Vol. 2, No. 3-4 March-April 1970
Newspaper of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
PO 5221, Cleveland, Ohio Tel. 861-6949
The proletariat is the greatest class in the history of mankind. It is the most powerful and in strength. It can and must unite the overwhelming majority of people around itself so as to isolate the handful of enemies to the maximum and attack them. -Mao Tsetung
INSIDE: African National Liberation Struggles
Communist Movement Advances To New Level
HISTORIC CONFERENCE FIGHTS FOR PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO ORGANIZE POLITICALLY
Postal Strike Proves Gov't Turning Fascist
Editorial-
Lenin, the Party, and the People's Democratic Rights
Hospital Bans Communist Newspaper
Afro-Americans Wield the Great Weapon of Mao Tsetung Thought
Canadian People's Struggle Surges Forward!
U.S. IMPERIALISM, OUT OF CANADA!
Victory to the African People's National Liberation Struggles!
CCC Students Fight for the Right to Organize Politically
Albania Denounces U.S. Coup in Cambodia
Irish Workers and Students Attack Kennedy
Molly Maguires Turns Truth Upside Down
Chinese Postal Workers Support U.S. Postal Strike
Charu Mazumdar:
Develop Revolutionary War To Eliminate War Of Aggression Against China
As the struggles of the working class, Afro-Americans and other oppressed people in the U.S. rise wave upon wave, the monopoly capitalist class, in mortal fear of being swamped, increasingly resorts to open fascist violence to repress the people and completely deny their democratic right to organise politically.
To this Chairman Mao Tsetung has answered, "It is right to rebel against reactionaries!" and communists have come forward to organize on this basis; At the historic First National conference of the American Student Movement (Anti-Imperialist), held March 6-13 in Cleveland, Ohio, it was proven beyond a doubt that when the revolutionary forces come forward to apply invincible Mao Tsetung Thought as a guide to action and use the mass democratic method in organizing the people, a clear line of distinction is drawn between enemies and friends, the reactionaries wildly try to suppress the people's rights and the masses of workers and oppressed people come forward to fight for their liberation.
Called to develop methods of work in building the anti-imperialist movement, this conference immediately sent its delegates forth to arouse the people in the communities, on the job, and in the schools. The people stood up, first to take Chairman Mao's teachings and other revolutionary literature as their own, then to carry out mass democratic struggles in support of these ideas in various places, and finally to defend the communists from fascist attacks in mass struggle for the right to organize politically.
Refuting the slander that American workers are racist and anti-communist, the communists boldly announced for all to hear that Chairman Mao is our Chairman and that we will defend the People's Republic of China, the bastion of world revolution and best friend of the world's people. A warm welcome was found among workers for Chairman Mao's 1968 "Statement in Support of the Afro-American Struggle against Violent Repression": "The struggle of the Black people in the United States IS BOUND TO MERGE with the American workers' movement and this will eventually bring to an end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capital class." (See page 3 of this issue.) Daily, teams of delegates sold Chairman Mao's writings, The Workers'Advocate and the The American Student and distributed Chairman Mao's statement by the hundreds to both workers and students. Black people were most happy to see the statement and often took copies to give to their friends. Black and white workers and students bought the bright red newspapers and works of Chairman Mao eagerly. One Black man followed a delegate around shouting, "She's selling socialism!" and telling everyone to buy the paper. A white worker said, "I'll buy anything with red on it!" A worker from Palestine said,"'Smash the Old to Build the New.''Good.' That means revolution, doesn't it?" Many working people were uninterested until they heard it was a communist paper and they then bought it immediately. Hundreds of copies of The Workers' Advocate were sold and hundreds of people showed interest in the five revolutionary rallies that were held each night of the conference.
In this way the communists put full faith in the people and for this reason the people proved the truth of Chairman Mao's great statement:
"The masses have a potentially inexhaustible enthusiasm for socialism."
FASCISTS ARE PAPER TIGERS
This revolutionary enthusiasm reflects the excellent situation in the U.S. and the world, where the people's forces are everywhere awakening. In response, the reactionary forces everywhere are carrying out last desperate struggles before extinction, wildly suppressing the people's political rights.
At the conference these ghosts and monsters first crawled out to oppose the workers at University Hospitals, where wide mass work was done. Because the workers read communist literature with great interest, the administration first pleaded with, then threatened the communists in order to prevent the democratic development of ideas. But the workers are determined to carry on the struggle. (See page 2 of this issue.)
The night after a militant rally in support of the national liberation struggle of the people of Palestine., the next attack on the right to organize was organized by the fascist city police. After two days of mobilizing, these running dogs, led by a member of the "subversive squad", were able to muster only thirty fascists to attack the conference. Facing clubs, blackjacks and guns, the conference delegates followed Chairman Mao's spirit of "being resolute, fearing no sacrifice," and drove these vermin from the parking lot of the hall. It was later learned that these fascist came from families that betrayed their people during World War II to follow Hitler and oppose the national liberation struggle of the people of Yugoslavia. Like all reactionaries when faced with the people's wrath, they proved to be nothing but paper tigers. That night an even more militant rally was held to support the national liberation struggle of the people of Quebec.
Thus another great truth of Chairman Mao's was proven: "It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work."
BRIGHT RED RALLIES
City police and all forms of "left" opportunists tried to enter the following rallies but were turned away at the door. Most militant and jubilant of all was the final rally, in support of the People's Republic of China and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, attended by many workers and students. Standing beneath huge silk portraits of the great fathers of the working-class movement, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, speakers denounced the U.S.-Soviet imperialist war plots being hatched against Socialist China and the people of the world, and stated that,this is a direct result of the correct revolutionary guidance being given to the people of the world by Chairman Mao. Speakers from the Quebec Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist), the Canadian Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and the [American Communists Workers Movement Marxist-Leninist) pledged to oppose counter-revolutionary war with revolutionary war, to make resolution in their own countries as the only way to defend China and their own peoples from the war of aggression. Chants rang out: "Death to U.S. Imperialism!" "Long Live Great People's Republic of China!" "Long Live Invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought!" and "Long Live Chairman Mao! A Long, Long Life to Him!" The rally closed with the showing of "The East Is Red," a revolutionary opera performed by workers and peasants depicting the story of the Chinese revolution.
Other rallies were held in support' of the Armed Agrarian Revolution in India and in support of the struggles of the American working class and the Afro-American people. At the latter, speakers from the Black Panther Party of Iowa and the American Communist Workers Movement (M-L) pointed to the long history of struggle and its betrayal by anti- Marxist leaders of both the Afro-American people and the entire working class. They pointed out the truth of Chairman Mao's statement that the two struggles "ARE BOUND TO MERGE" and showed how they are already merging rapidly and that this will bring about the final collapse of imperialism and all forms of reaction and a world without exploitation will be built. They pledged themselves to build a new Marxist-Leninist communist party of the United States, devoted to following Chairman Mao's Thought and able to lead the working and oppressed people of America to liberation. "Death to Fascism!" the chants broke out, "Victory to the American Working Class!" "Victory to the Heroic Afro-American People!" "Long Live the Victory of People's War!" and "Long Live Chairman Mao!"
The struggle for the right to organize politically reached its peak on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College on the last day of the conference. This campus is attended by many students from working-class background and consequently news of events there travels quickly into the working class. Many workers there had bought The Workers' Advocate and supported it. Here, faced with city and campus police and fascist students, dozens of progressive students and workers came forward to defend the right to organize politically and to discuss Mao Tsetung Thought (See page 5)
INTERNAL STRUGGLE IN THE CONFERENCE
Imperialists culture teaches people, especially petty bourgeoisie (middle class), to be passive, to lack daring, initiative, industriousness and faith in the people and uses these attitudes to undermine the working class movement. The line of the leading body of the conference, the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) is that the question of political line is clear, and that the problem is in practicing correct methods of work. Our political line is that the U.S. reactionaries are preparing to impose fascism on the people, by doing widespread lying propaganda for racism and anticommunism and by denying the people's democratic political rights and viciously oppressing nations and national minorities at home and throughout the world. The main political task is to organize a party of communist revolutionaries to lead the proletariat and oppressed people in defeating fascism by the armed overthrow of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class proceeding to build socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The principal step at present in building this party is laying the basis for it in ideological struggle among the people. Agreed on this, the main thing that can prevent revolution is incorrect method of work.
Mass democratic method (putting all questions publicly before the people as in The Workers Advocate) -- versus mass bureaucratic method (issuing directives from above and manipulating people from behind closed doors); this was the struggle in the conference. It is the task of the proletarian leadership to develop the method of defeating the mass bureaucratic line. At the conference it was defeated by calling on the delegates to actively go forth and do mass work among the people, and by drawing a clear line of demarcation and exposing class enemies and bourgeois ideas whenever they showed up. These two aspects, one of daring to rebel against reactionaries, and the other of closely integrating among and having faith in the people, are the greatest protection against revisionism liberalism Trotskyism New Leftism and all kinds of counter-revolutionary muck.
The ASM conference has proven conclusively that the masses of working and oppressed people want revolution and are eager for Mao Tsetung Thought. They will fight for the right to organize politically. Therefore, our only path can be to follow Chairman Mao's great statement: "It is up to us to organize the people. As for the reactionaries..., it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them. Everything reactionary is the same; if you don't hit it, it won't fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself."
DEATH TO U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITAL!
VICTORY TO THE WORKING AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE!
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO! A LONG, LONG LIFE HIM!
[Photo: "THE STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PEOPLE IN 3HE U.S. IS BOUND TO MERGE WITH THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT!" --MAO TSETUNG]
The heroic strike of postal workers has revealed again that the U.S. government is not an impartial democratic body for all the people, but instead it is the instrument of the monopoly capitalist class for keeping the working masses in check and is being rapidly transformed into an open fascist dictatorship.
The heroic postal workers defied the imperialist government and the union hacks to assert their fundamental right to organize and strike against oppression. In doing so the strikers proved imperialism to be nothing but a paper tiger, by bringing both business and government to a halt. In answer, the Nixon administration took the openly fascist steps of calling in federal troops, refusing to negotiate until the strike was ended and having a whole chorus of trained seals do fascist propaganda blaming the workers for the strike.
As the world-wide system of U.S. imperialism has grown weaker, the U.S. ruling monopoly capitalist class has been piling the added burdens of its crisis onto the backs o£ the American working class and the broad masses of the American people, who are standing up to fight back. The militant strike by these government workers is a leading example of how the anti-people controls of bourgeois democracy are failing to hold back the surging tide of resistance and how the ruling class has to resort increasingly to open force.
On March 17, 1970, the postal workers began their defiant strike. The letter carriers of New York set off the spark that was quickly picked up by letter carriers, postal clerks, and other postal, workers throughout the country, particularly in the big northern cities. In militant solidarity 210,000 postal workers risked "punishment", for violating the federal anti-strike law, of $1,000 fine, a year and a day in jail, and loss of any possibility of ever holding a federal job. They used the revolutionary method of the proletariat, mass democracy, in the struggle to force the scab union "leaders" to permit the strike. In union halls throughout the nation workers had to shout down the bourgeois line of these sell-out hacks who were pleading, "Let's be patient with Nixon..." "We can't vote now...".
MAIL STRIKE
The furthest step towards an open fascist state was made when Nixon stooped to using federal troops to put down the center of the strike in N.Y. Such a tactic shows the growing desperate state of the ruling class and reflects the militant power of the rising masses of workers.
