The Workers' Advocate

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VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA

December 30, 1982

Volume 12, Number 12

[Front page:

Back to the Classics of Marxism-Leninism!]

IN THIS ISSUE

Back to the Classics of Marxism-Leninism!

SPEECH AT THE BUFFALO MEETING -- NOVEMBER 6, 1982

Great October Lives On at the Barricades of the Class Struggle

SPEECH AT THE BOSTON MEETING -- NOVEMBER 5, 1982

Red October shows that we must build the working class party

Condemn the Murder of Comrade Nicolás Valerio in the Dominican Republic!

Historic strike in its 12th month

250,000 textile workers on strike in Bombay, India

West German workers demonstrate against austerity measures

The nationalist program of the RCP of Britain (ML) violates the ABC's of Marxism-Leninism

More on the RCP of Britain (ML)

The Revolutionary Phrase

The October Revolution Turned Upside Down

On the path forward for the struggle against imperialist war

An American liquidator versus Leninism

On the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of China

Revisionist China in a Quagmire

Back to the Classics of Marxism-Leninism!

Today the class struggle is brewing. The capitalists are unleashing a furious assault on the factory workers and other toiling masses. While starvation stalks millions, tens of millions teeter on the brink of ruin. Racist terror, new reactionary laws, and the threat of imperialist war grow with each passing day. And as the want and suffering mount, so does the discontent. The workers, the poor and oppressed are itching for a fight. Under the apparent calm there is a running debate: when, where and how to fight?

Marxism-Leninism provides answers to these burning questions of our day. Born in the revolutionary upheavals of the 1840's and raised to a new level by the earthshaking experience of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary theory of the working class movement. The working class long dreamed of and spontaneously strived for its emancipation from the shackles of capitalist slavery. But without theory these strivings were like groping in the dark. One of the historic accomplishments of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin was that they took the workers' dreams and, based on a systematic study of history and the worldwide experience of the workers' movement, turned them into a revolutionary science for the education of the working class. This science gives the workers consciousness of the socialist aim of their movement and practical guidance in the class struggle.

Since the birth of Marxism, the capitalist rulers have waged an unrelenting war against it, a war that is all the more clamorous today. Each bourgeois sets himself the task of abolishing communism all over again -- for the specter of communism never dies. Reagan himself has taken the stage to try to discredit this revolutionary theory, to try to claim that the crisis of Russia, a crisis based on the restoration of capitalism by the revisionist betrayers of Marxism-Leninism, marks the demise of scientific socialism itself.

The lies and confusion mongering of these capitalist henchmen must be fought. The workers must and will organize themselves as a class; they will mount the stage of history as a political force independent of and in struggle against the capitalist despots when they rally behind the leadership of a party based on the most advanced revolutionary theory. To free itself from bondage to the capitalist slavedrivers, the working class must also free itself from intellectual bondage to the capitalists. A powerful struggle must be waged to defend the teachings of Marxism-Leninism from attacks, no matter from what quarter, and to wield this science as a mighty weapon to mobilize and organize the working masses.

In the coming year of struggle, the Marxist-Leninist Party calls on the class conscious workers everywhere, BACK TO THE CLASSICS OF MARXISM-LENINISM!

Against Liqnidationism

Today there are many organizations who, while claiming to be communist, are giving the capitalists the greatest help in their war on Marxism-Leninism. These Maoists, pro-Soviets and other trends of revisionism and trotskyism have come together on a common platform of liquidationism. They have renounced (liquidated) the revolutionary traditions of the working class, the building of its vanguard party, and revolutionary struggle. They are joining hands with social-democracy and the sellout union bureaucracy to tie the workers to the coattail of the liberal capitalists of the Democratic Party. This disgusting betrayal of the class independence of the workers is matched only by the liquidators' extreme poverty of thought and outlandish denunciation of Marxist-Leninist principles.

Indeed, the liquidators have taken to mocking at the very idea of revolutionary theory, at any notion of a coherent, integral world outlook, as "correct line-ism,'' etc. Today there are many important questions pressing on the movement, but the liquidators maintain a studied evasion of them. Their journals are marked by the absence of any thought-out idea. For some, like the now defunct Maoists of the "CPML," the mere mention of a difficult question has been enough to set them to wringing their hands in despair, to curse the day that they even mentioned a Marxist-Leninist principle, to send them running back to the safe and uncontroversial dogmas of the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. For others, like the official pro-Soviet revisionists of the "C"PUSA, difficult questions are simply glossed over and brushed aside with a deceptive show of well-being. What matter that the union bureaucrats have once again sold the workers down the river, everything's going swell, didn't Doug Fraser himself approve the sellout contracts?

The liquidators replace Marxist-Leninist principle with the dirty maneuverings of "realistic" politics. The Democratic Socialists of America have declared themselves the "left wing of the possible." And what is possible is unity with and subordination to the capitalist politicians of the Democratic Party. The revisionist and trotskyite liquidators have joined the social- democrats in this stinking swamp. For them, Marxism- Leninism is not the theory to see farther than the present stagnation, to guide the workers out of the morass of capitalist politics. Rather the liquidators distort Marxism-Leninism, snatch phrases from it as catchwords, to prettify and justify digging deep in the filthy marsh with the social-democrats.

If Marxism-Leninism is to be of any value to the revolutionary struggle of the workers it must be saved from the embrace of the liquidators. Back to the classics of Marxism-Leninism is a call to fight liquidationism, to defend the revolutionary science of the working class.

Revolutionary Theory Is an Essential Guide to Revolutionary Work

Back to the classics of Marxism-Leninism is also a call to study deeply revolutionary theory and to use it as a revolutionary weapon to answer the difficult questions that confront the working class today. Comrade Stalin, in his famous book The Foundations of Leninism, emphasized:

"Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect. Of course, theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illuminated by revolutionary theory. But theory can become a tremendous force in the working class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice; for theory, and theory alone, can give the movement confidence, the power of orientation, and an understanding of the inner relation of surrounding events; for it, and it alone, can help practice realize not only how and in which direction classes are moving at the present time, but also how and in which direction they will move in the near future. None other than Lenin uttered and repeated scores of times the well-known thesis that:

" 'Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.' " (Chapter III, p. 22)

It was the theory of Marxism-Leninism that guided the movement against social-chauvinism which sprung up in 1976 and led to the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party in 1980. It was because of the detailed study of and the loyal following of the teachings of Comrade Lenin, that the comrades of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists were able to discern the issues of principle in this movement and to guide it in a revolutionary direction to not only repudiate Maoist "three worlds-ism" and Browderite liberal-labor politics, but also to use the energy of the movement to establish the Party.

Likewise, it has been the loyalty to and thoroughgoing study of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism that has assisted the Party to find methods of approach to the masses to help them to break with the left wing of the Democratic Party and move step by step closer to the revolution. The work to build the independent movement of the working class, the struggle to put opposition to imperialism in the center of the struggle against war preparations, the correct use of the economic struggle of the workers to expose the union bureaucrats and build the Party, etc., all find their foundation in the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism.

In the coming year, the Party plans to go farther in dealing with the question of the united front tactics. The Party will expose the liquidationist distortions on this question. It will elaborate the Marxist-Leninist principles which underlie the united front tactics. And it will explain further the tactical policy that the Party follows today. In short, on this and other questions the Party will work harder than ever to strengthen its theoretical foundations, for as Lenin stressed, "There can be no strong Socialist Party without a revolutionary theory which unites all Socialists, from which they draw all their convictions, and which they apply in their methods of struggle and means of action." ("Our Program," Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 211)

Build the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement

The theoretical problems confronting the revolutionary movement in this country interlace with and are part of the issues facing the worldwide movement of the revolutionary workers. The working class is an international class, and its theoretical principles must be drawn from a critical examination of the experience of the international movement.

Today a host of difficult questions confront the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. What is the orientation and tactics for the fight against imperialist war? What is the role of the struggle against the superpowers in the lesser imperialist powers? What is the revolutionary strategy in the neo-colonial and dependent countries? How are the immediate, day-to-day struggles of the working masses to be directed toward the socialist revolution? How should the struggle against revisionism and opportunism be continued? What methods should be used to combat them in the mass movement? And so forth.

These questions involve complex issues in each country. They cannot be shuffled under the rug, nor can they be answered with fashionable generalities devoid of explanation. Our Party is firmly convinced that these questions can be resolved only by careful study of the experience and conditions in the various countries and by holding firmly to the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism in uncompromising ideological struggle against revisionism and opportunism.

For our part, the MLP pledges that, as in the past, it will not shrink from its duty, but it will work with all its might to strengthen the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement.

Commemorate the Life of Marx

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, the great teacher and leader of the international working class. There can be no better way to commemorate the earth-shaking life and work of this dedicated genius of the revolution than by stepping up our revolutionary work.

In this coming year of bitter struggle against the Reaganite offensive of the capitalist ruling class, the Marxist-Leninist Party calls on all class conscious workers and revolutionary activists to combat liquidationism: Work to defend the revolutionary teachings of Marxism-Leninism. Study deeply the Marxist-Leninist theory as a guide to provide revolutionary answers to the perplexing problems of our movement. Work without letup to bring the revolutionary principles of Marxism- Leninism to the broad masses of the workers, to give them faith in the invincibility of their movement and sure direction in organizing themselves as an independent revolutionary force, the leader and mainstay of the socialist revolution. BACK TO THE CLASSICS OF MARXISM-LENINISM!

[Photo: Lenin at the unveiling of a monument to Marx and Engels in Revolution Square, Moscow, November 7, 1918.]

[Photo.]

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SPEECH AT THE BUFFALO MEETING -- NOVEMBER 6, 1982

Great October Lives On at the Barricades of the Class Struggle

(Below we reprint the full text of the main speech given by a representative of the MLP at the meeting in Buffalo on November 6 to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution. It has been edited for publication.)

Comrades and friends,

Sixty-five years ago, when the October Socialist Revolution of the Bolsheviks brought the working class to power in Russia, the world was rift in two by the impact of this monumental event.

On the one side, the forces of property and the status quo in every country rallied to oppose the Bolshevik revolution. The bourgeois press denounced the revolution in the wildest terms as anarchy, the Bolsheviks as Tartar barbarians. The Catholic Pope declared that Lenin was the anti-Christ, and from every pulpit the preachers threatened that unless godless Bolshevism was stamped out, the end of civilization was at hand. Fear of Bolshevism swept through the mansions and drawing rooms of the bourgeoisie with the rapid force of hysteria. No bourgeois could rest his head on his pillow without first checking to ensure that a Bolshevik was not hidden beneath the bed.

Evidently, in the days following the October Revolution the international bourgeoisie did not feel it could rest unless it succeeded in crushing the Bolsheviks. And, in fact, the governments of the big capitalist powers threw their support behind the White Guard counter-revolution in Russia. Eleven imperialist powers formed a coalition for direct military intervention in the Soviet Union. The imperialists threw themselves against the new Soviet system with all the fury of a wounded and frightened beast.

A New Dawn

As for the working masses, it was a new dawn. The sun which rose in Russia in October 1917 flooded over the entire international working class movement a brilliant new light -- the light of Bolshevism and Lenin ism. The great sympathy for the new Soviet power which gripped the broadest sections of the ordinary working people is exemplified by the stand and actions of the imperialist troops sent to fight the Red Army: the French sailors and soldiers mutinied; the soldiers of other countries refused to fight the Bolsheviks; and workers in the U.S. and other countries refused to load the ships being sent to supply the interventionist troops.

Indeed, the working people of all countries completely justified the terrible bourgeois fear of Bolshevism, as everywhere the workers looked to the October Revolution as their model and made the establishment of Soviet power their aim. Here in the U.S., the October Revolution and the new Soviet form of organization served as an impetus for the Seattle general strike of 1919. In other countries, where the workers' movement reached a much higher revolutionary pitch, the workers, inspired by the example of their Russian comrades, set up Soviets, as took place in 1918 in parts of Germany and 1919 in Hungary where the Soviet republic held state power for several months. Even in the long-slumbering nations of Asia, the masses of toilers newly awakened to political life and struggle joined the movement for Soviet power. In country after country, the advanced elements from the working class movement became the students and disciples of the great Lenin who had organized and led the October Revolution. Proletarian parties of a new type, communist parties, were organized in many countries, parties modeled after the Bolshevik Party of Lenin, revolutionary proletarian parties leading the working class towards its historic mission: the carrying out of the socialist revolution and the establishment of Soviet power in their own countries.

This deep and powerful support for the October Revolution swept up the workers of all countries in a great revolutionary ferment. It was this, together with the heroic struggle of the proletariat in Russia itself, that was decisive in staying the hands of the imperialists, wild with their mad frenzy for revenge against the Bolsheviks. The international bourgeoisie could not crush the Bolshevik revolution in Russia because it en joyed the ardent support of the workers of their own countries.

Without exaggeration, it can be said that no event before or since has ever penetrated so rapidly and so widely, has ever affected so powerfully the working people of the world as the October Revolution. No event, before or since, has ever so sharply divided the world along class lines.

Why did it have such a profound impact? It was be cause the October Revolution was a socialist revolution, the first successful socialist revolution, and it spelt the end of private ownership of the means of production, of the factories, the mines, the land, etc., the end of the exploitation of the workers and peasants of Russia. No bourgeois could fail to oppose an event which spelt the end of capitalist wealth, status and privilege acquired through the exploitation of the workers. No worker could help but have sympathy for a revolution which for the first time in history brought to power a socialist regime with the mission of destroying all exploitation and privilege and of raising to ever greater heights the social, political, economic and cultural status of the workers.

And it was because the October Revolution was not an exclusively Russian or national affair that it had such a powerful world impact. The October Revolution was only a part, an integral and inseparable part, of the world socialist revolution of the international proletariat against the international bourgeoisie. The Soviet Republic established in Russia was not and could not be content with utilizing its power for the benefit of the toilers there only, but openly proclaimed and actively pursued a proletarian internationalist policy. The new Soviet Republic consciously and actively pursued the policy of arousing and assisting to organize the workers and oppressed of all countries to follow the path of the October Revolution and emancipate themselves. Hence its galvanizing effect all over the globe -- galvanizing the bourgeoisie with ghastly fear and dread, galvanizing the workers with revolutionary enthusiasm and fervor.

The Lessons of October Retain Their Freshness and Vitality Today

But all of this drama, this polarization of the world into two camps -- for and against the Bolshevik revolution -- and the conflict between these two camps, all of this occurred sixty-five years ago, and under the direct impact of a contemporary event, the October Revolution itself. Has not the passage of time dulled the brilliance of the achievements of the Bolsheviks? In deed, do we not today hear on every side voices which relegate the October Revolution to the dusty archives of ancient history -- and not just the voices of the bourgeois professors but those as well of many an alleged "socialist" or supposed "communist"?

What is more, do not the events which have intervened between us and the-October Revolution -- and, in particular, the restoration of capitalism in the land of the October Revolution, in the Soviet Union itself -- do not these subsequent events force us to reconsider and reevaluate the significance of the October Revolution? And again, many voices from all sides, including those of alleged "Marxist-Leninists," can be heard and many pages of ink can be read informing us that history has shown it was a mistake to follow the path of the October Revolution and that we must give up this outdated notion without delay.

Comrades, while no one can deny that time has erased the immediate dramatic effect of the events of October 1917, while no one can deny that the reversals suffered by socialism have caused the faint of heart to despair and the ill-informed to doubt, nevertheless, there are certain facts which must be reckoned with to make a correct judgement of the contemporary significance of the October Revolution.

One such fact is the general crisis of capitalism, the stagnant depression, the massive unemployment and hunger and wage cutting, the orgy of warmongering militarism and of racist and fascist reaction. This world wide crisis is the death agony of the capitalist social system. The material conditions which impelled the masses to the October Revolution in 1917 still exist today, and these conditions are leading to revolutionary crises in various countries in which the working class will once again storm the barricades to seize power.

Another such fact is the continuing vitality of the Marxist-Leninist theory which was proved correct by the October Revolution. To this day Marxism-Leninism remains the only reliable guide for the working class movement; it remains the precious legacy of the working class and the ever cursed boogey of the capitalist politicians and professors. Its alternative, social-democracy in all its revisionist variants, remains just as bankrupt as at the time of World War I and the great October insurrection. Indeed, if anything, social-democracy is even more bankrupt, for it has since repeatedly been shown to be the preferred ideology of the ruling cliques of capitalist and imperialist governments.

Yet another such fact is the existence of socialist Albania. Yes, the October Revolution was all of 65 years ago and capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union more than two decades ago. But Albania, a land of genuine socialism, exists today. And this fact shows that the restoration of capitalism as occurred in the Soviet Union under Khrushchov is not an inevitability.

And still another such fact is the existence of our Marxist-Leninist Party, and similar parties in other countries, which remain the true disciples of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The power of the working class resides in organization, and it is the Marxist-Leninist parties all over the world which are the organized vanguards of the working class. The October Revolution lives in the work and struggle of the genuine Marxist-Leninist communist parties, the proletarian revolutionary parties of a new type whose era was ushered in by the October Revolution.

These facts are stubborn things, and they provide eloquent testimony for the continued relevance and vitality of the path of the October Revolution. The inescapable misery of capitalism which cries out for a social revolution, and the material conditions which drive the masses to this momentous undertaking, still persist. The vitality of the Marxist-Leninist theory, and the necessity to orient the working class movement with the revolutionary truth of this theory, still persist. The brilliant example of socialism in Albania still persists. And the advanced elements of the working class who em brace Bolshevism and who organize themselves into Marxist-Leninist parties still persist. They persist despite the passage of time. They persist despite the reversals which our great cause has suffered; and, we must say, any world historic social movement which aims at nothing less than the complete elimination of the centuries-old exploitation of man by man must inevitably experience reverses. Yet the facts which prove the necessity of the October road persist despite the mad ravings and frenzied bloodletting of capitalist reaction. And they persist despite the whimperings and moanings of the faint-hearted liberals who yesterday liked to pose as "Marxist-Leninists" and "communists" but who today are hanging on for dear life to the fringes of the Democratic Party, the labor bureaucracy and even the clergy.

It is the testimony of these facts which proves that the path of the October Revolution remains today -- just as it was 65 years ago -- the only genuine path for the salvation of the working masses. Thus, in our celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, it is only fitting that we take as our theme the lessons of the path of the October Revolution for the proletarian movement of today.

In my remarks, I shall speak about various of the lessons of the October Revolution, lessons which retain the same freshness and vitality today as they possess ed 65 years ago, lessons which remain the guiding principles necessary for the success of our contemporary revolutionary movement in the U.S. We can by no means exhaust this subject, or even touch upon all its aspects, in a single speech or program. Rather, we will have to focus on only several of the most significant and topical lessons of this epoch-making revolution.

The Revolutionary Nature of the Working Class

Perhaps the most simple and basic lesson of the October Revolution is that the working masses themselves are the great source and powerful wellspring of revolution. It was only by placing their unwavering faith in, and basing themselves upon, this revolutionary nature of the proletariat that the Bolsheviks were able to organize the victory of October. Eulogizing Lenin, Stalin said: "I do not know of any other revolutionary who had so profound a faith in the creative power of the proletariat and in the revolutionary efficacy of its class instinct as Lenin.... And hence, Lenin's constant precept: learn from the masses, try to comprehend their actions, care fully study the practical experience of the struggle of the masses.

"Faith in the creative power of the masses -- this was the feature of Lenin's activities which enabled him to comprehend the spontaneous process and to direct its movement into the channel of the proletarian revolution." ("Lenin," Works, Vol. 6, pp. 62-63) And anyone who looks into the events of the October Revolution cannot help but be impressed a hundred, a thousand times over by the great creative, revolutionary instincts of the working masses; it literally jumps out and demands recognition at every turn of events.

But why then does it require emphasis? Well, it is not so difficult to see in the proletariat the truly revolutionary force it is, and to base all one's work and effort, all one's hope for the prospects of the revolution, upon the revolutionary nature of the working masses during those times when the workers are manning the street barricades and storming the citadels of the reactionary state power. All the more necessary therefore to insist upon the revolutionary nature of the workers in those times when it is not self-evident, when it is not proven a dozen times a day by revolutionary events occurring directly before our eyes. It must be insisted upon be cause whether in directly revolutionary times or during periods of relative lulls in the class struggle -- at all times -- faith in the revolutionary nature of the workers and basing oneself upon their revolutionary character is the very foundation of any revolutionary strategy and tactics.

The Soviets

Of course, one of the most brilliant and indelible proofs of the revolutionary nature of the workers and of the great spontaneous creativity of our class was the creation of the Soviets.

As comrades are aware, the Soviets were the great creation of the Russian revolution. The Soviets were the new weapons of insurrection and of revolutionary rule, designed to enforce the will of the insurgent people. As such, they were the most democratic political organization, ideally suited for uniting all the oppressed and exploited, workers and peasants, and for determining the needs and desires of the masses. They did not just register the mass sentiment but, more than this, the Soviets were the most effective and versatile instrument for carrying into life and practice the policies which the masses decided upon. They were not talk shops or debating clubs, but militant weapons of revolutionary action, through which the demands of the masses were translated into revolutionary deeds and implemented. It was through these Soviets that the very broadest strata of the toilers -- literally the vast majority of the masses, who might never before in their life have participated in any political activity what soever -- were brought into the political struggle. Just for this reason, the Soviets were ideally suited to linking the vanguard of the toilers, the proletariat, with all the other working masses and to enabling the proletariat to exercise its leadership of the mass struggle. The Soviets brought the masses into action, organized them to carry out the October Revolution and welded them into the rulers of the new Soviet Russia. In short, these Soviets were unprecedented, democratic in a new, proletarian way, and revolutionary.

But where did they come from? What genius of the revolution possessed the instincts and the wisdom required to create such an institution, what force of the revolution possessed the organizational capacity and energy to establish and wield such a weapon?

It was the factory workers, the industrial proletariat of Russia, which created this great revolutionary institution.

The Soviets were first built by the Russian workers during the high tide of the 1905 Revolution against the Tsar. Lenin described these Soviets as "exclusively by the revolutionary sections of the people, they were formed irrespective of all laws and regulations, entirely in a revolutionary way, as a product of the native genius of the people, as a manifestation of the independent activity of the people which had rid itself, or was ridding itself of its old police fetters." ("A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship," Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 350) Arising initially during the monumental strike wave of the industrial workers during the months of October and November, the Soviets were used to launch the December 1905 uprising.

The 1905 uprising was drowned in blood, and the revolution was unsuccessful. But the experience which the workers gained in the Revolution of 1905 was tremendously important for preparing them for the eventual victory of 1917. Indeed, 1905 was a "dress rehearsal" for 1917. It was then that the workers first discovered and began to learn how to use the Soviets.

The events of February 1917 proved that the training and education from 1905 was not lost on the workers. The winter of 1916-17 found Russia in the grips of a most severe crisis. The country was completely exhausted by the imperialist war effort. Industry and agriculture were on the verge of complete collapse. The masses in the cities were staring starvation in the face. The army at the front was disintegrating and the troops were in a mutinous mood. But the Tsar refused to abandon the war, to which he was committed in the service of domestic capital and foreign imperialism. And he was determined to meet the people's demands for bread and peace with the point of a bayonet.

In January 1917 a new wave of strikes and demonstrations burst out throughout Russia. During February, the revolutionary movement which was developing across the country reached a new stage in Petrograd, the capital. It was the workers from the factories who marched in the vanguard of the movement. Factory after factory went out on strike; the economic strikes developed into political strikes demanding an end to the autocracy, the establishment of a democratic republic and the end of the war. Under these slogans raised by the workers and under their leadership, the general movement for bread in the city merged with the workers' movement and developed into powerful mass political demonstrations. Each day the demonstrations grew in numbers and militancy. Setting out from the workers' districts on the outskirts of the city, gathering new thousands of workers from every factory along the way, the demonstrators marched into the center of the capital, right up against the seats of government power, and demanded: "Down with the Autocracy!"

Already at the end of January, the tsarist government, in desperation and fury, armed the Petrograd police with machine guns, stepped up mass arrests and prepared to use troops. But the workers passed from the defensive to the offensive. The movement grew. The police proved impotent to suppress such a revolutionary and growing mass of workers, and the police sent to stamp out the demonstrations found themselves beaten up or thrown into the river and various of the commanders of police detachments were shot down. So at the end of February the Tsar ordered the troops into action to put down the workers. But within several days, the workers won over the soldiers to the side of their movement. Whole regiments joined in the workers' demonstrations; the troops refused to obey the orders of their commanders to fire on the workers; and many turned their guns against their officers.

By the end of February, Petrograd was in the hands of the workers and soldiers. The workers' movement and the revolt in the army spread rapidly across the entire country, reaching its greatest heights in those areas with the largest concentration of factory workers. Soviets -- first established by the workers of Petrograd -- were quickly set up in city after city following the example of the revolutionary capital. The Tsar's autocracy lay in rubble at the feet of the triumphant working masses.

The crowning achievement of the February Revolution was the creation of the Soviets by the mass working class movement. In the words of Lenin: "... February 1917 the masses had created the Soviets even before any party had managed to proclaim this slogan. It was the great creative spirit of the people, which had passed through the bitter experience 1905 and had been made wise by it, that gave rise to this form of proletarian power." Without this, the masses, " not under any circumstances have assumed power in October, because success depended entirely upon the existence of available organizational forms of a movement embracing millions." (Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 90)

Thus the events of the Russian revolution demonstrate that it is the working masses who are the great creative wellspring of the revolution, and demonstrate this in the most unmistakable and dramatic manner with the creation of the Soviets.

