rich, prettifies this "reindustrialization" by painting it in even more fantastic colors than the capitalists themselves. The Citizens Party and the "C"PUSA consider it to be the miracle cure for the economic crisis of capitalism. But the "CPUSA/ML" far outdoes the rest in its fantastic claims for this magic potion which it holds will lead to the complete recovery of U.S. imperialism for decades and genuine advances for the material well-being of the working masses. Even the bourgeoisie hesitates to make such an extreme claim.
[Photo: Photo shows comrades of the MLP denouncing social-democracy and the Chrysler sellout contract at a UAW-supported "Progressive Alliance" conference on the "future of the labor movement," held in Ann Arbor, Mich., January 1980. The MLP fights the social-democratic subversion of the workers' movement. In contrast to this, the Weisberg social-democratic sect went into raptures over this conference and the other conferences organized this year by the social-democrats to subvert and disorient the workers' movement. They regard social-democracy as among "the progressive forces in the labor movement."]
[Photo: Photo shows comrades of COUSML (predecessor of the MLP) working to organize the auto workers' struggle against the 1979 sellout auto contract. The MLP fights the brutal productivity drive and the chauvinist import hysteria. In contrast, the Weisberg social-democratic sect supports "reindustrialization" and automation. It is completely subservient to the chauvinism of the UAW and gave the chauvinist demand "No Import or Export of Capital!"]
The "CPUSA/ML" Is Working for a United Front with the Khrushchovite Revisionist "C"PUSA
Browderite liberal-labor politics is common to all the right opportunists in the U.S. The "CPUSA/ML's" social-democratic politics has therefore led to its repeated attempts over the years to form alliances and a common front with the other followers of Browderite politics. It is this common Browderite platform of the liquidation of revolutionary communism that lay behind the "CPUSA/ML's" years of close ties with the "three worlders." Today, this common Browderite platform is what forms the basis for the Weisberg sect's attempts to form a united front with the utterly corrupt, pro-Soviet revisionists of the so-called "Communist" Party of the USA.
Whether or not to form a united front with the "C'PUSA is a major question of principle. The "C'PUSA is not only the main Browderite grouping in the U.S., but it is also the official, recognized agency of Soviet (Khrushchovite) revisionism. It is part of the international Khrushchovite trend. Indeed, it is one of the most loyal toadies of Soviet revisionism in the world. It follows an amalgam of Browderism and Soviet revisionism. It has betrayed and trampled into the mud the traditions of the once-revolutionary CPUSA. Today the "C"PUSA is an entirely different party, communist in name only, but in reality a traitor to the proletariat and a mere shadow of the Democratic Party. It is a broken shell that lives on the alms from the bourgeoisie and the Soviet revisionists.
It is incumbent on all revolutionary Marxist-Leninists to inculcate among the revolutionaries, the class conscious proletarians and the broadest masses the spirit of bitter hostility to the Khrushchovite and Browderite traitors. Not unity with the "C'PUSA, but irreconcilable struggle against it, is a hallmark of a genuine communist policy. Twenty years ago, at the historic Moscow meeting of November 1960, Khrushchovite revisionism was openly denounced in front of the communist and workers' parties of the entire world. Shortly thereafter, in 1961, the public polemic broke out in full force between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and Soviet revisionism. All over the world, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists separated from the Khrushchovites, fought them, and built new Marxist-Leninist parties free from the Khrushchovites in those places where the old parties had fallen into the Khrushchovite corruption. This glorious struggle was led by the Party of Labor of Albania. The Chinese leadership constantly vacillated and sabotaged this struggle. One of the methods of Chinese revisionism was to float the idea of a united front with the Khrushchovites in the name of an alleged joint struggle against U.S. imperialism. But the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists rejected this treachery.'They held that to seek a united front with the Khrushchovites was to invite a Trojan horse into the communist and workers' movements. Marxism-Leninism teaches that the fight against imperialism is inseparable from the fight against revisionism. As Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed: "...unity will be re-established in the communist movement and the socialist camp, but it will be re-established by the Marxist-Leninists without revisionists and traitors and in resolute struggle against them." (Cited in the History of the Party of Labor of Albania, Ch. VII, sec. 2, p. 605)
It is this principle that the "CPUSA/ML" is throwing to the winds with its present appeals for a united front with the "C"PUSA. The particular nature of this appeal is that the "CPUSA/ML" wants the Khrushchovites to join with them in a "united front of labor" with the social-democrats and all the other "reformists," as the "CPUSA/ML" calls them.
Hence in August 1979, the Weisberg sect sent a traveling team to Detroit, a city they do not work in, in order to leaflet the National Convention of the "C'PUSA. The Weisberg sect did not go there to denounce the Khrushchovites. They did not even distribute their journal Unite! which had a mock "criticism" of the "C'PUSA in its August 15 issue. Instead they distributed only an appeal from their so-called "Trade Union Action League" (TUAL) entitled "To Strike Is to Struggle."1 With this they meant to appeal for unity with the "C'PUSA on the pretext of alleged support for the struggle of the auto workers.
