First Published: Revolution, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Following are edited excerpts of remarks made by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, during the November 20 debate with William Hinton and Dave Dellinger at the Conference on the International Situation.
Full transcripts of the major speeches and debate will be available after January 1st for $5.00 from the conference organizing committee. P.O. Box 20 Bronx, N. Y., 10468.
Khrushchev had made a mess of things, he unstabilized things, he banged his shoe too much and didn’t get down to the serious business of consolidating capitalist relations. So other revisionists pushed him aside and moved to consolidate these relations and moved to consolidate capitalism. But having done so, they were bound by the very laws of capitalism, especially in its imperialist stage. They are driven to push out and try to grab up everywhere they can in the world. To plunder wherever they can while robbing and exploiting the people within the Soviet Union itself.
They’ve turned most of Eastern Europe into essentially dependencies or colonies of the Soviet Union, which became clear in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, and especially in recent years, have reached out to all parts of the world to try to grab control away from the U.S. imperialists and to crush the struggle of the people at the same time.
But, in recent years, as they more and more geared up and became more and more bold and been more and more driven to contend with the U.S. imperialists and as the U.S. imperialists have been more on the decline, the Soviet social-imperialists have got a new wrinkle (by social-imperialist I mean socialism in words, imperialist in deeds). Now they come on as seemingly less conservative and cowardly, now they bang their fist and talk more militant, they even talk again of the dictatorship of the proletariat; how they are going to in fact dictate over the workers in the Soviet Union and everyone else internationally. At the same time they talk about supporting struggles against imperialism.
But this new militancy doesn’t mean they have gotten less “conservative” and more “revolutionary.” All it means is that they have gotten more bold, more brazen and are driven more desperately .... Is what the Soviet Union is doing in relation to these different liberation struggles actually support or an attempt to use them for actual takeover? Any examination of any particular struggle shows that it is always the latter. This is an old game played by imperialism. Hell, go back to 1898 when the U.S. grabbed Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, they did it in the name of liberating them from Spain ... So this is an old trick and the Soviet social-imperialists are playing it and people are seeing more and more through it, but they are still many who don’t and this leads to complications, confusion and even to wrong policies .....
I would like to speak to our position on NATO and some of these other things. But first, I want to say something about where emotionalism can lead you. About five years ago I was in a debate like this and there were a bunch of Trotskyites up there screaming about Bangladesh and how the Chinese and other people were opposing liberation. If we look at Angola today we can look back and use Bangladesh as one yardstick and remember that the Cubans, who some say were playing an internationalist role in Angola, also supported that and also supported the Czechoslovakian invasion by the Soviet Union. People at the time of the Bangladesh events were very emotional. But look at what’s happened since then. There aren’t too many who will argue any more that the people in Bangladesh were really liberated in 1971-in fact, if anything, conditions got worse and they were brought under the rule of a new master. There have been some events that have changed things since then; the “great leader” Mujibur Rahman was executed and there have been a few other things. I think it’s clear we should sum up some experience. We can learn some things-that emotionalism, however well intentioned, just won’t do it. We need science, we need a deep understanding of the laws governing things.
NATO, (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) first of all, what does it mean for U.S. revolutionaries, the working class and people in the U.S. to so-called “fight appeasement“ and fight against a section of the ruling class that carries out so-called “appeasement“ policies, etc., the way it is being raised by some like Hinton and the OL and others today. It means urging our own imperialists to be more vigorous in carrying out their own imperialist aims and intentions and their own imperialist drives, to be more vigorous in their plunder and in their contention for domination, exploitation and oppression.
Now Bill Hinton says, for example, that we’re feeding and nurturing a Frankenstein monster, the Soviet Union, which he says will turn on us. The problem with that, what he leaves out, is that we’ve already got Frankenstein monster that’s “turned on us” and has been riding our backs and sucking our blood every day – that’s our own ruling class. And we don’t intend to change one for the other, have one monster come and replace the other. What we intend to do is smash down the monster that’s now ruling over us and then, as I said, to protect ourselves and to protect the socialist state we’re going to create from enemies both internal and external.