Marxism-Leninism Versus Opportunism on the Nature of the Working Class Movement

But before we pass on to review the progress of the Russian revolution following the February uprising, let us pause for just a moment to consider the relevance of this most simple and basic lesson from the October Revolution -- indeed, a lesson which is taught by every great revolution -- for the contemporary revolutionary movement. Today, as right from the start, our Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, has always based its work upon complete faith in the revolutionary nature of the working class. For example, our Party has always given a revolutionary character to its agitation and propaganda among the workers. It is a hallmark of our Party that it has always organized among the proletariat on a revolutionary basis with the full expectation and the certain conviction that the workers will inevitably respond.

On the other hand, the opportunists have always con fined their activities among the workers to economist and trade unionist appeals. Take the neo-revisionists (the American followers of Chinese revisionism who for a time paraded themselves as the true anti-revisionists), who only yesterday primped themselves as the followers of Lenin. The neo-revisionists always attacked our Party's revolutionary work in the proletariat be cause in their philistine-liberal souls they could never conceive of the working masses taking an interest in any struggle other than the fight for immediate economic demands. Hence, in days past, while in words professing to follow the path of the October Revolution, in deeds they were the same as every other opportunist to whom the workers' movement is synonymous with trade unionism.

And today these renegades have outdone them selves. Today, they have even abandoned the economic struggle in their haste to cozy up to the trade union bureaucrats who are signing one concessions contract after another with the capitalists. Meanwhile there are the Maoist ravings of Bob Avakian that the industrial proletariat is not a revolutionary class and is sold out and can only hope to "purify" itself of its sin by completely giving way before the concessions offensive of the rich. Here we have a vivid example of the complete degeneration of the neo-revisionists to open renegacy and liquidationism (advocacy of abandoning or "liquidating" party organization, the revolutionary struggle and Leninist principles and instead trailing behind the liberal-labor politicians and trade union bureaucrats). They have abandoned the proletariat, either attaching themselves to the trade union bureaucrats or abandoning the factories altogether, and they flaunt the fact that they have turned their backs on the most basic and simple lessons of the October Revolution. This indeed is an illuminating instance of how the liquidators interpret Marxism-Leninism. Long ago, Marx stated that "The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing." (Letter to Engels, February 18, 1865) "We choose the latter" whine our present-day liquidators.

Don't Romanticize the Spontaneous Movement: The Active Role of the Proletarian Political Party Is Necessary for the Victory of the Revolution

Comrades,

While we must have faith in and base our work on the revolutionary nature of the working class, we must never exaggerate the significance of the spontaneous movement of the workers. Left on its own, the mass movement spontaneously falls under the domination of bourgeois ideology and politics.

Thus, in February 1917, having overthrown the Tsar and created the Soviets -- an institution ideally suited for them to seize power themselves, an institution which inevitably decays into insignificance if it is not used as a tool of revolutionary insurrection or rule -- the working masses nevertheless allowed the bourgeoisie to ride the crest of the revolution to power. While the masses overthrew the Tsar, the bourgeoisie conspired to form the Provisional Revolutionary Government and proclaim themselves the new power in Russia. The workers fought and the bourgeoisie seized the fruits of the victory. And the Soviets gave their support to this Provisional Government made up of ex-tsarist ministers and members of the Cadet Party (Constitutional Democrats) -- the main bourgeois party in Russia. In short, the masses had a naive faith and confidence that the bourgeoisie would grant them their basic demands.

This is a very sobering fact. It cuts against any euphoric intoxication with, or idealist romanticization of, the spontaneous mass movement. Class instinct and elemental class consciousness brought the workers to the street barricades, led them to topple the Tsar and even to create the great Soviets. Of course, this class instinct itself was also the result of over two decades of development of the workers' movement, and the various political parties did their best to shape the course of the revolution. But the revolution marked a huge spontaneous upsurge which brought millions of toilers to new political life. Class instinct and the spontaneous movement alone, by themselves, could not lead these masses to sever themselves from the bourgeoisie. It could not make them conscious of the necessity to eliminate the bourgeoisie completely from power and take all power themselves through the Soviets in order to win their basic demands. For this, something else was required: the leadership of a Marxist-Leninist party, the Bolshevik Party of Lenin. Only through the leadership of the Party could the working masses be brought to seize political power.

To understand what the Bolsheviks accomplished in the eight months between February and October in 1917, to see how they succeeded in leading the working class to seize state power, let us first briefly describe the situation that existed in February following the overthrow of the Tsar.

First of all, in the place of the political power of the autocracy, there now existed in Russia an extremely rare situation: a dual power was established. On the one hand, the working masses were organized into the Soviets, which in the months following the February Revolution spread throughout all the cities and into the agrarian districts of Russia. Eventually, they encompassed the vast majority of the working people including the soldiers, who were mainly peasants in uniform, and who were also represented in the Soviets. The Soviets possessed, therefore, a tremendous revolutionary and moral authority, and their influence extended everywhere among the "ordinary people" of Russia.

At the same time, the Soviets did not exercise their political power. Potentially, the Soviets were every thing -- no power in Russia could stand up to them. But actually they allowed the bourgeoisie to form the Provisional Government and to run the affairs of state and to keep intact all the old government bureaucracy including the reactionary leadership of the army. The particular feature of the period of dual power was that the bourgeoisie did not rule by violence against the Soviets and the working people but ruled because the Soviets voluntarily handed over the power to them, be cause the toilers had an unreasoned trust in the bourgeoisie.

This situation came about because the masses who had made the revolution in February were as yet unconvinced of the need to take power themselves. It must be remembered that the masses who made the February Revolution were in the main completely new to politics. Furthermore the majority of the toilers in Russia were peasants, who together with the petty-bourgeois strata in the cities and the less conscious elements of the proletariat, were still willing to follow the leadership of the bourgeoisie and had confidence that the bourgeoisie would meet their demands for land, for an end to the war and for democratic liberties. The proletariat itself did not yet have sufficient organization and class consciousness at the start of the revolution, and it was overwhelmed by the petty-bourgeois wave. Thus the working masses were then very far indeed from seeing the need to break with the bourgeoisie and form a Soviet Republic.

The Opportunist Parties Served as a Screen for the Bourgeoisie

The political parties which these toilers then followed and which at first had the majority in the Soviets, were opportunist, petty-bourgeois and compromising par ties. They were the Mensheviks, who were the reformist, liquidationist wing of the workers' movement, and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, who were then the most left of the populist (Narodnik) peasant parties. They held fast to one basic political tenet, which they followed right up to its ignominious conclusion: that only the bourgeoisie could lead the Russian revolution and establish the new state to replace the autocracy. According to these parties, since the Russian revolution of February 1917 was a democratic revolution, only the bourgeoisie could lead it. According to them, since the tsarist monarchy represented the large landlords and feudal elements of the country, only the capitalist system could replace it. This was their dogma. Hence they held that the revolution must stop at the bourgeois-democratic stage and the bourgeoisie must take power and lead the toilers, who could only be lesser allies of the bourgeoisie. Only after the bourgeoisie had established itself in power and been allowed a long period to develop capitalism would the "material conditions" become ripe for further advances. Prior to that, it was supposed to be nonsense, anarchism, Blanqui-ism, adventurism, just plain wild raving, or anything you like but realism to think that the proletariat could establish its hegemony in the revolution, lead the working people to split with the bourgeoisie, and establish the Soviet power.

Thus, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries could never even conceive of -- let alone actually carry out -- turning the Soviets into organs of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasants. Nonetheless, as the parties who had the majority for the time being, they controlled and led the Soviets. Led, that is, by opposing any concrete step which the Soviets in any part of the country took to run affairs at the expense of the authority of the bourgeois Provisional Government or to solve any of the problems facing the toilers in a revolutionary fashion. Rather they sought to confine the operation of the Soviets to exercising what they called "control" over the Provisional Government, which was to hold real power in its hand with the complete "confidence" and "support" of the Soviets.

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were for compromising with the bourgeoisie, for forming a coalition with the bourgeoisie, for handing power over to the bourgeoisie, while covering everything over with pious words about "controlling" the Provisional Government and with high-sounding resolutions promising reforms, resolutions that always remained on paper and whose only purpose was to throw dust in the eyes of the working people. For these petty-bourgeois parties, "control" meant that the Soviets should restrict them selves to watching what the Provisional Government did, to supporting the Provisional Government and the war, and to trying to influence the decisions of the Provisional Government and pressure it to take certain measures or reforms in the interests of the masses. The compromising parties knew of only two means by which the masses were to pressure the Provisional Government or exercise this "control": one, by passing resolutions; two, by sending high-ranking Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to hold parleys with the bourgeois ministers. Their greatest ambition, and in their view the veritable consummation of the revolution, was to themselves occupy posts as ministers in the Provisional Power side by side with the bourgeoisie. This policy leads to tearing the soul out of the Soviets, and indeed the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries not only supported the imperialist war, but they helped the bourgeoisie destroy the dual power during the "July days" and institute a violent rule over the working people. They helped the Provisional Government hunt down Bolsheviks and in general embroil ed themselves in the counter-revolutionary plots of the bourgeoisie.

The striking analogy between this Menshevik conception of the role of the Soviets and of the toilers in the Russian revolution and the present-day conception of the liquidators of the working class confining itself to operating as a "pressure group" in the liberal-labor coalition of the Democratic Party is evident.

Thus, the majority of toilers did not yet see the need for themselves to seize power through the Soviets, and the parties whom they at first trusted -- the compromising parties -- bitterly opposed any such notion, while only the Bolsheviks and the class conscious proletarians that they led grasped the need to create a Soviet republic and to set upon the path of the socialist revolution.

The Bolshevik Strategy

Possessed of the advanced Marxist theory and led by none other than V.I. Lenin, the path breaker of the proletarian revolution in the twentieth century, the Bolsheviks saw clearly what the masses led by the com promising parties could not see. They knew that the bourgeoisie could not meet even one of the basic demands of the masses for land, peace and an end to the economic crisis. Rather, the bourgeoisie was committed to preserving as much as possible of the old regime and to stopping the revolution in its tracks, to pursuing the imperialist war "to a victorious finish" and to continuing the unbridled exploitation of the masses. The Bolsheviks knew that only the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasantry could accomplish the basic demands of the masses and only by continuing the revolution from the bourgeois-democratic stage to the socialist stage.

Furthermore, the Bolsheviks also saw that in the Soviets the working class had created an institution ideally suited to smashing the old state power and establishing the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class and poor peasantry. As early as 1905 when Soviets were first created, Lenin already saw in them the rudiments of the revolutionary dictatorship of the working masses. Following the February Revolution, Lenin, while still in exile in Switzerland, with only "scanty information available," as he put it, wrote in his first Letter from Afar that:

"Side by side with this government [meaning the bourgeois Provisional Government -- ed.] ...there has arisen the chief, unofficial, as yet undeveloped and comparatively weak government, which expresses the interests of the proletariat and of the entire poor section of the urban and rural population....

"The Soviet of Workers Deputies is an organization of the workers, the embryo of a workers' government, the representative of the interests of the entire mass of the poor section of the population, i.e., of nine-tenths of the population, which is striving for peace, bread and freedom....

"He who says that the workers must support the new government in the interests of the struggle against tsarist reaction...is a traitor to the workers, a traitor to the cause of the proletariat, to the cause of peace and freedom....

"No, if there is to be a real struggle against the tsarist monarchy, if freedom is to be guaranteed in fact and not merely in words, in the glib promises of Milyukov and Kerensky [members of the Provisional Government -- ed.], the workers must not support the new government; the government must 'support' the workers! For the only guarantee of freedom and of the complete destruction of tsarism lies in arming the proletariat, in strengthening, extending and developing the role, significance and power of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies.'' (Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 304-5)

But while the Bolsheviks possessed the correct strategy and tactics for the further development of the revolution, they did not yet have the sympathy of the majority of the working people for the proletarian revolution. How did the Bolsheviks accomplish this?

All Power to the Soviets!

First, the Bolsheviks worked to split the masses away from, to completely sever the workers and peasants from, the leadership of the bourgeoisie and its Provisional Government. This was the line of establishing the class independence of the toilers against the exploiters. The slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" was one of the main historic slogans that concentrated this line during most of the period between the February and October Revolutions.

During the period of dual power, extending from the February Revolution to the "July days," "All Power to the Soviets!" was a slogan of the peaceful development of the revolution. Since the bourgeoisie was not yet able to rule by violence against the working masses, the Soviets could take full power upon themselves through their own decision. No force would have been able to resist them. The transfer of full state power to the Soviets as they then existed would not have constituted a proletarian dictatorship, for they were following a petty-bourgeois rather than proletarian policy. But such a transfer would have marked the severing of the coalition with the Cadets and would have speeded up the development of the consciousness of the masses and the exposure of the petty-bourgeois policy of the compromisers and would have given a great impetus to the revolution.

During the "July days" the dual power came to an end. The Provisional Government violently attacked the masses, and it became the sole state power in the country. Subsequently, at the Sixth Party Congress, the Bolsheviks temporarily withdrew the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" because the Soviets were being strangled and corrupted. To continue the slogan at this time would have meant creating the illusion that the toilers could take power simply by a resolution of the Soviets and that the compromising parties at the head of the Soviets were not tainted by their share in the counter-revolutionary bloodletting. The possibility of the peaceful development of the revolution was eliminated, and the Bolsheviks set the course for the armed insurrection. At the same time, the Sixth Congress did not abandon the view that the Soviet system would be the form of proletarian rule, but this could not refer to the Soviets as they then existed.

Later, after the counter-revolutionary Kornilov revolt was suppressed by the working masses, there was a new upsurge. The Soviets were revitalized in the struggle against the Kornilovites and once again dis played their great powers. For a brief period there was even the possibility of a peaceful transition of power to the Soviets, but this possibility ended in a few days with the continued refusal of the compromising parties to break with the bourgeoisie. Now the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!", was once again the order of the day, and this time the slogan meant the armed insurrection to seize power. The Soviets changed their composition, strengthened themselves and went over to the Bolsheviks. Now the victory of the Soviets meant the establishment of the proletarian power.

Through such powerful slogans as "All Power to the Soviets!" the Bolsheviks worked to gather up all the currents of discontent and opposition to the Provisional Government, to the capitalists and landlords, which inevitably developed among the masses and to turn these currents in the revolutionary direction of the taking of power by the masses. The Bolsheviks opposed the illusion that through "control" without power the toilers could force the bourgeoisie to meet their demands and strove to bring the masses to the revolutionary conclusion that since the bourgeoisie could not meet their demands, the masses themselves must take power.

Such slogans as "All Power to the Soviets!," "Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers!," "Publish the Secret Treaties!," "The Nationalization of the Land!," "Workers' Control of Industry!" and so forth were slogans for drawing the class lines. Every toiler in Russia who possessed an elemental class consciousness and who had become disgusted with the antics of the bourgeoisie could be brought to understand these slogans. These slogans sharply divided the toilers from the bourgeoisie and landlords. And precisely for this reason, these slogans hit hard against the compromising parties and their policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie. Working people under the influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were drawn to these slogans, and this assisted in breaking them free from their illusions about the compromising parties.

An Unyielding Struggle Against the Opportunist Parties

Second, in order to fight for the class independence of the Soviets and the workers' movement against the Provisional Government and the bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviks had to wage a fierce and unrelenting struggle against the compromising, opportunist parties. It was only because of this struggle that the Bolsheviks insured the hegemony of the proletariat over the revolutionary movement and, in particular, won the majority of the Soviets away from the petty-bourgeois, compromising policy.

It was the compromising parties, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had the support of the majority of the masses at the beginning of the revolution, and it was through these parties that the bourgeoisie exercized its control of and influence over the masses. In effect, the compromisers were a shield for the Provisional Government. One example will show how this worked.

While the masses had overthrown the Tsar in order, among other things, to put an end to the war, the bourgeoisie came to power in the Provisional Government without any intention of ever ending the war. The war was in their class interests. And they were as commit ted to preserving their partnership with the other imperialists, to whom they were bound with secret treaties on the predatory aims of the war, just as much as the Tsar had been before them.

How then was the Provisional Government to prevent the masses from continuing the struggle against the war? This was a job for the compromisers. In order to shield the predatory, imperialist war policy of the Provisional Government, they preached that with the over throw of the Tsar, even though the imperialist bourgeoisie was still in power and still committed to the same predatory aims, that the war had changed its character: it was no longer an imperialist, robbers' war of aggression and plunder, oh no, now it was a revolutionary and democratic war, a war in defense of revolutionary Russia against imperialist Germany. With this policy of "revolutionary defensism," the compromisers worked to convince the masses to support the new offensives of the Provisional Government and to have "confidence" that the Provisional Government was working for a just and democratic peace without annexations.

Overall, since the compromising policies pursued an active line for protecting and shielding the Provisional Government, their leadership spelled impotence for the Soviets. Since the Soviets were not to take power, what were they to do? Carry on endless and meaningless debates and pass resolutions expressing "confidence" in the Provisional Government. That is what the leader ship of the compromisers meant for the Soviets. "Met, sat, talked and smoked" -- such was the ironical assessment given by the workers of the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary-led meetings.

But the logic of the development of the revolution sealed the doom of this opportunist policy of coalition between the exploiters and the exploited. As the months passed after the February Revolution, the Provisional Government fought against every one of the basic demands of the toilers, and the mass opposition and ferment grew. The intensification of this contradiction between the bourgeois government and the toiling masses caught the compromisers right in the middle and began to tear them apart. The Bolshevik struggle for exposing the compromisers sped up and facilitated this process and insured that it developed in the way most favorable to the revolution. The Bolshevik exposure of the compromisers hastened the isolation of these parties and greatly assisted the masses to rid themselves of all illusions about the bourgeoisie granting their demands, to reject the policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie and to take the path of resolute struggle against the Provisional Government.

The events of the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets, which was held in early June, show how the Bolsheviks were able to build up the forces for the October Revolution in the course of directing powerful volleys against the compromisers. First of all, although the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries still had a sizeable majority at this time, the Bolsheviks persisted in patient work inside the Congress to organize and rally all the oppositional forces which had been building up from below in the Soviets. The Bolsheviks opposed the policy of "support" and "confidence" for the Provisional Government and fought for the revolutionary alternative: that the Soviets should seize power themselves. They opposed any prettification of the Provisional Government or the imperialist war and instead put forward a clear-cut program to the Soviets for carrying forward the revolution and satisfying the demands of the masses.

You are probably familiar with the famous story from this Congress which sums up the respective positions of the compromisers and the Bolsheviks. From the speakers' rostrum, the Menshevik leader and Minister of Posts and Telegraph in the Provisional Government, Tsereteli, expressed the policy of compromise and coalition between the bourgeoisie and the opportunist, petty-bourgeois parties by blustering that: "There is no political party in Russia at this juncture which would say: 'Hand over the power to us, quit, we will take your place.... There is no such party." "There such a Party!" was Lenin's immediate response from the floor of the Congress. He later mounted the podium to speak to the hushed Congress. He reiterated that the Bolshevik Party was "ready to take over power at any moment" and explained the Bolshevik program. (Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 20)

At the same time as the Bolsheviks were organizing the opposition inside the Congress, the Bolsheviks organized the revolutionary workers and soldiers of Petrograd, where the Congress was being held, to march in a demonstration under such basic slogans as "All Power to the Soviets!," "Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers!," "Workers' Control of Industry!" and "Bread, Peace and Freedom!" The Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary leaders used their majority at the All-Russia Congress of Soviets to ban this demonstration -- and the Bolsheviks abided by the will of the Congress. The Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders got the Congress to organize instead another demonstration, timed to coincide with the launching of a new offensive at the front by the Provisional Government and planned to take place under the basic slogan of "Confidence in the Provisional Government." Stalin described the character of this massive and spirited demonstration of 500,000 workers and soldiers in the following words:

"A feature that struck the eye was the fact that not a single factory and not a single regiment dis played the slogan: 'Confidence in the Provisional Government!' Even the Mensheviks and Revolutionaries forgot (or, rather, did not dare!) to display it. They had anything you please -- 'No split!' 'For unity!' 'Support the Soviet! 'Universal education!' (believe it or not!) -- but the chief thing was missing: there was no call for confidence in the Provisional Government, not even with the sly reservation 'to the extent that....' Only three groups ventured to display the confidence slogan, but even they were made to repent it. These were a group of Cossacks, the Bund group and Plekhanov's Yedinstvo group. 'The Holy Trinity ' -- the workers on the Field of Mars ironically called them. Two of them (the Bund and the Yedinstvo) were compelled by the workers and soldiers to furl their banners amidst cries of 'Down with them!' The Cossacks, who refused to furl their banner, had it tom to shreds. And one anonymous 'confidence' streamer, stretched 'in the air' across the entrance to the Field of Mars, was tom down by a group of soldiers and workers while the approving public cried: 'Confidence in the Provisional Government is hanging in mid-air.' " ("At the Demonstration," Works, Vol. 3, pp. 107-8)

In short, the work of the Bolsheviks among the masses succeeded in transforming a demonstration planned to express 'confidence' in the Provisional Government into a demonstration of non-confidence which revealed how the influence of the compromisers was collapsing among the workers and soldiers of the capital.

Convincing the Masses Through Their Own Experience

Third, while the Bolsheviks directed the mass movement along the lines of "All Power to the Soviets!" and fought to isolate the compromising parties, how, by what means and methods, did the Bolsheviks carry out this guidance of the movement? The basic principle guiding the Bolsheviks was that "the masses them selves should become convinced by their own experience of the correctness'' of the Party's line and slogans. (Stalin, "The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists," Part III) Of course, this did not mean that the Bolsheviks were passive and merely allowed events to take their course and convince the masses spontaneously. Far from it. They carried out a truly unbelievable amount of work to ensure that the masses arrived in the speediest manner at the revolutionary conclusions that they were being led to by their own experience.

First, the Bolsheviks used agitation and propaganda to good effect. In the period between February and October, the Bolsheviks were tireless agitators who achieved incredible results in patiently and systematically explaining their views to the masses. Bear in mind that in the course of these eight months, filled with the most complicated events taking place almost daily, the Bolsheviks were able to win over millions of working people from the compromisers. Lenin person ally set the example for all party members during this period. In the three months after his arrival in Russia alone, he wrote 150 articles and several pamphlets; and in May and June he spoke at over 30 meetings, some times two or three a day.

And more than just energy was required to accomplish this work on the agitational front. Many obstacles had to be overcome. For example, Bolshevik news papers were prohibited from the war front. Yet, by October, not only had the majority of the soldiers at the front been Bolshevized, but the letters which these soldiers wrote home to their families in peasant villages across Russia played a very important role in Bolshevizing the countryside.

Second, through their slogans, the Bolsheviks were able to reflect the cherished wishes of the masses, to formulate their political demands and to rally them round the Party banners. According to The History of the Civil War in the U.S.S.R. by Stalin, Molotov and others:

"The greater part of the working population could not be got at once to recognize the necessity of fighting for Socialism and of consciously sup porting the proletarian revolution. They were hos tile to the bourgeoisie for dragging out the war, but they were still a long way from realizing the possibility of taking power into their own hands. Skillful handling was required to lead them to adopt the class slogan: 'All power to the Soviets!' A great part in rallying the toiling population was played by the slogan...'Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers!' Simple and comprehensible, it helped to expose the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries -- who stubbornly strove to keep the ten 'capitalist Ministers' in the government -- and brought home the necessity of transferring power to the Soviets." (Vol. I, Ch. V, Sec. 4, p. 221)

Third, the Bolsheviks stood in the forefront of all the actions undertaken by the masses to secure their demands. Whether it was the big political demonstrations in Petrograd, the strikes of the factory workers for higher wages, the peasant land seizures, the refusal of the soldiers at the front to go on the offensive -- wherever the masses pressed forward the struggle to win their demands, the Bolsheviks marched and fought at their head. Through their leadership of the mass struggle, the Bolsheviks gave an organized expression to the spontaneous actions of the masses and skillfully combined the immediate, particular demands with the basic revolutionary demands and slogans, thus step by step raising the political level of mass struggle.

Fourth, the Bolsheviks carried out Herculean organizational work. First and foremost, they organized the working class. With the overthrow of the autocracy, the Russian working class began to organize with unparallelled speed, and it was the Bolsheviks who led them. The Bolsheviks built party organization among the workers, and they built trade unions, factory committees, Soviets, etc. The Bolsheviks also laid great stress on the organizing of the soldiers in the armies, of the peasants in the countryside, of the agricultural proletariat, and so forth.

A central hub of the organizing activity of the Bolsheviks was the Soviets. The Bolsheviks led in expanding the Soviets to encompass the vast majority of the toilers. Everywhere Soviets were built, the Bolsheviks established their fractions to rally the revolutionary elements against the compromisers. They did everything possible in the Soviets to release the revolutionary energy of the masses, which the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries sought to suppress. Where the Bolsheviks achieved a majority in the local Soviets, the Soviets were instrumental in all the local struggles and actions of the masses. Where the Bolsheviks were in the minority, they formed the revolutionary oppositions, exposing the compromisers and rallying the toilers against them.

The Victory of the Bolsheviks

The First All-Russia Congress of the Soviets in June and the huge demonstration that took place in Petrograd at that time showed how far the Bolsheviks had succeeded in rallying a political army beneath their banners in the several months since the February Revolution. In the subsequent months, as the struggle against the Provisional Government sharpened and began to assume the character of a civil war, the Bolsheviks continued to make great gains. By the time of the holding of the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets at the end of October, the Bolsheviks had not only secured a majority in the Soviets, but they were able to present the working masses of Russia with the finest example of the difference between opportunist leadership and revolutionary Leninist leadership. Shortly after the Second Congress of the Soviets opened on October 25, it adopted an appeal written by Lenin entitled "To the Workers, Soldiers and Peas ants" which read in part:

"...Backed by the will of the vast majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants, backed by the victorious uprising of the workers and the garrison which has taken place in Petrograd, the Congress takes power into its own hands.