This is a repetition of the tactics of the so-called "Communist Labor Party Of the USNA," a pro-Soviet neo-revisionist outfit which has for years been begging for a united front with the "C'PUSA. The "CLP" bases this on its claim that the "C'PUSA is not a Marxist-Leninist party, but is nevertheless allegedly a genuine fighter for socialism. Apparently the Weisberg sect considers the "C'PUSA to be not Marxist-Leninist, but nevertheless genuinely in favor of the strike movement and the interests of the auto workers. However, this is balderdash, because the "C"P- USA is an enemy of socialism and a saboteur of the workers' movement.
Actually, "CPUSA/ML's" appeal was for unity with the Khrushchovite strikebreaking. The "C'PUSA did not stand for a strike against the sellout auto contract, while the "CPUSA/ML's" appeal "To Strike Is to Struggle" opposed strikes against both GM and Chrysler under the pretext that GM was "too strong" and striking it would "deplete the UAW 'war chest' and demoralize the workers," while a strike against Chrysler "might break the company."
A ''United Labor Front" with the Khrushchovites
In recent months, the Weisberg social-democrats have gone into a frenzy with their repeated appeals to the "C'PUSA to join the "united labor front." For example, in July, the "CPUSA/ML" gently chided the "C'PUSA for not joining with TUAL in a "united front of the labor movement" in a factory in Chicago. (Unite!, July 1, 1980, p. 1, col. 3) Both Unite! and Advance, the newsletter of Weisberg's trade union group, the TUAL, have carried one appeal after another for a united front with the "C'PUSA's trade union group, the Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy (TUAD).
The tactics for wooing the "C'PUSA were discussed, for instance, in a recent interview with a TUAL spokesman in Unite! ("Interview with TUAL Organizer Matt Fusco," Unite!, Sept. 1,1980, p. 3) Unite! asked the following question: "Your [TUAL's -- ed.] call for a united front of labor was issued in part to the Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy (TUAD) and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). Do you expect them to respond? In what way?" Note that the TUAD is the trade union wing of the "C"P- USA, while the CBTU is closely associated with the Democratic Party.
TUAL organizer Matt Fusco replied: "To respond directly? To answer our letter? No, not at this time." He then went on to describe various indirect ways in which he thought unity with the Khrushchovites and social-democrats could be achieved in practice. For example, he suggested uniting with these organizations in a "national coalition" of the opportunist chiefs to carry out the building "for a demonstration in Washington for jobs," that is, to carry out organizing the plans of the revisionist and social-democratic groups for work in the unemployed movement. Fusco described the revisionist trade union organizers and other opportunists politely, indeed glowingly, as "progressive forces in the labor movement."
The tactics employed by the Weisberg sect in order to unite in action with the revisionists, labor bureaucrats and social-democrats is to dress up each of the proposals or actions of the revisionists and others as wonderful advances for the working class movement, and then to gently chide the revisionists, labor bureaucrats and social-democrats for not uniting with the TUAL in carrying out these programs. As well, the Weisberg sect will make constructive "criticisms" as to how to improve these plans and actions. For example, in the November 1980 issue of Advance, the Newsletter of the National Organizing Committee of the TUAL, Matt Fusco gives ecstatic praise to a "Conference on Union Democracy Held in Detroit," which he himself admits was organized by the forces of social-democracy, and also returns to the question of the "Washington March for Jobs." We shall consider his praise for the social-democratic conference on union democracy in the next section.
As to the Washington March for Jobs, Matt Fusco laments that it did not take place prior to the presidential elections as "A Political Opportunity Lost." He dresses up this proposed march, intended to promote revisionist and social-democratic politics, as a wonderful opportunity to bring "politics" to the workers. He supports the plans of the "C"PUSA's TUAD, but gently chides them for not going further, saying, "The Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy (TUAD) published a national call for endorsements for the march, but proposed no date or organizing committee." He discusses the question of "Why then was this opportunity lost?" But this discussion is avowedly for the purpose of bringing "a lesson to the progressive forces in the labor movement," among which Fusco includes the TUAD and the opportunists. That is, Fusco is trying to be helpful to the revisionists and social-democrats.
Fusco stresses his complete loyalty to the revisionist and social-democratic program, saying: "Everyone agreed [what an abject self-confession! -- ed.] with the call for holding a march in Washington, D.C. during the election campaign in order to put before the candidates our demands, the demands of the workers: ...Freeze on Prices, Rents, Taxes, and Interests!" (emphasis as in the original) "Everyone agreed" -- that is, the "CPUSA/ML" agreed too and is marching totally in step with the labor bureaucracy, social-democrats and Khrushchovites! Getting down on his knees, Fusco even endorses explicitly the demand for the "freeze" on prices, rents, taxes, interest, etc. This demand, as is well known, is the thinly disguised way in which Lane Kirkland and the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, Kennedy and the social-democrats, and others call for strengthening Carter's wage-price controls, making them mandatory and suppressing the workers' movement, under the plea of adding a few controls on the capitalists. The labor bureaucrats and the Kennedyites are willing to drop explicit mention of controls on wages, because it is taken for granted that such a demand for freezes on prices, etc., implies a strict freeze on wages. They prettify the fascist wage controls and tell the workers not to defy them, but to work to strengthen them, for, don't worry, the capitalists will kindly consent to have their own government apparatus freeze prices, rents, taxes and interest also. By endorsing this demand for a "freeze," which "everyone agrees" means mandatory wage controls, Matt Fusco and the National Organizing Committee of TUAL are showing once again that their."united front of labor" is actually a united front with Khrushchovites and other class traitors against the working class movement.