Even the troops who were forced to move against the strikers raised the victory sign of solidarity with them. Its no wonder that the ruling class is seeking an all volunteer armed forces to lessen the possibility of soldiers siding with the rising masses of Americans in the course of revolutionary struggle.
Whatever economic gains come as a result of this key strike, the heroic actions of the postal workers claimed for the entire American working class an important victory in the just struggle for the right to organize against the state machinery of the U.S. imperialists and all their instruments of oppression.
Dragging the line of these buffoons out before the masses, the workers cut it to pieces. This is the same struggle now being waged by workers everywhere in the U.S. It shows the revolutionary ardor of the working class which will only come fully into play when they take up political struggle under the leadership of a new Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.
The courageous postal workers were furious with Nixon as well as with their union officials' lackey relationship to the government. After years of living on subsistence wages and rotten conditions of work they had to wait through months of fruitless negotiations and empty promises. It was at the announcement of one more delay that they rose up to strike. They were striking out at Nixon and the Congress of the ruling class. They knew that each was using the other as an excuse to deny any consideration of the needs of the workers. It is Nixon's job to link arms with his monopoly capitalist bosses to keep wages down, in trying to prevent their economic crisis from nipping the profits of the ruling class. This arrogant basset hound, sitting on his $200,000 salary, used the delay of pay increases for postal workers to try to intimidate their unions into supporting his so- called postal "reforms." With the trick of a public postal corporation the Nixon administration would take away civil Service benefits (limited job security) and the little political influence that postal workers now have on the postal system.
For standing up against these injustices the postal workers received slanderous attacks from all the agents of the ruling class.
James Rademacher, scab president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, tried to discredit the heroic strikers by making the idiotic claim that the bankrupt SDS was responsible for instigating the strike. This slimy racist tried to divide and slander the progressive Black and white postal workers by saying that the workers hired recently weren't concerned about the "noble tradition" (of absolute obedience) of the postal system but were only concerned about their own selves and so "out they go" - on strike. Many of the more recently hired workers have been Black and progressive Black leadership played a powerful role in the strike. Bourgeois agents like Rademacker squirm as they see in practice the truth of Chairman Mao's statement: "The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American worker's movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class."
Owned and controlled by the monopoly capitalist class, the mass media desperately tried to discredit and divide the strikers, to isolate them from the masses and accuse them of being the cause of the crisis. This propaganda painted them as being yet another unpatriotic "minority" of workers rashly endangering the "public interest" merely because the government was letting them starve.
But the American laborers and vast majority of the American people in conversation everywhere expressed full sympathy with the just struggle of the postal workers and enthusiastically pointed out that the ruling class was really taking a beating. The heroic struggle of the postal workers sparked the fighting spirit of the entire working class.
The trembling bourgeoisie frantically turned to stronger fascist measures. Nixon made the calculated demand that there would be no negotiations until the strikers gave up their powerful bargaining position and returned to work. To try to cow the strikers, he had already set into motion court actions under the Hatch Act which denies federal workers the fundamental right to strike. In fact under this "bourgeois democracy" there is a law that prohibits federal employees from even advocating the right to strike. Therefore, the postal unions had no strike fund for strike pay or huge court fines. But the government courts, serving the capitalist class, prepared to load fines on the unions of $10,000 the first day, $20,000 the next and so forth and a similar scale of fines for union leaders beginning with $1,000 the first day. As part of the negotiation settlement the charges may be dropped but the government has threatened to punish the leadership, mistakenly assuming that the fascist practice of "making an example of them" for other workers who dare to fight back will hold back the tide of history.
The defiant pickets faced picture-taking FBI and various local "anti-subversive" squads. Leaders were bitter but not shocked that their phones were tapped, for many strikers were well aware of the rise of fascist propaganda, repressive laws, and open fascist, repression.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born 100 years ago, on April 22, 1870, the year before the Paris Commune, and died in 1924.One of the great fathers of the working class movement and the leader of the first successful proletarian revolution, he inherited, defended and developed Marxism to a new stage, at that time, that of Leninism, which is "Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution," in the words of his great successor, J.V. Stalin. Lenin developed the theory and tactics of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial revolution in the period of the emergence of modern imperialism. His greatest contribution was in the development of the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution--the method of party building, the strategy and tactics of leading the proletariat through all the twists and turns to the armed overthrow of the imperialist state and the building of socialism. It is just such a task which faces American revolutionaries today, and so there can be no better way to honor Lenin's memory than to apply his teachings creatively to the concrete conditions of the present.
The principal task facing American revolutionaries is building the party of the proletariat. The principal step at present in the building of this party is the waging of mass democratic ideological struggles, directed against monopoly capital, among the working class and oppressed people. This will prepare public opinion for revolution and unite the advanced workers ideologically and politically so that they can be united into a single revolutionary organization. Chairman Mao Tsetung's further development of Marxism-Leninism, in the form of testing ideas against the experience of the people in mass democratic discussion, provides the method for party building. Lenin is most useful today for the guidance he gives in "What Is to Be Done?. Burning Questions of Our Movement" in defeating the main revisionist trend within the revolutionary movement, which takes the form of economism, and in his advocacy of the leading role of a national communist newspaper in laying the basis for the party.
The essence of economism is the denial of the leading role of ideology, which amounts to the line that the workers should carry on the trade union struggle and the intellectuals the political struggle. Since the revolutionary struggle is basically a political struggle over which class will hold state (political) power, this makes the workers the tail of the intellectuals and ensures that, in fact, the revolution will not take place. The form this takes today within the so-called left is to organize trade-union caucuses for the workers around purely economic demands, and to hold small discussion sessions in which "the revolution" is planned behind the backs of the working class.
It is the role of the revolutionary leadership, Lenin pointed out, instead to place all-sided political agitation and propaganda as its most important task in order to arm the workers themselves with Marxism. He said that the task of communists, "the conscious element." is to "combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 384-5) The economists want to enforce this division, prevent the revolutionary intellectuals from integrating with the working class and coming under its supervision, and prevent a contingent of proletarian intellectuals from developing from out of the working class, devoted to serving its interests heart and soul. In short, they want to preserve their petty bourgeois egos and expert roles. Chairman Mao continued Lenin's struggle against the economists and during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution put forward the slogan "political work is the lifeblood of all economic work," in order to defeat the counter-revolutionary economist line pushed by the capitalist-roader and scab, Liu Shao-Chi. Today the best way to fight economism is to disseminate Mao Tsetung Thought widely among the working people, and creatively and consciously apply it. Mao Tsetung Thought is the best weapon against economism because it develops Marxism-Leninism to the present era, in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to worldwide victory, gives concrete guidelines for action, and places them directly in the hands of the working people in a form that can be quickly applied.
A national communist newspaper is a second great weapon against economism. Lenin said, "A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under construction, which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organized labor. With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organization will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence those events." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 22-3). It is precisely this task which The Workers' Advocate is engaged in, and it is producing a network of distributors who are using it as a collective organizer.
The conditions under which Lenin built the Bolshevik Party have certain important similarities to the present. Lenin worked under conditions of open terrorist dictatorship; the U.S. is rapidly installing fascism. Russia was an imperialist country exhausted by war; this is the direction the U.S. is taking. These two factors, despite other differences, require that we, too, build a party which is strictly centralized and secret, capable of carrying on both legal and illegal activities. Further, the rise of fascism in the U.S. is destroying the thin facade of democracy that has existed for the working masses, especially destroying the right of oppressed nations to self-determination and the right of the people to organize themselves politically. Both of these are democratic demands and U.S. imperialism increasingly denies them everywhere. An example of increasing national oppression is the recent coup d'etat in Cambodia, engineered by the CIA, which plunged that country into fascism overnight and is exciting the most spirited resistance. Within the U.S., the national oppression visited upon the Black, Puerto Rican, Mexican-American and Indian people is growing heavier, and it will accelerate these struggles, thus aiding and urging on the struggle of the entire working class.
Most important, the imperialists are stripping away the last vestiges of the proletariat's right to organize itself into a revolutionary proletarian party, or even to carry on development of political ideas in an open way. This right, when denied by the military and police force of the state, leads the proletariat directly into revolutionary struggle starting from the struggle for the people's democratic rights. The struggle for the right to organize politically is the revolutionary alternative to the economist program. This is the lesson of many recent struggles in the U.S., and it is the lesson of the First National Conference of the American Student Movement (Anti-Imperialist).
It is not reformist to put forward democratic demands. On the contrary, the working class has always fought for the widest democracy in order to provide the widest field for carrying out its struggle for socialism. Communists today will organize the working class to fight for the right of nations to self-determination and for the people's democratic right to organize politically. Lenin stated, "It is necessary to formulate and put forward all these democratic demands, not in a reformist, but in a revolutionary way; not by keeping within the framework of bourgeois legality, but by breaking through it; not by confining oneself to parliamentary speeches and verbal speeches, but by drawing the masses into real action, by widening and fomenting the struggle for every kind of fundamental, democratic demand, right up to and including the direct onslaught of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, i.e., to the socialist revolution, which will expropriate the bourgeoisie." (Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination," International Publishers, p. 74)
A centralized, disciplined, secret party organization; placing politics in command and doing mass-democratic ideological work among the working and"oppressed people; using a national communist political newspaper to sum up and popularize the experience gained in struggle; fighting for the right of nations to self-determination and for the people's democratic right to organize politically; these are the guidelines we can make direct use of in the struggle today. To sum up, the party, the newspaper, the fight for democracy, are all means for mobilizing the working class and oppressed people and placing the weapons in their hands with which they will liberate themselves. Chairman Mao Tsetung sums this up creatively: "Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world." With the memory of Great Lenin in our hearts, we will apply his guidelines in organizing to change the world.
[Photo.]
During the national conference of the American Student Movement, worker and student delegates dared to go time and time again to sell The Workers' Advocate and hold political discussion with employees of University Hospitals in Cleveland. The workers bought the paper in large numbers and said they were glad to see the communists come down to talk with them right on the job and in the locker rooms. Many had seen The Workers' Advocate before and agreed with its revolutionary political line.
Many Black workers were glad to see Chairman Mao Tsetung's "Statement in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression," which was also distributed. Several workers told of miserable conditions forced on them by the greedy imperialists who run the hospital. These blood-sucking parasites charge $100 a day and more to patients for a bed and pay wages as low as $1.75 an hour to the workers who care for the patients. The workers are determined that this criminal exploitation must go.
The discussions sent the hospital authorities and their running dog security guards into a frenzy, and they tried to stop the development of revolutionary discussion among the workers. First an administrator called The Workers' Advocate and feebly protested that "your newspaper is causing trouble among 'my' workers." Laughingly he was told, "This all depends on your point of view."' Next, security guards grabbed a delegate while he was talking to some workers and tried to snatch a newspaper from a worker who had just bought it. When one of the communists was able to snatch the paper back, the workers gave him strong support. The guards then took the delegate to the "Protective Service" office where he was harassed and threatened with arrest and with being shot in a vain attempt to intimidate militant communists. Many times later in the week the delegates were threatened and the guards went all out to prevent workers from exercising their right to hold political discussion.
These fascist activities of the hospital authorities have aroused great resentment among the workers. They are 100% against the slave theory that workers must be mental and physical slaves to their bosses while on the job.
Afro-American communists have come forward to spread Mao Tsetung Thought widely in the Midwest and to lead mass democratic struggles for the right to organize politically in the schools, in the community and on the job.
Going forth boldly among Black and white working people and students, especially since the First National Conference of the American Student Movement, members of the Black Panther Party of Iowa have distributed thousands of copies of Chairman Mao Tsetung's 1968 "Statement in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression," distributed Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung and The Workers' Advocate widely, and have found that the masses of working and oppressed people in fact "have a potentially inexhaustible enthusiasm for socialism."