"The Provisional Government has been over thrown. The majority of the members of the Provisional Government have already been arrested....

"The Congress decrees: all power in the localities shall pass to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, which must guarantee genuine revolutionary order." (Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 247)

The small handful of compromisers attending the Congress had walked out previously, bid farewell by the delegates' shouts of "Traitor," "Deserter" and "Good riddance." The Congress followed up the appeal by adopting the famous decrees on peace and on land and forming the workers' and peasants' government known as the Council of People's Commissars.

To sum up. From the February Revolution, the Bolshevik Party led the Russian working masses to the victory of October under such basic slogans as "All Power to the Soviets!" These slogans concentrated the Bolshevik line for severing the masses from the political leadership and influence of the bourgeoisie and for organizing them into an independent political force with their own revolutionary program. In order to carry out this process, the Bolsheviks conducted a relentless, unyielding struggle against the compromising parties, a struggle to isolate these parties from the revolutionary movement -- for without this there could be no hope of a rupture between the toilers and the bourgeoisie. In order to bring the masses to the socialist positions, the Bolsheviks made energetic use of agitation which was based on having the masses learn through their own experience and which set a model of telling the masses the unvarnished truth; they made skillful use of trenchant slogans; they led the mass struggles; and they organized the masses into a multitude of organizations, especially into the Soviets.

Comrades, there are many, many other vital lessons of the October Revolution which we have not even been able to touch upon. Such, for example, is the work of the Bolsheviks in forming Red Guards -- armed detachments of the workers without which the struggle against the Provisional Government and the success of the October uprising would simply have been out of the question. There are also the lessons of the struggle against the First Imperialist World Slaughter. But we have had time to concentrate on only certain of the vital questions of the socialist revolution.

We Base Ourselves on Bolshevism

I do not believe that it is necessary to dwell at length on the applicability of these lessons from the October Revolution which we have outlined. Suffice it to say that the tactics of the Bolsheviks are the model for our Party's work today: the model not in the sense of some scheme or ready-made formula which we mechanically apply, but the model in the sense that the basic spirit, stand and viewpoint, the essence of the Bolsheviks' strategy and tactics, are the guide for our Party's work in the mass movements. Clearly, our Party's work for building the independent political movement of the working class and uniting the workers and activists on a class basis against the principal enemy; for channeling the movement into a revolutionary direction; for struggle against the opportunists and compromisers who are grouped around the Democratic Party; and our Party's appeal for building the independent proletarian movement through mass actions, the circulation and study of revolutionary literature, and the building of independent organization; clearly all of this is modeled after the Bolshevik tactics.

But, just as we are the contemporary heirs of the Bolsheviks, so too, today, there are those contemporary spawn of the Mensheviks: the liquidators. On every point, our allegiance to the Bolshevik lessons of the October Revolution is matched by their allegiance to the Menshevik lessons of betrayal. Whether it is the necessity for building the movement independent of the bourgeois parties and politics, which the liquidators oppose by tying the workers to the tail of the Democratic Party and by fouling the workers' movement with their promotion of liberal-labor politics; whether it is the necessity for struggle against the opportunists and compromisers, which the liquidators oppose by jumping into bed with the social-democrats and labor bureaucrats and becoming opportunists themselves; whether it is the necessity for revolutionary work in the mass movements, which the liquidators oppose with their rigid adherence to reformism and parliamentary cretinism; whatever the lesson which the October Revolution and the work of the Bolsheviks teach, the liquidators, who only yesterday huffed and puffed and pretended to be revolutionaries, have turned their backs on the lessons of Bolshevism and are following to a tee the renegade example of Menshevism.

Comrades, the fact that the liquidators have openly renounced Leninism, that they are writing treatises at tacking the October Revolution and denying its present-day applicability, that they are snidely dismissing the allegedly old-fashioned "truisms" of 1917, this fact is cause enough for us to ever more staunchly uphold and propagate the lessons of the October Revolution. We shall prove in practice, in the teeth of their renegade howlings, the living and absolutely obligatory nature of the path of the October Revolution.

Comrades, if the path of the October Revolution is to remain as fresh and vital today as it was 65 years ago, then it is not enough that the objective conditions propel the masses to revolution. What is required is that our Party and our comrades uphold the theory of the October Revolution, the theory of Leninism. This theory lives only so long as an active force vitalizes it in practice, gives it life in the closest connection to the actual class struggle. It lives only so long as our Party defends it against every distortion, against every renegade. The way to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution, therefore, is for comrades to step up their study of Marxism-Leninism, of the lessons of October, in order to shape, guide and organize the current class struggle.

Comrades, it is undeniable that the old Bolsheviks of 65 years ago are now gone. But new Bolsheviks have arisen to take the place of the old. It is undeniable that the traitors and renegades to our glorious cause have robbed us of the first land of the Soviets and of much more besides. But genuine socialism still lives in the struggle of the Marxist-Leninist parties and in red Albania. And the great truth of the October Revolution still shines in our immortal doctrine of Marxism-Lenin ism, which no one can ever rob us of. It is because of this that the following words of Comrade Stalin, written upon the death of Lenin, the organizer of the Bolshevik Party and the leader of the October Revolution, ring as true today as they did when Stalin wrote them:

"Burdensome and intolerable has been the lot of the working class. Painful and grievous have been the sufferings of the laboring people. Slaves and slaveholders, serfs and serf-owners, peasants and landlords, workers and capitalists, oppressed and oppressors -- so the world has been built from time immemorial, and so it remains to this day in the vast majority of countries. Scores and indeed hundreds of times in the course of the centuries the laboring people have striven to throw off the oppressors from their backs and to become the masters of their own destiny. But each time, defeated and disgraced, they have been forced to retreat, harboring in their breasts resentment and humiliation, anger and despair, and lifting up their eyes to an inscrutable heaven where they hoped to find deliverance. The chains of slavery remained intact, or the old chains were re placed by new ones, equally burdensome and degrading. Ours is the only country where the oppressed and downtrodden laboring masses have succeeded in throwing off the rule of the landlords and capitalists and replacing it by the rule of the workers and peasants. You know, comrades, and the whole world now admits it, that this gigantic struggle was led by Comrade Lenin and his Party. The greatness of Lenin lies above all in this, that by creating the Republic of Soviets he gave a practical demonstration to the oppressed masses of the whole world that hope of deliverance is not lost, that the rule of the landlords and capitalists is short-lived, that the kingdom of labor can be created by the efforts of the laboring people themselves, and that the kingdom of labor must be created not in heaven, but on earth. He thus fired the hearts of the workers and peasants of the whole world with the hope of liberation. That ex plains why Lenin s name has become the name most beloved of the laboring and exploited masses." (Works,Vol. 6, pp. 48-49)

[Photo: This proclamation was written by Lenin on behalf of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.]

[Photo: The Putilov Factory -- one of the main centers of the revolutionary proletariat in Petrograd.]

[Photo: Armed workers in the streets of Petrograd prepare to storm the Tsar's Winter Palace (left back ground), where the Provisional Government was sheltered during the October Revolution.]

[Photo: Meeting in Buffalo on November 6,1982, commemorating the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution.]

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SPEECH AT THE BOSTON MEETING -- NOVEMBER 5, 1982

Red October shows that we must build the working class party

(Below we reprint one of the speeches delivered at the meeting in Boston on November 5, 1982 to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution. It has been edited for publication.)

Comrades and Friends,

The October Revolution shook the capitalists of the whole world like nothing had ever shaken them before. The revolutions of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries had overthrown feudalism and brought the capitalists to power. But the October Revolution signaled that now it was capitalism's turn to be overthrown. So terrified were the American capitalists that the prevention of revolution and communism has been the publicly stated No. 1 policy objective of the U.S. government ever since.

But comrades and friends,

In spite of all the millions of people the capitalist governments have killed in their war on communism and the revolution, in spite of all the help that has been given them by the Khrushchov-Brezhnev gang who restored capitalism in the Soviet Union after Stalin died, in spite of the fact that the Chinese revisionists have now entered into an alliance with U.S. imperialism, in spite of all this, the specter of the October Revolution still stalks the capitalist world. Socialism is alive and well in Albania, and conditions for new revolutions are growing everywhere. Capitalism cannot escape its doom because it is an outmoded system. No matter what the capitalists say or do, their system itself keeps giving rise to revolutionary crises, it keeps pushing the masses to revolution.

For example, during the 1950's and 1960's when capitalism in Western Europe and America survived the post-World War II crisis, and experienced a temporary recovery, the bourgeois economists proclaimed that we had entered the "post-scarcity" society, as the reformist economist and Kennedyite Galbraith called it.

They proclaimed that there would be no more depressions, no more crises. They boasted that the revolution and communism were dead. Khrushchov agreed with them, led the restoration of capitalism in Russia and most of Eastern Europe, and preached an end to proletarian revolutions and national liberation wars. But, as everyone knows, in the midst of all this rejoicing by the capitalists and their new ally Khrushchov, the stream of revolutions since World War II continued. The struggle of the Indochinese people defeated the worst that U.S. imperialism could throw at them. And in the latter 1960's there were surging mass struggles in the streets and ghettos of so-called "post-scarcity" Western Europe and America.

Although things slowed down in the U.S. in the latter 1970's, around the world revolutions kept breaking out in various countries. The revolutionary upsurges in Portugal and Spain continued. The Shah of Iran was toppled from his throne. The Nicaraguan people chased Somoza out of the country, while the struggle intensified in El Salvador and Guatemala. The Zimbabwean people's struggle reached a high point.

Today we still face a lull in the movement in the U.S., but meanwhile conditions for an even greater crisis are maturing both in the U.S. and internationally. The robbery by the oil barons, the declining standard of living, and the growing unemployment increased the anger and indignation of the workers all over the world.

Today, the entire capitalist world has sunk into another great depression. The same scribblers who 15 years ago were talking about the post-scarcity society are today writing books about the new "Age of Austerity." The American capitalists have thrown 15 million people out of work, and they are pushing the workers to the wall with their incessant concessions drive and with Reaganomics. They are developing more and more fascist laws and unleashing the police and terrorist gangs to terrorize the people. The financiers and generals of Washington and Moscow, of Europe, China and Japan, etc., are stepping up their fight over the division of resources and markets. The whole capitalist system is becoming more and more unstable, and the people are justly concerned about the growing danger of catastrophic new wars.

Comrades and friends, once again capitalism has revealed all its terrible evils. Once again it is clear that the working class of all countries is faced with the choice: Either continue as before and sink lower and lower into misery, poverty, and fascist slavery, while the ruling classes prepare to slaughter you in new wars of conquest, or rise up in revolutionary struggle. While there is presently a relative lull in the U.S., the sentiment for a determined mass struggle is growing. This is seen in the hatred of Reagan and in the demonstrations against the aggression and war preparations of U.S. imperialism. It is seen in the recent action that ran the KKK out of Boston, and in the militant strikes of the Brown and Sharpe workers and the Nebraska meatpackers. Even the Wall Street Journal is getting worried that the workers are getting ready to fight concessions.

The mass movement of the 80's is developing in fits and starts and is having some difficulty getting up steam. This is due to the maneuvers of the capitalists, it is due to the deception of the Democrats who are posing as an opposition to Reagan to keep the people off the streets, and it is due to the fact that the union leaders and other agents of the Democratic Party are literally sitting on the movement. But in spite of all this, the masses are learning, and slowly coming to the conclusion that they must fight. The movement will have many ups and downs, but no matter what, it is certain that the 1980's will be a decade of great class clashes. Therefore it is extremely appropriate that on the eve of these great class battles of the 80's, that we, the Marxist-Leninists, revolutionary-minded workers, and militant activists, should review the history and lessons of the Great October Socialist Revolution. This revolution inspires in us great confidence in our cause, and provides us with a correct and powerful orientation.

The Working Class Must Have Its Own Party

One of the most important lessons of the October Revolution is that the working class must have its own party. This was Lenin's first principle. Without the Bolshevik Party the Russian workers could not have made the revolution.

The Bolshevik Party was not a party like the capitalist or opportunist parties which are only interested in getting their leaders elected to office and their members appointed to soft jobs. The Bolshevik Party was a disciplined fighting organization of the most advanced, class conscious and militant workers in Russia. It was organized in the factories and in the working class districts, to lead and guide the workers' struggle against the capitalists, to teach them how to defend the interests of their whole class, and to prepare them for revolution.

Lenin taught that the task of building up this headquarters of working class struggle was not just a question for the party members, but for all class conscious workers. Around the Bolshevik Party, in the factories and neighborhoods, there were hundreds of thousands of workers who regarded the Bolshevik Party as their own, who helped the Bolshevik Party distribute illegal leaflets, to organize strikes, and to carry on revolutionary agitation among the widest masses of the working class, and among the peasants as well. This network of pro-party workers linked the Bolsheviks indissolubly with the entire class. The fact that the revolutionary vanguard of the Russian workers was organized multiplied the strength of the working class one hundredfold. It made the working class the invincible force that was able to rally all the downtrodden and oppressed masses in Russia for the final assault on the power of capital.

This great lesson of the October Revolution, that the working class needs its own party, applies not just to Russia but to all countries. In 1921 the revolutionary workers in the U.S., inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, united to form a revolutionary party of our class, the Communist Party of the USA. For many years this Party led the working class in battle. And during those years the working class movement was looked up to by its friends and feared by its enemies. Unfortunately this Party was eventually corrupted by revisionism: it gave up the revolution and became an organization of union bureaucrats and timid petty-bourgeois elements who tail after the Democratic Party.

But communism did not die out. In 1969 a small group of young revolutionaries from Cleveland took up the task of rebuilding the Bolshevik-style party of our class. Comrades from among the best activists and workers of the movements of the 1960's and early 70's joined them in this task. And in 1980, after many years of hard struggle, the new party of the American working class was founded: the Marxist-Leninist Party. This is an extremely militant and revolutionary party, but it is still too small for the giant tasks we face today. On this 65th anniversary of the October Revolution, let us rally around our Marxist-Leninist Party, let us work to extend its influence and organization to every factory, school, and community. In this way we will organize and strengthen our entire movement, just like the Bolsheviks did!

Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class

Comrades and friends, closely related to the question of building the party of our class is the second important lesson from the October Revolution that we are raising tonight, and that is the question of combating the influence of the capitalist political parties on the workers, and training the working masses to take an independent class stand against the capitalists and their political parties on all questions. This is an (extremely important question in the U.S., where for the last 50 years the capitalists have used the Democratic Party to sabotage every movement of the toiling masses. With the help of soldout union leaders and other traitors, the Democrats have posed as "friends of the workers and minorities." In every movement of the people, whether it's the strike movement of the workers, the demonstrations against war preparations, or the black people's struggle against racial discrimination, these liberal Democrats show up to reconcile the masses to the capitalist system, and to divert the movement into an impotent pressure group behind the Democratic Party. The worst role in all this is played by the revisionists and modern-day social-democrats who form an informal "left" wing of the Democratic Party, and who specialize in using Marxist and "radical" rhetoric to justify moderation and tailing the Democrats.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks faced similar problems in organizing for the October Revolution. For years a battle raged in the Russian workers' movement between the opportunist wing led by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the revolutionary wing led by the Bolsheviks. Repeatedly the Mensheviks tried to cut down the workers' demands, slogans and actions to what was acceptable to the liberal capitalists and their Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets), who deceptively called themselves the party of people's freedom.

The Bolsheviks on the other hand insisted that the working class must have its own independent stand against all the capitalist parties including the liberal Cadets. The workers, Lenin taught, must not tone down their movement for anyone. The Bolsheviks were relentless in their exposure of the Cadets, and of all the enemies of the workers' and peasants' struggle for freedom and socialism.

In 1917 this struggle for class independence came to a head in the battle over whether the workers should support the Provisional Government of the Cadets or whether they should use their Soviets to seize power for themselves. If the Bolsheviks had not fought for the independent class stand of the workers against the Cadets and the Provisional Government, there never would have been an October Revolution.

Comrades and friends, some people ask us why we insist on denouncing the Democratic Party every chance we get, but from the Bolshevik experience, and from our own experience, you can see that unless we wage a most relentless struggle against the Democratic Party, and work to organize the masses independently of the capitalist parties, the soldout union hacks, and so on, the working class movement is not going to get very far in the U.S.

Against Opportunism

Comrades and friends,

The experience of the October Revolution also teaches us that there can be no revolutionary party, and no really independent movement of the working class without also fighting the revisionists and opportunists, who try to tie the workers to the policies of the capitalist class. It was precisely the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries that the Bolsheviks had to fight in order to prepare the masses to fight the capitalist government. The revisionists and opportunists in all countries are the most dangerous enemies of the working class movement. They use radical and even Marxist rhetoric to disguise a pro-capitalist policy. Lenin and the Bolsheviks taught us a great deal about the fight against revisionism and opportunism. Lenin pointed out that the workers must learn to judge people, not by their boastful words, but by what class interests they actually defend in the world, how they help or hurt the development of the revolutionary fighting capacity of the proletariat. He exposed that the revisionists and opportunists do not defend the interests of the workers, but in fact, they defend their own interests, the interests of a small minority of union bureaucrats, lawyers, and other elements, who are bribed by their imperialist masters to keep the workers down.

In the years leading up to the October Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks led a titanic struggle against the opportunist leaders of the old socialist international. The main leaders of all the socialist parties in America and Europe, except for the Bolsheviks, had, in general, been corrupted by the imperialists. They had become respectable to the capitalists. They had a soft position in capitalist society. So when World War I broke out, these "socialists" sided with their own imperialist governments and sent the workers off to slaughter each other in the war. This was a great crime against the working class.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks branded these scoundrels as traitors. They exposed the flimsy excuses that the opportunists used to justify their treachery. They called on the workers to split with the opportunist leaders, to form new revolutionary parties and rise up against the war. By exposing how the opportunists were selling out the workers the Bolsheviks taught the workers how to defend their true interests and how to prepare for revolution.

The October Revolution was the victory of Leninism over the opportunism and revisionism of the socialist international. Inspired by this revolution, workers abandoned their opportunist leaders in droves. They rallied around the revolutionary Marxists of their countries, and built new, fighting, communist parties. By defeating the opportunists and revisionists of their time, Lenin and the Bolsheviks enabled the whole international workers' movement to march forward in seven-league steps.

Today we too are faced with a tremendous struggle against revisionism. The Khrushchovite revisionists have restored capitalism in the Soviet Union. The spread of Soviet, Chinese and other revisionist trends has caused enormous damage to the workers' movement throughout the world.

Today our modern-day revisionists have degenerated so far that they are making fun of the very idea of revolution, or even of mass struggle. They are openly merging with the capitalist parties and with the social- democratic scoundrels that Lenin defeated in his time. In the U.S., Gus Hall goes so far as to say that the fight against Reagan must begin in the Democratic Party. They denounce as fanatical any idea of independent organization of the workers. In other words, they have become out-and-out liquidators of anything revolutionary. And all this at a time when we are approaching a new wave of revolutionary storms. Comrades and Mends, today we must fight the revisionist liquidators with the same relentlessness as the great Lenin did in his day.

Marxism-Leninism Will Triumph Over Liquidationism

Comrades and friends,

Today the capitalists and their revisionist and social-democratic hangers-on are doing everything possible to keep the masses from the path of revolutionary struggle. They are trying to create an atmosphere of pessimism and doubt, to undermine the confidence of the revolutionary workers in the strength of their own class. They want us to believe that we have no choice but to tail after the Democrats and the liberal wing of the ruling classes as the lesser of two evils.

But the October Revolution is a powerful weapon to expose this fraud. The October Revolution shows the enormous revolutionary power of the working masses. From the very beginning the Bolsheviks rejected reformism and put their faith in the revolutionary struggle of the working class. From the very beginning the Bolsheviks organized the Russian workers along revolutionary lines. This did not mean that they rejected the struggle for reforms. But rather, they regarded reforms as the byproduct of revolutionary struggle, they used the struggle for even the slightest, but real improvements in the conditions of the masses as a means of organizing the workers into mass struggle, and preparing and training them for revolution. Never for a moment, even in the most difficult of times, did Lenin and the Bolsheviks give up their faith in the revolutionary power of the working class. Never for a moment did they give up the Marxist analysis of proletarian revolution. Never for a moment did they give up their revolutionary tactics.

In 1909, the Tsar had plunged Russia into the darkest days of reaction following the 1905 Revolution. The Tsar's police were arresting revolutionaries by the thousands. Faint-hearted intellectuals were fleeing the revolutionary ranks in droves. The Mensheviks were whining that the revolution would never come again. They were advocating that the workers should liquidate their revolutionary party and tail after the Cadets to beg for reforms. In this difficult situation, Lenin loudly condemned these renegades and confidently stated:

"Though mass organizations of one type or another may be dissolved, though the legal trade unions may be hounded out of existence, though every open act of workers' initiative under a regime of counter-revolution may be ruined by the police on one pretext or another -- no power on earth can prevent the concentration of masses of workers in a capitalist country, such as Russia has already become. One way or another, legally or semi-legally, openly or covertly, the working class will find its own rallying points; the class conscious Party Social-Democrats [prior to the split in World War I, the Marxists were called social-democrats -- ed.] will everywhere and always march in front of the masses, everywhere and always act together in order to influence the masses in the spirit of the Party....

"Let the Black-Hundred diehards [reactionary tsarist gangs organized by the police -- ed.] rejoice and howl inside the Duma and outside it, in the capital and in the remote provinces, let the reaction rage -- the ever so wise Mr. Stolypin [tsarist minister -- ed.] cannot take a single step without bringing the precariously balancing autocracy nearer its fall, without creating a new tangle of political impossibilities and absurdities, without adding new and fresh forces to the ranks of the proletariat and to the ranks of the revolutionary elements of the peasant masses. A party which succeeds in consolidating itself for persistent work in contact with the masses, a party of the advanced class, which succeeds in organizing its vanguard, and which directs its forces in such a way as to influence in a Social-Democratic spirit every sign of life of the proletariat -- such a party will win no matter what happens." ("On the Road,'' Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 354-55)

And history has shown that Lenin was right!

Today our situation has similarities to that faced by Lenin in 1909, and his historic advice rings true. We too are in a period of relative lull before the new rising tide of revolutionary struggle breaks out. We too are in a period where the fainthearted liquidators are cursing the revolution and party organization. And we too must follow Lenin's advice, and we too must maintain unshakeable faith in the proletariat. We too must maintain our confidence in the power of systematic party work.

The masses are fed up with Reagan and the capitalist offensive and are groping for the path of mass struggle. The development of the mass revolutionary movement of the 80's faces many difficulties and the movement will certainly have many ups and downs. But if we follow the example of the Bolsheviks; if we persist in building the party and independent revolutionary organization among the masses, in the factories, in the schools, and in the communities; if we work hard to organize the masses for strikes, demonstrations and other mass actions against the capitalists and their government; if we combat every attempt of the capitalist politicians and of the revisionists to reconcile the masses to the capitalist system; if we work to imbue every mass action with the spirit of class struggle; if we spread the science of Marxism-Leninism and the perspective of revolution and socialism among the masses -- then we too are bound to win no matter what.

Hail the 65th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution of the Bolsheviks!

Celebrate 38 years of the triumphant march of socialism in Albania!

Socialism is the goal of the workers' struggle!

Fight the Reaganite offensive and the capitalist parties!

Denounce Russian and Chinese revisionism, traitors to the workers' cause!

Follow the path of Lenin!

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Condemn the Murder of Comrade Nicolás Valerio in the Dominican Republic!

In late November, the Dominican police brutally assaulted a demonstration of students at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo who were protesting budget cuts at the school. They shot into the demonstration and murdered Nicolás Valerio, a 23-year-old student. Comrade Valerio was a leader of the "Flavio Suero" Student Front (FEFLAS) and a dedicated militant of our fraternal party, the Communist Party of Labor (PCT). The Workers' Advocate deeply mourns the loss of this comrade and condemns the social-democratic regime of Jorge Salvador Blanco which is carrying out a repressive policy against the popular movements in the Dominican Republic. Below we reprint a message of condolences sent to the PCT from the National Executive Committee of the MLP, USA.

---

Central Committee Communist Party of Labor Santo Domingo Dominican Republic

Dear comrades,

We share with you the deep pain in the death of Comrade Nicolas Valerio. A dedicated communist, a member of the PCT, and a leader of FEFLAS, Nicolas Valerio took his place at the forefront of the mass struggle of the Dominican students where he was brutally gunned down by the police forces of the reactionary Dominican regime. Nicolás Valerio has joined the ranks of the many heroic martyrs of the Dominican revolutionary cause. We are confident that the PCT, the Marxist-Leninist party of the Dominican proletariat, will turn this tragic loss into a source of strength to raise ever higher the revolutionary struggle of the working masses against the Dominican exploiters and U.S. imperialism. The comrades of the MLP,USA salute the communist martyr Nicolas Valerio and, as always, express their proletarian internationalist solidarity with their comrades-in-arms of the PCT.

Fraternal communist regards, National Executive Committee MLP,USA

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Historic strike in its 12th month

250,000 textile workers on strike in Bombay, India

For over 11 months now, 250,000 textile workers in Bombay, India have been carrying out a determined strike. This is the longest strike of such a large scale in Indian history. The workers are fighting against the intolerable conditions which characterize their industry. They have raised demands against starvation wages and murderous working conditions, which have steadily become worse as the bloated textile capitalists continue to impose a savage productivity drive on the industry.