Not only does the Weisberg sect's "united labor front" unite on the basis of pushing forward the various plans and actions of the Khrushchovites and other class traitors, but even the plan for a "united labor front" itself is not original. Instead, it has been taken with insignificant minor variations from the arsenal of the Khrushchovites and the social-democrats. Even Weisberg's "CPUSA/ML" itself admits this. Thus in a major article on "the united front of labor" in Unite!, it is described as "tak(ing) over the halfhearted attempts by the reformist 'opposition' to build a united front of labor." ("The United Front of Labor: To Defeat Reformism and Unite Against Capital," Unite!, June 15,1980, p. 3, col. 4) That is, the revisionists and class traitors are only "half-hearted" about the "united front of labor." But the "CPUSA/ML," in order allegedly to defeat these fiends, will wholeheartedly carry out the united front with them.
The political content of the "united labor front" with the Khrushchovite TUAD and the social-democrats is shown by the program of the TUAD. The TUAD is also for such "unity," and it describes it as the "rank and file working in harmony with courageous, forward-looking leaders." (Programmatic statement carried in every issue of the TUAD publication, Labor Today) It is of course no secret that the "courageous, forward-looking leaders" are none other than the trade union bureaucrats, especially those with social- democratic leanings. Thus the avowed goal of the TUAD is to cool down the discontent among the rank and file workers with the "forward-looking" section of the trade union bureaucracy in order to reestablish harmony between the workers and the labor traitors.
The "CPUSA/ML" seeks unity with such an outfit in order to form a common front against the workers. It seeks to use the TUAD as a transmission belt to further unity with the trade union bureaucracy. Since it is seeking unity with the TUAD, the Weisberg social-democrats in practice have no serious criticism of the TUAD. They engage in the type of squabbles that arise when both sides are swimming in the same murky waters. Thus, in trying to explain the difference between the "united labor front" of the "CPUSA/ ML" and the "left-center coalition" of the "C'PUSA, Unite! is reduced to the following babbling: "In opposition to the revolutionary trade union movement, they [the TUAD -- ed.] issue the pathetic slogan that 'an injury to one is an injury to all.' In contrast, the revolutionary Trade Union Action League declares that 'an attack on one will be answered by all.'" ("No to the CPUSA Revisionist Ticket," Unite!, Sept. 1, 1980, p. 4) Only the imagination of professional imposters like Weisberg could see the difference between revisionism and revolution in the differences between these two innocuous slogans.
The "CPUSA/ML's" calls for unity with the TUAD are thus in fact nothing but a thinly disguised call for unity with the Khrushchovite "C'PUSA. In order to preserve a Marxist-Leninist'' disguise, the "CPUSA/ML'' prefers this alliance to be slightly indirect, but real and palpable nonetheless. Thus it prefers for the time being to seek unity via TUAD, various coalitions, and unity in action on the revisionist program, rather than through direct appeals to the "C" PUS A for negotiations. Besides, the time is not ripe for direct appeals anyway, as the "C''PUSA and the major social-democratic groups treat with contempt their ardent lovers from the "CPUSA/ML'' and their delusions of grandeur. But in whatever form or guise the "CPUSA/ML'' works for unity with the Browderites and Khrushchovites of the "C"PUSA, it remains rank treachery. It is an open declaration by the "CPUSA/ML" of its renunciation of revolution, its hatred for the struggle against revisionism, and its totally social-democratic stands. It is,a revival of the social-democratic theories of the Second International, which advocated that revisionists and revolutionaries could coexist together in peace, or, to be more precise, advocated that the revolutionaries should be corrupted and compromised by uniting together with revisionists.
Merging with All the Other Social-Democrats Via the "United Labor Front"
The attempts of the Weisberg sect to form a united front with the Khrushchovite revisionists are only a part of his efforts to form a united front with all the social-democrats. Today the pages ofUnite!are filled with all kinds of tales about the "united labor front," the "people's front against fascism" and the "popular front of the working class and its allies" that the "CPUSA/ML" is building with the revisionists, social-democrats, "progressive" labor bureaucrats and all the forces comprising the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. This shows that the Weisberg sect has given up even the pretense of building revolutionary organization in favor of merging into a common front with the forces of avowed social-democracy and the other opportunists.
The Weisberg sect dresses up its treachery in all kinds of pseudo-Marxist, high-sounding labels. But just like Browder, the Weisberg sect is turning the Marxist teachings about "united fronts" and "popular fronts" on their head. As a cornerstone of Browder's efforts to corrode the CPUSA, in the mid-1930's Browder began a process of liquidating the Party organizations and the class organizations of the proletariat on the pretext of redefining the united front and the popular front. First he liquidated the independent revolutionary mass organizations, then the Party fractions in mass organizations, and then the basic organization in the factories. Finally in 1944 he liquidated the Party altogether. Simultaneously he defined and redefined the united front on a "broader and broader" basis, including in it first a section of the labor bureaucracy and the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. Finally he brought in the whole labor aristocracy, the liberals of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and even outstretched his hand to the National Association of Manufacturers and J.P. Morgan himself.