These comrades sell and distribute this literature at plant gates, on the streets, and in the schools. Many Afro-Americans have asked for more copies of the statement, saying that they never knew that Mao or the Chinese communists cared about Black people. The enthusiasm is so great that the comrades are constantly running out of literature and badges of Chairman Mao.
Two Mao Tsetung Thought living study groups have been formed, one among Black students and the other among Black working people, to study and apply Mao Tsetung Thought to the concrete problems of building the revolutionary movement and party. Members of these study groups, guided by the communists, are grasping Mao Tsetung Thought consciously as a weapon and using it to deal blows against fascist political repression.
One Afro-American youth took Chairman Mao's statement and The Workers' Advocate into his job-training class and distributed them to other Black youths. He was immediately criticized by the white working-class youths for not giving them copies! Seeing this enthusiasm, the Black program administrator tried to stop the dissemination of literature. The young comrade led a mass democratic struggle against him, denounced him as a lackey of the ruling class, and won this strong support of 80% of the class.
In the course of these comrades' practice, Chairman Mao's great truth is constantly being proven. He stated: "The Black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States share common interests and have common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning Sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States IS BOUND TO MERGE with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class."
A major struggle against fascist rules and regulations and violent repression, and for the right of the students to politically organize, is building in a predominantly Black junior high school and elementary school in a working-class area of Des Moines, Iowa. These schools are known for their brutality and expulsions. Black and white students have been fighting for a student council independent of administration control and for the right to have a Black Panther comrade speak there and disseminate Mao Tsetung Thought.
Recently, two Black workers (who are relatives of students) confronted the teachers at school and demanded, that they stop harassing the students. When the white teachers tried to eject the two workers, they met with resistance and were injured in the fight. Fascist police, who are stationed at every door of the school, were called in and the two Afro-Americans were arrested and jailed for "using loud and profane language" (denouncing the oppressors) and for "assault and battery" (justified retaliation). Parents are now organizing to march into the school and demand that this harassment stop, that drug traffic cease, and that the students' right to organize politically be recognized by the administration. In addition, they continually raise to the masses the fact that this "education" does not serve the working and oppressed people, but serves their masters instead.
The Afro-American communists have also denounced and exposed a desperate reactionary attempt of the imperialists to sow racism among the Black people of Des Moines and prevent their struggle from merging with the whole workers' movement. Under the leadership of the local poverty program director, a federal flunkey, a group called the "Black Caucus" was formed, which took as its goal the creation of "anti-racist racism" and advocated the separation of' the races and the search for a "Black identity" as the "only road" to uniting the oppressed people in struggle.
The comrades denounced the program for ignoring the oppression of the whole people and for not fighting the fascist repression in the Black community. (The first project the group advocated was a Black beauty contest]) Revolutionary comrades also denounced the "Black Caucus" for being based solely on the petty bourgeoisie (middle class), especially OEO employees, and totally ignoring the working class. "Laborers could not relate to the madness the caucus was talking about," the comrades declared; After these denunciations, the meeting of the "Black Caucus" fell silent as the guilty found themselves exposed.
The revolutionary Afro-American communists of Iowa have pledged themselves to integrate Mao Tsetung Thought with the concrete practice of the proletarian revolution in the United States. They were strongly influenced by the Vancouver North American Anti-Imperialist Conference and by the American Student Movement Conference. Their pledge and their concrete practice are a clarion call to revolutionary Afro-Americans and all revolutionary people in the U.S. to "seize the day, seize the hour" and to make practical use of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as a guide to action. In the hands of the oppressed people, it is truly "a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power."
STATEMENT BY COMRADE MAO TSETUNG, CHAIRMAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA, IN SUPPORT OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE AGAINST VIOLENT REPRESSION (April 16, 1968)
Some days ago, Martin Luther King, the Afro- American clergyman, was suddenly assassinated by the U.S. imperialists. Martin Luther King was an exponent of non-violence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance towards him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the broad masses of the black people in the United States a profound lesson. It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that country. It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is latent in the more than twenty million black Americans.
The storm of Afro-American struggle taking place within the United States is a striking manifestation of the comprehensive political and economic crisis now gripping U.S. imperialism, which is beset with difficulties at home and abroad.
The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous support and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the black people in the United States.
Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the black masses in the United States and U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States share common interests and have common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro- American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the' criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
In 1963, in my "Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism," I said that "the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people." I still maintain this view.
At present, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The struggle of the black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals of every country and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the black people in the United States] People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and against its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off.
[Photo: Chairman Mao Tsetung reads first statement in support of the Afro-American struggle when receiving a group of visitors from Africa. -August 8, 1963]
* Progressives earnestly study and fervently propagate Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in their struggle.
* Students march out of their schools to fight shoulder to shoulder with workers.
* They are gradually combining Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought with the practice of the revolutionary struggle in their country.
The progressives from among the masses of the Canadian people are eagerly studying and applying the invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. This is a great event of fundamental importance in the Canadian people's revolutionary struggle in recent years. The Canadian people are experiencing a new awakening.
U.S. imperialism has long been exploiting and oppressing the people of Canada, which is a main place for investments by the U.S. imperialists. As the oppression and exploitation by U.S. imperialism and Canadian monopoly capital become more and more ruthless, the Canadian people's struggle against such oppression and exploitation grows steadily in strength. In the new revolutionary situation, the masses urgently demand that their revolutionary struggle be taken to a higher level. This is the opinion of some revolutionaries: "We should not stay on the level of merely opposing wars of aggression and waging strikes in general, we must eliminate the root cause of war and exploitation--the imperialist system. The most important problem we are facing is how to overthrow the rule of U.S. imperialism and its lackeys." To attain this aim, the revolutionary masses need a correct theory to guide their action.
From their own experience, they have gradually come to realize that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is a great truth which can be universally applied. At a rally in Regina city, Canadian revolutionaries pointed out with full confidence: "The only road for us to win liberation is to wage struggle under the guidance of Mao Tsetung Thought, the acme of Marxism-Leninism in the present era, and in accordance with the concrete conditions of North America, and dare to struggle and dare to win. This is also our internationalist duty to the people of the world."
The Canadian, revolutionaries are studying and publicizing Mao Tsetung Thought with great enthusiasm. Many of them wage struggle to disseminate Mao Tsetung Thought despite the danger of being dismissed, laid off or even arrested. In Nova Scotia, Winnipeg and other cities, when the school authorities brutally banned, under various pretexts, the dissemination of Mao Tse-tung Thought on the campus by the revolutionary students, the students bravely argued with them face to face and criticized sharply the reactionary nature of the capitalist educational system. The students cited many irrefutable facts to expose the school authorities for indoctrinating them with fascism, racism and other reactionary ideas while forbidding them especially to seek truth. They pointed out: "U.S. imperialism is the No. 1 enemy of the Canadian people. Mao Tsetung Thought is the reliable guarantee for the North American people to achieve liberation." To spread Mao Tsetung Thought, they added, is their "glorious duty and sacred right." A great debate in a school in Winnipeg lasted for eight hours and drew about one thousand students. It influenced and educated many people.
Many progressive bookstores publicizing Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought have now appeared in Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Nova Scotia, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina and other main Canadian cities. High up on the walls in these bookstores are huge portraits of Chairman Mao and portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Many English and French versions of Chairman Mao's works are on display, drawing revolutionary people there to seek the truth. Quotations From Chairman Mao Tsetung is often out of stock because of the huge demand. During mass demonstrations, one can often see protest marchers carrying the treasured red book Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung. In Montreal, when the broad masses were waging fierce struggles against the reactionary troops and police, hundreds of workers and students often set up picket lines voluntarily to protect the progressive bookstores which disseminate Mao Tsetung Thought. This fully demonstrates the profound proletarian affection for Mao Tsetung Thought cherished by the revolutionary Canadian people.
The revolutionary students play a vanguard role or serve as a link with the masses in disseminating Mao Tsetung Thought. Revolutionary journals and at meetings, periodic or otherwise, the revolutionary students constantly study and apply Mao Tsetung Thought to analyze the class contradiction and class struggle in North America, discuss the problems confronting the students and criticize U.S. imperialism and social-imperialism, and pseudo-revolutionaries of all descriptions flying the banner of "socialism." They often criticize the reactionary ideas of the reactionary bourgeois "scholars" in the universities, putting them in an awkward position. For example, a "professor of sociology" in Manitoba University was more than once stumped by the questions of the revolutionary students in the classroom. Apart from launching struggle on the campus, they pay special attention to Chairman Mao's great teaching: "The dividing line between revolutionary intellectuals and non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary intellectuals is whether or not they are willing to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants and actually do so." They go deep among the worker masses and help them to get organized. They also mobilize their classmates to join or support the struggle of the working class. Students have marched out of their schools to wage struggle shoulder to shoulder with the workers despite a tight ring of encirclement thrown by reactionary troops and police. This is a salient feature of the revolutionary struggle of the Canadian people in recent years.
With the wide dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought, more and more progressive people in Canada are studying Chairman Mao's theses on the nature of imperialism, the struggle against modern revisionism, the making of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, etc. The great prediction by Chairman Mao about "the days of imperialism are numbered" has further inspired the Canadian revolutionaries to fight against U.S. imperialism bravely. In recent years, the Canadian people's struggle against U.S. imperialism has developed tremendously. In November 1968, the workers of the Domtav Paper Mill in Quebec occupied the mill by force in protest against the exploitation by the U.S. capitalists. In October last year, the taxi drivers in Montreal put up armed resistance against the intolerable, crushing oppression by the reactionary authorities. Taking up arms, they fought fiercely with the 800 reactionary troops sent to suppress them. In June last year, strong mass protest greeted U.S. imperialist chieftain Nixon when he "visited" Canada. During Nixon's stay in Montreal, he always went to meetings by helicopter. But despite the fact that his itinerary was kept a strict secret, wherever he showed his face, there were shouts of angry slogans: "Nixon the murderer!" "U.S. imperialist chieftain, get out!" It was something unprecedented for any U.S. chieftain to be put in such an awkward predicament in neighboring Canada.
Our great leader Chairman Mao has pointed out: "Imperialism has prepared the conditions for its own doom. These conditions are the awakening of the great masses of the people in the colonies and semi-colonies and in the imperialist countries themselves." The new awakening of the Canadian people portends that the revolutionary storm of the Canadian people will become more and more violent and that the day will soon come when U.S. imperialism has to scamper out of Canada.
--PEKING REVIEW, No. 6, Feb. 6, 1970
Ottawa (Hsinhua, March 3, 1970) Over 2,500 Canadian people demonstrated in front of the U.S. embassy here recently, strongly protesting against U.S. imperialism's policy of aggression in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
Holding aloft portraits of Chairman Mao and carrying red flags, the demonstrators shouted. "Long Live People's War!" "Death to U.S. imperialism!" and "U.S. aggressors, get out of Vietnam!" and other slogans. They exposed on the spot a handful of revisionists and other saboteurs who had sneaked into the procession, and made them extremely embarrassed.
The demonstration reflected the daily awakening of the Canadian people. More and more people have come to realize that U.S. imperialism is the common enemy of the people throughout the world.
[Photo: STUDENTS AND WORKERS MARCH HAND IN HAND AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM AND ANGLO-AMERICAN NEO-COLONIALISM IN QUEBEC.]