In order to rise up in this crucial struggle, the workers have had to stand up in defiance of an utterly corrupt and sellout trade union which had entrenched itself for more than 30 years with the support of the mill owners and the government. And once they launched their fight, the workers have had to show great courage and shoulder tremendous sacrifices to carry it forward.

The textile workers have refused to be intimidated by the arrogant declarations of the mill owners refusing to deal with their demands. They have ignored the strident calls of the government that the strike was "illegal." They have braved police attacks, imprisonment and even the shooting down of a number of their ranks. Considering that even in normal working times they face great poverty, the Bombay textile workers have endured even greater deprivations in order to wage such a long struggle.

Their courage, determination and fighting spirit have won them the sympathy and solidarity of wide sections of the working class and other toilers of India. Several times, workers in Bombay and the state of Maharashtra where the city is located have come out in solidarity actions on behalf of the textile workers. The Indian government and the capitalists at their highest levels have expressed their fear that the Bombay strike may provide inspiration for a broad extension of the workers' strike movement across India.

The current strike carries forward the fighting traditions of the textile workers of Bombay. The city is the main center of the Indian cotton textile industry, responsible for 30% of the total production. From the 1918 strike which involved 140,000 workers up to the present, the Bombay textile workers have repeatedly shown their ability to launch mass actions drawing together all the mills in the city. In 1924-25, 1928 and 1934, they waged powerful struggles under revolutionary and communist leadership. They have always served as an inspiration to the entire proletarian and revolutionary movement in India.

The Development of the Strike

1981 saw widespread discontent among the textile workers. They were in no mood to wait until 1983 when the contract between the mill owners and the officially recognized sellout union was to expire. They cast aside this union, the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh (RMMS), which had worked for decades with the capitalists against the workers. Instead they approached another union, the Maharashtra Girni Kamgar Union (MGKU), to organize their fight. By October 1981, eight textile mills were shut down, most of these strikes led by the MGKU.

But the workers were not satisfied with a partial strike. They recognized that only a determined fight through a strike involving all the mills in the city could win anything for them. Under the pressure of the workers, the MGKU, which was originally reluctant for an all-out confrontation, finally decided to launch a city- wide textile strike. On January 18, 1982, the textile workers in 60 Bombay mills began their strike.

When the strike began, the industry was going through a recession. At that time, the textile companies had unsold stocks equivalent to 42 days output. The capitalists thought that the workers would be forced to give in after a short strike. But they entirely misjudged the great anger that has long been building up among the workers against the ruthless exploitation they have suffered. They forgot that the textile workers have shown in the past their capacity to mount sustained strikes. However, after a few months, the employers began to complain more and more about the profits they were losing. Still, they showed no signs of changing their arrogant stance of refusing the workers' just demands.

In the meantime, the mill workers received the warm and fighting support of their fellow workers throughout Bombay and Maharashtra. On April 19, a successful 24- hour general strike in solidarity with the textile strike was organized in Bombay. The government tried to stop it by throwing more than 2,000 participants temporarily in jail, but in vain.

In August, the struggle of the textile workers merged with popular discontent among other sections of the masses in a powerful mass rebellion against the rich exploiters and their government. The immediate occasion which sparked this off was a struggle by 22,000 police constables in Bombay. The police constables are among the lowest rungs of the reactionary armed forces of the Indian state. Thus they are part of the machinery used for the suppression of the toiling masses. But their wages and working conditions are so bad that large sections of them repeatedly wage strikes and even mutinies to try to improve their conditions. In several cases, these struggles have merged with struggles of other sections of the masses, such as workers, students, etc.

For some time, the constables in Bombay had been demanding improved wages and benefits. On August 15, they wore black armbands during the official celebrations of India's independence day. In retaliation, the authorities fired a number of policemen, suspended their union and threw several into jail on charges of "treason" and "indiscipline."

On August 18, the policemen answered with pickets against police stations, attempts to block traffic and stop trains, etc. Their struggle merged with the pent-up rage of the textile workers in the industrial areas, who enthusiastically joined in the fight. As well, broad sections of the poor and toiling masses, including children, joined in and hit out at the authorities. Widespread rebellions broke out across the city. The entire city virtually came to a standstill and big clashes took place between the masses and heavily armed security forces. The people burned at least five buses, damaged 54 more and smashed up as many as 500 cars and other vehicles. At least two houses, belonging to a state legislator from the ruling Congress Party and to a leader of the sellout RMMS union, were ransacked.

The government went into a frenzy of repression. A 24-hour curfew and shoot-on-sight orders were issued. Finding the already present large force of security forces (meant for use against the textile workers) insufficient, the central government sent in a massive mobilization of the Indian Army, Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police. Over 5,000 troops occupied the city while another 11,000 stood on alert. After two days of fighting, the government admitted to having shot down five people, including two textile workers and a son of a textile worker. Many more were wounded and arrested.

Although the policemen's fight triggered off the August rebellion, the events of those days took on significance beyond that one struggle. They showed the great indignation of the exploited and crushed masses of Bombay against the exploiters and their social order. Bombay is a city of striking contrast between misery and degradation for the millions and luxury and opulence for a few. In these conditions, the poor people of the city used August 18-20 to strike out against the rich. They vented their anger against the rotten transit system, against stores full of luxury goods, and against the armed guardians of the criminal oppressors. And in this entire struggle, the textile workers bravely came forward and even gave martyrs from their ranks.

In the beginning of October, the MGKU called for a three-day mass action throughout Maharashtra in solidarity with the textile strike. This was to include a transportation strike, a three-day industrial strike and a massive "fill the jails" movement, in which 80,000 workers would court arrest.

On October 10, the Bombay bus system went out on strike, shutting down about half the city's transit system. The government banned all assemblies of five or more, beefed up the police with 2,000 reserves and arrested many on "preventive detention" laws. On October 11, the bus system remained shut and even the trains were brought almost to a complete halt. The masses tried to bum down two first-class coaches in suburban trains as they went through working class neighborhoods. Elsewhere, workers tried to bum down a police radio van and snatch rifles and batons from the cops. Police carried out several baton charges and even opened fire once. Tens of thousands of strikers courted arrest. In retaliation, the authorities rounded up 136 bus loads of these protestors and took them to the jungles of Aarey and Goreagon where they were abandoned. When they agitated for food and water, they were severely beaten by baton-wielding police. On October 12, the buses remained out for a third day in protest of the police repression. Workers from many other industries also stayed out in solidarity.

By late October, the government and the mill owners shifted their stand and launched certain demagogical maneuvers to end the strike. They let it be known that they were considering removal of the leadership of the sellout RMMS union. Through a flurry of negotiations between the textile capitalists, the state and central government, a proposal was agreed upon to offer to the workers. This would give the bonus payment for 1981 which they had held up, provide pay for the first 18 days of January which they had also held up, some miserly interim relief payments to those workers who had started to work by July, and an advance payment as a loan of 1,500 rupees ($180). Clearly, this was nothing but a gross insult to the strikers and it was rejected.

Today, as the strike proceeds in its twelfth month, there is no doubt that it remains quite effective. Although the owners claim that 43,000 workers have returned to work, the large majority have remained firm. The mill owners have lost output of 982 million meters amounting to 9.8 billion rupees ($1.2 billion). While normal working production would be 104 million meters per month, it stood at one million in March and had gone up to 20 million in October (about 19%).

The workers have endured this long strike in several ways. Many with close connections with the countryside returned to their villages. They have eked out some existence through working the land or in various road and dam projects. For the workers in the city, the union has distributed some small assistance and many peasants have sent some food to the strikers. Many workers have had to sell off belongings and go further into debt. But despite such huge sacrifices, their spirit to fight remains strong.

The Issues at Stake in the Strike

What is behind this courageous persistence of the textile workers? What has led to this standoff in the textile industry where the bloodsucking mill owners continue with their arrogant stand? The answer to these questions lies not just in this or that demand of the workers but in the fact that a whole machinery of ruthless exploitation established over several decades is being challenged. For decades now, the workers have been bled dry with hardly any improvements in their wages and working conditions while the textile capitalists have reaped in fabulous profits, especially through their modernization drives. This brutal exploitation has been carried out relatively successfully all these years because the capitalists and the government saddled the textile workers with a whole system of labor laws and an entrenched sellout union which have been powerful obstacles in the path of the workers.

At the end of World War II, the wage and benefit levels of the Bombay textile workers had become the pacesetters for other industries in the city, and even nationwide. For example, minimum wages and a cost-of-living allowance were first won in this sector. These were the fruits of militant struggle of the previous decades as well as the boom in the industry during the war.

However, in the decades since, their conditions have steadily worsened and today their wages and benefits are way below those in other major private and public sector industries. In fact, the basic minimum wage has risen less than 15% in real terms in the last 35 years, while for those making higher wages, there hasn't even been that much of an increase. Today, the basic wage is 660 rupees per month ($80).

The permanent workers only get five days casual leave and 15 days privilege leave per year, but the privilege leave requires 240 days attendance. In an industry which is marked by high absenteeism (20% in 1978) because of the murderous conditions, almost half the workers do not become eligible for this benefit.

Housing is another serious problem. Many live in extremely squalid conditions, in slum quarters that house 15-30 workers in rooms 10 feet by 10 feet. Beds are used by workers in rotation on different shifts. Most workers leave their families in the villages.

Besides the permanent workers, there are about 80,000 "badli" workers (temporaries), who have to come to the mills daily looking for work. Their situation is ten times as bad. Only about 18% of them get more than 20 days work per month and their average wages are tiny. Although about half of these workers have been working for more than two years, they have little hope of being made permanent. In fact, a growing section of the temporary workers consists of older unskilled workers who have gotten laid off.

The conditions in the mills are murderous and extremely unhealthy. The workers are exposed to very high noise levels, heat, humidity, cotton dust and various caustic chemicals. This leads to a steady destruction of their lives. As well, the industry has both the highest rate of accidents and the highest rate of increase of accidents.

Since the early 1960's, there has been a steady process of automation and productivity drives. In 1973, the seven-day workweek was also put into effect. The capitalists claimed this would increase wages and create jobs, but nothing of the sort has happened. Only the exploitation of the workers has increased.

The productivity drives, through automation, job elimination and combinations, etc., have resulted in a drop in the work force of 32,000 workers between 1961 and 1980. In the same period, productivity and profits went up. Monopolization has increased such that now nine business groups control about 70% of the private mills.

These are the rapacious conditions that have led the workers to rise up. They are demanding a wage increase of about 250-400 rupees ($30-48) per month and permanent status for the temporary workers. As well, they are fighting for relief from the savage productivity drives and demanding improvements in other benefits.

The Challenge to the Labor Laws and the Official Union

One of the big obstacles in the path of the textile workers' movement in the last several decades has been the Bombay Industrial Relations Act and the stranglehold it put on the workers. This was set up in the wake of the hard-fought 1934 struggle led by the communists. This struggle was brutally broken up and led to the banning of the then-revolutionary communist party, arrests of trade union organizers, etc. The BIRA was set up with the explicit aim of preventing such struggles in the future. It made arbitration compulsory and opened the way for long drawn out legal procedures to wear down the workers and to help set up company unions. After having smashed the militant union, the government and the Indian bourgeoisie helped entrench the sellout RMMS union in the industry. This union was and remains a part of the Indian National Trade Union Congress, the trade union center associated with the ruling Congress Party. Although it claimed a membership of 65% of the workers, it never really had the workers' support. This was seen for example in the 41-day strike in 1973-74 against the RMMS wage agreement which encompassed over 115,000 workers by its third day.

Although the workers hated this union, the BIRA established a Catch-22 situation for any legal way to oust the RMMS. The law requires a challenging union to have a 25% paid membership over six months while imposing a ban on strikes during that period. If any union showed 25% membership, this could get challenged in court, where it could linger for three to four years. Unable to carry out any struggle during this period, a new union could not possibly hope to sustain a paid membership. Indeed, through a number of such futile efforts carried out by revisionists and social-democrats, the workers realized that the RMMS could not be dislodged through legal means.

Over the years, the frustration of the workers turned into active opposition. By the current strike, the feeling was widespread among the militant and experienced workers that the RMMS and the BIRA system would have to be overthrown through defiant struggle. And this is exactly the path the workers have opted for today.

However, the Bombay textile workers continue to face a difficult situation in carrying forward their struggle. The new union they have called in to organize their fight, the Maharashtra Gimi Kamgar Union, is also a union led by bourgeois leaders, albeit reformist ones, who are preparing to betray their struggle.

This union is led by Mr. Dutta Samant, who is an ex- Congress Party politician who turned trade union organizer in 1979. Since then, he has set up a federation of some 5,000 unions under his personal leadership. Through a number of bitter struggles, he and his unions have built up a reputation for winning substantial wage increases. For example, one of his unions won an increase in the minimum wages of auto workers at Premier Automobiles from 650 rupees per month ($78) to 1,000 rupees ($120) through 14 months of intermittent strikes.

It is because of this reputation that the textile workers invited Samant's union to lead their fight. It has already been noted that his union was reluctant to take up an all-out fight against the mill owners. Only when the workers declared they were ready for a full-scale struggle including confrontation with the state did the MGKU call the industry-wide strike.

What is hidden by Samant from the workers is that the way he has won pay increases in other sectors is by treacherously agreeing on huge productivity concessions to the capitalists. Thus, at Premier Automobiles, for example, Samant agreed to raise the output of cars from 62 per day to 74 per day. One of the ominous features of the activity of the MGKU leaders in the textile strike is that they are only talking about fighting for a wage increase. Samant has not taken up, and in fact has demanded that the workers shelve for the present, the issues that refer to workload and bonus payments.

This treacherous character of Samant and co. flow naturally from their thoroughly bourgeois character. Samant himself was a longtime stalwart of the Congress Party of Indira Gandhi. He served from 1972-77 as a member of the state legislative assembly from the Congress. He fell out with Indira Gandhi during the National Emergency period in the mid-70's. As a Congress leader he was closely connected with the INTUC, the Congress-led trade union center. Today Samant's politics are social-democratic. He denounces Marxism while pledging loyalty to free enterprise under government control. And while for the last several years he has preached a sort of militant non-party and narrow trade unionism, more recently he has declared his intentions of floating a labor party, which will be nothing but a bourgeois labor party. He seeks to use his union base among the workers to advance these political ambitions.

But the treachery of the union bureaucrats does not take away from the significance of the fight of the Bombay textile workers. For the first time in more than three decades they have mounted a massive challenge to the bloodsucking mill owners, their legal chains and the lap dogs of the capitalists in the official union. Their long and valiant fight has sent shivers down the spine of not just the capitalists of Bombay but also the central government of the capitalists and landlords that rule India. The exploiters are quite right to be worried -- such a struggle is bound to provide further impulse to the working class movement throughout the millions- strong proletariat of India.

[Photo: 300,000 workers marching in Bombay on August 16,1982.]

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West German workers demonstrate against austerity measures

During the last two weeks of October, hundreds of thousands of workers in West Germany came out into the streets to protest against the growing unemployment and the austerity program of the new Christian Democratic administration of Helmut Kohl. On October 23, a total of two hundred thousand workers turned out in demonstrations in the cities of Dortmund, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg. On October 31, another 150,000 workers rallied in Stuttgart, while 30,000 took their protests to the streets of Hanover. These massive actions show that the West German workers are awakening to struggle and are determined to fight the capitalists and their government which are trying to saddle them with the burden of the capitalist economic crisis.

The demonstrations were originally called months ago to protest against the severe unemployment and the rotten policies of the social-democratic government of Helmut Schmidt. For 13 years Schmidt's Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the ruling party in West Germany and presided over the capitalist offensive against the workers. Like the other major capitalist countries, West Germany has become caught in the grips of a deepening economic crisis. The "miracle" of the West German economic machine, which has been so highly praised by the American capitalists, is evaporating as industry grinds to a halt and factories rust on the scrapheap of depression. The Schmidt government has been powerless to halt this collapse. Instead it has tried to shift the weight of the crisis onto the workers' shoulders. Among other things this has meant snowballing unemployment. Today 7.4% of the workers have been thrown off the job. This is the highest unemployment rate in 30 years and the government predicts it will exceed 8% by winter. In the face of growing misery, the workers decided to take action against the social-democratic government and called the demonstrations for October.

But at the beginning of September Schmidt's Social-Democrats were replaced by the Christian Democrats of Helmut Kohl as the ruling party of West Germany. Following in the footsteps of the Social-Democrats, the Kohl government immediately announced a new austerity program against the workers including a wage freeze, tax increases on the workers and cuts in social-welfare benefits. Under Kohl's program unemployment benefits are to be cut, pension increases are to be delayed, and the workers are expected to make higher contributions to national insurance (social security). In typical Reaganite style, Kohl calls these attacks on the poverty-stricken "cutting the fat" off government spending. Also like Reagan, Kohl's program demands tax breaks for the capitalist monopolies which will supposedly "stimulate investment" and someday trickle down to the workers. In the United States this Reaganite type of program has only led to the deepening of the economic crisis, to greater impoverishment of the working masses and multi-billion dollar profits for the biggest banks and monopolies. In West Germany, Kohl's austerity measures poured gasoline on the flames of the workers' anger. The October demonstrations blasted Kohl's program and showed that the workers are determined to fight these new capitalists attacks.

Unfortunately the trade union bureaucrats who headed up the October demonstrations do not share the workers' fighting spirit. West Germany's 800,000 member trade union federation, the DGB, is the equivalent of the AFL-CIO. And like Kirkland, Fraser, and the other misleaders of the AFL-CIO, the DGB union hacks are trying to undermine the workers' struggle against the capitalists and to divert their movement into the hands of the capitalist parties.

In the first place the DGB bureaucrats are sweet on the social-democrats of the SPD. Although the demonstrations were originally called against the SPD government of Schmidt, from the speakers' platforms the DGB bureaucrats refused to utter a peep against the Social-Democrats. They tried to convert the mass actions into protests solely against the Christian Democrats and to let the SPD off the hook for their crimes against the workers. Nationwide elections are now planned for March, and the DGB misleaders want to silence any criticism of the Social-Democrats and to march the workers to the polls behind the SPD candidates.

But more than this. The DGB bureaucrats are also trying to moderate the workers' anger against Kohl and to make overtures of friendship to the Christian Democrats. In the October demonstrations, the main criticism of Kohl offered by Ernst Breit, the head of the DGB, was that "the new government endangers social peace." Breit's concern is not to organize the class struggle against the vicious capitalist attacks on the workers, no! He only fears that Kohl's brutal policies will lead to an intensification of the class struggle. To head off such a possibility, Breit offered the Christian Democrats an olive branch of peace. The DGB leaders, Breit stressed, "have not ruled out constructive dialogue with the new government." Imagine that. Kohl offers the workers pay and benefit cuts, layoffs and ruin, and the DGB bureaucrats reply with an offer to Kohl for "constructive dialogue." What spineless class treason against the workers.

Despite the union bureaucrats' calls for "constructive dialogue" and prayers for class peace, the West German workers are turning to class struggle. The October demonstrations were a manifestation of the growing anger of the workers. Mass struggle is their powerful weapon for the battle against the bourgeoisie.

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The nationalist program of the RCP of Britain (ML) violates the ABC's of Marxism-Leninism

In recent months the leadership of the RCPB(ML) has adopted a program of struggle for the national rights and sovereignty of Britain. The Communique of the Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCPB(ML) announced that the "national question" of British sovereignty rights "is an extremely important democratic question to take up for solution" and that this thesis has been adopted as part of "the general line of the Party." (Workers' Weekly, organ of the Central Committee of the RCPB(ML), June 5, 1982) Meanwhile, agitation for a struggle for British national rights and sovereignty has emerged as a key front of the RCPB(ML)'s agitation and tactics.

In our opinion, this change in the general line of the RCPB(ML) is a serious mistake. The RCPB(ML) has introduced a nationalist program for the socialist revolution in Britain, a socialist revolution ignoring the fact that the proletarian revolution in Britain is not a struggle against foreign oppression but first and foremost a struggle for the overthrow of the British bourgeoisie. This can only cause immense harm.

Already we have seen the negative consequences of this change in line during the Falklands war. As we discussed in detail in our article "Why Does the RCPB (ML) Reject the Slogan 'The Main Enemy Is at Home'?," these nationalist tactics led to a non-revolutionary stand against British imperialism and Thatcher's aggression. These tactics led to blunting the exposure of their "own" British imperialist ruling class, and they obscured the idea of class struggle with that of a struggle for the British national interests. The entire agitation of the Workers' Weekly on the Falklands war was gravely marred by petty-bourgeois pacifism and nationalism, showing a tendency to adapt to the line of the social-democracy of the "left" wing of the British Labor Party. Reflecting the liquidationist spirit of cavalier disregard for the well-known Marxist-Leninist principles, the RCPB(ML) repudiated the fundamental revolutionary concept that for the proletariat "The Main Enemy Is at Home" in a reactionary war, and rejected other cardinal axioms of Marxism-Leninism on war and revolution.(See The Workers' Advocate of September 5,1982)

In a sense the Falklands war provided a practical test for the new nationalist tactics of the RCPB(ML), a test which they failed miserably. Beyond a doubt these tactics can only lead to more and greater fiascoes in the future. This is because they are based on the fundamental fallacy of trying to oppose imperialism from within the imperialist heartlands with a nationalist program. In his article "The Junius Pamphlet," Lenin describes how the German revolutionary Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg, fell into this same fallacy when she put forward the idea of a "truly national program" to "oppose the imperialist war program" of the German bourgeoisie at the time of the First World War. In discussing the fallacious reasoning that determined Rosa Luxemburg's national tactics, Lenin made an observation that sheds light on the present mistake of the RCPB(ML). Lenin pointed out that:

"Secondly, Junius [Rosa Luxemburg had written under this pen name -- ed.] apparently wanted to achieve something in the nature of the Menshevik 'theory of stages,' of sad memory; he wanted to begin to carry out the revolutionary program from the end that is 'more suitable,' 'more popular' and more acceptable to the petty bourgeoisie. It is something like a plan 'to outwit history,' to outwit the philistines. He seems to say, surely, nobody would oppose a better way of defending the real fatherland; and the real fatherland is the Great German Republic, and the best defense is a militia, a permanent parliament, etc. Once it was accepted, that program would automatically lead to the next stage -- to the socialist revolution.

"Probably, it was reasoning of this kind that consciously or semi-consciously determined Junius's tactics. Needless to say, such reasoning is fallacious." (Collected Works, Vol. 22, p.319, emphasis as in original)

Apparently, the leadership of the RCPB(ML) has fallen prey to this same fallacious reasoning. A decade ago, the predecessors of the RCPB(ML) openly upheld the programmatic line that the revolution in England was at a national democratic anti-imperialist stage which would lead to the development of the proletarian socialist revolution. (See "On the History of the Nationalist Deviations of the RCPB(ML): The Struggle Against the Theory of 'Three Worlds' Must Not Be Forgotten,'' The Workers' Advocate, September 5, 1982) Today, in a more refined form the RCPB(ML) has revived this very same "theory of stages" of sad memory.

Presumably, the idea behind adopting a nationalist program for imperialist Britain is that this will make life easier; it will provide a shortcut to popularity and to the "broad masses.'' But by taking this shortcut the RCPB (ML) has fallen into a grave error. It is reflecting the liquidationist and renegade spirit which has overcome various revisionist and opportunist forces in a number of countries. It is reflecting the spirit of weariness with the arduous and painstaking work of building up the independent revolutionary class movement of the proletariat. It is reflecting the abandonment of the proletariat in favor of appealing to the petty bourgeoisie and labor bureaucracy, and, in particular, the liquidationist groping towards merger with social-democracy. No, this is not a shortcut at all, but a liquidationist and petty bourgeois nationalist deviation from the Marxist-Leninist road of the class struggle and the socialist revolution.

From the ideological standpoint, this deviation is identical to Maoist "three worlds-ism.'' Mao Zedong Thought consistently denigrated the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat. This was graphically expressed in the skepticism which the Maoists held about the prospects of the working class struggle for socialism in the developed capitalist countries. This skepticism led the Chinese revisionists and their followers to promote the idea of a nationalist appeal to the non-proletarian strata as an alternate program to the proletarian socialist revolution in the imperialist states such as Britain. This Maoist nationalism was eventually carried to the logical conclusion of a complete social-chauvinist alliance with the imperialist ruling classes as spelled out in the counter-revolutionary theory of "three worlds."

The British Party had been deeply influenced by this Maoist nationalism. As we documented in our article "On the History of the Nationalist Deviations of the RCPB(ML)," this Party had not only fought for the program of a national anti-imperialist revolution for Britain but also, by the mid-1970's it had adopted the "three worldist" program of subordinating the British and West European proletariat to the British and European monopoly bourgeoisie in the name of preserving national independence against the two superpowers. For a period between 1977 and 1979, the British Party took positive measures to criticize the Maoist concepts of a nationalist struggle for such a major imperialist power as Britain. But unfortunately, they all too rapidly abandoned this criticism. Thus it can only be a matter of great concern that the RCPB(ML) has once again revived this petty-bourgeois nationalist and Maoist deviation of sad memory.