The Weisberg sect is traveling on the same road. At the 5th Plenum of their CC, the Weisberg sect reiterated its tactics of eliminating any obstacle to unity with the avowed social-democrats under the pretext/'of a fight against the "left." They flagellated themselves for their "sectarian" errors of: "narrow(ing) the united front or popular front to the existence of a particular mass revolutionary organization. Rather such organizations are part of these fronts, and their mission is to unite with other appropriate forces." (Unite!, May 15, 1980, p. 4)
Here the "CPUSA/ML" is denouncing even the idea of building mass revolutionary organization in favor of the tactics and strategy of "unit(ing) with other appropriate forces." As well, they are admitting in a backhanded way that their "mass revolutionary organizations have been a complete fiasco and are virtually non-existent.
So who are the "other appropriate forces" that the Weisberg sect seeks unity with? We have already seen that a major component of their "united labor front" is the Khrushchovite "C"PUSA. But there are others as well, first and foremost the avowed social-democrats.
We have already referred to the ecstasy of the "CPUSA/ML's" TUAL over the "Conference on Union Democracy." (Matthew Fusco, "Conference on Union Democracy Held in Detroit,"Advance, Nov. 1980, p. 2) Fusco hails this conference, saying that "Attendance at the conference, which nearly doubled the organizers' expectations, continues to point out the growing trend in the labor movement toward much more active and broad discussion of the problems facing workers, as well as the continued growth of interest in the labor movement among academic and professional circles. In the past year alone conferences have been held on the future of the labor movement, on fighting plant closings, on the environment and energy, and on working class culture." But who was at these conferences? Fusco himself admits that "The conference [on union democracy -- ed.] was sponsored by the Association for Union Democracy which is supported by various social-democratic forces in the labor movement and the labor education and labor law fields." He proudly exhibits a list of some of the people attending this conference, not failing to highlight: "progressive" labor bureaucrats, such as Sadlowski and Victor Reuther, "former director of International Affairs for the UAW," whom he characterizes as "liberal union reformers"; trotskyite organizers in the trade unions; associated social-democratic labor lawyers, such as those behind the campaign that resulted in the election of the notorious sellout Arnold Miller to the presidency of the United Mine Workers; and so forth. In short, this conference, as well as the other-conferences he praises, were conferences of the top labor bureaucracy and their petty-bourgeois lawyers, ideologues and allies. To be sure, these were conferences of the social-democratic section of the labor bureaucracy, conferences that are part of the bourgeoisie's plan to further activate social-democracy in order to subvert and disorient the coming class battles of the 1980's. You can tell which side of the barricades these conferences are on by the fact that the conference "on the future of the labor movement," held-in Ann Arbor, Michigan in January 1980, opened with a minute of silence to honor the counter-revolutionary, casehardened, fascist George Meany, late head of the AFL- CIO Executive Board.
Thus the Weisberg sect is seeking unity first and foremost with the forces of avowed social-democracy. The "other-appropriate forces" include the "progressive" labor bureaucrats, the labor lawyers, and the labor educators. The "other appropriate forces," in fact, reads like a who's who of the most trusted labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.
Why, Matt Fusco and the "CPUSA/ML" are so saturated with bourgeois respectability and so isolated from the class sentiments of the proletariat that they regard it as a mark of distinction for someone to be a labor lawyer or labor educator independent of that individual's class stand. Why, that is the next best thing to being a "progressive" bureaucrat! Why, these are the "allies" of the working class to be included in the "popular front"! It never even strikes them that the "growth of interest in the labor movement" in the universities has anything at all to do with the bourgeoisie studying the ways to suppress the workers' movement. The "CPUSA/ML" is nothing but the apologists and glorifiers of the soldout stratum among the labor aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie that serves as the social base for the reactionary trend inside the workers' movement.
The "CPUSA/ML" hasn't forgotten the student movement either. Oh no. They stress that "...revolutionary activists must begin to win some of the allies of labor to the idea of the united front.Students who participate in labor studies programs at the universitiesare an example of this group." (Unite!, June 15, 1980, p. 3, col. 4, emphasis added)
Incredible! The "CPUSA/ML's" conception of "the allies of labor" is totally corrupt, lacking any shred of a revolutionary outlook towards society. They do not identify the revolutionary and progressive students as the "allies of labor," but classify students according to what courses they take in school. Now everyone knows that the "labor studies programs" have been set up by the bourgeoisie to train prospective labor bureaucrats, government officials and personnel officers for the corporations. Of course there may be progressive or revolutionary-minded students in such programs, as in any other program, but they will be found among those who revolt against these programs and participate in the revolutionary mass movements. But the "CPUSA/ML" is not interested in the masses of fighting students, and especially not in those who are revolted by social-democracy, but instead searches for friends and allies among those in thrall to the bourgeoisie. In effect, the "CPUSA/ML" wants to get off to an early start in making alliances with the labor bureaucrats and government officials of tomorrow.