[Photo: Woodcut by Chiang Mi]
(Hsinhua, Feb. 22, 1970) The awakening African people have engaged in a hard and bitter struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism in the 1960's and the national liberation movement in Africa is developing in depth.
The African National Liberation Movement has reached"an unprecedented high in the past decade. The African people are engaged heroically in fierce struggles against imperialism, pulling asunder the British and French "colonial empires" in Africa. The flames of armed struggle have been raging in areas under the rule of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung thought is being disseminated more and more widely in the continent. The great truth pointed out by Chairman Mao that imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers and "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" is inspiring the broad masses of the revolutionary African people in their struggle against imperialism and colonialism.
TAKE UP ARMS AND FIGHT COLONIALISM AND NEO-COLONIALISM
More and more revolutionary African people have taken up arms to fight for national independence. At the beginning of the 1960's, U.S. imperialism and modern revisionism made frenzied efforts to obstruct the armed struggle of the oppressed African people. U.S. imperialism tried desperately to prevent the oppressed nations and people in Africa from taking violent actions, advertising "orderly peaceful transition", while Khrushchov, the clown, posing himself as a savior, told the African people to sit and wait for the "elimination of colonialism through the United Nations". But the African people refused to be taken in by their heinous tricks. The Algerian people persistently carried on their armed struggle for more than seven years and ended finally in 1962 the 130-year colonial rule of French imperialism in Algeria. The patriotic armed struggle of the people in the Congo (Kinshasa) hit hard at the reactionary rule of U.S. imperialism and its lackey. In what has been called the -"silent areas" - the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea (Bissau) - the people categorically rejected the "bestowal" of the United Nations and rose in arms one after another in the first few years of the 1960's. They have gone deep into the countryside and have been persisting in struggle, their patriotic armed forces have grown steadily in strength, from small to big and from weak to strong. The patriotic armed forces in Guinea (Bissau) have controlled the greater part of the country, where they have set up grass-roots administrative organs. In the areas under their control, the patriotic armed forces of Mozambique have unfolded a movement for production, mobilized the masses, and carried out the policy of protracted war. The patriotic armed forces in the Portuguese colonies are holding down 130,000 Portuguese colonial troops, landing in an increasingly difficult position the Portuguese colonialists are supported by the aggressive NATO bloc headed by U.S. imperialism. Since 1966, guerrilla fighters in South West Africa and Zimbabwe have been raising the banner of armed struggle, throwing into panic the white colonial regimes in South Africa and southern Rhodesia which are struggling desperately in the southern part of the African continent.
PERSISTING IN STRUGGLE, CONSOLIDATING NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
The African people who have suffered under the prolonged, barbarous rule of western colonialism have been awakening since World War II. Their revolutionary struggle against imperialism and colonialism and for national liberation which had gradually spread to the whole continent reached a new high in the early 60's. Over the past decade, many African countries have won tremendous victories in consolidating their national independence.
The people who have won independence deeply understand that only by waging an unremitting struggle against old and new colonialism can they safeguard "their independence. The people of Guinea, Tanzania, The People's Republic of the Congo and Zambia have won one victory after another in their arduous struggle against the old and new colonialists' intervention, control, subversion, sabotage, and aggression. From 1966 to 1969, Guinea thwarted a series of counterrevolutionary military coups and other subversive conspiracies plotted year after year by imperialism. In August, 1969, Tanzania smashed the counter-revolutionary subversion plotted by imperialism in league with the domestic reactionary forces, the biggest plot since the country's independence. After overthrowing the government of the imperialist agent F. Youlou in August, 1963, the people of the People"s Republic of the Congo have been persevering in their struggle against U.S. led imperialism and its lackeys, smashing one after another their sinister attempts of armed subversion.
After the downfall in September, 1969 of the Idris feudal monarchy, which was subservient to imperialism the Libyan people have finally succeeded in compelling the U.S. - British aggressor troops, which had entrenched themselves in large numbers in Libya for a long time, to begin withdrawing from the country. In Somalia, the U.S. "Peace Corps", which had done all sorts of evils for eight long years, was compelled to get out of the country lock, stock, and barrel at the end of last year amidst the curses of the broad masses of Somali people. Zambia has announced the cancellation of the "permanent" copper mining rights held by U.S., British, and other foreign capital. All these struggles were direct blows to colonialism, old and new, and have consolidated the national independence of the countries concerned.
DIABOLIC FEATURES OF U.S. IMPERIALISM AND MODERN REVISIONISM FULLY REVEALED
In face of the surging national independence movement in Africa following the Second World War, the British, French, Belgian and other old colonialists, having failed in their armed suppression of this movement, resorted to the deceptive trick of "granting independence" to the people under their colonial rule. They hoped in vain to preserve their colonial interests by means of this counter-revolutionary tactic of "feigning a retreat in order to advance." Taking advantage of the decline of British, French, and other imperialisms, U.S. imperialism has done its utmost to penetrate into Africa, clamouring that it would "fill" the "huge vacuum" left behind in Africa by Britain and France; it strove to make the newly-independent African countries victims of its neo-colonialist policies so as to dominate the whole African continent. U.S. imperialism thought that it could "fraternize" with the African people under the smokescreen that it "has no colonies" in Africa, but the massive armed aggression committed by U.S. and Belgian imperialism to strangle the independence of the Congo (K) in the summer of 1960 and all the crimes of intervention, control, subversion, sabotage and aggression committed by U.S. imperialism against other African countries, have fully revealed the vicious features of U.S. imperialism before the broad masses of the African people and have time and again aroused their angry waves of protests against it. Modern revisionism played a big role in the armed aggression against the Congo (K) committed by U.S. imperialism, under the flag of the United Nations. It has thus won praises from U.S. imperialism.
At present, social-imperialism is carrying out frenzied expansion abroad and energetically pressing ahead with its neo-colonial policy in Africa. In order to make its way into Nigeria to plunder rich strategic resources, it provided large quantities of arms and munitioms and many military "experts" for that country so as to make Africans fight Africans. This towering crime of social-imperialism has aroused the extreme indignation of the African people and enabled a growing number of them to realize that social-imperialism, like U.S. imperialism, is their enemy.
Our great leader Chairman Mao has pointed out: "The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people." In the new decade of the 1970's, the great African people will surely advance with giant strides, raise a greater revolutionary storm and make new contributions to the oppressed nations and people in Africa and the whole world in their great and arduous struggle to bury the evil system of colonialism and imperialism.
This Workers' Advocate supplement commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre. Rallies are being held world-wide in memory of the seventy-two patriotic Azanians killed by South African fascist police on March 21, 1960, while peacefully protesting the "pass laws".
Copies available from:
American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
P.O. Box 5221, Cleveland, Ohio Phone 86l-6949
by A.G. Ebrahim
Deputy Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Information Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania
The Azanian people have been subjected to colonial domination and economic exploitation for the past 317 years. During the 17th century when Dutch colonialism was at its height, the southern tip of the continent of Africa was colonized by the Dutch in order to establish a halfway station for sailing vessels of the Dutch East India Company carrying spices and other raw materials looted from the East Indian islands. Thus in 1632 Jan Van Riebeeck landed at the Cape of Good Hope with a number of settlers to establish a halfway station.
The Dutch colonialists landed at the Cape of Good Hope with a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other for the specific purpose of grabbing land and cattle from the indigenous people in order to supply vegetables and meats to passing ships. The colonialists not only forcibly expropriated land and confiscated cattle from the indigenous inhabitants, but also introduced the institution of slavery. However, despite the wholesale massacre of the Hottentots, the tribe that inhabited the southwestern Cape, they fought the colonialists bravely.
The Napoleonic war in Europe led to the first occupation of the Dutch colony by the British colonialists in 1795. Finally Holland ceded the colony to the British in 1811. This gave rise to a contradiction between the burgher settlers and the new occupationists. In 1836 the Boers or the burgher settlers moved eastwards in order to establish a republic independent of the British colonialists. This exodus of the Boers from the British-occupied colony is termed the "Great Trek."
Successive battles were fought between the trekking Boers and the indigenous people who resolutely defended their land and cattle from the new colonialists. Great African chiefs like Chaka, Dingaan and Moshoshoe mobilized their entire armies to fight the invaders. A decisive battle was fought along the banks of the Blood River but the lack of a revolutionary theory led to the defeat of these armies. The invaders set up the Orange River Sovereignty (now called the province of the Orange Free State) and the South African Republic (now called the province of the Transval).
In 1886 gold was discovered in the province of the Transvaal and the British colonialists who were occupying the Cape province and the province of Natal were determined to grab the vast deposits of gold that were just discovered. The British imperialists mounted an attack on the newly created Boer republic which terminated with the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. It is interesting to note that the arch British imperialist, Winston Churchill, fought in the Anglo-Boer War. Thus in 1902 South Africa became a full-fledged colony of Britain and the British imperialists, through the De Beers Mining Corporation, began the naked exploitation of Azania'a mineral resources, particularly gold, diamonds, coal, asbestos, uranium, etc.
In 1909 the British House of Commons, that facade of democracy, debated a bill to grant internal self-government to the white minority in South Africa. The Union of South Africa was set up by the British imperialists in 1910 with an all-white parliament. In 1961 the all-white parliament voted to break all ties, which in any case were formal, with the British crown and declared itself a Republic. However, the racist minority clique which is in power presently in Sou^h Africa represents Anglo-American imperialism. By oppressing and brutally subjugating vast majority of the population the racists make it possible for Anglo-American imperialism to reap super profits from the direct exploitation of the Azanian people.
LAND QUESTION
The total population of South Africa presently stands at 18 million, made up of 13 million black people and 3 million white people. The 13 million oppressed, exploited and discriminated against black people are herded into 13% of the total land area while the 3 million whites occupy, the remaining 87% of the total land area. The fascist authorities in South Africa have systematically herded the vast majority of the people into so-called "stans" which are made up of the 13% and and semi-arid areas of South Africa.
The white farmers of South Africa occupy 92.2 million hectares which amounts to 73% of the total land surface of the country. Of these white-owned farms, 106,011 live off the exploitation of cheap black labor. 68.3% of these farmers are bigger than 86 hectares and 23.9% are over 860 hectares. (One hectare equals 2 1/2 acres.) The African "bantustan" or reserve, the Transkei, created by the South African fascists in accordance with their policy of "separate development", harbors 41% of the African population and comprises an area of only 13.3 million hectares. A commission set up by the South African fascist authorities pointed out that 30% of the total land area in the Transkei was completely eroded and therefore completely unproductive; 40% of the land area was semi-eroded which left only 30% arable land. Thus the African reserves, in which the people are unable to seek out a living, were calculatingly designed to act as a reservoir for cheap labor.
The wholesale confiscation of the land by the settlers has given rise to a popular saying among the landless: "Over 300 years ago the white men came with the rifle in one hand and the Bible in the other. Then we had the land and he had the Bible. Now we have the Bible and he has the land! Not only that. He didn't give us the Bible he practices. The Bible he gave us says if somebody hits you on the right cheek you must give your left cheek, but the Bible he practices says: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In fact he gave us the revised edition of the Bible. So you see 'revisionism' has an old history. This candid and pungent saying of the landless sums up the cry for an agrarian revolution in South Africa's countryside.
South Africa's national agricultural output amounts to R686 million compared to the mining and manufacturing output which amounts to R2,432 million. Thus South Africa, besides having a developed agricultural economy, is also a highly industrialized area.