Here it should be noted that in 1980 the Central Committee of the RCPB(ML) unilaterally and in flagrant violation of the Marxist-Leninist norms severed all contact with our Party, trampling a decade of fraternal relations into the mud. In our September 5 issue we carried the relevant correspondence between our two Parties and an introduction to this correspondence. Among other things, this material reveals how it was their disapproval of the irreconcilable struggle that our Party was waging here in the U.S. against social- chauvinism and Maoism which compelled the leadership of the RCPB(ML) to break with our Party. As it turns out, this break coincides directly with the RCPB (ML)'s own abandonment of the struggle against nationalism and Maoism in their own country.

For our part, we wish no harm to the RCPB(ML). We have always and we continue to stand for the close fraternal unity between the American and British Marxist-Leninists and we rejoice at the successes of the British revolutionaries as if they were our own. This is why we consider it our communist duty to express our criticisms of the liquidationist and Maoist deviations which are not only the source of the rupture between our two Parties, but which are bringing so much damage to the cause of the RCPB(ML) itself. Lenin and Stalin's teaching on Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism underscore that we must not cover up such deviations with a false front of official well-being. No, shortcomings must be dealt with head on. This is the road of tempering the Marxist-Leninist parties and the militant unity of the Marxist-Leninist communist movement. And it is in this spirit which we have written this article to continue our criticism of the petty-bourgeois nationalist and Maoist deviation of the RCPB(ML).

On What Basis Has the RCPB(ML) Put Forward a Platform of Struggle for the National Rights of Imperialist Britain?

In this article we would like to examine the basis upon which the RCPB(ML) has put forward a platform of struggle for the national rights and sovereignty of Britain. Such an examination shows that this platform has been built on rotten planks. It shows that there is no objective basis for such a program of nationalist struggle and that such a thing can only cause immense harm. It can only reinforce petty-bourgeois nationalist prejudices, turning the workers' eyes away from the tasks of the class struggle against their "own" British bourgeoisie. And it can only obscure the fact that British imperialism is itself a monstrous and a bloodstained oppressor nation.

The RCPB(ML) puts forward its nationalist platform on the basis of the literal claim that Britain is not an independent, sovereign state, but that it is a subjugated state much like the neo-colonies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The RCPB(ML) has adopted the thesis that "The British Bourgeoisie is a Reactionary Class of Traitors Who Have Sold Out the Sovereignty of Britain to U.S. Imperialism." (See Workers' Weekly, June 5,1982) It is important to note here that the RCPB(ML) also claims that this sovereignty has been sold out to not only U.S. imperialism, but to "other foreign imperialist powers" as well. For example, Workers' Weekly speaks of the sellout of "the sovereignty of the nation... to the U.S. imperialists and other foreign imperialist powers." (May 29, 1982) And it refers to the sellout of "the sovereignty rights of Britain to the U.S. imperialists... as well as to the European monopolies." (June 15,1982)

According to Workers' Weekly, this destruction of British sovereignty has been thoroughgoing and complete. It argues, "that actually the sovereignty of Britain is not in parliament or anywhere else in Britain but is carried around in the hands of the White House staff." (Workers' Weekly, June 12, 1982) Moreover, it theorizes on the "denial of national self-determination for Britain as a result of the U.S. domination of the country." (May 22,1982)

Such theorizing verges on the unreal. How is it even conceivable that someone in the latter part of the 20th century could be theorizing about a struggle for "national self-determination" for imperialist Britain? Isn't Britain among the very oldest of the independent capitalist nations? Isn't Britain a nation that fully realized its national self-determination at least several centuries ago? Maybe it could be understood if some zealous nationalist crackpot spoke of the "denial of national self-determination for Britain" and then it could be dismissed as a bad joke. But here it is being put forward in all seriousness as a programmatic thesis by the leadership of the RCPB(ML). Therefore it is obligatory to examine this question more carefully.

The Arguments to Prove the Loss of British National Self-Determination Are Totally Unfounded

The RCPB(ML) has produced only the scantiest shell of an argument to prove its thesis that Britain is a subjugated state which has been denied its rights to national self-determination. But the shoddy fragment of an argument that they have produced has been repeated several times over in their most important documents and articles in recent months. The sum total of their argument was presented in their May First Statement, which was said to represent the general line of the RCPB(ML). This May Day Statement declares: "The British bourgeoisie presents itself as the 'defender' of the nation; but nothing could be further from the truth. Besides the ruin and disasters which it is bringing to the workers and people as a result of the crisis, there is also the important political question of the increasing domination of United States, in the political, economic, military and social affairs of Britain.

"This fact is manifested in the fact that around 30% of manufacturing industry in Britain is U.S.- owned and controlled; that there are over 100 U.S. military bases and thousands of U.S. troops in Britain; that respective governments since World War II have been the zealous supporters of the reactionary and warmongering global policy of the United States (so clearly in evidence in the most obscene manner with the present Thatcher government); that Britain is a center of U.S. imperialist culture; that the American CIA and other agencies freely operate in Britain against the people. It is also manifested in the way that the assassin Reagan is being invited and welcomed to Britain in June." (Workers' Weekly, May 1, 1982)

The two most important arguments here are the economic and the military-strategic. Let us begin with the economic.

To imply, as this statement does, that the British lords of finance and industry do not firmly dominate and firmly control the British economy is a grave distortion of the facts. The powerful monopoly capitalist groups as seen in the big London banks and financial houses are the true masters of Britain's economy. British finance capital has allowed foreign multinationals to make certain investments in British manufacturing industries, but the British bourgeoisie remains, as always, king of British manufactures. With the possible exception of auto production where U.S. monopolies control a 50% share, the British monopolies, including the giant state capitalist monopolies, command a dominant position in every major branch of industry. At the same time, as compared to the purely British finance capital, foreign investments are an insignificant fraction in such important economic sectors as banking and finance or transportation and infrastructure.

Thus the claim, which Workers' Weekly repeats over and over again, that Britain is increasingly dominated by the U.S. because "30% of manufacturing industry in Britain is U.S.-owned and controlled," is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality. Moreover, this 30% figure itself is neither substantiated nor is it true. So far, our investigation shows that conceivably total foreign ownership and control in British manufacturing may approach this level, but the U.S. share is at most only one half of 30%. Obviously, for U.S. multinationals to control some 15% of British manufacturing can in no way mean the "domination" or "subjugation" of the British economy. No amount of figure juggling can hide the plain truth that it is British finance capital which is the supreme sovereign over the British economy and that British imperialism, though weakened, remains one of the principal financial and economic pillars of world capitalism.

From the military-strategic angle as well, the RCPB (ML)'s theorizing on the "denial of national self- determination for Britain" is again turning reality upside down. From the time of the Second World War, the Anglo-American alliance has been a bulwark of the Western imperialist bloc. At the conclusion of the war, U.S. imperialism and British imperialism, as the two most powerful imperialist states, formed a close alliance in their common crusade to strangle socialism and enslave the peoples all over the globe. The Anglo- American alliance continues to play a major international role as U.S. imperialism and British imperialism closely coordinate their global strategies: they work hand in glove in relation to NATO and Europe, in relation to both of their imperialist and aggressive activities in Latin America, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. One feature of this alliance is that since the days of the last world war the American and British armed forces, the CIA and British intelligence, and other instruments of imperialist slavery and aggression have been closely linked.

It is only in the light of this Anglo-American alliance of worldwide counter-revolution, aggression and plunder that the military, intelligence and other relations between Washington and London can be understood. This alliance has been and remains a partnership of hangmen and executioners of the world's people. Of course, in any such partnership, the weaker will often find itself being dragged around by the stronger. But on no account can this justify portraying British imperialism as a poor subjugated and dominated victim that has been stripped of its sovereignty and national rights. No, as the Falklands war so graphically demonstrated, the Anglo-American military/strategic alliance is comprised of not just one, but of two world imperialist marauders, each closely linked to the other for its own enslaving, plundering aims.

As for the other claims, such as Britain being "a center of U.S. imperialist culture" or the way in which Reagan was "invited and welcomed to Britain," these can hardly be taken as serious arguments showing the denial of British national self-determination. Indeed, as for the cultural claim, the infamous cultural products of Liverpool and London have ensured Britain's own status as a foremost center of degenerate imperialist culture -- closely allied with the U.S. superpower of cultural depravity, but nevertheless a decadent cultural "power" in its own rights.

In short, the thesis that imperialist Britain has been denied its national self-determination, i.e., that Britain is not a politically independent and sovereign state, simply does not hold water. All the concrete facts of the intimate partnership between U.S. and British imperialism show that this is but a typical example of an imperialist alliance between independent and sovereign states. Such an intimate alliance is not an unprecedented or unusual phenomenon among imperialist powers. Within such imperialist alliances varying degrees and forms of economic, financial, and military dependence are inevitable. This applies to the Anglo- American alliance as well. But to draw the conclusion that this alliance has liquidated imperialist Britain as a powerful and politically independent and sovereign state is simply a travesty of Marxism-Leninism and of common logic.

Is Britain on "The Path of Becoming a Vassal State"?

The RCPB(ML) not only asserts that the political self-determination of Britain has been liquidated by the U.S. domination but also that this domination is steadily and qualitatively increasing. Thus Workers' Weekly puts forward the following thesis:

"Just as U.S. imperialism dominates the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, so too it increasingly dominates the countries of Europe, Oceania, North America, Japan, etc.

"The increasing domination of the U.S. in the political, economic, military and social affairs of Britain shows that the British imperialist bourgeoisie and all its political representatives are a complete fraud when they present themselves as 'patriotic' and as 'defenders of the nation' -- for in reality they are selling out the sovereignty of Britain, of the British working class and people.

"The present Thatcher government and all previous governments have been amongst the most zealous allies and supporters of U.S. imperialism and its warmongering, global policy. All this has more and more restricted the national sovereignty and any independent action on the part of Britain, moving it step by step onto the path of becoming a vassal state of U.S. imperialism." ("The British Bourgeoisie is a Reactionary Class of Traitors Who Have Sold Out the Sovereignty of Britain to U.S. Imperialism," Workers' Weekly, June 5, 1982, emphasis added)

In other words, according to the RCPB(ML), the big imperialist powers of Europe, Japan, Canada, etc., are increasingly being reduced to the status of the enslaved neo-colonies -- "just as U.S. imperialism dominates the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America." As for Britain, the claim is made that it is ''moving... step by step onto the path of becoming a vassal state of U.S. imperialism." And on this basis the leadership of the RCPB(ML) speculates that the ''national question" of British sovereignty looms up as the pressing issue of the day.

Even if the U.S. imperialist domination were increasing over these countries, this still would not justify the nationalist tactics of the RCPB(ML). But let's take a look at what the historical trend actually is. Workers' Weekly has got the historical trends reversed. This is why it cannot print any evidence of substance to back up its thesis. In fact, Workers' Weekly itself writes about the steady strengthening of the might of the EEC imperialist powers and their efforts to transform the EEC into a superpower. No one can deny these things because the economic and financial strengthening of the West European, Japanese, Canadian and other imperialists in relation to the U.S. imperialists is an indisputable phenomenon. It is precisely this strengthening that has intensified the inter-imperialist conflicts that we are witnessing today within the U.S.-led Western imperialist bloc.

In 1952, Comrade Stalin pointed out that to believe that the imperialist countries that had been put on rations by the USA after the Second World War would not get back on their feet and force their way to independent development was to "believe in miracles." (Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, ''6. Inevitability of Wars Between Capitalist Countries") Thirty years later, it is more than self-evident that Stalin was right. But clearly this phenomenon which Stalin had predicted and which is taking effect in force today cannot be reconciled with the RCPB (ML)'s thesis that the big imperialist powers of Western Europe, Japan, etc. are being step by step reduced to the status of neo-colonies.

As for the particular case of Britain, it is well known that British imperialism has been weakened as compared to its position prior to the Second World War and that today it remains in the throes of a deep crisis. Over the last decade and more, both U.S. and British capitalism have been in the grips of a severe stagnation and have continued to weaken in relation to their West European, Japanese and other rivals. But as far as British-U.S. relations go, Britain appears to be holding its own. The propaganda about Britain being step by step reduced to a vassal state or a neo-colony not only defies all facts; it is simply absurd as Britain remains politically, financially, and militarily one of the strongest and most ferocious of the imperialist wolves in the Western alliance.

The Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Must Be Waged From the Class Standpoint

From the conclusion that imperialist Britain has been and remains an independent and sovereign power it does not follow that the British revolutionaries should therefore abandon the struggle against U.S. imperialism. Quite the contrary. The British proletariat and people, like the peoples all over the world, have a deep hatred for U.S. imperialism. Necessarily the slogans and agitation against the crimes of U.S. imperialism, and the close complicity of the British imperialists in these crimes, play an important role in the revolutionary movement. For example, the opposition to the stationing of U.S./NATO missiles in Britain has played a major part in the development of the mass struggle against imperialist war preparations. And for our part, our Party and its supporters have always enthusiastically welcomed the sight of millions of proletarians around the world denouncing U.S. imperialism.

But the question at stake is in what direction should the agitation against U.S. imperialism be aimed: Either it should be aimed in the direction of a struggle for British national rights and British sovereignty, as the leadership of the RCPB(ML) holds; or it should be aimed in the direction of the class struggle, in the direction of advancing the class battles of the proletariat and the oppressed masses against their ''own" exploiters and oppressors, the British imperialist ruling class.

Let us take the struggle against U.S./NATO war preparations as an example. The revolutionaries must utilize the burning hatred of the masses for U.S. imperialism and NATO to put in focus the class issues at stake. They must explain to the workers and anti-imperialist activists that the U.S.-led NATO alliance is a class alliance of capitalist-imperialist powers against the workers and oppressed of all countries. They must explain the role of British imperialism as a pillar of this counter-revolutionary alliance. And they must point out that the road of struggle against the U.S.-led NATO alliance is the road of revolutionary class battles of the proletariat and working masses against their ''own" British government and bourgeoisie. Only from this class perspective can the indignation of the masses against the U.S./NATO missiles, etc., be channeled in a revolutionary direction, in a direction that can advance the revolutionary movement for the overthrow of British imperialism and hence also for the overthrow of the U.S. imperialist yoke.

The leadership of the RCPB(ML) has rejected this class standpoint. Instead they agitate that NATO shows the need to struggle for British national rights and sovereignty. Whatever their intentions, objectively in contemporary politics this means one of two things: either opposing NATO on the grounds that London should have a bigger voice and greater national rights within the imperialist alliances; or, advocating the petty-bourgeois nationalist utopia of a neutral and non- aligned imperialist Britain. In either case, this error can only dull class consciousness. It can only turn the workers away from the class struggle against their ''own" imperialist ruling class towards a nationalist struggle against the foreign threat.

The Nationalist Struggle Against "Other Foreign Imperialist Powers"

As we noted earlier, when the RCPB(ML) speaks of the struggle against "the sellout of the sovereignty of the nation" they frequently refer not only to the sellout to the U.S. imperialists, but also to "other foreign imperialist powers," or to the "European monopolies." In many ways, this agitation against the sellout of the sovereignty of the British nation to "other foreign imperialist powers" underscores the inherent falseness of the RCPB(ML)'s entire program for a nationalist struggle for British sovereignty. It shows that the inherent logic of such a nationalist struggle leads nowhere but to the dead end of bourgeois nationalism.

Of course, the RCPB(ML) is only being consistent when it directs its nationalist struggle also against the "other foreign powers." After all, if the nationalist struggle against the U.S. imperialists is based solely on tabulations (and exaggerations) of the investments of U.S. companies in British manufactures and the integration of imperialist Britain within the U.S.-led NATO alliance, then it is only logical that the other imperialists which invest in Britain and which are powers in the NATO alliance should also be made targets of the nationalist struggle for British sovereignty. For example, behind the U.S., it is the Dutch, French and Canadian multinationals which are the biggest investors in British industry. Therefore it is only logical that the struggle against the "sellout of the British nation" must also be directed against the "other foreign powers" such as the Dutch, French, Canadian and other capitalists.

But doesn't this demonstrate the utter absurdity of the RCPB(ML)'s nationalist program? Hasn't the RCPB (ML) forgotten the fact that British imperialism remains one of the principal bulwarks of world capitalism; that it too is a major international exploiter; that it is a big power within the EEC; and that British imperialism also sucks the blood of the toilers not only in the neo-colonial countries but also in Western Europe, etc.? Hasn't the RCPB(ML) devised a program to set the proletarians of Britain, Holland, France, Canada, etc., at loggerheads against one another in a struggle for national rights against the "other foreign imperialists"? Hasn't the RCPB(ML) taken a position which can only lead to the dead end of unrestrained bourgeois nationalism?

More Nationalistic Than the Bourgeoisie Itself

With its nationalist program the leadership of the RCPB(ML) has found itself tangled up in a web of irreconcilable contradictions. One of its most acute problems is to find some way to distinguish their program of struggle for the national rights of Britain from the filthy reactionary nationalism of the British bourgeoisie. The only way that the RCPB(ML) has been able to resolve this problem is to counterpose the alleged insincerity of the bourgeoisie's nationalism to the RCPB (ML)'s true patriotism and genuine loyalty to the national interests.

This has emerged as a major theme in Workers' Weekly. A good example of this was provided by a recent editorial on the question of economic protectionism. Entitled "False 'Patriotism' of the Bourgeoisie," this editorial exposes how the bourgeoisie's calls for economic protectionism are used "to line up the workers behind the British monopoly capitalists in their rivalry with their competitors." It explains how this is part of the British capitalists' efforts to strengthen their position in relation to the U.S., Japanese and other capitalist powers, that this is part of the growing inter-imperialist contradictions, and so on. (Workers' Weekly, August 7,1982)

Since the time of Marx, class conscious workers have combatted the capitalists' chauvinist appeals with appeals for the international solidarity of the working class. They have fought the attempts of the bourgeoisie to enlist the workers in their nationalist strivings with appeals for the joint class struggle of the workers of all countries against world capitalism.

But for Workers' Weekly patriotic appeals for economic protectionism are not patriotic enough! This editorial denounces the patriotic calls for protectionism on the grounds that protectionism is allegedly only "false patriotism," and that it is not "in the interest of the nation as a whole" -- i.e., it is not truly nationalistic! Workers' Weekly goes on to explain that in regard to protectionism "The 'patriotic' phrases of the bourgeoisie ring especially hollow when it is this selfsame bourgeoisie...which is more and more handing over sovereignty to the U.S., as well as the EEC. It is the long-established habit of the British bourgeoisie to brand whosoever opposes them as 'acting against the national interest,' but it is precisely they who are the most anti-national, traitorous force. They sell the national interest for the sake of their own class interest."

What an amazing argument!

First Workers' Weekly reveals how the British monopolies are resorting to nationalistic economic warfare in their inter-imperialist rivalries against the U.S. and other imperialist powers. Then it turns around and declares that this is not real nationalism. Oh no. You see, the bourgeoisie only wants people to think that it is engaging in a nationalistic struggle to strengthen British imperialism's position. But really the bourgeoisie is "the most anti-national, traitorous force," because really it is only "more and more handing over sovereignty to the U.S., as well as the EEC."

How can anyone possibly make heads or tails of such convoluted nonsense? What possible meaning can this have except that Workers' Weekly is denouncing the British monopolies for being half-hearted and irresolute in their nationalistic economic warfare against their U.S., Japanese and EEC competitors?

In its patriotic enthusiasm, Workers' Weekly has overlooked the fact that economic nationalism is a most naked expression of the capitalists' struggle for the British national interests. Economic protectionism is nothing but a struggle for the interests of British national industry, finance, etc., against the national interests of the U.S., Japanese, EEC and other capitalists. Undaunted by such an elementary truth, Workers' Weekly simply repeats its refrain about how the capitalists "sell the national interest for the sake of their own class interest.'' But to criticize economic protectionism on such grounds is not only ludicrous in the extreme; it also places the authors in the absurd position of being the true champion of the interests of British finance and industry against the "other foreign imperialist" rivals. In short, it places the authors in the absurd position of putting the national interests of capitalist Britain ahead of the internationalist class interests of the proletariat.

Workers' Weekly carried a similar nationalist theme during the recent Falklands war. For example, at the height of the British aggression and the accompanying chauvinist hysteria, it carried a major editorial entitled "Fraudulent Manipulation of National Slogans." (May 22, 1982) This editorial was written in reply to a bloodcurdling national chauvinist speech that Thatcher had given to glorify the slaughter in the South Atlantic. But did the Workers' Weekly take this jingo patriotism by the horns and spell out the class interests of the proletariat in the Falklands conflict? Did it counterpose Thatcher's bourgeois patriotism to proletarian internationalism and the solidarity of the working class of Britain and Argentina against the reactionary nationalism of their governments? Did it declare that the British workers do not want a nationalist struggle but a class struggle against their "own" bourgeoisie? Not a single word! Not even a hint of such things!

Instead the Workers' Weekly editorial only challenged the sincerity of Thatcher's nationalism! Instead it posed the question "What of the 'nationalism' of the Thatcher government? How 'patriotic' is Thatcher?" The editorial then proceeded to chastise Thatcher for being untrue to her nationalist image, for "sell(ing) the nation for dollars and pounds," and for having "nothing to say about the denial of national self-determination for Britain." In other words, it accuses the ultra-jingo "Iron Lady" for being insincere about her rabid nationalism, for failing to put her nationalist words into deeds with a genuine struggle for the "national rights of Britain."

The RCPB(ML) attempts to justify such nationalist tactics on the grounds that they are necessary to prevent the bourgeoisie from "manipulating the national question." Apparently the idea behind this tactic is that, by attacking the bourgeoisie from a nationalist standpoint, this will allegedly allow the revolutionaries to outwit the wily British capitalists; it will allegedly allow the revolutionaries to remove the nationalist fangs from the British imperialist wolves. But with this tactic, it is the RCPB(ML) itself which is being "manipulated by the national question." It is the RCPB(ML) which is being outwitted and which is lapsing into absurd, petty-bourgeois nationalist arguments, arguments which would better find their place among the lords and ladies of true-blue British patriotism.

Negation of the ABC's of Marxism-Leninism on the National Question

The RCPB(ML)'s platform for a national struggle for the national rights and sovereignty of Britain inevitably leads into a quagmire. The concrete situation in Britain simply does not conform to such a national struggle. This is why the leadership of the RCPB(ML) has so much difficulty trying to contrive a national struggle that will fit into the framework of British imperialism. Moreover this is why its speculations on the "national question in Britain" cannot be anything other than a direct negation of the ABC's of Marxism-Leninism on the national question.

In his famous "Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions" which were prepared for the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin set forth the foundations of communist policy on the national question. In his thesis Lenin stressed that communist policy must proceed from concrete realities:

"...the Communist Party, as the avowed champion of the proletarian struggle to overthrow the bourgeois yoke, must base its policy, in the national question too, not on abstract and formal principles but, first, on a precise appraisal of the specific historical situation and, primarily, of economic conditions; second, on a clear distinction between the interests of the oppressed classes, of working and exploited people, and the general concept of national interests as a whole, which implies the interests of the ruling class; third, on an equally clear distinction between the oppressed, dependent and subject nations and the oppressing, exploiting and sovereign nations, in order to counter the bourgeois-democratic lies that play down this colonial and financial enslavement of the vast majority of the world's population by an insignificant minority of the richest and advanced capitalist countries, a feature characteristic of the era of finance capital and imperialism." (Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 145, emphasis added)

From every conceivable angle, the RCPB(ML)'s program for a national struggle in Britain violates each of the above concrete requirements.

First of all, it violates the specific historical and economic conditions that have prevailed in Britain for along, long time. Britain is one of the most bourgeois of all countries, where for centuries the sovereign power of the bourgeois has been fully consolidated. And for many decades Britain has been a country of fully mature and decadent monopoly capitalism. In this historical epoch of the proletarian revolution, if there are any countries in the world besides the superpowers where it is not the national question but the socialist revolution which is on the agenda, imperialist Britain is one of those countries.

In this regard, discussing the different types of countries in relation to the self-determination of nations, Lenin made a clear division between the countries of highly developed capitalism and the countries where the bourgeois democratic and national revolutions were still on the agenda. In "the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States," Lenin explained, "the progressive bourgeois national movements came to an end long ago. Every one of these 'great' nations oppresses other nations both in the colonies and at home. The tasks of the proletariat of these ruling nations are the same as those of the proletariat in England in the nineteenth century in relation to Ireland." ("The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination," Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 150-151)

In his article "A Caricature of Marxism" Lenin flayed the idea of a national movement in the developed capitalist countries of the West.

"In these countries," Lenin pointed out, "the process of forming national states has been consummated. In these countries the national movement is a thing of an irrevocable past, and it would be an absurd reactionary utopia to try to revive it. The national movement of the French, English, Germans has long been completed. In these countries history's next step is a different one: liberated nations have become transformed into oppressor nations, into nations of imperialist rapine, nations that are going through the 'eve of the collapse of capitalism...

"In the Western countries," Lenin continued, "the national movement is a thing of the distant past. In England, France, Germany, etc., the 'fatherland' is a dead letter, it has played its historical role, i. e., the national movement cannot yield here anything progressive, anything that will elevate new masses to a new economic and political life. History's next step here is not transition from feudalism or from patriarchal savagery to national progress, to a cultured and politically free fatherland, but transition from a 'fatherland' that has outlived its day, that is capitalistically overripe, to socialism." (Collect Works, Vol. 23, pp. 38-39)

Lenin did not absolutely exclude the possibility of the emergence of national wars waged by the big nations of Europe. During the imperialist First World War Lenin pointed out that such a national war should not be proclaimed impossible:

"...if the European proletariat remains impotent, say, for twenty years; if the present war ends in victories like Napolean's and in the subjugation of a number of viable national states; if the transition to socialism of non-European imperialism (primarily Japanese and American) is also held up for twenty years by a war between these two countries, for example, then a great national war in Europe would be possible, would hurl Europe back several decades. That is improbable. But not impossible, for it is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong to regard the course of world history as smooth and always in a forward direction, without occasional gigantic leaps back." ("The Junius Pamphlet," Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 310)

At the time of the Second World War, the emergence of the fascist axis represented an attempt at just such a "gigantic leap back.'' The German imperialists dispatched their Nazi hordes with the aim of destroying the nations of Europe and of reducing the European proletariat to slaves of Nazi barbarism. As a result, genuinely liberating national wars broke out across the European continent. But the specific historical conditions which gave rise to these anti-fascist national wars against the Hitlerite yoke only further underscore the total lack of conditions for a national struggle in present-day Britain.