Finally, another example of "other appropriate forces" is the "reformists," whether "within the working class movement" or the "national movements." Thus the Resolution of the Political Bureau of the "CPUSA/ML" entitled "Defeat the 'Left' Danger to Fight the Right!" sobbed that "The Party has belittled the importance of temporary alliances with the national reformists." (Organize!, Sept. 1979, p. 26) The 4th Plenum of the CC reiterated this stand in reporting on one of their numerous splits. The CC stressed: "In the U.S. today there can be little doubt that the masses of working and oppressed people are under the influence of reformism, whether in the trade unions or national movements. The anti-Party group, on the other hand, believes the reformists hold no sway over the masses of oppressed nationalities. They view the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Jesse Jackson, the NAACP, etc., as virtually without support. As a result, they maintained the view that it is unnecessary for the Party to work with these organizations in order to win the masses away from their influence."(Unite!, Feb. 1, 1980, p. 5, col. 3)
Thus the "other appropriate forces" include the "reformists," both the "national reformists" (i.e. "reformists" in the movements of the oppressed nationalities) and the "liberal union reformers" or "progressive" bureaucrats. The "united labor front" or "popular front" consists of "temporary alliances" or "work(ing) with" the "reformists" as well as the other forces. Indeed, the "CPUSA/ML" sinks to the depths of insisting on "work with" the SCLC, PUSH, the NAACP, etc. But notwithstanding Weisberg's prettification, these organizations are nothing but coalitions of social-democratic chieftains, soldout elements mainly revolving around the Democratic Party but also friendly to the Republican Party as well. In July this year, the NAACP sent its leader to grovel before the Reaganite Republican Convention, while some of the former leading lights of the SCLC, Abernathy and Hosea Williams, endorsed the Klan's favorite candidate, Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile PUSH leaders and the majority of the "national reformists" stumped for Carter. All of these characters are nothing but firemen over the revolutionary movements, as was witnessed recently when the Carter administration dispatched Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young to extinguish the flames of revolt among the black masses in Miami and Chattanooga.
Winning the Masses from the "Reformists" and Social-Democrats by Praising Them to the Skies
The "CPUSA/ML" alleges that it advocates "temporary alliances," "united labor fronts," and "popular fronts" with the "reformists" and social-democrats in order to win the masses away from their influence. What a fraud! In fact their whole work is to convince the masses about the positive and "progressive" nature of these flunkeys of the bourgeoisie. The pages ofUnite!andAdvanceare full of glowing praise for these dogs and present each conference, action and proposal of the social-democrats, labor bureaucrats and "reformists" as a step forward for the working masses.
We have already seen the enthusiasm with which Matthew Fusco greeted the social-democratic conferences in the pages of Advancein his article "Conference on Union Democracy Held in Detroit." (Advance,Nov. 1980) What "criticism" did Fusco make of these conferences? He gently suggested that: "This union democracy conference, like the majority of others, suffered from the failure to transform the broad discussion and experience of the participants into any program of action, any statement of principles or any form of organization." In brief, Fusco was excited and a little impatient over the prospect of developing the social-democratic program and organization, which is what these conferences were aiming at anyway without the need of Fusco's advice. Instead of appealing to the masses against the opportunists, Fusco on the contrary welcomed the "broad discussion" and rich "experience" of the social-democrats, trotskyites, labor bureaucrats and others. Of course, he utterly failed to mention that their "experience" was experience in suppressing the workers' struggles and their "broad discussion" was on the best methods of betraying the workers.
Another typical example of how "CPUSA/ML's" "temporary alliances" with the social-democrats and "reformists" are more like torrid love affairs can be seen in their coverage of the so-called "National Anti-Klan Network" inUnite!(Jan. 15, 1980) Now this "network" is a coalition composed of all sorts of dubious social-democratic hacks, Democratic Party politicians, cultural nationalists, the "C"PUSA, the "three worlders" and opportunists of every shade. It is nothing but a paper organization, an empty shell, which seeks to cool off the anti-fascist struggle and direct it into such channels as begging "individual politicians and governmental bodies at all levels" to make empty declarations against the Klan.
But in the press of the professional liars of the "CPUSA/ ML," this broken-down old nag was transformed into a powerful young stallion. It became a group "(bringing) together young organizations with older organizations which have fought the Klan for a long time." Amazing! Why indeed would anyone want to win the masses away from the influence of such heroic, longstanding fighters against reaction! But this is not all, for, according toUnite!,"over 450 people attended this meeting, representing 200 organizations. This was the first time in over ten years that such a step has been taken towards building a united front with a single goal in mind -- fighting the Klan and all that it represents." Incredible! Every "reformist" hack and his brother are all of a sudden praised as "fighting the Klan and all that it represents" while the network allegedly "represents an effort to break from individual isolated resistance toward building a national movement." The "CPUSA/ML" is more enthusiastic about the "reformists" than the "reformists" themselves!
Hence it is clear that "CPUSA/ML's" "united front tactics" is not designed to win the masses away from the "reformists," but to strengthen the hold of social-democracy and opportunism over the masses. The "united labor front" of the "CPUSA/ML" is a common front with the "reformists" against the interests of the masses of workers, against revolution and Marxism-Leninism.
Of course, it is quite natural that the "CPUSA/ML" should seek to bolster the other social-democrats and "reformists," since Weisberg and the "CPUSA/ML" have always been social-democrats themselves. The "united labor front" signifies that the "CPUSA/ML," which has never built independent organization in practice, is denouncing the very idea of the proletariat organizing itself as a class for itself and not as a miserable appendage of the imperialist liberals and the Democratic Party. The "CPUSA/ML" is setting forth the Browderite plan that the revolutionary movement will allegedly arise spontaneously from the increasing unity, organization and politicization of the yellow front of "reformists" and social-democrats. In reality, the "united labor front" means to form a common front with the "left" wing of the Democratic Party, a common front aimed against revolution and Marxism-Leninism.