SOUTH AFRICAN FASCISTS
In 1938 a fascist industrial manager, Martinus Smuts Louw, revealed that 88% of South Africa's banking, 71% of short-term insurance, 60% of the gold mining industry and 10-30% of the secondary industry were controlled by foreign owners. Naturally the figure is much higher now. The chief exploiters of the Azanian people are Anglo-American imperialists. Figures published in December 1961 showed that direct and indirect British investments and assets, in South Africa, were estimated at 1,330,000 pound sterling and U.S. investments at 290,000,000 pound sterling. American economic investment in South Africa has greatly increased over the years, for in 1962 alone U.S. investments increased by 13-million pound sterling. In 1960 the members of the NATO owned 93% of the total foreign investments in South Africa; the British share being 38% and,that of the United States being 19% with the Western European countries accounting for the remaining 16%. The imperialist powers reap super profits arising from the naked exploitation of the Azanian people. Fascist colonialism and APARTHEID are a convenient vehicle for such naked exploitation of the Azanian people. An arch imperialist is reported to have said, "Apartheid in South Africa is abominable but it is also very profitable."
APARTHEID
"Apartheid," the policy of racial segregation and discrimination, has its foundations in economic exploitation, although bourgeois philosophers and apologists of fascism quote the Bible and distort natural science to give credence to their bankrupt fascist concepts. Although South Africa is the only state in the whole world that has officially adopted a racist ideology as a state ideology and therefore discriminates on the grounds of color, the struggle of the people of Azania^s not centered around the fight to be able to use the same public toilet as the white man or to share the same coffee tables in the same restaurant. These in themselves are nothing but bourgeois-liberal demands. Racial discrimination is the byproduct of capitalism and imperialism and therefore the fundamental task for the Azanian people is to seize political power by violently overthrowing the present fascist government and its imperialist backers.
Apartheid or racial segregation is nothing but a by-product of capitalism and imperialism. The white minority ruling clique in South Africa, when legislating, grants economic privileges to the settlers community whilst reducing the status of the African to that of a slave. The mines and Works Act of 1911 was the first piece of legislation which introduced compulsory segregation in employment. This act excluded Africans from "skilled" jobs in the extractive industries. In fact they continued to do the same job but for remunerative purposes were classified as "unskilled". The average wage between white and non-white in South Africa is as follows:
| Average in general | White | R962 |
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African | R47 |
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| Mining industry | White | R2,562 |
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African | R152 |
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| Manufacturing industry | White | R2,058 |
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African | R422 |
Besides the wholesale exploitation of the Azanian proletariat he is subjected to numerous taxes without receiving any free medical or other benefits. In a recent income-tax statistics given to the all-white parliament by the Minister of Finance he disclosed that Africans, on the average, pay R79 tax compared to the whites who pay R275.
SLAVE TRADE
The mining companies in South Africa, with the connivances of the South African Government, recruit more than 300,000 workers from the African reserves, from Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana as well as from the neighboring countries like Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), Malawi and Mozambique. They are supposedly hired on a yearly contract basis and during this period live locked inside the mine compounds, cut off completely from the outside world and even their families. 100,000 are recruited from the Portuguese colony of Mozambique alone. For the first two months they receive no salary at all for the exploiters argue that this amount is confiscated to defray expenses incurred whilst bringing them to the mines and pay for the necessary documents. The South African mining authorities pay the Portuguese colonial authorities R.23 cents per head per week, which amounts to 30,000 (sterling) per month. Voila! evidence of naked slavery in the second half of the 20th century!
In the rural areas, the fascist authorities co-operate with the white farmers in supplying the latter with slave labor. Africans who have been arrested for technical offences, such as under the notorious pass laws, are "leased" to white farmers at wages of R0.20 cents per day.
The pass laws constitute the corner-stone of fascist subjugation of the broad masses of the African people and consequently the most detested aspect of discrimination. Under the pass law regulations every male adult, and recently extended to females as well, must at all times carry on his or her person a "reference book." The book contains his employment history, as well as a number of documents such as tax receipts and various sorts of permits. In short an adult African, male or female, may not reside anywhere without permission; may not move outside his allotted place of residence without prior approval of the authorities; is subjected to curfew at night; may not live in any white area; may not own land in freehold areas; and may be expelled from place of residence and deported to any place should the authorities decide that his or her presence is "undesirable" or "redundant."
THE PASS LAWS
The South African fascist police has the right to demand the producing of the "reference book" at any hour of the day and failure to produce one on the spot leads to immediate arrest. In a recent survey it was shown that on the average 600 African males and females are arrested in the city of Johannesburg alone everyday. The court records of Fordsburg Court (in the suburb of Johannesburg) depicted the following statistics regarding "reference book" cases:
| 1st August, 1968 -- | 619 men were charged |
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32 women |
| 2nd August, 1968 -- | 633 men were charged |
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45 women |
| 5th August, 1968 -- | 633 men were charged |
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30 women |
| 6th August, 1968 -- | 564 men were charged |
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32 women |
The survey further points out that South African courts summarily deals with pass book cases at a rate of about one every two minutes!Hardly ever any one of these cases defended, and the usual sentence is R10 or two weeks imprisonment. However, under the "Bantu Labour Law" an African who pays his fine may nevertheless be detained until a "suitable" escort is found to take him back whence he came. Often people who pay their fines remain in jail for months awaiting a "suitable" escort.
Thus should an African, male or female, forget to carry his or her "reference book" on his or her person, he or she is certain to either spend RIO fines or serve a term of imprisonment of not less than two weeks and in some cases both. In the latest issue of the "Survey of South African Law" statistics show that there was an increase of 66,628 over the previous available figures on pass arrests.
THUS THE PASS LAW IS A LIVING HELL FOR THE OPPRESSED, EXPLOITED AND DISCRIMINATED AGAINST PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THEREFORE CONSTITUTES A RALLYING POINT FOR THE ANTI-FASCIST, ANTI-IMPERIALIST AND ANTI-REVISIONIST STRUGGLE IN SOUTH AFRICA.
WHERE THERE IS OPPRESSION, THERE MUST BE RESISTENCE!
In 1912 the South African Native Congress was established, thus giving the struggle of the oppressed and exploited people of Azania an organizational form. The South African Native Congress, which later changed its name to the African National Congress (ANC), being led by traditional conservatives, pursued a reformist programme and was strongly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's sterile policy of non-violence. Incidentally Mahatma Gandhi came to South Africa at the turn of the present Century and left behind an irksome legacy, the legacy of non-violence as a means of struggle. The only fruitful result of the legacy was that in 1961, Chief Luthuli, the last elected president of the African National Congress was awarded the "Nobel Peace Prize" by the imperialists for his unflinching dedication to the principle of non-violence!
Whilst the ANC leadership, under the direction of the revisionist "Communist"Party of South Africa, preached the servile doctrine of nonviolence to the Azanian masses, thereby doing a great service to the imperialists and colonialists, the fascists in South Africa aided by the imperialist powers, armed themselves to the teeth and unleashed a reign of white terror. Reactionary violence became the order of the day. However, through their own bitter experience and much shedding of blood, the Azanian people came to realize the utter futility of non-violence as a means of struggle against a class enemy and profoundly grasped the truth contained in Chairman Mao Tse-tung's teaching that "POLITICAL POWER GROWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN."
In 1959, through popular demand, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) came into being, representing the true, militant, and genuine aspirations of the entire oppressed, exploited and discriminated against people of Azania. On March 21, i960, barely ten months after its founding, the PAC launched a nation-wide anti-pass campaign which culminated in the massacre of 72 patriotic Azanians at Sharpeville by the South African fascisti police and the arrest of thousands. This wanton massacre heralded in a new era in the history of the struggles of the people of Azania. On that historic day, Mangaliso Sobukwe, President of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, unequivocally stated that, "FROM NOW ONWARDS WE ARE NOT ONLY PREPARED TO DIE FOR OUR FREEDOM BUT WE SHALL KILL FOR IT AS WELL!"
The degenerate, revisionist "Communist" Party of South Africa long abandoned the Marxist-Leninist truth of the inevitability of a violent revolution to overthrow the oppressing class. Instead they advocated the treacherous line of peaceful and parliamentary struggles. The revisionists repeatedly blackmailed the African people with the threat of nuclear holocaust by maliciously emphasizing that if the oppressed, and exploited people of Azania took up arms to overthrow white fascism and imperialism in South Africa, this would lead to a world-wide "racial conflict" and "bring about the total destruction of the universe." Some materialists! As for Mao Tsetung Thought, the Marxism-Leninism of our era, it is an anathema to the degenerate, revisionist Communist Party of South Africa!
THE EMERGENCE OF P.A.C.
One can hinder the development for a short period but one cannot prevent history from pursuing its normal course. The degenerate, revisionist "Communist" Party of South Africa, under direct instructions; from their masters, the Soviet revisionist ruling clique, attempted to cow down the just struggles of the Azanian people by cunningly fostering the pernicious policy of non-violence, by distorting the fundamental truths of Marxism-Leninism and by preventing the spread of Mao Tse-Tung's Thought. However, the sharpening of the contradictions, the intensification of the struggle and through practice -the nefarious schemes of the revisionists was thoroughly exposed.
The emergence of PAC and the growing militancy of the Azanian people not only terrified the local fascist authorities, the Anglo-American imperialists but also the Soviet revisionist ruling clique. Thus the imperialists and the revisionists have ganged up to oppose the PAC and the just struggles of the people of Azania. Recently the Soviet revisionist ruling clique sponsored a meeting in Khartoum ostensibly to "support liberation movements in Portuguese colonies in Africa and in Southern Africa." However, the principal aim was to popularise its lackeys whilst condemning genuine revolutionary movements from these countries. This is but one example of the filthy role the New Tsars are playing in Africa to undermine the just struggles of the people of Africa.
"WAR IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF STRUGGLE FOR RESOLVING CONTRADICTIONS WHEN THEY DEVELOPED TO A CERTAIN STAGE, BETWEEN CLASSES, NATIONS, STATES, OR POLITICAL GROUPS, AND IT HAS EXISTED EVER SINCE THE EMERGENCE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY AND OF CLASSES." (Mao Tse-tung)
Thus for more than 300 years the people of Azania have not only had their land confiscated from them, their wealth exploited and themselves being driven to serfdom in order that imperialism reap super profits BUT have become aliens in the land of their birth. Therefore, being subjected to the most reactionary violence, the Azanian people, under the leadership of the PAC, correctly decided to meet the reactionary violence of the oppressors with revolutionary violence of the masses.
With the establishment of the PAC was also formed POQO, the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. Firmly believing in the teachings of Chairman Mao of building base areas, liberating the countryside and then attacking the cities, the PAC and its military wing is firmly rooted in the countryside of South Africa with active cells operating throughout the country, including the cities. Since 1963 POQO carried out numerous uprisings in the rural and semi-rural areas of South Africa, the most important ones being the Paarl Uprising, the Basheee River incident, the Pondoland Uprising to mention but a few. To date 89 PAC freedom fighters have been executed by the fascist regime and more than 13,000 activists are incarcerated in South African prisons.
However, the year 1968 witnessed the slow but steady increase of guerrilla activities inside South Africa.
In April, 1968, a POQO cell in Graff Beinet, a town important as a railway junction, attacked the local police station and seized important points in the town. The South African authorities had to call in the army which surrounded the entire town and arrested every African in the area. Today 72 of them are facing charges which carry the death penalty. Similar insurrections were carried out in the neighbouring towns of Outdshoorn and Uttenhage
In June, 1968, the South African newspapers reported that Portuguese soldiers in Mozambique clashed with PAC guerrillas who were marching southwards with the Portuguese colonial troops suffering heavy casualties. Immediately after this incident was reported to the South African authorities, they carried out a large-scale military operation on the borders of South Africa and Mozambique, called Operation Sibasa. To the jittery public the South African authorities said that Operation Sibasa was a normal military exercise but they could not hide the fact that they were looking for PAC guerrillas moving southwards.