In contemporary conditions, just as in Lenin's day, to try to revive a movement for the national self-determination and sovereignty of Britain is "an absurd and reactionary utopia." The pressing task of "the national question in Britain" is not the rights of the British nation against alien oppression, as the RCPB(ML) contends, but the ruthless national oppression of the Irish people, the national minorities, etc., by the British bourgeoisie. The struggle for the sovereignty of Britain, on the other hand, has been a dead letter for many centuries and can yield nothing progressive. To the contrary, it can only divert the proletariat from its historic task, it can only play the role of a brake on the class struggle for the overthrow of overripe capitalism and for the triumph of socialism in Britain.

Second, the RCPB(ML)'s program of struggle for the national interests of Britain violates the necessary "clear distinction between the interests of the oppressed classes, of working and exploited people, and the general concept of national interests as a whole, which implies the interests of the ruling class." As we have already seen, in practical agitation, it is impossible to wage a struggle for British national interests which can be separated from the predatory and exploiting national interests of the British imperialist ruling class.

Third and finally, the RCPB(ML)'s program for a national struggle for British sovereignty violates the mandatory "clear distinction between the oppressed, dependent and subject nations and the oppressing, exploiting and sovereign nation." Lenin underscored that, "The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed forces." ("Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions" to the Second Congress of the Communist International, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 240) And Lenin stressed that this distinction "is the cardinal idea underlying" the Comintern's theses on the national question.

But the RCPB(ML)'s speculations on the so-called national question of British sovereignty have completely obliterated this distinction in regard to British imperialism. As we have seen, it bases its national program on the ludicrous thesis that Britain is not a sovereign power, but a nation denied its self-determination, a country being reduced to a mere "vassal state" subjugated just like the neo-colonies of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In this way the RCPB(ML) obscures the undeniable reality that British imperialism has in the past and continues today to take a prominent place among the handful of "oppressing, exploiting and sovereign nations" which enslave "the vast majority of the world's population."

In short, the RCPB(ML) is basing its national program on a myth, on the silly fairy tale that the bloodstained British lion which has ravaged the globe for centuries has been somehow miraculously transformed into a victimized little pussycat.

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More on the RCP of Britain (ML)

The Revolutionary Phrase

In the historic struggle of the revolutionary Marxists against the social-chauvinist degeneration of the Second International, Lenin stressed over and over again that one of the key factors responsible for this degeneration had been its discrepancy between word and deed. In words, the opportunist parties of the Second International flaunted before the workers high-sounding phrases about recognizing revolution. But when it came down to deeds, they went no further than reformism. When it came to the question of carrying out systematic work along revolutionary lines, these parties came up with a thousand evasive excuses or declamations against "putschism," pyrotechnics, anarchism, etc.

This lesson is not a mere truism of academic interest drawn from the ancient history of the international working class movement but something which has profound contemporary significance. This was recently underscored, for example, by the attitude of the RCP of Britain (ML) during the Falkland Islands war. This Party revealed a method strikingly similar to that of the hypocrisy of the Second International.

Thus, on the surface, the agitation and propaganda of the RCPB(ML) appears full of revolutionary-sounding phrases and declarations. Slogans like "The Necessity for Revolution!" regularly scream out in red ink from the pages of Workers' Weekly, the newspaper of the RCPB(ML). Every few weeks, the newspaper will run scholastic articles with red headlines such as, "Faced with the capitalist offensive, the working class must advance the tasks of preparing for revolution." (November 20,1982)

But when it came to day-to-day work during the Falklands crisis, what did the RCPB(ML) do? Here was a situation which required not just high-flown phrases about revolution in general but a concrete struggle against a reactionary imperialist war of one's "own" bourgeoisie. This meant taking a revolutionary stand within an atmosphere rampant with chauvinism and patriotism organized by the bourgeoisie and its hangers-on.

What did the RCPB(ML) do in this situation? Did it stand up in an internationalist spirit and focus its agitation in the spirit of "The Main Enemy Is at Home!"? No, they blunted the exposure against the British bourgeoisie and trimmed their sails before the patriotic onslaught. They promoted a struggle in defense of national interests instead of a struggle drawing the class questions to the fore. While adapting their agitation to the pacifist and nationalist outlook promoted by the "left" Laborites, the RCPB(ML) openly renounced the Leninist stand that "The Main Enemy Is at Home!" While taking up such rightist positions, they warned the masses to be specially vigilant about the "left," about "semi-terrorist" and "semi-anarchist" positions which they identified with internationalist stands! (See the article "Why does the RCP of Britain (ML) reject the slogan 'The Main Enemy Is at Home'?" in the September 5,1982 issue of The Workers' Advocate.)

There are things which are not readily apparent on a day-to-day basis, but are brought out in sharp relief during times of crisis. As Lenin observed:

"The great and progressive significance of all crises, even the gravest, most arduous and painful, lies in the tremendous speed, force and clarity with which they expose and sweep aside rotten phrases, even if well meaning, and rotten institutions even if they are built on the best of intentions." (Lenin, "Social-Chauvinist Policy Behind a Cover of Internationalist Phrases," Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 429)

Another example of a situation where the high-flown declarations of the RCPB(ML) were put to the test of deeds was the rebellions of the British youth during the early days of July 1981. Here was a situation where the masses of youth in their thousands, both black and white, rose up in fury against the countless degradations they suffer under British capitalist rule -- against racism, rampant unemployment, police repression, etc. And what did the RCPB(ML) do in this situation? While appearing to support the rebellions, Workers' Weekly made dark hints against the struggle of the youth. They lectured the youth for taking "premature actions" before the "majority can rise," they lectured on and on against semi-anarchism and semi-terrorism, etc. The really flabby essence of this agitation was seen especially in what line they advocated the masses to organize themselves along. The biggest campaigns they ran among the youth that summer had nothing to do with the mass struggle -- instead it was to organize into sports and cultural festivals!

These examples in the practice of the RCPB(ML) bring to mind the method pursued by the social-democratic parties of the Second International. As Lenin noted in his celebrated work "The Collapse of the Second International":

"On the one hand, the most 'Left' and arch-revolutionary resolutions, and on the other, the most shameless forgetfulness or renunciation of these resolutions -- this is one of the most striking manifestations of the International's collapse...." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 209)

This similarity underscores the importance of overcoming the deviations expressed by the RCPB(ML). The lessons of the corruption and ultimate degeneration of the Second International must never be forgotten by the Marxist-Leninists.

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The October Revolution Turned Upside Down

Each class judges all momentous events in history through the spectacles of its own class interests. That is why for the same event, every political trend, and every political tendency, draws different lessons.

In this light, we would like to comment on a recent article in People's Canada Daily News, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), regarding the lessons to be drawn from the earthshaking Great October Socialist Revolution of the Russian Bolsheviks. In a major article entitled "A Most Urgent Task Facing the People," carried on the occasion of Remembrance Day marking the conclusion of World War I, PCDN gave a call for ''all democratic people to learn the bitter lessons written in blood." (PCDN, November 11, 1982) Below we reprint in full the relevant passage on the lessons drawn from the October Revolution. But first a warning. Undoubtedly many of our readers will blink with amazement; surely PCDN has gotten the time, place and names of the leaders of this revolution confused with that of some other revolution. But no. What you are about to read are the lessons to be drawn from the Great October Revolution of Lenin and Stalin as seen through the thick spectacles of a grave petty-bourgeois nationalist deviation. PCDN writes:

''The First World War provides another lesson of first-rate importance for the peoples. For it was during the First World War that the workers and peasants in Russia, led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin, refused to participate in the mutual slaughter of workers and peasants of other lands and instead hoisted the banner 'Workers of All Countries, Unite,' rose up and overthrew the czarist regime which was responsible for embroiling Russia in the war. The Great October Revolution remains the guiding light for the revolutionary proletariat in Canada and around the world and a profound lesson and inspiration for all progressive and democratic people that the only way to secure peace is through revolutionary struggle against those who are the source of war. It also shows that while the exploiters put their class interests above those of the nation, which, amongst other things, leads to the devastation of inter-imperialist war, the class interests of the workers coincide with those of the nation for peace, sovereignty and progress." (PCDN, November 11, 1982, emphasis added)

What ''profound lessons" indeed! Here PCDN demonstrates just how profoundly they can turn the lessons of the October Revolution inside-out and stand them on their head. And it shows how profoundly they can reduce the brilliant proletarian revolutionary ideas of Lenin and Stalin and the October Revolution to miserable, run-of-the-mill pacifism and petty-bourgeois nationalism.

This passage reflects the grave deviations which have afflicted the leadership of CPC(M-L) for many years. In previous articles we have examined in detail some of the outstanding features of these deviations. (See ''Once Again On Canadian Imperialism and the Maoist Deviations of CPC(M-L)," The Workers' Advocate, September 5, 1982.) This particular passage indicates the serious mistakes in CPC(M-L)'s orientation for the struggle against imperialist war. To examine these deviations in depth will have to be left to a future date. But here we would like to briefly comment on some questions raised by PCDN's ''profound lessons."

Leninism Cannot Be Reconciled With Petty-Bourgeois Nationalism

Up until this day, it has been a generally held view that World War I was a ferocious clash of national interests. In fact, it was a clash of two coalitions of bourgeois imperialist nations waged for the purpose of enriching themselves, for grabbing colonies and sources of raw materials for their national industries, for ensuring big profits for their national arms merchants, banks, etc.

Therefore when PCDN writes that World War I was an example of ''the exploiters put(ting) their class interests above those of the nation" and that this is what ''leads to the devastation of inter-imperialist war," an unsuspecting reader may think it is a typographical error. Surely they mean to say that the class interests of the imperialist exploiters coincide with rabid nationalism and with wars for the predatory imperialist national interests. But no, PCDN means what it says. It means that the German, Russian, French, British, American and other imperialists were not nationalistic enough and betrayed the sovereignty of their nations. Indeed they apply this alleged "lesson" of World War I to the present day, repeating over and over again the refrain that the Canadian, French, British and other imperialists "put their class interests ahead of the national interests" and thus fail to "defend the sovereignty of the nation." The logic of such an assessment of World War I, as well as of the present day, is unfathomable to common mortals, but then petty-bourgeois nationalism has never been too strong on logic.

This brings us to the first question at hand: In the context of the inter-imperialist First World War, which group of Marxists was it that proclaimed that the "class interests of the workers coincide(d) with those of the nation"?

It is well known that at that time the world Marxist movement was split into two camps. The first camp was made up of the social-chauvinists and Kautskyites who made up the majority of the corrupt leaders of the reformist and opportunist Second International. This was the camp of social-democratic class treason, of the petty-bourgeois nationalist betrayal of the proletarian revolution. These renegades adopted the stand that in the imperialist war it was the workers' duty to "defend the fatherland," that is, for the German workers to shoot down French workers, and vice versa, on behalf of the national interests of the German and French capitalists. Their social-chauvinist lie was precisely that the workers' interests coincided with those of the nation, and thus they betrayed the workers' class interests, betrayed proletarian internationalism and the cause of socialism.

The other camp was led by Lenin and his Bolshevik Party. This was the camp of consistent internationalism and of the proletarian revolution. Their stand was that in the context of the inter-imperialist war the proletariat must renounce any idea of national defense. They pointed out that in the imperialist countries the "national interests" meant nothing other than the interests of the ruling class, i.e., the bloodstained imperialist bourgeoisie. They raised high the banner of struggle for the class interests of the international proletariat; they raised high the banner of transforming imperialist war into a civil war of the working class of each country against its "own" bourgeoisie. The triumph of the October Revolution in Russia was precisely the triumph of this Leninist, internationalist line.

As part of the preparations for the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks waged an unrelenting struggle against the social-chauvinist betrayal of the petty-bourgeois opportunists, a struggle which entailed the exposure and condemnation of any attempt to reconcile proletarian internationalism with the patriotic and petty-bourgeois nationalist spirit.

Thus, when PCDN tries to pass off their thesis that in the imperialist countries "the class interests of the workers coincide with those of the nation" as a "lesson" of the October Revolution they are knocking on the wrong door. If they are seeking the champions of this thesis, the door pf the Kautskyite petty-bourgeois nationalists is the one to knock on.

Why then would PCDN so crudely attempt to pawn off old Kautskyite lies for the lessons of the October Revolution? As we have demonstrated in previous articles, CPC(M-L)'s nationalist program for the revolution in Canada cannot be reconciled with the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, clinging firmly to its Maoist deviations, CPC(M-L) tries to accomplish the impossible: the reconciliation of two diametrically opposite standpoints, Leninism and petty-bourgeois nationalism. And as we can see in this recent attempt in PCDN, they are willing to go a long way in twisting reality to accomplish this aim.

A Nationalist Program Against Imperialist War

In its account of what actually took place during those heroic days of October, 1917, PCDN makes two factual mistakes. These mistakes are of interest because they are both linked to definite, deep-seated ideological prejudices.

The first of these is the claim that the Russian workers and peasants led by Lenin and Stalin "refused to participate in the mutual slaughter of workers and peasants of other lands." One may think that this is just a loose way of saying that the masses fought against the war. But there is every reason to believe that meant "refusal to participate" in its literal sense.

In fact, tens of millions were driven by the Russian tsarist and imperialist regime to the front to fight and die in the trenches. Meanwhile the Bolsheviks told the masses the truth that as long as imperialism holds power, no amount of pacifist phrasemongering could bring an end to the terrible slaughter. They explained that it was a most harmful illusion to imply that the war could be ended if only enough people avoided military conscription. Rather, the masses should learn how to use their arms well for the fight against the class enemy. Thus the Bolshevik slogan was not to "refuse to participate," but to "turn the guns around" in a class war against the warring governments of all countries.

The leadership of CPC(M-L) has never accepted this lesson of the October Revolution. In one form or another they have consistently preached the thoroughly pacifist idea of "refusing to participate" or boycotting the war. They preach to the workers to abandon the war-related industries and even call on women workers to shun entering factory work in the name of depriving the imperialists of manpower for waging war. But this is simply pacifist phrasemongering to the extreme. As long as the monopoly capitalists hold the economic and political reins they will be able to compel the masses into the machinery of war. The great harm in CPC(M-L)'s propaganda for "refusal to participate" is that it creates the idea that the plans of the warmongers can be combatted without the revolutionary mass struggle, without the class war against the bourgeoisie.

This brings us to the second factual mistake which concerns the class nature of the October Revolution. PCDN writes that in the October Revolution the workers and peasants "overthrew the tsarist regime which was responsible for embroiling Russia in the war." Of course this was not the case as the tsar had been overthrown in the bourgeois-democratic February Revolution which took place over eight months prior to October. But what is noteworthy here is what has been overlooked. PCDN has overlooked that the October Revolution was a socialist revolution which overthrew the bourgeoisie. This is a factual "detail" which is vital for drawing appropriate lessons from this revolution and it is a "detail" which CPC(M-L) has good reason to be uncomfortable with.

In fact, CPC(M-L) would like to bury in a dark comer the most fundamental lesson of the October Revolution for the struggle against imperialist war. This is the principle that the fight against imperialist war must be rooted in the class struggle of the exploited masses against the bourgeoisie; it must be guided in the direction of the revolutionary mass struggle against one's "own" imperialist government; and it must be linked with the perspective of the socialist revolution. These teachings of Lenin, which were fully borne out by Red October, have enormous bearing on the present-day work of the Marxist-Leninists in the worldwide upsurge against the imperialist war preparations. They indicate the orientation to guide this work along the lines of strengthening the movement and transforming it into a colossal force against the imperialist warmakers.

CPC(M-L), however, has tossed these invaluable lessons of the October Revolution aside. In their place, it has adopted a nationalist program against imperialist war. This program rejects the class standpoint and reinforces pacifist and nationalist illusions. It replaces proletarian principles with a petty-bourgeois nationalist humbug that "genuine peace and security" are won through "defending the independence and sovereignty of the nation." It is a program that begins and ends with "the struggle to defend the independence and sovereignty of Canada."

True, in PCDN's"lessons" a reference is made to the effect that "the only way to secure peace is through revolutionary struggle against those who are the source of war." But elsewhere PCDN has explained many times over what they mean by this. Above all they mean the struggle against the foreign bourgeoisie of the U.S. and Soviet imperialist superpowers. Only in passing will struggle be mentioned against their "own" bourgeoisie, and then, nine times out of ten, only in relation to the national struggle for sovereignty.

The entire body of CPC(M-L)'s agitation and activity has been afflicted by this nationalist program. It has been geared away from the class struggle and the socialist perspective and towards, as PCDN would put it, "coinciding with the interests of the nation for peace, sovereignty and progress." In other words, towards coinciding with ordinary petty-bourgeois nationalism.

On November 7, 1917, the October Revolution marked the victory of proletarian internationalism over petty-bourgeois nationalism. PCDN has turned this upside down.

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On the path forward for the struggle against imperialist war

An American liquidator versus Leninism

The liquidators are those who paint the policy of joining with the capitalist politicians in general, and the "left" wing of the Democratic Party in particular, in "Marxist-Leninist" colors. They are called liquidators because they oppose (seek to liquidate) the very idea of the working class building up its own militant organization independent of the capitalists and the capitalists' parties and because they are renouncing their "leftist" vows of the past. Renegacy is the "in thing" among the liquidators, and they constantly mock at revolutionary theory in favor of the "realistic politics" of coming to terms with the powers that be.

In the face of growing militarism and the stepped up war preparations by the imperialists, the liquidators have given special attention to denouncing the Leninist teachings on war and peace. Yet it is Marxism-Leninism alone which tells the truth about the origins of reactionary wars in the system of capitalist exploitation and which provides the working masses with the strategy and tactics of the fight against imperialism and militarism. These teachings have been repeatedly confirmed by the experience of the world working class movement. For example, it is through following these teachings that the Bolsheviks carried out the epoch-making October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917 right in the midst of World War I and that the international communist movement spearheaded the victory over fascism in World War II. Yet the liquidators prefer to close their eyes to the truth in order to justify nestling with the smooth-talking warmongers of the Democratic Party.

Among the liquidators who spit on the Leninist teachings on war and peace is Mr. Barry Weisberg and his liquidationist newspaper Unite!Unite!, the organ of a few scattered individuals, claims to be published by the "Communist Party of the USA/Marxist-Leninist," but, as our readers are well aware, Mr. Weisberg and company are actually social-democrats. (See the series of articles in The Workers' Advocate entitled "Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement" and our pamphlet by the same name.) Nothing is more hateful to social-democracy than the revolutionary teachings of Leninism. In the past, the Unite! newspaper did its best to fight these teachings by distorting them. Today it has begun to directly denounce the various Marxist-Leninist principles as outdated and obsolete.

In this regard, the June 1982 issue of Unite! is of special interest. It carries a long article by Mr. Weisberg entitled "Stop Nuclear Blackmail by the U.S. and USSR/The Threat of Nuclear War and How to Fight It." This article was written to justify Mr. Weisberg's activities in seeking unity with the "left" section of the capitalist politicians and labor bureaucrats. The heart of this article is the denunciation of the Leninist teachings on war and peace as allegedly outdated and obsolete because of the advent of the era of nuclear weapons. The article centers its attack on such basic teachings of Leninism as that "war is the continuation of politics by other, i.e., violent, means" and "turning the imperialist war into a civil war." In this way, Mr. Weisberg tells his few followers to throw away any scruples about departing from Leninism. Step by step he is seeking to rehabilitate, so to speak, his writings and political views of a decade ago, where he openly denounced the class struggle, the revolution, the proletarian party, and Marxism. (See the discussion of Weisberg's early books and his training at the social-democratic Institute for Policy Studies in the pamphlet referred to above.)

Mr. Weisberg Denounces Leninism

One must strip away the phrasemongering to find the main themes in this article. The heart of this article is condemning the Leninist teachings. Let us see how Mr. Weisberg goes about this.

Mr. Weisberg uses the very "nuclear blackmail" that he professes to condemn. He argues that we must give up the Leninist teachings because otherwise the militarists will kill us all. He writes that:

"...short of nuclear war, imperialist war is simply a continuation of imperialist politics by other means.

"But the results of a nuclear war cannot be viewed as the same as those of a non-nuclear war. In this sense, there is a profound contradiction in wars of different degrees, contrary to what Von Clausewitz stated. A nuclear war is not merely a continuation of politics through other means. For with a nuclear war, the very continuation of politics as we have known it historically is threatened, if not obliterated....

"In such an exchange, politics would cease to exist. Classes, governments, states as we have known them would cease to exist. Such an exchange would likely sterilize the ecosphere as a life-supporting system." (Unite!, June 1982, pp. 8-9, emphasis as in the original. Unless specified otherwise, all Weisberg quotations are from this source.)

Mr. Weisberg likes this argument so much that he makes it into a central theme of his article, making sure to bring out the conclusion that all "classes, governments, states" face annihilation. He does this in order to promote the idea that class and political differences should be put aside in the face of the common danger of nuclear destruction. Rich and poor, exploiter and exploited, imperialist aggressor and fighter for liberation presumably should all unite in the face of the doom threatening them all. Of course, Mr. Weisberg won't quite come out and say so. Oh no, instead he postures that he really means something else, that of course he is for struggle, that he really does condemn the reactionaries, and so forth. But we shall see, as we proceed to analyze his arguments and correlate them with the actual practice of Mr. Weisberg and company, that this is exactly what he does mean. His talk of the annihilation of politics is precisely for the purpose of negating the class struggle and advocating unity with the enlightened ones from the enemy camp, especially with the smooth-talking politicians of the Democratic Party.

Let us now proceed to step by step strip away his rhetoric and see how he goes about propagating this stand of negating the class struggle and the revolution. To begin with, Mr. Weisberg pretends that he would allow us to condemn, say, the U.S. war of aggression in Viet Nam as the continuation of the imperialist policies of the Washington warmongers, because that was not a nuclear war. However, we are not allowed to condemn the preparations for world war as the continuation of the imperialist policies of the Washington warmongers, because that would most likely be a nuclear war.

What nonsense! The greater the tragedy of war, the more important it is to know who is responsible for it, what its real causes are, and what policies it is the continuation of. If the working people do not know which politics gives rise to the danger of nuclear war, then they will not be able to fight against this threatened catastrophe. Mr. Weisberg's lurid lectures on the results of nuclear war are no more likely to cause the Pentagon generals and other imperialists to become reasonable than the religious zealots with their signs announcing the "end of the world" are likely to eliminate sin. It is one thing to expose the coldblooded militarist propaganda for mass murder on an unprecedented scale and for a "nice little" nuclear war, and quite another thing to believe that one can scare the capitalists into renouncing war and smoothing over the class struggle. This always turns into trying to scare the people into reconciling with their exploiters.

With his guilty conscience, Mr. Weisberg pretends that he is merely expressing an innocent disagreement with Von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military historian of the early 19th century. Who would defend the theses of a Prussian militarist?

But this is a transparent fig leaf. Anyone familiar with the Leninist teachings on war and peace knows he is really going after Lenin. Lenin, in his struggle against the social-chauvinists of World War I who defended their "own" imperialist ruling classes, stressed the fundamental importance of the thesis that "war is the continuation of politics by other, violent, means." He showed that this thesis was crucial in determining the attitude of the working class movement to war. In one of his many comments on this subject, Lenin wrote:

"With reference to wars, the main thesis of dialectics... is that 'war is simply the continuation of politics by other (i.e., violent) means' Such is the formula of Clausewitz, one of the greatest writers on the history of war, whose thinking was stimulated by Hegel. And it was always the standpoint of Marx and Engels, who regarded any war as the continuation of the politics of the powers concerned -- and the various classes within these countries -- in a definite period." ("The Collapse of the Second International," Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 219, emphasis as in the original)

What Does It Mean to Deny That "War Is the Continuation of Politics by Other Means"?

What is at stake in Mr. Weisberg's shamefaced challenge of this, the "main thesis of dialectics," on war?

This Leninist thesis is the basis for anti-imperialist work in the anti-war movement. If one accepts this Leninist thesis, then one must ask which politics are leading towards imperialist war (or responsible for the present wars, such as the U.S. aggression against £1 Salvador or the brutal U.S.-Zionist trampling on Lebanon). Among other things, it then follows that one must oppose the capitalist warmongers and their two main parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. One must condemn these parties as parties of imperialist war and strive to organize the proletariat as an independent force, separate from and opposed to these capitalist parties.

If one rejects this thesis, as Mr. Weisberg does, then one is undermining the basis for a genuine anti-imperialist stand. One can then close one's eyes, as Mr. Weisberg does, to the fact that the Democratic Party -- from "liberal doves" to Dixiecrats and open reactionaries -- is united in support of U.S. imperialism and votes for gigantic war budgets. One can then ignore the fact that the "left" wing of the Democratic Party is not against militarism but only against the inefficiency of the war machine, and that it stands for a "leaner" military which gets "more firepower for the dollar." By rejecting the Leninist thesis, Mr. Weisberg is trying to create a rationale for his own treachery in uniting with the "left" wing of the Democratic Party and opposing anti-imperialist work in the anti-war movement.