1. There are now two groups calling themselves the "Trade Union Action League." The "CPUSA/ML," always so eager to oppose the struggle against revisionism and opportunism on the plea of the necessity of "unity," has been racked by one split after another. As a result of one of these splits, there are now two TUAL s. All references to the TUAL in this article are to the TUAL affiliated to the "CPUSA/ML."
[Photo: Above: Leaflet put out by the COUSML (predecessor of the MLP) to denounce the 22nd National Convention of the Khrushchovite revisionist "C'PUSA in 1979. It was distributed in the factories and outside the "C'PUSA convention hall. The MLP trains the proletariat in irreconcilable struggle against revisionism. On the other hand, the Weisberg social-democratic sect went to the "C'PUSA convention to. beg for unity. Instead of fighting revisionism, they distributed an appeal by the TUAL for unity, entitled "To Strike Is to Struggle." Unity with revisionism is a cornerstone of the "CPUSA/ML's" "united labor front."]
(The following articles are taken from Albanian Telegraphic Agency News Bulletin of November 18, 1980.)
The Scientific Session "Soviet Revisionism and the Struggle of the Party of Labor of Albania to Expose It," organized by the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies at the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, began its proceedings in Tirana yesterday (November 17).
Attending the proceedings of the session were leading cadres of the organs of the Party, state power, economy in districts and center, scholars of social sciences, working people of production, culture, arts, army and others.
Comrades Ramiz Alia, Kadri Hazbiu, Hekuran Isai, Simon Stefani, Qirjako Mihali; the members of the Central Committee of the Party Nexhmije Hoxha, Fiqret Shehu, Vito Kapo, Foto Cami; the First Secretary of the Tirana district party committee Gaqo Nesho and other comrades took their seats at the presidium.
The session was declared open by the Vice-Director of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, Prof. Ndreci Plasari. He said among others:
Twenty years are completed since the day when on November 16, 1960, Comrade Enver Hoxha delivered on behalf of the PLA the historic speech at the Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow.
This speech is historic from every point of view.
First of all it is such from the view of its principled, revolutionary and militant content. It constitutes an ardent defense of the Marxist-Leninist principles and a telling blow against Khrushchovite revisionism, at a time when this revisionism had completely liquidated the revolutionary line of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin and had replaced this line with the counter-revolutionary, anti-Marxist course of the 20th Congress.
Prof. Ndreci Plasari stressed that time has fully confirmed the great historic importance of Comrade Enver Hoxha's speech in Moscow. It has fully confirmed how correct our Party was when it opposed the counter-revolutionary revisionist course of the Khrushchovites and how right were the views it put forth at this international forum of the communist movement.
The speech of Comrade Enver Hoxha, he continued further on, has left deep traces in the international communist movement, which is now on the road of its renovation on Marxist-Leninist foundations, and in the history of all the revolutionary and liberation movements in the world.
It is and will always remain an example of the spirit of principle, courage, independence, which are indispensable factors to wage the revolutionary struggle against the internal and external enemies of the proletariat and the people, and to score the final victory over these enemies. It will always remain a banner of struggle in the hands of our Party and people.
How just and vital has been and will always be the struggle of the PLA against Khrushchovite revisionism, a struggle which openly and directly began in Moscow on November 16, 1960, to the defense of Marxism-Leninism, socialism in our country, the freedom and national sovereignty of our people. This is scientifically argued by many documents of the Party and works by Comrade Enver Hoxha. This is also argued by his new work The Khrushchevites.
With the publication of Comrade Enver Hoxha's new work The Khrushchevites, Prof. Ndreci Plasari said in conclusion, our communists and people are equipped with a new powerful weapon in their struggle against modern revisionism, a struggle, which, as our Party has decided, will never cease till socialism and communism finally triumph on a worldwide scale.
Then, Prof. Agim Popa delivered the report "The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Evolution of Modern Revisionism"; and the old scientific co-worker Vangjel Moisiu, the report "The Struggle of the PLA Against the Pressure and Interference of Khrushchovite Revisionism Towards Our Party and Country."
At the afternoon sitting, the alternate member of sciences, Omer Harshova, delivered the report "The Present Economic-Social Order of the Soviet Union-Capitalist Order"; and Prof. Arben Puto, the report "The Social-Imperialist Character of the Foreign Policy of the Present-Day Soviet Union."
Those present attentively listened to the reports.
The session is continuing its proceedings.
Summary of the report by the old scientific co-worker Vangjel Moisiu at the Scientific Session devoted to the struggle of the PLA against Soviet revisionism
In his report: "The Struggle of the Party of Labor of Albania Against the Pressure and Interference by the Khrushchovite Revisionists Against our Party and Country,'' delivered at the Scientific Session devoted to the struggle of the PLA against Soviet revisionism, Vangjel Moisiu, old scientific co-worker, said among others:
The struggle of the Party of Labor of Albania against the interference and pressure by Khrushchovite revisionists is a component part of all the great principled struggle it has waged against Soviet revisionism.
Substantiating with facts the pressure, blackmail and interference by Khrushchovite revisionists against the PLA and our country, the speaker dwelt on the attempts of the Khrushchovites to ensure the embodiment of the theses of their 20th Congress at the 3rd Congress of the PLA and to convince the leadership of our Party of the indispensability of reexamining and changing its general line. But the Party of Labor of Albania, the speaker stressed, never moved from its positions.