However, since i960, the year of the Sharpeville massacre, the South - African military budget has risen fantastically. In 1960-61 the military spending, excluding the spending on the police, was 22 million (sterling) and the figure given for 1967-68 amounts to 145 million (sterling).
Chariman Mao points out that "ARMS ARE IMPORTANT, BUT NOT DECISIVE." The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa) and its military wing, POQO, by mobilizing the masses and firmly relying on them and by waging an armed struggle, is confident of final victory. Moreover, not only are the Azanian people sure of victory but the fascist colonialists, imperialists and the social-imperialists are daily acknowledging their inevitable doom. In South Africa, despite such huge arms build up, the Commander-in-Chief of the fascist army summed up his inevitable doom when he said, after the completion of Operation Sibasa, that, "We may have all the firing power at our disposal, BUT if we do not have the local population on our side we can never win this war." This is one contradiction that all reactionaries cannot resolve and therefore this irreconcilable contradiction will most certainly bring about the downfall of the fascists, imperialists and revisionists in South Africa and in its place will emerge a Democratic and Socialist Azania.
reprinted from MASS LINE, newspaper of the Canadian Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
[Photo: P.A.C. guerrilla fighter studies Mao Tsetung Thought]
[Photo: Mozambique guerrilla fighters love Chairman Mao, the great leader of the Chinese people. They are seen here in a group study of Chairman Mao's works.]
STUDYING MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT IN THE COURSE OF FIGHTING, THEY HAVE.WON TREMENDOUS VICTORY, AND GUERRILLA OPERATIONS HAVE SPREAD TO NINE OF ANGOLA'S 15 PROVINCES
Suffering under ruthless imperialist and colonialist oppression, the Angolan people rose in arms with bitter hatred on February l1, 1961, and launched a vigorous offensive against Portuguese colonial rule to open the prelude to their armed struggle. With the support of the people, the Angolan patriotic armed forces have persevered in struggle and grown in strength in the past nine years. The Angolan people's armed struggle is now developing in depth in the vast countryside.
WHERE THERE IS OPPRESSION THERE IS RESISTANCE
The five-century-old bloody rule of the Portuguese colonialists in Angola has long kindled the flames of hatred in the hearts of the Angolan people. Slaughtering the Angolan people with hideous barbarity, the Portuguese colonialists put Angolan patriots in wooden boxes and threw them into the sea or herded them into aircraft and pushed them out while in flight. They tied Angolans to their jeeps and dragged them to death or poured gasoline on them and burnt them to death. The savage Portuguese colonialists even murdered their "prisoners" by poisoning the food in prisons; they also chopped off the feet of the Angolans and gouged out their eyes.
The Portuguese colonial authorities have bled the Angolan people white through numerous exorbitant taxes. The Angolan people are forced to pay a so-called "sovereignty tax" in acknowledgement of Portuguese colonial rule; they have to pay taxes when they go hunting or change their residence and even if they want to grow a beard or moustache.
But the heavier the oppression, the stronger the resistance. Pushed to the end of their forbearance, the Angolan people launched a fierce attack on the police headquarters and prisons of the Portuguese colonialists in Northern Angola on February U, 1961. They seized the enemy's weapons, stormed the prisons and set a large number of patriots free. The attack dealt a heavy blow to the enemy's arrogance and started the revolutionary flames of the armed struggle for national independence against the Portuguese colonial rule in Angola.
PERSEVERING IN STRUGGLE AND FORGING AHEAD
Supported by the people, the Angolan guerrillas have achieved tremendous victory after nine years of arduous struggle. Guerrilla operations by Angolan freedom fighters have spread to nine of the 15 provinces in the country. The vast rural areas in eastern, northern, and central Angola are now under guerrilla control, while the Portuguese colonial authorities can only dominate the cities and towns, communication lines, and a number of so-called "strategic hamlets." About half the inhabitants in these areas refuse to pay any tax whatsoever to the colonial authorities.
Persevering in struggle and dauntless in the face of difficulties, the Angolan people are forging ahead along the road of armed struggle. One instance is UNITA (the National Union for the Complete Liberation of Angola). When it began guerrilla operations in 1966, it had only 11 fighters with one machine-gun, two rifles and bows and arrows. Now, its military organization, (FALA, the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola), has more than 3,000 well-trained guerrilla fighters who are highly disciplined and are capable of not only destroying bridges and highways but also, of conducting battalion-size campaigns on a relatively large scale.
Why were the Angolan guerrillas able to grow? As summed up in a recent interview with a Hsinhua News Agency correspondent by Tony Dacosta, UNITA representative in Cairo, there are two main factors contributing to the rapid development of the Angolan revolution: first, the barbarous rule of the Portuguese colonial authorities which drove the people to rebellion, and second, the study of the great truth of Mao Tsetung Thought by the revolutionary Angolan people, especially Chairman Mao's teachings on people's war and self-reliance.
AROUSE AND RELY ON THE PEOPLE
In the course of protracted struggle, the Angolan people have come to understand that they cannot; achieve emancipation without waging a people's war. J. Savimbi, President of the Central Committee of UNITA, said that the liberation war must be a people's war waged by the people and for the people. UNITA has been working hard for a long time to arouse the people by its own example and by means of political education. The general line of UNITA, reaffirmed at its Second Congress held inside Angola at the end of August last year, is to carry out a protracted people's war for national liberation and steadily develop guerrilla warfare in Angola by relying on its own efforts.
The Angolan guerrillas have forged close ties with the people. Local administrations have been established in the guerrilla zones to lead the people in production and in fighting. Producers' co-operatives, primary schools and make-shift clinics have also been set up. The guerrillas pay attention to doing political work among the people and helping the militia in military training. At the same time, the people also actively support the guerrillas, providing them with food, clothes and information about the enemy. The Angolan guerrillas have studied and applied the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention formulated by the great leader of the Chinese people Chairman Mao Tsetung. In ordinary times, they engaged in productive labor together with the local people. When the enemy comes, they fight side by side with the militia. The guerrillas not only have thick underbrush to take cover in but even more important, they are protected by the people who whole-heartedly support the revolution. Samuel Ghiwale, a young commander of the guerrillas under UNITA, said: "We could not operate without the support of the people.
PORTUGUESE COLONIAL AUTHORITIES IN DIRE STRAITS
The triumphant development of the Angolan people's armed struggle has thrown the Portuguese colonial authorities in a very difficult position. Besides the mounting casualties inflicted on the Portuguese troops, the African freedom fighters have forced the Portuguese colonialists to spend almost 50 percent of their military budget on their colonial wars in Angola Mozambique, Guinea (Bissau) and other colonies. A small nation with a population of 9 million, Portugal had to maintain more than 180,000 men on a military budget of 302 million U.S. dollars in fiscal year 1968-69. There are now more than 60,000 Portuguese colonial troops in Angola, a 31 percent increase compared with 1968.
What warrants attention is that U.S. imperialism has supplied the Portuguese colonial authorities with huge financial and military assistance to back their dirty colonial wars in Angola and other colonies and has established a military base in Azodes, central Angola. The permanent U.S. military mission based in Portugal plots and plans for the Portuguese colonial troops. From the very beginning of their armed struggle, the Angolan people have realized that U.S.-led imperialism is their enemy.
Although there will be many difficulties in their way forward, the Angolan people are determined to carry on their armed struggle till they win independence. In a recent statement, the General Command of FALA said: "Political power will not come to us on a silver platter, nor can it be won by demagogic phrases as some of us imagine. Political power will come only. through blood and iron." The statement declared: Despite all the hardships and difficulties that will emerge in our struggle, we are firmly determined not to rest until the Portuguese authorities are eliminated.
-PEKING REVIEW, 7, Feb. 13, 1970!
November 28, 1964
The armed aggression of U.S. imperialism against the Congo (L.) is a very grave matter.
The United States has all along attempted to control the Congo. It has used the United Nations forces to perpetrate every kind of. villainy there. It murdered the Congolese national hero Lumumba and subverted the lawful Congolese Government. It imposed the puppet Tshombe on the Congolese people and dispatched mercenary troops to suppress the Congolese national-liberation movement. And now, in league with Belgium and Britain, it is carrying out direct armed intervention in the Congo. The purpose of U.S. imperialism is not only to control the Congo, but also once again to enmesh the whole of Africa -- particularly, the newly independent African countries -- this time in the toils of U.S. neo-colonialism. U.S. aggression has encountered heroic resistance from the Congolese people and aroused the indignation of the people of Africa and the whole world.
U.S. imperialism is the common enemy of the people of the world. It is committing aggression against south Vietnam, intervening in Laos, menacing Cambodia and blustering about extending the war in Indo-China. It is trying by every means to strangle the Cuban revolution. It wants to turn West Germany and Japan into the two major U.S. nuclear bases. It has ganged up with Britain in creating "Malaysia" to menace Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia. It has occupied south Korea and the Chinese province of Taiwan. It dominates all Latin America. It plays the bully everywhere. U.S. imperialism has over-reached itself. Wherever it commits aggression, it puts a new noose around its neck. It is besieged ring upon ring by the people of the whole world.
People of the Congo, you are not alone in your just struggle. The entire Chinese people are behind you. The people throughout the world opposing imperialism are behind you. The U.S. imperialists and reactionaries of all countries are paper tigers. The struggle of the Chinese people has proved this. The struggle of the Vietnamese people is proving it. The struggle of the Congolese people will surely prove this too. By strengthening national unity and persevering in protracted struggle, the Congolese people will certainly triumph, and U.S. imperialism will certainly be defeated.
People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.
[Photo: Led by the People 's Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf, people in Dhofar Region have persisted in armed struggle against the British colonial rule. Photo shows fighters of the People's Liberation Army fighting in the Dhofar Region studying Chairman Mao's works in connection with their practical struggle.]
Many students at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland demonstrated the correctness of the slogan "It is right to rebel against reactionaries" when they joined the Student Front for Democratic Rights in militantly defending the right of communist students from American Student Movement to speak there.
In past months the administration has been criminally repressing the students' right to politically organize, repressing mainly Black students on a racist basis. Bogus excuses, many created by the lackey "student" paper The Commuter, were used to bring police on to campus to carry out this repression, but the Black students fought back vigorously against these fascists.
It was during these struggles that the Cleveland Student Movement organized the Student Front to Fight Racial Oppression. As a result more recent repressive action taken by the administration was aimed at the Cleveland Student Movement. In an attempt to keep Mao Tsetung Thought from the students at CCC, all "rights and privileges" previously "granted" the CSM were revoked. Student Front was immediately broadened to defend all democratic rights and took up the defense of the CSM.
Students from CCC and delegates to the First National Conference of the American Student Movement went out and did vigorous mass work. They sold the American Student, newspaper of the ASM, passed out leaflets calling for a mass democracy meeting, and put up a big-letter poster saying "It Is Right to Rebel Against Reactionaries.'" and listing in detail all the reactionary policies of the administration.
As soon as the poster went up, a few fascist students began tearing it down in a frenzied attempt to stop this attack on their masters. Almost as quickly, progressive students came forward to defend the fundamental democratic right to discuss ideas and to support ASM. The cowardly fascists couldn't deal with the revolutionary will of the students, so they ran off. By then security police and plain-clothesmen came up and grabbed the literature that CSM was selling and illegally forced one speaker to the administrator's office.