Indeed, last year Barry Weisberg's newspaper Unite! went into hysterics because our Party committed the great sin, in their eyes, of denouncing the Democratic Party at a conference of 1,000 anti-draft activists in February 1981 in Detroit. At this conference, our Party, along with other anti-imperialist activists, put forward three resolutions. The first resolution denounced the two big capitalist parties, the second denounced U.S. imperialism, and the third denounced all imperialism. (These resolutions are reprinted in the article "On the work of the anti-imperialist activists at the National Anti-Draft Conference," The Workers' Advocate, April 20,1981)

Unite! screamed that these resolutions were "ultra-left" and "trotskyite." Unite! concentrated its polemic against the first resolution, which proposed that the conference take a stand that "condemns the warmongering, aggression and war preparations of both the Republican and Democratic Parties." Unite! cried out in horror that this would throw out of the movement "any politician of the Democratic and Republican parties" and that the movement, instead, "must seek to unite all those who could be united." ("1,000 Attend Anti-Draft Conference," Unite!, March 1,1981, p. 4) In another article referring to the same subject, Unite! denounced our stand as "oppos(ing) in practice the tactic of uniting all who can be united in the struggle against war and fascism." (Unite!, March 15,1981, p. 2)

Thus Unite! toadies to the Democratic Party politicians under the pretext of "uniting all those who can be united." Indeed, in an earlier editorial, Unite! denounced our Party's struggle against the influence of the Democratic Party on the mass movements as the "counter-revolutionary road (of) attacking the entire tactics of the united front." (Unite!, January 15, 1981, p. 2) Mr. Weisberg and company have replaced the class struggle with class collaboration under the pretext of "united front tactics." They replace the Leninist united front of the working masses against the class enemy with the opportunist-liquidator policy of uniting the working masses with their class enemy. This type of "united front" consists of the liquidators betraying the interests of the working class in order to hobnob with the capitalist politicians and the labor bureaucrats.

This class collaboration has been the longstanding policy of Mr. Weisberg and company. What is new in Mr. Weisberg's article is simply that now he has admitted in his own words that his policy is opposed to Leninism. Once again, he is cursing the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, just as he did a decade or so ago in his earlier works on the ecosphere.

Anti-Imperialist Struggle or Bourgeois Pacifist Hand-Wringing

In his article, Mr. Weisberg claims to be opposed to pacifism. But this is just some more of his empty posturing. Actually, by denying that the American war preparations are the continuation of imperialist politics by other means, he is severing the anti-war struggle from the class struggle and replacing anti-imperialist struggle with bourgeois pacifist hand-wringing. In this regard, Lenin wrote:

"The key to the question of pacifism...: the idea that war is not connected with capitalism, is not the continuation of the politics of peace time. In this lies the theoretical falsity; the practical one is evasion of the social revolution." ("To Inessa Armand," Collected Works, vol. 35, pp. 277-78, emphasis as in the original)

Hence it is not surprising that Mr. Weisberg's article, which casts off the political approach to the danger of nuclear war as obsolete, is full of pacifist panaceas and is saturated with a reformist approach to the question of democracy. Without saying so in so many words, it implies that it is possible to "prevent imperialist war altogether" (p. 12) -- without breaking with the capitalists or overthrowing imperialism -- by stopping all war production, democratizing the military and defeating "the tendencies represented by General Westmoreland and others -- that the military should not be subject to the policy of Congress." (p. 12) He thus gives a wrong perspective to the militant actions of the masses against war production, military research and the weapons of mass destruction: he wants to convert these actions into pacifist panaceas, and he opposes the revolutionary line of supporting them as steps in building up an anti-imperialist movement and the class independence of the masses from the capitalist imperialists.

Indeed, in his discussion of the relationship of the military to congress, we see another example of how pacifism and reformism trail impotently behind the diehard imperialists of the Democratic Party. It was the Democratic Party that tried to fool the masses and cool down the anti-war movement by saying that the passing of some War Powers Acts would prevent the possibility of any more U.S. military adventures such as that in Viet Nam. Well, the War Powers Acts were passed, yet Carter sent helicopters to raid Iran, U.S. "advisers" hunt down the insurgent masses in El Salvador (or are hunted by the insurgent masses), the U.S. is preparing an invasion of Nicaragua, and recently U.S.-zionist aggression swept across Lebanon (although this was after Mr. Weisberg had written his article). Nevertheless, Mr. Weisberg has faith in the impotent panaceas of the Democratic Party "doves." He even believes that at present the Congress controls the military machine, although the independence of the military, the intelligence agencies and the executive branch from the Congressional talk shop has been exposed by even mildly liberal and thoroughly non-revolutionary journalists. Apparently Mr. Weisberg also believes that the Marxist theory of the state and critique of bourgeois democratic republics is also obsolete.

A Movement With No Enemies

Mr. Weisberg's denial that "war is the continuation of politics by other means" is the theoretical basis for his pacifism and reformism. He replaces the Leninist teachings with pacifist hand-wringing and insists that the crucial thing is that nuclear war will obliterate all classes, all governments, and all politics "as we have known them." He clearly implies that all classes, workers and capitalists alike, and all governments, revolutionary or counter-revolutionary alike, have a common interest in preventing war. If the capitalists and warmongers don't understand this, then they must be educated about the dangers of nuclear annihilation.

This is the old pacifist refrain that "we are all victims," both the oppressor and the oppressed, both the rich and the poor, both the aggressor and the fighter for liberation and freedom. It is the concept of building an anti-war movement that "has no enemy," that strikes at no one, that is reduced to pious moralizing. Today this empty pacifism has become the stock in trade of most imperialist politicians. They have learned how to talk about the inhumanity of war, about their "sincere" desire for peace, about how their heart throbs at the sight of suffering humanity -- while voting for gigantic military budgets.

But Mr. Weisberg would have us believe that he, at least, would allow us to have a political approach to non-nuclear wars. He says that he only denies that "war is the continuation of politics by other means" for nuclear war.

What a transparent fraud! Can one really divide wars of aggression into those that are the continuation of imperialist politics by other means and those that aren't?

No. Of course not! Mr. Weisberg himself says that "the fight to prevent a nuclear war is indeed the struggle to prevent all imperialist war and aggression by the superpowers." (p. 12) From the context, it is clear that this means that he is putting forward his anti-Leninist class collaboration and pacifist hand-wringing as the way to fight all imperialist war by the superpowers. Moreover, his formula is the exact opposite of the truth. One should say instead: there can be no real fight against the threat of world war unless one fights against each and every U.S. aggression around the world.

Renouncing the Socialist Revolution

In his article, Mr. Weisberg not only denounces Lenin's teaching that "war is the continuation of politics by other means," but he also denounces Lenin's slogan of "turning the imperialist war into a civil war." He pontificates that:

"...it is imperative to recognize that the fight to prevent a nuclear war is indeed the struggle to prevent all imperialist war and aggression by the superpowers. For once an imperialist war breaks out between the U.S. and the USSR the logic of escalation would mead nuclear annihilation. That is why to stop the nuclear blackmail, our chief concern cannot be to prepare to turn an imperialist war into a civil war, but to prevent imperialist war altogether." (p. 12)

Once one recalls that "turning the imperialist war into a civil war" was the slogan of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, one sees what a disgusting slander Weisberg has cast on the history of the working class movement. Are we to believe that Lenin and Stalin and the heroic proletarian internationalist workers in World War I failed to realize that it was possible to "prevent imperialist war altogether" and so passively sat on their hands and allowed the world war to come about? Are we to believe that the Communist International failed to understand that it was necessary to fight Against the outbreak of war and so frivolously waited passively for the outbreak of World War II? Or are we to believe that Mr. Weisberg has found the miraculous key that can "prevent imperialist war altogether" without the "civil war" of socialist revolution that overthrows imperialism?

No, when Mr. Weisberg counterposes "prepar(ing) to turn an imperialist war into a civil war' ' to working to prevent war, this is just a subterfuge. The issue is not that preparing for the socialist revolution means abandoning the struggle against the outbreak of war. The issue is: along what lines does one work in the anti-war movement? Does one pursue the bourgeois pacifist and liquidator approach of uniting the anti-militarist masses with the "left" wing of the Democratic Party politicians and labor bureaucrats? This is an approach that disarms the masses and facilitates the approach of imperialist war. Or does one work on revolutionary lines to ensure the class independence of the proletariat and hasten the socialist revolution?

Mr. Weisberg has renounced the revolution and renounced the line of revolutionary struggle. That is the significance of his denunciation of Lenin's formula of "turning the imperialist war into a civil war."

A Repetition of the Timeworn Revisionist Claptrap of Khrushchov and Company

In his article, Mr. Weisberg poses as a discoverer of new truths and a farsighted pathfinder. But his denunciation of Leninism as unsuited for the nuclear age is simply a repetition of the timeworn claptrap of modern revisionism. In the last few decades, various trends of revisionism have arose that claim to be "communist" but that have discarded Leninism ("revised" it) as outdated and obsolete. The revisionists renounce the revolution, replace the class struggle with class collaboration and seek ways to nestle up to the capitalist politicians. Weisberg's social-democratic strategy of allying with the "left" wing of the Democratic Party bears much in common with the ideas of the modem revisionists. Even his particular arguments about nuclear annihilation are nothing new. Mr. Weisberg has simply been repeating word for word what various of the revisionist chieftains had already said before him.

For example, several years after World War II the Yugoslav revisionists denounced Lenin's theses on war and peace on the pretext of the existence of nuclear weapons. They too claimed that the basic Leninist principle that "war is the continuation of politics by other means" was outdated. These ideas were part of the ideological foundation of their policy of allying with U.S. imperialism against the socialist and revolutionary forces of that time. Their ideas found an echo in the theorizing of the Italian revisionist Palmiro Togliatti, the grandfather of "Eurocommunism."

But it was the Soviet revisionist Khrushchov who became best known for denouncing the Leninist theses on war and peace on the pretext of the existence of nuclear weapons. Khrushchov and company seized power in the Soviet Union and overthrew the socialism that existed in the days of Lenin and Stalin. As part of this program, they denounced the revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism in favor of the stand of class collaboration with U.S. imperialism on the pretext of the need to avoid the nuclear destruction of the world. Khrushchov and his successors, such as Brezhnev codified these ideas into a full-blown renegade program to sabotage the struggle against imperialism and war. They denounced the Leninist teachings as outdated and obsolete.

For example, preceding Mr. Weisberg by some twenty years, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) put it as follows:

"We also soberly appraise the radical, qualitative change of the means of waging war and, consequently, its potential consequences. Nuclear rocket weapons, created in the middle of our century, changed old concepts about war." (Open Letter of the CPSU to All Party Organizations and All Communists of the Soviet Union, July 14, 1963, Crosscurrents Press, N.Y., p. 14)

By "old concepts about war," the Soviet revisionists meant Leninism. They replaced Leninism with the conclusion that one must abandon the revolution. National liberation wars and proletarian uprisings were denounced as "sparks" that might start a world conflagration. The Soviet revisionists threatened the communists and people of the world with the specter of the atomic bomb. For example, when the heroic Party of Labor of Albania stood up in favor of anti-imperialist struggle against the policy of betrayal followed by the Khrushchovites under the pretext of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism, the Khrushchovites threatened them with "nuclear blackmail." Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out at the Moscow Meeting of 1960, where he confronted the Soviet revisionists, that:

"They say that we are in favor of war and against coexistence. Comrade Kozlov has even put to us, Albanians, this alternative: either coexistence, as he conceives it, or an atomic bomb from the imperialists, which would turn Albania to ashes and leave no Albanian alive. Until now, no representative of U.S. imperialism has made such atomic threat against the Albanian people. But here it is, and from a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...." (Enver Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. H, p. 804)

While threatening the revolutionaries of the world with nuclear catastrophe and accusing them of being in favor of war, the Soviet revisionists prettified the imperialists. They said that the heads of imperialist countries were "reasonable" and "enlightened" men who sought to avoid the threat of nuclear destruction. The threat of war was alleged to come not from the capitalist exploiters or the imperialist governments, but from simply a few "madmen." World problems were supposed to be solved by the U.S. and the Soviet Union peacefully dividing up the world between themselves.

Just like Mr. Weisberg today, the Soviet revisionists concluded that there must be class collaboration because the atomic bomb will annihilate all classes. The Open Letter from the CC of the CPSU that we cited above continued as follows:

"All peaceloving forces unite in the struggle to avert war. In their class composition and in their class interests they differ, but they can be united by the struggle for peace, for averting war because the atomic bomb adheres to no class principle -- it destroys everybody within the range of its devastating action." (p. 15)

These ideas remain the guiding principles of Soviet revisionism today. Bourgeois pacifism serves them as a screen to cover their social-imperialism and their preparations for world war, just as it serves U.S. imperialism in the same way. Far from ensuring peace, the pacifist and class collaborationist ideas of Soviet revisionism only increased the danger of war. Their collaboration with U.S. imperialism proved to be only the flip side of their deadly rivalry with U.S. imperialism for world domination. While the Soviet Union in the days of Lenin and Stalin, the days that it upheld the world revolution, restrained the warmongers of world imperialism, the Soviet Union of Khrushchov and Brezhnev, at a time when it preaches pacifism instead of revolution, is itself a dangerous source of imperialist war.

Trailing Behind Revisionist Romania

Meanwhile Mr. Weisberg himself inadvertently confesses to the similarity of his ideas to those of the modern revisionists. In his article, Mr. Weisberg praises Romania, and not for the first time. He declares that this revisionist country is an example of anti-war struggle. He writes: "Romania began to take independent positions, and actually organized anti-war activity against both superpowers." (p. 6)

But Romania is an example of the worst sort of pacifist sugarcoating of revisionist counter-revolution. It does not oppose Soviet social-imperialism, but takes part in the revisionist bloc, only demanding somewhat bigger crumbs. It does not oppose U.S. imperialism, but demonstrates its "independence" of Soviet revisionism by such means as its notorious huge enthusiastic welcomes to the U.S. imperialist butcher Nixon. Its so-called demonstrations against war are directed against neither of the two superpowers, as it cannot afford to alienate either one -- it gets loans from the imperialist bloc of the West and is integrated into the social-imperialist bloc of the East. And this is what Mr. Weisberg regards as an encouraging example of antiwar struggle!

Nor is this the first time that Unite! has praised Romania. This has been a continual theme of this newspaper.

But to support the stand of Romania means to support, say, the general line of Titoite Yugoslavia, which also talks of "reducing tensions" in the world without denouncing the imperialism of anyone. It is roughly the equivalent of supporting the general stand of European social-democracy -- such as the "left" wing of the British Labor Party or of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany -- which also try to throw dust in the eyes of the masses by claiming to stand for peace without condemning imperialism. It shows how far the denial of the Leninist teachings leads one.

Talking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

Nevertheless, in order to hide his treachery, Mr. Weisberg tries to look oh-so leftist. At various points in his article, he throws in phrase after phrase about the need to target imperialism, about how "the struggle for peace must be linked with revolutionary struggle" (p. 11) and so forth. Indeed, on the surface this article would appear to the unsuspecting reader as one of the most leftist articles ever in Weisberg's flabby journal. This is because Mr. Weisberg finds himself forced to twist and turn and maneuver in the face of such factors as the anti-imperialist sentiment in the mass movement. So he has written an article designed mainly to explain to his few followers how to reconcile his flimsy policy of class collaboration and unity with the liberal Democrats with the need to adopt some anti-imperialist camouflage. Thus it is interesting to note some of the methods that Weisberg uses to clothe his propaganda for capitulation in militant garb.

To begin with, all the "anti-imperialism" in 'the article is simply a ruse to fool the unwary reader. In fact, one of Mr. Weisberg's main aims in the article is to justify removing all anti-imperialist content from the anti-war movement. In the practical agitation of Mr. Weisberg and company, agitation against imperialism is toned down to the point that it essentially disappears. Thus this article is to serve to justify even jettisoning the very term "anti-imperialism" and replacing it, in the main, with such weaker terms as opposing "nuclear blackmail." This is why "the very title of Mr. Weisberg's article identifies the way to fight nuclear war as "stop(ping) nuclear blackmail" and not as fighting imperialism. Of course, "fighting nuclear blackmail" can mean anything, depending on the context. What Mr. Weisberg means is lecturing about the destructiveness of nuclear weapons. After all, the Democratic Party politicians will not consent to denounce U.S. imperialism, but many of them are quite happy to engage in pious hand-wringing over the horrors of nuclear war and to sit on the same platform with those who fight "nuclear blackmail" in the way that Mr. Weisberg recommends.

Thus a notable feature of the article is its innumerable contradictions. The article says one thing in one place, and the opposite somewhere else. A paragraph will start by talking of one thing, and end by drawing a conclusion about another thing. Vagueness, confusion, ambiguity, and diversion are its stock in trade.

For example, on page four Mr. Weisberg denounces various versions of the "nuclear freeze" proposals and talks about the "avalanche of 'peace' proposals to bury the rising struggle of the people against the two superpowers." Yet it seems that his right hand knows not what his left hand doth do, because in just the previous paragraph he enthusiastically hailed this very same "avalanche," saying that the "nuclear freeze" agitation is part of "the people of the world -- more and more rising up in struggle against the two superpowers and...world imperialism and reaction as a whole." He goes so far as to grovel before the capitalist politicians who have "conducted hearings on the threat of nuclear war" in "hundreds of cities."

This same contradiction occurs all over again later in the article. Once again he poses as an anti-imperialist and says that: "There is a flurry of demogogic proposals for disarmament, a nuclear freeze.... Their aim is to ensure that the growing anti-war movement does not assume an anti-imperialist character." (p. 9) But what then are we to think of Mr. Weisberg's own aim, for a little further on he reiterates his support for the referendums and legislation that embody these very same "proposals for disarmament" and "nuclear freeze," telling us that ' 'the continued efforts to achieve legislation, local resolutions and related efforts are useful...." (p. 11)

Similarly, on page 11 he pontificates that "Marches which merely make a call for 'peace' do not serve this purpose." What a militant! But we recall that on page 4 he waxed eloquent over the role of "hearings on the threat of nuclear war" held by the bourgeois politicians which, generally speaking, did not even get to the level of calling for "peace."

Or again, the article claims in various places to advocate the importance of an anti-imperialist stand. It says: "it is important...to understand deeply the origins of the nuclear arms race and the politics of its development. Only upon this foundation can we correctly prepare to give the current day anti-war movement a definite anti-imperialist content and insure that it develops in a bold, revolutionary manner which attacks the real sources of the problem." (p. 5) The article then proceeds to ramble on at random on this theme, wandering aimlessly from talk of which scientists discovered this or that fact about nuclear fission to a general discussion of classes.

Yet the basic theme of the article, stated over and over, is that Lenin's thesis that "war is the continuation of politics by other means" is outdated. This thesis of Lenin's meant that it is not sufficient to wring one's hands at the horror of war, but one must examine the origins of war, the politics that gives rise to war, and the real sources of the problem. Mr. Weisberg opposes this by stressing over and over again a distinction between the "causes" of nuclear war and the "effects" of nuclear war. According to the article, our attention must be focused on educating people about the horrors of war, the effects of war. He stresses that, in his opinion, the advent of nuclear weapons has brought about an entirely new situation that allegedly makes the old political approach to war obsolete.

Or take a final example. Mr. Weisberg assures us, tongue in cheek, that he believes that "Lenin provided an analysis of imperialism and imperialist war which remain completely valid today." (p. 7) Yet in the very same passage he concludes by denouncing Lenin's thesis on "war is the continuation of politics by other means." And elsewhere in his article he emphatically denounces the idea of "turning the imperialist war into a civil war." He says that these concepts are obsolete in the era of nuclear weapons.

The reason for these crying contradictions is the fundamentally false position which all liquidators find themselves in. On one hand, Mr. Weisberg must present himself as "Marxist-Leninist," while on the other hand he is straining all his efforts to find every excuse for collaborating with the capitalist politicians and labor bureaucrats. As a result, he becomes just as devious and two-faced as the typical capitalist politician himself.

His contradictions reveal a guilty conscience. He denounces pacifism in one breath, and chases after all the pacifist panaceas in the next. He praises anti-imperialism over and over, while leaving the escape hatch that supposedly what "anti-imperialism" means in practice is trailing after "Ground Zero" week, voting for "nuclear freeze" referendums, uniting with all the capitalist politicians who can be united, and so forth. He denounces all sorts of proposals and "isms" and even some individual politicians, while refusing to say a single word against the Democratic Party per se, which is the main vehicle used by the capitalists to bring these negative influences into the anti-war movement. This is the typical corrupt method of the social-democrat, denounced by Lenin in his article The Collapse of the Second International, of being militant for show and in high-sounding declarations while being a docile servant of the bourgeoisie and a servile bootlicker on any issue that counts, anytime it comes down to actually taking part in fighting the bourgeoisie.

In Conclusion

The treachery of the modern revisionists and the liquidators serves to underline the necessity of upholding the revolutionary teachings of Marxism-Leninism. It is Marxism-Leninism that teaches how to organize the workers and oppressed people of the world into the real bulwark against imperialism and war. It is Marxism-Leninism that shows the path forward to liberation from the hell of capitalist exploitation and imperialist war. In denouncing the Marxist-Leninist teachings on war and peace, Mr. Weisberg has only succeeded in exposing once again the social-democratic essence of present-day liquidationism.

[Cartoon.]

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On the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of China

Revisionist China in a Quagmire

From September 1 to September 11, the Communist Party of China held its 12th National Congress. This Congress offered yet another revealing exposure of the revisionist and thoroughly counter-revolutionary nature of the Chinese leaders. It provided a graphic picture of the disaster which revisionism has brought to China. It brought together in one place a whole series of the latest policies and theories of Chinese revisionism, showing that the Chinese leaders are sworn enemies of revolution and socialism.

The Congress adopted the most rightist policies on domestic and foreign affairs. It resolved to step up the consolidation of capitalist rule at home. It proposed to give greater economic and political power to the private capitalists and to further enrich the party and state bureaucrats. For the working masses, it only promised more exploitation and poverty.

In foreign policy, the 12th Congress dropped even any phrasemongering about support for the world revolutionary movements or the struggle against revisionism. Instead the CPC pledged to continue China's alliance with world imperialism and in particular reaffirmed that China remains committed to the U.S.-China alliance. While doing so, the Congress however sanctified a new twist that has been developing over the last few years in Chinese foreign policy. It toned down the CPC's criticism of the Soviet Union, dropping any reference to it as a social-imperialist or revisionist power. Instead, the Congress adopted a Tito-style "non-bloc" phraseology. This was an indication of China's interest to maneuver with the Soviet social-imperialists, adding a new step in China's participation in the dance of imperialist alliances.

The 12th Congress also recorded the triumph of the Deng Xiaoping faction in the ongoing factional conflicts among the various ultra-revisionists who seized power in the coup d'etat after Mao Zedong's death in 1976. Hua Guofeng, who took over as Chairman of the Party after Mao, had already been demoted several years ago. Now he was also dropped from the Political Bureau and its Standing Committee, the top two bodies of the CPC. Deng's victory was also marked by a complete condemnation of the so-called Cultural Revolution. Indeed, Hua Guofeng was reproached for having failed to fully condemn the "Cultural Revolution" and for allegedly continuing its leftist orientations. The Congress also repudiated Mao's role in leading the "Cultural Revolution," but it avowed its loyalty to the body of the revisionist ideology of Mao Zedong Thought. Indeed, the rightist policies promoted by Deng Xiaoping and his cronies are all based on Mao's theories, especially those from the 1950's.

It is instructive to note the response of the revisionist and opportunist currents in the U.S. to the latest Chinese party Congress. The League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L), today the main official pro-Chinese group in the U.S. left after the collapse of the "Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)," was generally enthusiastic about the 12th Congress, proudly hailing the capitalist program of the CPC as a great new step of socialism. However, the new twist in Chinese foreign policy towards the Soviet Union put these pro-Chinese "three worlders" in an awkward position. For years, they have hitched themselves to the Chinese revisionist propaganda of fighting the Soviet Union as the greatest danger, but the latest Congress did not repeat this formula. So the LRS(M-L) simply chose to lie about the Chinese policies. In an article on China's foreign policy, a recent issue of Unity, the newspaper of LRS(M-L), reassured its readers that China still considers the Soviet Union as "the main source of war" and that the Chinese have not dropped any of their criticisms of the Soviet Communist Party. (October 29, 1982) But interestingly enough, LRS(M-L) refused to claim that the Chinese still consider the Soviet Union to be revisionist or social- imperialist.

The new Chinese flirtations with the Soviet Union have also earned the 12th Congress generous treatment from several pro-Soviet groups. The newspaper of the official pro-Soviet "Communist" Party of the USA, the Daily World, in a major article on September 11, approved of the rightist domestic policies adopted at the 12th Congress as well as China's dropping of the denunciation of Russia as social-imperialist. The "C"PUSA only mildly reproached the CPC for its continued criticism of some of the Soviet Union's policies. Meanwhile, the trotskyite Workers World Party, which has been loudly campaigning for Soviet-Chinese rapprochement for years, only saw fit to criticize the 12th Congress for its ouster of Hua Guofeng. However, it went on to make the preposterous claim that "Even the Deng grouping has been forced to pull back on its most rightward moves.'' From this assessment, the WWP chose to remind us all that China has not "regressed to the point of being a capitalist country.'' (September 17, 1982)

Both the pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet opportunists are united on the assessment that China remains socialist. Let us then go on to see, through a study of the main features of the 12th Congress, what kind of "socialism" exists in China.