Particularly the Khrushchovites, he went on, made attempts to liquidate the main leaders of our Party and state and to replace them with the rehabilitated traitors, as many other parties and former socialist countries did. The pressure of the Khrushchovites also aimed at putting under their control our army, economy, culture, etc., through the Soviet advisers and specialists as well as through their Albanian agents, to turn Albania into a country dependent on them economically, consequently, politically too. After speaking of a number of oppositions of the PLA to a series of actions by the Soviet leadership, the report says that to subjugate the leadership of our Party, the Khrushchov group resorted, as Comrade Enver Hoxha writes in his work The Khrushchevites, both to the "carrot and stick." The aim of the Khrushchovites was to break the resistance of the PLA, to force it to change its course. But as Comrade Enver Hoxha writes "they broke their heads."
Further on, the speaker dwells on the Bucharest meeting and the open opposition of the PLA to the splitting actions and the plotting methods of N. Khrushchov. The period of a great test began for Albania and the Party of Labor of Albania, the speaker underlined.
The Soviet revisionists particularly resorted to pressure and sabotage in the economic field, going so far as to use even the weapon of famine. But the Party of Labor of Albania did not yield.
After the Moscow meeting, Vangjel Moisiu continues further on, the pressure and attacks by the Khrushchovites against our Party and country assumed fiercer and aggressive forms. They unilaterally broke all the agreements struck between the two countries, completely cut off the credits and every economic aid, as well as all the trade relations, withdrew from Albania in a threatening manner all the specialists, and expelled all the Albanian cadres and students, who attended their studies in the Soviet educational institutions.
The Soviet revisionists were ready to interfere even militarily in Albania, under the pretext of the question of the Vlora military base. But these plans failed thanks to the heroic resistance of our Party, army and armed people. Finally, from the rostrum of the 22nd Congress, in October 1961, N. Khrushchov undertook the open public attack against our Party, calling on our communists and people for counter-revolution, an act which was followed by the other hostile act, the severing of diplomatic relations with Albania.
Although they suffered defeat in the confrontation with the PLA, Vangjel Moisiu said further on, the Khrushchovites did not give up their attempts to subdue it and the Albanian people. They pinned great hopes in realizing the subjugation of our Party after Khrushchov's overthrow. But the Party of Labor of Albania cherished no illusion for the aims of Khrushchov's followers, who did nothing else but only "changed the horses" in the leadership, preserving Khrushchovism intact.
Our Party also turned down "the advice" of the Chinese leadership to approach and reconcile with the Khrushchovites following its example. Its judgement "to give the hand to the dear Soviet friends," "to forget the past," had the smell of opportunism and pragmatism from far away. The Soviet revisionists once again entertained the hope that after the breaking off with the Chinese we would stretch our hand to them thinking that under these conditions "the suitable moment" had come to come to terms with Albania. But their hopes had not and will never come true.
Dwelling upon the political moral causes and factors that ensured the great victory of the PLA over the Khrushchovites, the speaker underlined among others:
Our Party successfully fought against and foiled the interference, pressure and blockade by the Khrushchovites because it has always stood loyal to Marxism-Leninism, has followed a consistent principled line.
The PLA successfully coped with all the hostile pressure, blackmail and blockades of the Khrushchovites because it enjoyed the backing of the broad working masses of the country, the powerful support of the people.
The PLA overcame the Khrushchovite blockades because it has always applied the great revolutionary principle of self-reliance.
Another factor of the victory over the Khrushchovites is the fact that our Party has persistently applied the revolutionary principle of not allowing the foreigners (be they allies or enemies) to interfere in the internal affairs of our country.
In its struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionist betrayal, the PLA enjoyed assistance and determined support of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary forces.
The determined support by these forces made our Party more powerful, resolute and confident in the great confrontation with the enemies and traitors of the revolution, Vangjel Moisiu said in conclusion.
Summary of the report by Prof. Agim Popa, delivered at the Scientific Session devoted to the struggle of the PLA against Soviet revisionism.
Follows a summary of the report: "The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Evolution of modern Revisionism," delivered by Prof. Agim Popa at the Scientific Session organized in Tirana devoted to the struggle of the Party of Labor of Albania against Soviet revisionism. The report reads among others:
Twenty years ago, Comrade Enver Hoxha delivered the historic speech at the meeting of the 81 communist and workers' parties in Moscow. During these 20 years, life has fully corroborated the correctness and vitality of the stand of the Party of Labor of Albania, has incontestably proved that the line of determined struggle against revisionism was the sole correct and life-giving stand. At the meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha exposed in a clear and substantiated way the treacherous course of the Khrushchovite revisionists, drew the line of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism and Khrushchovite revisionism.
He devoted special attention to the criticism and exposure of the opportunist theses and the counter-revolutionary stands of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which formulated the general line of Khrushchovite revisionism both for the internal problems of the country, and the international ones.
At the 20th Congress of the CPSU and later on, the Khrushchovite revisionists, just like all the modern revisionists, speculated and are speculating a great deal with the slogan of "creative development" of Marxism-Leninism and the "struggle against dogmatism." But the "anti-dogmatism" of theirs is nothing else but a pragmatic maneuver to justify and hide revisionism.