An African student visiting from England, however boldly continued the meeting. Speaking from the top of a table, he called on students to defend the democratic right of having discussion of political ideas. The students militantly defended him and he was able to speak for nearly a half hour before the security police, backed up by 20 carloads of city police were able to stop the mass democracy.
He and a white Canadian worker were arrested and six others were illegally detained and harassed. The two were held overnight and then taken to immigration and questioned there. After the Student Front set up a picket line in front of the immigration building, the Canadian worker was released. The African student, bureaucratically forced to leave for Canada in order to avoid deportation proceedings, but no charges were brought against him.
In order to spread the news of these events more widely, members of the Student Front put out a newspaper. Many students from CCC and other campuses distributed it widely.
The Student Front is pressing forward with the demand that students be allowed the right to politically organize. In the case of CCC campus this is of special importance to the working class. Many of the students that attend there are from working class background. CCC is a place where fascist (i.e. racist, anti-communist) ideas are taught and fascist repression is a policy of the Administration, and where fascists are trained as police cadets who will go out and oppress the working class. Also, revolutionary ideas spread at CCC will rapidly reach the whole Cleveland working class.
The Student Front holds that "When the democratic rights of some go, the democratic rights of all go!" and will carry on the struggle against all the racist and fascist limitations of students' democratic rights.
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL AGAINST REACTIONARIES!
Tirana, (Hsinhua, March 22, 1970) The Albanian paper "Bashkimi" in a commentary today strongly denounced U.S. imperialism for hatching a coup d'etat in Cambodia and flagrantly interfering in the internal affairs of various countries in Southeast Asia.
The commentary said that when Cambodian head of state Samdech Norodom Sihanouk was staying abroad, the C.I.A. spies seized the opportunity to plot activities in Cambodia to oppose openly the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam. They instigated hooligans to make raids on the embassies of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and of the Republic of South Vietnam in Cambodia. On March 18, domestic reactionary forces in Cambodia staged a coup d'etat, announcing the overthrow of the head of state Samdech Norodom Sihanouk.
The commentary pointed out that the real organizers of the coup d'etat were the U.S. imperialists who attempted to turn Cambodia into a war base against the people of South Vietnam, the Laotian patriots and the people's armed forces of Thailand. After the coup d'etat, the U.S. government hurriedly extended recognition to it. The U.S. propaganda machine has made no secret of its exaltation at the incident in Cambodia.
At the same time, the commentary said, the U.S. imperialists also instigated their lackeys in Southeast Asia to continue their intervention in the internal affairs of Laos and instigated the reactionary Thanom clique in Thailand to openly help the Laotian right-wing forces in launching attacks on the liberated areas in Laos. A spokesman of the White House admitted that U.S. aircraft had transported two battalions of Thai troops to Long Cheng military base in Laos.
The commentary said in conclusion: the intervention in the internal affairs of the Southeast Asian countries on the part of the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys has aroused ever greater indignation among the people in this region and has further strengthened their determination to fight through to the end for the defense of their freedom and independence and drive the U.S. aggressors and their lackeys of every description out of their countries once and for all.
Peking, (Hsinhua, March 23, 1970) With the support of U.S. imperialism, Israel has begun to carry out its criminal plan of forcibly driving 300,000 Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. This is another grave step taken by U.S. imperialism and its tool, Israeli Zionism, in carrying out their policy of aggression and expansion.
According to a report of Radio Amman, the Israeli authorities have according to this plan forcibly moved 50 Palestinian families from the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip to the west bank-of the Jordan River and are hurriedly moving other families by plane.
The Gaza Strip is part of Palestine. It came under Egyptian administration after the Israeli war of aggression against the Arab countries in 19h8. More than 300,000 Palestinian refugees, who were driven out of their homeland in other parts of Palestine by Zionism, are living on this narrow strip of 258 square kilometers. It was occupied by Israel during another Israeli war of aggression against the Arab countries in June 1967.
In the past two years and more, the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip put up a staunch struggle against the Israeli aggressors. Under the support of the masses, the Palestinian guerrillas have attacked almost every day the Israeli occupation troops there. Workers, students and other residents there have constantly waged struggle in the form of strikes. Just as Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has said: in the Gaza Strip, "even the old men, women and children are fighting. The Israelis may have control over it during the day, but at night, Gaza belongs to the Arabs."
Another sinister aim of the Israeli authorities in evicting the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip is to perpetuate its occupation of this strip of strategic importance and to set up Zionist "military settlements" there as positions for its expansionist and aggressive forces.
It should be noted that the forcible eviction of the Palestinians to the west bank of the Jordan River by U.S. imperialism and Israel is closely connected with the scheme of establishing a so-called "Palestinian State" as plotted by U.S. imperialism. As military suppression failed to eliminate the Palestinian guerrillas, U.S. imperialism in collusion with Soviet social-imperialism has long been hatching a so-called "political solution" scheme, in an attempt to strangle the Palestinian people's armed struggle. A western journal has revealed that one of the tricks being designed by U.S. imperialism is to establish a so-called "Palestinian State" in the west bank of the Jordan River as a means to induce the Palestinian people to lay down their arms, surrender and sue for peace. U.S. diplomats in Jerusalem have started activities towards this end. However, the Palestinian people have long seen through the wicked design of U.S. imperialism. The Palestinian guerrilla organizations have sternly exposed this plot. The "Voice of Assifa" radio of the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Al Fateh) in a recent commentary once again condemned this wicked scheme aimed at "liquidating the Palestinian revolution." The radio has well said, "The Palestinian people, with revolutionary consciousness will persist in the revolution and carry on the armed struggle till final victory."
The great leader Chairman Mao has pointed out, "'Lifting a rock only to drop it on one's own feet' is a Chinese folk saying to describe the behavior of certain fools. The reactionaries in all countries are fools of this kind. In the final analysis their persecution of the revolutionary people only serves to accelerate the people's revolutions on a broader and more intense scale." This new crime of aggression of U.S. imperialism and Zionism in forcing the Palestinian people to move out of the Gaza Strip will certainly fan up the burning flames of wrath of the Arab people and enhance a further development in the struggle against the U.S. and Israeli aggressors by the Palestinian and other Arab people, thus accelerating the doom of the U.S. and Israeli gangsters.
The Arab people's struggle against the U.S. imperialist and Zionist aggression is a just cause. The Chinese people strongly condemn this new crime of aggression of U.S. imperialism and Zionism, and resolutely support the just struggle of the Palestinian and other Arab people. Final victory certainly belongs to the heroic Arab people persisting in struggle.
Hundreds of militant Irish students and workers routed U.S. imperialism's number one glamor boy--Teddy Kennedy--in a mass democracy meeting and demonstration March 3 at Trinity College in Dublin.
The Irish press had publicized Kennedy's visit as a "friendly return to the land of his forefathers." However, the visit was planned by reactionary Trinity College, with its long history of service to British imperialism, and by the lackey southern Irish government. The visit had the definite purpose of doing propaganda for U.S. imperialist influence in Ireland, which is growing day-by-day as more and more large U.S. corporations sink their fangs into Ireland. Kennedy, popularized as the big-name Irish "patriot" represents the smiling face of U.S. imperialism to make the Irish people more easily accept U.S. domination.
While Kennedy was speaking inside Trinity College, the Committee to Oppose Ted Kennedy, a group of militant anti-imperialist workers and students, was holding a mass meeting on a busy public square outside the college gates. Several hundred students and workers, crowded on to the small square, vigorously denounced Kennedy as a peddler of imperialism. Hundreds more heard the speeches from across the street.
Meanwhile, a militant Irish worker had gone into the hall where Kennedy was addressing about 700 people and stood up, denounced Kennedy and U.S. imperialism, waved the Red Book of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung, and brought a hush to the hall. He was immediately wrestled out of the hall by six fascists. A reporter asked if anyone else in the hall was a "Maoist." The worker replied, "there may be--so many of the Irish people are against Kennedy!"
The worker then reported to the mass meeting what Kennedy had said. Kennedy's hypocritical and racist slanders against the people--such as saying that "Men of the white population" (imperialist leaders) must try to keep white workers from oppressing black people--were exposed and denounced. Militant speeches followed denouncing the Irish government for collaborating with U.S. imperialism and betraying the revolutionary struggles of the Irish people against foreign domination. Another speaker talked of the bright red anti-imperialist and socialist revolution throughout the world, led by China and Mao Tsetung Thought. A representative of the American Communist Workers' Movement expressed the solidarity of the American working class with the Irish people and denounced the rise of fascism in the U.S., of which Kennedy is part and parcel.
These militant speeches aroused the class hatred of the people at the demonstration, and when Kennedy tried to escape unnoticed out of a side entrance he was set upon by many of the demonstrators. He tried his best to prop up his smile while the demonstrators, momentarily held back by the police, denounced him as an imperialist. After he got into his car, the people broke through the police lines, pounded on his car and windows, and kicked the tires. "Ted, get out of Ireland!" they chanted. The U.S. bourgeois press pointed out that "It was the first time in Irish history that more than a few isolated Irishmen even spoke against the Kennedy clan."
The demonstration was the culmination of intensive work by the Committee to Oppose Ted Kennedy. During "Smash U.S. Imperialism Week," the week prior to March 3, Committee leaders went to campuses all over southern Ireland to do propaganda for Mao Tsetung Thought and against U.S. imperialism, which is struggling with the British for domination of Ireland and which controls over 16$ of the new industry developed in the last two years. In mass democracy meetings the Committee put forward why it was necessary to oppose Ted Kennedy as an agent of U.S. imperialism. In one such meeting in Dublin over 300 students ultimately joined in, and most supported the progressive line.
In working class communities, Committee members went door-to-door to talk with people. Through this work it became clear that most Irish workers have no illusions about the Kennedys and are determined to throw U.S. imperialism out of Ireland. "What has Kennedy ever done for the Irish?" said one worker. "Got his money through swindling the people. When's the demonstration?"
In their leaflets and discussions the Committee boldly advanced the line that the U.S. imperialist ruling class is heading for total collapse. Bogged down in crises at home and abroad, faced with an economy tottering under the impact of inflation, recession and overproduction, faced with the rising militancy of the American people and with People's Wars of national liberation all over the world, the reactionaries are making a frenzied attempt to promote and whitewash the image of U.S. imperialism. This attempt at political deception is exemplified by the reactionary propaganda that has been done on what the Kennedy family stands for.
The Committee's leaflet says:
"Joseph P. Kennedy, a multi-millionnaire who rose to power on the sweat of the American working class, was the father of a family deeply imbued with the imperialist world outlook. Into his children he bred the nauseous attitude of self-promotion, careerism, and exploitation. He put millions of dollars at the disposal of his sons to ensure their political futures--in other words to buy their way to power--especially through massive advertising campaigns.
"J.F.K.'s advertising campaigns were designed for the sole purpose of glamourising the Kennedy family life in such a way as to gain completely unprincipled emotional support for their political activities. The cultural aspects of the Kennedy's lives were advanced to do propaganda for U.S. imperialism both in America itself and all over the world and to divert the attention of the people from the criminal activities being perpetrated against them.
"At home, R.F.K., in a frantic attempt to obscure the roots of the problem and to maintain his own image of being pro-people, attacked various State Governors as being 'solely responsible' for the suppression of the people's struggle, especially that of the Afro-American people. This policy provided the imperialist system with a number of disposable buffers at the same time as confusing the real basis of the problem.