Revisionism Has Brought Disaster to the Chinese People

In 1949, the anti-imperialist democratic revolution won victory in China. China broke free of imperialist enslavement and smashed the centuries-old oppression of the vast millions of its peasantry. As a result of the revolution, a series of important reforms were carried out. Land was distributed to the peasants. Famine, the ancient scourge of the Chinese countryside, was wiped out. Industrial development was initiated on a fairly wide scale. Disease and pestilence were eradicated. Literacy and education were brought to the millions of toiling masses.

The revolution greatly weakened the power of the big bourgeoisie as well. But only the uninterrupted development of the revolution towards socialism could have ensured a path for the abolition of all exploitation of man by man and the all-round development of the country. However, the Maoist leadership of the Communist Party of China prevented the revolution from going over to its socialist stage. They allowed the bourgeoisie to maintain a share of political and economic power. For many years, the Chinese leaders tried to pursue a "third road" between capitalism and socialism. But this pipe dream inevitably collapsed altogether. In the 1970's, the Chinese leaders set forth on the road of extension and full consolidation of capitalist rule. In foreign policy, China turned from a force against imperialism towards an alliance with it.

So what have been the results of this course for China? The Political Report given at the 12th Congress by Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, provided an exposure of the bankruptcy currently faced by the Chinese leadership. Although Hu offered only a few glimpses, the facts that he did bring out amply reveal the utter disaster which revisionism has brought to China.

Half a decade ago, when the ultra-revisionists Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng seized power in China, they launched pompous slogans about how their plans for a speedy consolidation of capitalist rule would achieve all sorts of miracles within a few short years. But the 12th Congress was forced to admit that the economic situation in China is nothing but disastrous. Speaking of the economy as a whole, while Hu made a passing and totally unsubstantiated remark that the economy "has grown steadily," he laid special stress on the fact that "In many fields, however, the economic results have been far from satisfactory." (All quotes of Hu's Report are from Beijing Review, September 13,1982)

Hu especially singled out the agriculture, transport and energy sectors as being especially problematic parts of the Chinese economy. This is a revealing exposure of the fiasco of the Maoist dogmas about economic development which denounced the experience of industrialization in the then-socialist Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin as allegedly slighting agriculture and light industry in favor of heavy industry. Now it turns out, years after following the Maoist road, that not only is agriculture in bad shape, but also transport and heavy industry are also very backward.

The economic situation in present-day China is so bad that Hu was forced to acknowledge that the prospects for the entire next decade look very gloomy. He declared that "it will not be possible for the national economy to develop very fast in this decade." Of course, like any lying bourgeois politician, Hu did not fail to promise pie in the sky sometime in the future... far in the future. He promised that in the 1990's, if all goes well, "we will witness an all-round upsurge in China's economy." What rot!

Hu Yaobang also admitted that on the social and cultural front, the situation in China is abysmal. Indeed, a whole chapter of his Report was devoted to an exhortation to "strive to build a high level of socialist spiritual civilization."

In this regard, Hu made an interesting revelation about the cultural standards achieved in China by the revisionists. He reiterated a 1980 decision of the Chinese party and government to aim to achieve universal primary education by 1990. Just imagine! Over three decades have gone by since the People's Republic of China was established, but the Chinese revisionists cannot even claim to have achieved universal primary education! This is a striking exposure of the utter bankruptcy of Chinese revisionism in meeting the most elementary needs of the masses. Hu admitted also that this task is especially difficult in "China's vast rural areas." This is also an interesting revelation. Mao and the other Chinese leaders claimed that their policies of a special "Chinese road to socialism" would especially benefit the Chinese peasantry, but it turns out that they weren't even able to bring primary education to the peasants.

What is even more notable is Hu's admissions about the grave social crisis among the Chinese masses. He complained that the post-revolutionary enthusiasm has disappeared and instead "many serious problems of social conduct now exist in our country.'' A few examples of this were given, such as a significant crime rate and such "unhealthy tendencies and practices as benefiting oneself at others' expense, pursuing private interests at the expense of public interests, loving ease and despising work, putting money first in everything...." Hu, of course, failed to note that these are nothing but the natural accompaniments of the capitalist road the Chinese leaders have been pursuing. Hu can make any number of hypocritical moral exhortations as he wants, but the fact remains that as long as capitalism reigns in China these social phenomena are inevitable.

Hu also pointed out that "many vile social evils which had long ago been stamped out in New China... have now cropped out again." He did not specify these, but it is widely known that such medieval practices as female infanticide, the buying and selling of brides, etc., are widespread in present-day China. As well, the Chinese leaders' open-door policy towards imperialism has virtually flooded the masses with degenerate imperialist culture including drugs.

In sum, China today shows none of the hallmarks of a forward-moving socialist society but all the well-known features of a decaying capitalist social order. So much for the great benefits which revisionism has brought to China!

Speeding Along the Road Towards the Complete Consolidation of Capitalism

Of course, the 12th Congress of the CPC did not seek the causes of the present impasse in China in the revisionist road of theirs. Instead, it charted out the path of speeding up even faster the consolidation of the revisionist capitalist system.

One of the key policies advocated by the Congress was to give more political and economic power to the private capitalist elements. While claiming that China is a socialist country, the 12th Congress Report shied away from describing the state power as a dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, it was characterized as a "people's democratic dictatorship." While in one footnote to the Congress Report printed in Beijing Review there is a claim that this is equivalent to the dictatorship of the proletariat, the real class content of the "people's democratic dictatorship" in China is more aptly revealed in the following remark by Hu: "With regard to all China's democratic parties, non-party democrats, national minority personages and patriots in religious circles, our Party will continue to adhere to the policy of 'long term coexistence and mutual supervision'...." This slogan is of course the same notorious slogan of the opportunist 8th Congress of the CPC in 1956 (which was also repeated in Mao's 1957 speech "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People"). This was devised by the Chinese leaders to justify a policy of the Communist Party eternally sharing power with parties of the bourgeoisie. (The so-called 'democratic parties' were originally the small parties of the bourgeois opposition to the Kuomintang prior to the Revolution.) By restoring this slogan, the 12th Congress is spelling out the intentions of the Chinese revisionists to give more of a share in the state to the private capitalist elements, their political parties, the priests, etc.

On the economic front, the 12th Congress called for increasing the private capitalist sector and for dismantling even further various parts of the state-capitalist sector. In particular, Hu called for stepping up the development of "diverse economic forms," which is nothing but a euphemism for expanding the private sector. Hu added: "We must also encourage the appropriate development of the individual economy of urban and rural working people as a necessary and useful complement to the public economy.... "

With respect to encouraging "diverse economic forms," Hu made an interesting although somewhat cryptic remark. He said, "Cooperatives financed by young people and other residents have spread to many urban areas in the past few years and played a useful' role. The Party and government should support and guide them and forbid discrimination or attacks against them from any quarter." The cooperatives Hu is referring to here are not the cooperatives set up after the Revolution to draw in the old strata of peddlers, artisans, etc., but just a fancy name for the new peddling establishments, like sidewalk food stalls, etc., which have cropped up in China's cities as a form of disguised unemployment. Hu's call therefore is simply a call to encourage the marginal sector which is common to the cities of all the underdeveloped capitalist countries. Everywhere this sector is a manifestation of deep unemployment and poverty. So too in China. Incidentally, aside from this remark, Hu did not make any pronouncements about solving the massive unemployment that exists in today's China -- street peddling is the solution being held out for the unemployed!

Side by side with the general encouragement of the private sector, the 12th Congress also promoted the policy of increasing the role of market regulation as opposed to the state planning system. In this regard, Hu said: "In the past few years, we have initiated a number of reforms in the economic system by extending the powers of enterprises in planning and by giving scope to the role of market regulation." This policy is nothing but the road of adopting more and more open features of capitalist economics in the name of "modernization." It cannot resolve the problems caused by the capitalist character of the system of planning in China but will only intensify the crisis by further expanding the anarchy of the capitalist economy.

Such are the major features of the "readjustment" and "reform" planned by the Chinese revisionists for the next decade on the economic front. No wonder they cannot declare much prospects for the next ten years. After all, all the capitalist economies have these features and these have not helped them escape the deep economic crisis.

But, while pledging to expand the private capitalist sector, the 12th Congress did not fail to call for further enriching the bureaucrats in the party and state. Hu called for taking "effective measures to improve, steadily and group by group, the living and working conditions of middle-aged intellectuals, who play a backbone role in production, construction and all other fields."

As for the working masses of China, the Congress only assured continued exploitation and poverty. The following remark stood in stark contrast to Hu's concern for the bureaucrats: "As for those problems concerning the people's daily life which can be solved by spending very little or even no money, leaders at all levels must take even more energetic measures to solve them." After this lecture, Hu had the nerve to glibly add: "Concern for the well-being of the people is a fine tradition of our Party, which we should never neglect."

Complete Opposition to the Revolutionary Movements Worldwide

The Report to the 12th Congress was completely shameless in its opposition to the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and oppressed peoples around the world. Indeed, unlike even the 11th Congress, there wasn't even a few words of phrasemongering on this question, although the Report spoke at length on international affairs. There was not one word about the struggles of the working class anywhere. There was next to nothing on the national liberation struggles. The Report simply confined itself to a few hypocritical words about supporting "all victim countries and peoples in their struggles against aggression."

The fact that the subject of the world revolutionary movement was omitted by the Chinese revisionists shows their ultra-reactionary nature. How can a party of "communists" declare its basic policies and avoid even a hint of concern for the struggles of the workers and oppressed masses? However, the omission of this subject was not-mere whim. Deng Xiaoping and the other revisionist scabs had their reasons for doing away with even a bit of revolutionary phrasemongering. They wanted to eliminate all obstacles to their cooperation with world imperialism and reaction against the toiling masses worldwide. Truly, the 12th Congress was a Congress not of revolution, but of cynical capitalist reaction.

The Chinese revisionists also treated the struggle against revisionism with total disdain. In fact, even the word revisionism was not seen anywhere in the Congress Report. This is not surprising either since not only has the Chinese party adopted revisionism wholesale, but it has also taken many steps to reconcile with all the revisionist currents around the world.

Indeed, the Report enunciated plans for further amalgamation with the revisionist and opportunist currents. Thus it spoke of building up the relations with "other Communist and working-class parties." By this it did not of course mean the genuine communist and working class parties but the fake "Communist" and social-democratic parties. Indeed, for some time, China has been avidly following this policy. It has already established relations with the Yugoslav revisionists, the Italian and Spanish Eurorevisionists, the social-democratic party of Mitterrand in France, etc. And shortly after the 12th Congress, the CPC reestablished formal relations with the revisionist Communist Party of France. This event had a special significance. It indicated that the CPC was not only willing to establish relations with those revisionist parties who make a point of opposing various Soviet foreign policies like the Italians and Spanish, but also with those who in general support Soviet foreign policies, like the French. This also opens the way for the reestablishment of party-to-party relations with the Soviet party itself. In fact, the 12th Congress itself indicated that it considers the Soviet revisionist party to be part of China's conception of the "international communist movement.'' Hu's Report complained about a certain communist party's "armed intervention in other countries'' as something that "can only undermine the very foundation of the international communist movement," clearly a not-so-veiled reference to the Russian revisionists.

The 12th Congress also resolved to "establish similar contacts with a greater number of progressive parties and organizations." In short, the CPC is flaunting that its basic policy in the field of international political contacts will be unity and cooperation with any opportunist, bourgeois and counter-revolutionary trend, since it is well known that they have long broken with the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist forces worldwide.

China and the Dance of Imperialist Alliances

All of China's revisionist policies are aimed at transforming the country into a big capitalist-imperialist power in its own right. In the sphere of foreign policy this has two key components: first, an alliance with imperialism both for purposes of attracting foreign capital and engaging in imperialist world politics against the revolution, and second, neo-colonial exploitation of the dependent and oppressed countries for drawing imperialist profits itself.

Thus, under the banner of "modernization" the Chinese rulers have opened up the country to the U.S., Japanese and other Western imperialists. Foreign multinationals, such as the U.S. oil monopolies, have been invited in to plunder China and reap big profits from the low-paid Chinese labor. The imperialist bankers have also awarded China with billions of dollars in credits which is paid back with interest sweated out of the poverty-stricken Chinese laboring masses.

And what did the 12th Congress have to say on this? Full speed ahead. It called for stepping up even further the plunder of the country by the imperialist sharks. Hu elaborated: "We must as far as possible make more use of foreign funds available for our national construction." The Congress also urged the extension of contacts at all levels of the country with the imperialists: "We must stimulate the initiative of various localities, departments and enterprises in their foreign business dealings."

At the core of China's alliance with imperialism remains the reactionary U.S.-China alliance. The 12th Congress pledged to further develop the relations between Washington and Beijing. Significantly, simultaneous with the Congress, the arch-reactionary war criminal Richard Nixon was again invited and wined and dined by the Chinese leaders.

As is well known, the relations between the U.S. and Chinese governments are not limited to an economic "open-door" policy towards American capital but also extend to political and military collaboration against the revolutionary movements and against the Soviet social-imperialists. Thus the 12th Congress' declarations about continued support for the struggle of the Afghan and Cambodian peoples against foreign occupation signify nothing but a pledge to continue the closely coordinated policies of Washington and Beijing to hitch those peoples to Western imperialism.

For purposes of demagogy, the 12th Congress went through the usual song and dance about U.S. relations with Taiwan being a thorn in the side of the full flowering of the U.S.-China alliance. But actions speak louder than words. Taiwan remains a U.S. neo-colonial outpost while the Chinese leaders remain locked in a loving embrace with U.S. imperialism.

While pledging loyalty to the alliance with U.S. imperialism, the 12th Congress formalized a new twist that has been developing for awhile in China's foreign policy towards the Soviet Union. This is worth examining in a little bit of detail.

This is the policy of flirtation with the Russian social-imperialists. For over a year now, the Soviet revisionists have repeatedly emphasized their desire to "normalize relations" with China. The 12th Congress indicated that China is interested in responding to the Soviet feelers. Maneuvering with the Soviet Union is useful to the Chinese leaders to see what bargains can be struck with Moscow as well as for pressuring the U.S. to make further concessions towards them.

This new twist in foreign policy was shown by the CPC adopting a Tito-style "non-bloc" rhetoric. According to this rhetoric, a verbal policy of "equidistance" from the two superpowers is preached while dropping any condemnation of the superpowers as imperialist or reactionary. Mild complaints are made instead about the superpowers practicing inequality in international relations. Thus, Hu's Report made claims about China "never attach(ing) itself to any big power or group of powers," of pursuing an "independent foreign policy," etc. Overall, the Report tried to "balance" its treatment of the superpowers. While in the not-so-distant past, the Chinese revisionists gave strident calls for a "united front" with U.S. imperialism against the so- called main enemy, the Soviet Union, the 12th congress eliminated any reference to the Soviet Union as the main enemy. In fact, it dropped the characterization of the Soviet Union as social-imperialist as well. What this essentially means is that prettification of the Soviet social-imperialists has been added to the ongoing embellishment of U.S. imperialism. After all, the Congress also dropped any explicit references to the U.S. as imperialist too.

Since the 12th Congress, there have been further signs of the desire of the Chinese leaders to maneuver with the Moscow rulers. High-level discussions for the normalization of relations have begun for some time now. And on the occasion of the Brezhnev funeral, the Chinese rulers really started to warm up. They sent a high-ranking representative, Foreign Minister Huang Hua, to attend the funeral. Huang called Brezhnev "an outstanding statesman" whose memory is supposedly held in "reverence" by the Chinese people. On his return to Beijing, Huang declared that he was "optimistic" about the outcome of the talks between the two revisionist countries.

But while these maneuvers go on, the Chinese leaders have repeatedly made clear that for the present they remain committed to the alliance with U.S. imperialism. Nevertheless, the new twists in Chinese foreign policy and the rhetoric of the 12th Congress have helped to show up the real, sordid character of China's foreign alliances. In the past, the Chinese revisionists tried to hide their dirty maneuvers with imperialism under the cover of "anti-imperialist" and "revolutionary" phrasemongering. Now all that has been dropped overboard. They have brought into the open that their relations with the U.S. and the Soviet Union are not a matter of some clever revolutionary strategy but naked power politics, merely the pragmatic dance of imperialist alliances.

The Chinese Revisionists Prettify Neo-Colonialism

One of the special services Chinese revisionism carries out for world imperialism is the prettification and bolstering of imperialist exploitation of the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This it does by extravagantly praising and supporting the dependent and neo-colonial regimes in power in these countries.

The 12th Congress repeated this theme. For this purpose it utilized the concepts of the counter-revolutionary theory of "three worlds." The Chinese theory about the "third world" was a key component of the 12th Congress discussion of foreign policy. According to this thesis, the Chinese revisionists replace the anti-imperialist and class struggles within the dependent and neo-colonial countries with glorification of the "third world" regimes as the "main force of history." Hu's Report reiterated this view: "The emergence of the third world in the international arena after World War II is a primary event of our time. It has changed the United Nations from a mere voting machine manipulated by certain big powers into a forum where imperialism, hegemonism and expansionism are often justly condemned. The struggle initiated by the Latin American countries against the maritime hegemony of the superpowers and the struggles of the petroleum exporting countries for permanent sovereignty over their natural resources, the struggle of the non-aligned countries against power politics and bloc politics and the struggles of the developing countries for the establishment of a new international economic order -- all these struggles have converged into a mighty current of forces upholding justice in our time and greatly changed the situation in which the superpowers could willfully manipulate the fate of the world."

We have spoken to these issues elsewhere. Here we just wish to stress that the CPC leaders are declaring their support for all the existing regimes in the "third world," whether they be impotent national reformists or fascist lackeys of imperialism, such as the Shah of Iran, the generals in Pakistan, Pinochet in Chile, etc. Needless to say, while lavishing wild adulations on the "third world" regimes for their impotent shadow-boxing with the superpowers, the 12th Congress did not support or call for revolution in any of these countries.

Instead, the CPC declared that "the common task confronting the third world countries is, first and foremost, to defend their national independence and state sovereignty and actively develop their national economies so that they can back up the political independence they have already won with economic independence." But how are these things to be done by the capitalist-landlord forces that are the social base for imperialist domination? They cannot. To suggest they can means simply to oppose the revolutionary overthrow of imperialist domination and the reactionary social order in these countries. This is a great help for world imperialism, especially when it comes from the Communist Party of China which came to power in 1949 only by overthrowing such a "third world" regime as that of the reactionary Kuomintang in China.

In addition, the Chinese revisionists have a more direct reason why they promote the idea that the "third world" countries only face economic tasks. This was indicated by the loud advocacy of the 12th Congress that the goal of economic development in these countries can especially be well served by "mutual aid among the third world countries." This the CPC also referred to as South-South cooperation. This concept has of late found great enthusiasm from some of the bigger and stronger dependent capitalist countries, such as India. What this essentially signifies is the ambitions of some of the stronger bourgeoisies among the "third world" countries to carve out their own spheres of exploitation and influence among the rest of the oppressed countries. Thus, in describing the prospects of South-South cooperation, the Chinese revisionists noted, like vultures hovering over their prey, that the "third world" contained "immense resources and extensive markets." It is these resources and markets that China drools for in its appeals for "mutual aid." This is nothing but social-imperialism.

Burying the "Cultural Revolution," But Continued Loyalty to Mao Zedong Thought

The ultra-rightist policies of the 12th Congress were ideologically based on repudiating what the CPC described as the leftist policies of the past. The Congress hurled its venom against the ideas of continuing the class struggle and the revolution. It boasted that in China "class struggle no longer constitutes the principal contradiction." This was nothing but a refurbished version of the well-known Soviet revisionist thesis of the "dying out of the class struggle." However, the Report also acknowledged that "within certain limits, class struggle will continue to exist for a long time and may even sharpen under certain conditions." This is said to be aimed against only "a handful of hostile elements." But when you've already relegated the class struggle to a minor place and daily sing psalms to the bourgeoisie, all this talk of recognizing a little bit of class struggle is a sheer fraud. This is a back-handed acknowledgment by the Chinese revisionists that they do not still feel confident to declare that their system has achieved full stability. They need to prettify the factional squabbles among themselves so they put a paint job of "class struggle" over them.

The 12th Congress strongly denounced the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the embodiment of all the ultra-left evils of class struggle and revolution. This was the first congress of the CPC to completely condemn the "Cultural Revolution." The 11th Congress, held in 1977 under the chairmanship of Hua Guofeng, had declared an end to the "Cultural Revolution," but the ultra-revisionist henchman Deng Xiaoping had not yet been able to establish complete hegemony for his views against the "Cultural Revolution." This recent Congress, however, marked Deng's finest hour and his close crony Hu Yaobang even took a few swipes at the 11th Congress and Hua Guofeng for failing to put an end to the so-called leftist policies of the past.

This critique of the "Cultural Revolution" is a thoroughly counter-revolutionary critique of those events in China during the late 1960's and early 1970's. The revisionists seek to demagogically use the impotence and chaos of that period in order to castigate the class struggle and to speed up the plans for consolidating capitalism in China.

The "Cultural Revolution" had been waged under leftist general slogans and claimed to be directed against the ultra-revisionists within the CPC, such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Because of this, the Marxist-Leninists around the world, including our Party's predecessors, supported it. The Marxist-Leninists knew that revisionists had strong positions within the CPC and looked forward to their purging. But history and closer study of the "Cultural Revolution" have shown that this was not a revolution at all. It is true that there was a mass protest against the ultra-rightists and some of them were removed from positions of power. But the leadership of the "Cultural Revolution" around Mao Zedong did not take a proletarian revolutionary approach. They gave no revolutionary program to the struggle, relied not on the proletariat but mainly on the school youth, promoted spontaneity and disintegrated the party and mass organizations. Later they brought in the army to restore order after the resultant chaos. A few posts were reshuffled within the Chinese party and state, but within a few years, Mao began to restore the ultra-revisionist elements, including Deng, back to power. Clearly this was not an orientation for carrying forward the revolution in China on the socialist road -- that would have required restoring the Party on revolutionary Marxist- Leninist lines, bringing the proletariat into revolutionary struggle, smashing the economic and political power of the bourgeoisie, and so forth.

The 12th Congress delivered its counter-revolutionary critique of the "Cultural Revolution" in order to justify the most ultra-rightist policies. In fact, the Congress Report directly connected its opposition to the class struggle with the question of "restor(ing) and expand(ing) our united front work." This is merely their code word for the policy of giving more and more power to the private capitalist elements.

It should be noted that the burial of the legacies of the "Cultural Revolution" did not mean abandoning Mao Zedong Thought. By no means. In fact, the Report openly upheld Mao Zedong Thought. Moreover, the ultra-rightist policies that the Congress adopted are not new at all but based on opportunist formulas advocated historically by Mao and the CPC leadership. For example, the theories about "mixed economy" and long-term coexistence with the bourgeoisie are directly taken from Mao's teachings in the 1950's. Other things, such as China's "third worldist" theories about the oppressed peoples, the alliance with imperialism, etc. are based on Mao's teachings from other periods, especially the early 1970's.

The reason why the present Chinese leaders can repudiate the "Cultural Revolution" and still remain loyal to Mao Zedong Thought is found in the fact that Maoism is not an integral theory but an eclectic amalgam of a variety of ideological concepts and views, including rightist, leftist, liberal, anarchist and centrist deviations, all of which are dangerous for the revolution. At the same time, Maoism is saturated through and through with rightist and social-democratic ideas.

Carry Forward the Struggle Against Chinese Revisionism!

No matter how bland, pacifist and rightist the 12th Congress of the CPC was, it should not be taken to imply that the struggle against Chinese revisionism can be slackened. The revisionist chieftains of China remain deadly enemies of the revolution and socialism, not only in China but also on a world scale. China's alliance with imperialism is a major counter-revolutionary factor in the present-day international situation. China's social-imperialist ambitions towards the dependent and neo-colonial countries signifies that China is not a friend but one of the enemies of the revolutionary struggles of the peoples of these countries. And as the fawning of several opportunist trends on the policies of the 12th Congress shows, the domestic policies advocated by the Chinese revisionists, no matter how openly capitalist and reactionary they are, are still passed off by the distorters of Marxism as examples of policies to advance socialist construction.

The fight against Chinese revisionism is also important because many of the theories of Chinese revisionism are closely related to similar theories common to all the revisionist and opportunist trends. Just as, for example, the "third world-ism'' of the Chinese revisionists recently led them to advocate support for the fascist Argentine generals in the war over the Falkland Islands, so too similar ideological concepts led a series of other opportunists to do the same, such as the pro-Soviet revisionists, the Castroites, the major Trotskyite groups, etc.

The fight against Chinese revisionism also requires struggling against its ideological basis, Mao Zedong Thought. This is especially highlighted by the fact that Deng Xiaoping's repudiation of Mao's "Cultural Revolution'' policies is used by Maoists who are against the current Chinese leaders, such as the "RCP,USA," to claim that Deng and co. are departing from the real teachings of Mao. But as we have noted, such claims do not stand up to the facts. The fiasco of Chinese revisionism is also the fiasco of Mao Zedong Thought.

[Photo: CPC General Secretary Hu Yaobang greets George Marchais, head of the French revisionists. Shortly after the 12th Congress, the two revisionist parties restored relations. Arch-revisionist Deng Xiaoping declared, "Let bygones be bygones" to Marchais, the revisionist scab whose party takes part in the imperialist Mitterrand government and earned special notoriety a few years ago for sending bulldozers to smash the houses of immigrant workers on the outskirts of Paris.]

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