At the 20th Congress of the CPSU and later on, the Khrushchovite revisionists speculated a great deal with the deceitful slogan of returning to the teachings of Lenin, which allegedly had been abandoned, distorted and trampled under foot by Stalin. Our Party has exposed the aim of the maneuver of allegedly returning to Lenin. It has argued that the attacks against Stalin were in reality attacks against Marxism-Leninism, which has been consistently implemented and defended by Stalin in the Soviet Union and in the international communist movement. Now the revisionists preach the abandoning of Leninism "to return to the founders of scientific socialism, Marx and Engels," as, for example, the present-day revisionists "with gloves off" -- the Eurocommunists -- are doing. But, as Comrade Enver Hoxha stresses, "The revisionists, whether Khrushchovites or Eurocommunists, fight in the same way, with the same ferocity and perfidy both against Stalin, and against Lenin and Marx too."
After stressing that the defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, of its fundamental teachings, from the revisionist distortions and attacks, whether camouflaged or overt, constitutes today a great revolutionary duty. Prof. Agim Popa continued: The 20th Congress of the CPSU marked the beginning of a general campaign of modern revisionism against the dictatorship of the proletariat. While the 22nd Congress declared as "overcome" the dictatorship of the proletariat which was replaced with the so-called "state of the whole people," that is nothing else but a facade of the dictatorship of the new Soviet bourgeoisie. Within a few years, the so-called "state of the whole people" evolved into a social-fascist state.
The speaker argued further on that the Khrushchovite campaign against the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union became a powerful support for the other revisionists.
Speaking further on about the hostile stand which unites all the revisionists against the revolution, Prof. Agim Popa said: The theories which deny the revolution were widely spread in the communist and workers' movement with the 20th Congress of the CPSU, where there were rejected as outdated the Marxist-Leninist theory on violent revolution, as a universal law of the transition from capitalism to socialism, and on the destruction of the bourgeois state machine, a theory which was replaced with the Khrushchovite thesis on "peaceful road." This became the source and the foundation of the "flourishing" of all the present-day counter- revolutionary theories of the revisionists, and in particular, of the Eurocommunists, whose aim is to preserve and perpetuate capitalism and provide a vivid proof of the complete social-democratic degeneration of the revisionist parties.
The time we are living in, underlined Prof. Agim Popa, is characterized by a general upsurge of the revolutionary process in the world. The objective conditions for the revolution are becoming ever more favorable. Decisive now is the preparation of the subjective factor of the revolution.
Prof. Agim Popa spoke further on about the course of counter-revolutionary reconciliation, rapprochement and collaboration of the Khrushchovite revisionists with imperialism. The "theoretical" and practical bases of this course were laid out especially at the 20th Congress of the CPSU.
In our time, along with the exposure of the poisonous propaganda of imperialism, he said, indispensable also are the exposure and smashing of the dangerous deceitful theories and preachings of the modern revisionists on the stand towards imperialism.
Then Prof. Agim Popa said: The revisionists have always spearheaded their first blow against the leading revolutionary staff of the working class, the proletarian party. The Khrushchovite revisionists themselves set an example in this, proclaiming at their 22nd Congress the liquidation of the proletarian character of their party and its transformation into the so-called "party of the whole people," which in theory is an incongruous absurdity, whereas in practice it means elimination of the leading role of the working class.
But Khrushchov's group sought to impose the course of the degeneration of the proletarian parties on the whole international communist and workers' movement.
The revisionists have abandoned the fundamental theoretical positions of Marxism-Leninism and have adopted in fact the opportunist and counter-revolutionary ideological positions of social-democracy.
In our time, Prof. Agim Popa said, it is indispensable to expose and refute the clamor of the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, social-democracy, "Eurocommunists," etc., who claim that the post-Khrushchovite Soviet leadership, in particular as early as 1968, had allegedly renounced the line of the 20th Congress and of Khrushchov, had allegedly turned back to the "Stalinist methods," had allegedly evolved into "neo-Stalinism," etc., etc. Right after the fall of N. Khrushchov, in opposition to the vacillations of and pressure by the Chinese leadership, the Party of Labor of Albania exposed the demagogical maneuvers of Brezhnev's group and described the policy of the new Soviet leadership as the continuation of Khrushchovism without Khrushchov. The Party of Labor of Albania has stressed that it is indispensable to unwaveringly carry the struggle against Soviet revisionism, with or without Khrushchov, through to the end.
There is also speculation on the contradictions which exist today among various trends of modern revisionism, in particular between Soviet revisionism and other trends. But analysis and facts turn down these claims and show that, either from the Soviet or other revisionists, the contradictions do not have a principled character, because all of them are enemies of Marxism-Leninism and, irrespective of the contradictions which divide them, they have a common opportunist and counter-revolutionary ideological basis.
The propaganda of the bourgeoisie, social-democracy, trotskyites, etc., is raising a hue and cry about the alleged failure of Marxism-Leninism, about the alleged crisis and degeneration of communism. In reality, it is not Marxism-Leninism, it is not communism, but modern revisionism which is in crisis.
The evolution of modern revisionism, with all its variants, "theories," its dangerous demagogy and deception brings to the fore the colossal task facing the Marxist-Leninists today to expose it in the eyes of the working class and the peoples. The struggle against modern revisionism, for the liberation of the masses from the poisonous revisionist influence and for the revolutionary tempering of the Marxist-Leninist parties themselves, Prof. Agim Popa said in conclusion, is not a temporary campaign, but a permanent and vital necessity to carry forward the cause of the revolution and socialism to its complete victory.