"Under the Hitlerite theory of the 'Free World' (i.e. that the U.S. imperialists have the right to butcher the people of the world in order to preserve their interests and their profits), J.F.K. escalated the suppression of the Vietnamese people and stepped up arms expansion trying to provide new sources of investments and contracts for the giant monopoly capitalist corporations.
"Every unexpected event in the family life of the Kennedys (e.g. both assassinations, Jackie's wedding to arch-fascist Onassis, the Mary-Jo Kopechne case, etc.) has been used to promote the Kennedys while at the same time confusing the people as to what the Kennedys actually represent in the world today."
In fact, the Kennedy family represents the smiling, liberal face of two-faced U.S. imperialism while at the same time carrying on exploitation, oppression, and deception. The American people should resolutely stand shoulder to shoulder with our Irish brothers in exposing and denouncing these enemies of the people.
If you want to know what happened among American coal miners 100 years ago, go to see "The Molly Maguires" and imagine exactly the opposite.
The "hero"--Pinkerton agent James McParland, is pictured romantically as intelligent, clever, and "working his way up" by selling out countless struggling miners. The full story of McParland's spy work is told in Foner's History of the Labor Movement in the United States: "...ten Pennsylvania miners were railroaded to the gallows, trade unionism in the anthracite regions set back for many years, and the cause of organized labor throughout the country injured."
The miners in this film are pictured as fight-crazy, naive, and easily duped people who belong to what is described as a social, law-abiding organization called the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. In reality this group was a militant working-class organization with no illusions about whose interests the laws served. With over 6,000 local units reaching every corner of the mining industry, the so-called "law-abiding" Hibernians had every coal operator in the country searching desperately for a way to smash them.
The Molly Maguires themselves never existed. Pinkerton agents like McParland, payed by the coal operators, invented and popularized the mythical group, committed massive crimes in its name, then framed the leaders of the real organization of miners -- the Hibernians -- and brought them to trial as "Molly Maguires",
The makers of this film have gathered together all the lies used to slander miners and break their organization in the 1879's, and are selling them for profit as truth. This is just one,clear example of the fascistic lies the monopoly capitalists propagate everywhere against the working class.
WHAT THE WORKERS REALLY DID WITH PINKERTON AGENTS
[Photo: Workers battle Pinkertons during the Great Homestead Steel Strike, Pennsylvania, 1892.]
Peking (Hsinhua, March 26, 1970) The People's Daily today carried an article by You Xuan-tung, a worker in Peking Post Office, entitled "Firm Support for the U.S. Postal Workers' Strike." It reads in part as follows:
In the past few days, 250,000 postmen and post office staff in more than 200 U.S. cities have been fighting resolutely in defense of their vital rights, defying the intimidation and wheedling of the reactionary U.S. authorities and breaking through the obstruction and sabotage of scab unions. This is the first general strike of the postal workers in the U.S history and an amplified manifestation of their fighting spirit. This revolutionary action is very excellent, and we Chinese postal workers express our firm support.
The powerful strike of the U.S. postal workers has struck terror into the reactionary U.S. ruling circles. U.S. imperialist chieftain Nixon, at his wit's end, declared the strike was "illegal" and threatened that he would "take whatever steps that are necessary." Falling into a panic, he blatantly declared a "State of national emergency" and ordered fascist troops to take over postal services in New York City. Such naked coercion and suppression just revealed the very nature of U.S. reactionaries as paper tigers outwardly strong but inwardly weak.
Chairman Mao has pointed out: "In the United States there are others who are really strong--the American people." So long as the U.5. working class closely unites, combines their struggle with the struggles of the U.S; Black people and progressive youth and unites the masses of people of all strata to launch resolute and sustained struggle against the U.S. reactionaries, final victory surely belongs to the U.S. working class and the broad masses of other working people.
PEOPLE OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE AND OPPOSE ANY WAR OF AGGRESSION LAUNCHED BY IMPERIALISM OR SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM, ESPECIALLY ONE IN WHICH ATOM BOMBS ARE USED AS WEAPONS! IF SUCH A WAR BREAKS OUT, THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD SHOULD USE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO ELIMINATE THE WAR OF AGGRESSION, AND PREPARATIONS SHOULD BE MADE RIGHT NOW!
[The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was founded on April 22, 1969. The founding political resolution of the CPI, passed at that time, concluded: "The U.S. and the Soviet imperialists are using India as a main base for carrying out their strategy for joint world domination. India is also the center of conspiracies against socialist China, the base of world revolution, the hope of the exploited people of the world. That is why it is not merely the patriotic duty of the Indian people to accomplish the Indian revolution; it is also their internationalist duty. The international significance of the Indian revolution is very great. Great Lenin dreamed of the day when revolutionary India would unite with revolutionary China and bring about the collapse of the world imperialist system. That is why at the time of the formation of the Party the Indian revolutionaries must resolve that they shall unite with the great people of China and thus forge unity with the liberation struggles of the various countries, that they shall build up a revolutionary united front and destroy world imperialism and its chief accomplice; modern revisionism. Chairman Mao has given the call:
"People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy. U.S. imperialism, and against its accomplices.1 It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off."
Our task is to prepare ourselves to respond to this call."
Six months later, Charu Mazumdar, leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), in an article published in the October issue of the Indian journal "Liberation," calls on the Indian people to vigorously develop revolutionary armed struggle to eliminate a war of aggression against China being plotted by U.S. imperialism and social imperialism.]
(On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China)
For some time now U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism aided by all the reactionaries of the world, including the reactionary ruling clique of India and the Japanese militarists, have stepped up their preparations for launching a war of aggression against China, the land where the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has taken place. The reactionary Indian ruling clique as well as all the revisionist and reformist political parties of India have associated themselves with this sinister anti-China war plans peddled by the U.S. imperialist warmonger Nixon and the Soviet revisionist chieftain Kosygin in various countries of Asia.
China, the center of world revolution, has emerged from the victorious Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the immensely powerful bastion against world reaction. The revolutionary people of every country look upon the great China as a powerful base of their own revolution. For them the existence of the powerful socialist China is the guarantee of winning victory in their own revolutions. China is,today, the source of inspiration for the revolutionary struggles throughout the world. That is why U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, faced as they both are with inevitable destruction, are frantically hatching plots for attacking China. This is so because, as Chairman Mao has taught us: "All reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces."
U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism are now hopelessly hedged in on all sides by the surging struggles of the people in their own countries and in other countries of the world. That is why they are frantically plotting for launching a war of aggression against China. If they succeed in launching a war of aggression against China, the tremendous resistance put up by the 700 million Chinese people will push the imperialists and social-imperialist aggressors to their graves at a vastly accelerated pace, and give great momentum and stimulation to the revolutionary struggle in every country of the world, thus creating a worldwide prairie fire which will burn to ashes not only U.S. imperialism but also the entire imperialist system of exploitation, and there will eventually emerge a world without exploitation.
World War 1 brought about destruction on a scale never seen before and ran its course in 4 years. World War II brought about destruction on a still larger scale and reached a new stage of intensity on June 22, 1941, and ended four years later in 1945. If the imperialists dare to kindle the flames of a world war for the third time with the great socialist China as their target and bring about destruction on an even greater scale, there is no doubt that the war will also end in four years or even sooner.
If the imperialist monsters insist on meeting their doom through such a war, the revolutionary people of the world will not be afraid to face it. Because they know that such a war by the imperialists will provide the guarantee that the victorious red flag of liberation will fly still brighter in every country of the world and the victory in revolution will be won in a very short time. Hie certainty of winning victory will enormously enhance the confidence of the revolutionary people and the fierce hatred of the people against the imperialists that will burst forth in every country of the globe, will destroy both imperialism and the imperialist war. There will emerge a new world system without exploitation, without war, without destruction, where man's creative potentiality' can develop freely, where man will build for himself a new and glorious existence.
If the U.S. imperialists and Soviet Social imperialists succeed in launching a war of aggression against China for which they are now frantically preparing, then India, a collaborator of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social imperialism, will be an aggressor country. This will make the struggle of the Indian revolutionaries much more difficult and they will have to shoulder a great responsibility. However, for the Indian people the principal contradiction and the center of gravity for all our work will continue to be the same as at present. The class alliance will also be the same as at present. But the struggle will be more difficult and the tasks much heavier, and we shall be able to carry them out successfully only by spreading the class struggle, that is, the flames of agrarian revolution to every State, to the vast countryside and throughout India.
We can prevent the war from becoming fatally inevitable if we are able to consolidate all our forces and spread the sparks of this revolutionary armed struggle throughout India, here and now. No aggressor army will ever dare to attack another country with India--this land of 500 million people, as its rear, when the flames of revolutionary armed struggle begin to rage furiously all over the land. This tremendous prairie fire of revolutionary armed struggle in India will, on the one hand, shake the entire world imperialist system to its foundation while on the other, it will serve to increase greatly the confidence of the struggling forces in every country, making them irrepressible. Further, the crisis and panic inflicted on imperialism will provide new strength and inspiration to the exploited millions in the imperialist countries to deal most telling blows against imperialism. The impact of the tremendous force that will emerge from the unity of the revolutionary people of the whole world will make even the backward masses confident of victory. The dream that two young revolutionaries dreamt a hundred years ago and the great call they gave in the Communist Manifesto--"Workers of the world unite!", will finally take shape in reality. People of the whole world, inspired with a new internationalism, will unite with the great China, and led by Chairman Mao, will translate into reality the dream that man has dreamt for thousands of years, and a world without exploitation will be built.
We, the revolutionaries of India, must grasp the great call given by Chairman Mao: "seize the day, seize the hour" in order to be able to take a great part in carrying out the most sacred task of the people of the world. We know that the people of India have never lagged behind in making sacrifices in their struggle against exploitation and for the liberation of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people have fought and thousands have laid down their lives but were unable to win victory. India is no land of cowards. The people of my country are never afraid to lay down their life for a great cause. India's peasantry, which gave birth to countless martyrs, will spread the message of the greatest and the most sacred task facing the people of the world to the villages of India, will inexorably march forward on to the stage of history and prove themselves the makers of history. It is they, who, led by the working class, will destroy the class enemies, smash the existing oppressor state machine and bury the imperialist warmongers in this soil of India.
Members and sympathizers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)--you have voluntarily taken upon yourselves the task of freeing and liberating India, inspiring the working class, carrying the agrarian revolution in the countryside through to victory, spreading the flames of armed struggle throughout India, building a revolutionary people's army by organizing peasants' guerrilla warfare, consolidating rural liberated areas in order to win victory in the revolution, freeing and liberating India and transforming her into a people's democratic state, and building an India without exploitation by ushering in socialism. You have indomitable courage to win victory and conquer death because you are carrying forward the cause for which countless martyrs laid down their lives.
Today, your struggle has merged with the dream that man has dreamt and endeavored to realize for thousands of years. Today, your struggle is not merely the national struggle of India, you are a contingent in the front ranks of mankind in its march forward. Such a merging of national task with the international task has not perhaps been seen in the history of the world before. The revolutionary struggle of the world led by Chairman Mao has arrived at a point of great confluence. We are participants and comrades-in-arms in that great struggle. So, we cannot afford to lose even a single moment. Exert yourself to your utmost and move forward. Victory certainly belongs to us. A liberated India in a liberated world is looming large on the horizon. Comrades, let us march forward to usher in that great day.
reprinted from MASS LINE, newspaper of the Canadian Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
[Photo: Workers and Students Hail Armed Agrarian Revolution in India at First National Conference of the American Student Movement.]