Second of all, I think we ought to get to the heart of this on “main danger.” There is one thing that Bill ought to be commended for, at least to a certain degree, and that’s that he comes straight out and gets to the heart of the matter, ... as opposed to the OL and some others. What is really being said by the Soviet Union “main danger” really comes down to the fact that the Soviet Union, at the present time, is the main danger to China. And the position that we have to unite all who can be united against the Soviet Union on a world scale revolves around the fact that China is mainly endangered now by the Soviet Union – and it is true that the Soviets are overall the main threat to China, although the possibility of an attack by U.S. imperialism on China should not be ruled out.
But let’s examine this deeper. World War 2, when it began, as Mao pointed out and as other communists pointed out at the time,.. also began as an inter-imperialist war. Mao himself said there was no basis for unity with or supporting either side in that war at that time, and that was said not once but more than three times by Mao Tsetung between 1939 and 1941.
The fact .. .is that the imperialist war at that time was a war of imperialism on both sides. As we pointed out in Revolution articles, and a long article in the theoretical journal of our Central Committee The Communist, which is now out – World War 2 did change its character.
But it changed when the principal aspect of that war became an attack by some imperialist powers headed by Germany, on the Soviet Union and the defense against this attack. That did require a change in the tactics of Marxists-Leninists and the working class and the masses of people around the world.
But what Bill is saying, and he said this this morning, is that that’s bound to happen anyway, so we ought to start preparing for it now and to prepare for it now we ought to go about uniting with our own ruling class. This at best comes down to fortune telling and Mao, whom he rightly respects, said very succinctly Marxist-Leninists are not and should not be fortune tellers.
What we have to do is analyze the actual situation before us now, basing ourselves on it, keeping in mind what might happen. But we can’t a priori determine what might happen, nor does the mere existence of a socialist country, nor even the fact that an attack comes down on a socialist country necessarily mean that the character of a war changes. For example, if in the course of a new world war Albania were attacked and not China, that might or might not change the character of the war.
If China was attacked, it might depend on who attacked it and what the balance of forces was – if we were on the verge of making revolution in the U.S., the correct thing to do, in my opinion, would be to carry it through and that would be the best aid to China. If we weren’t, we might have to make adjustments. But to start making them now is a very dangerous line. And what it leads Bill to is to support things like NATO, support other aggressive moves by the U.S. to tighten up their own bloc – which is an imperialist bloc and that can never be forgotten.
Bill talks about arms. He said that we can’t have a one sided policy towards U.S. arms and arms sales any more. Arms for suppression, he says, have to be opposed, but arms for defense are OK. Well unfortunately, things don’t work like this. There was this movie “West World“ where they had robots and they shot each other and the guns would only go off if they were aimed at robots; they wouldn’t go off if any human heat was given off.
Well, unfortunately, arms in the real world don’t act like that. You can’t have arms that when they’re aimed against anti-imperialist fighters don’t go off and when they’re aimed against the imperialist go off! You can’t have arms that have “mood ring” triggers – so that if the person is a genuine anti -imperialist pulling the trigger, it’ll shoot, but if they’re an imperialist or fighting for suppression, it won’t go off!
We have to make an analysis of the actual character at any time of what’s going on. And the actual character of the U.S. is that it is trying to shore up and is shoring up its imperialist bloc. While there are reasons why China is making use of contradictions and on a world scale is trying to direct those forces mainly against the Soviet Union – acting according to similar tactics to the Soviet Union before World War 2 when it was a socialist country – this is not a reason for us to adopt the same policy. Mao Tsetung warned against this. In 1946 when the Soviet Union was making certain necessary compromises after the war with different imperialist countries, Mao wrote very sternly in an essay (because the same mistake was being made then) that because such compromises were being made it does not mean that the people in the capitalist countries should follow suit and also make compromises with their rulers at home. The people of those countries, he said, will continue their struggles according to their own conditions. And that’s exactly what we have to do and we have to continue aiming them towards revolution!
From audience: We’ve seen a lot of factionalism among the left, with many groups accusing each other. What principles can the left unite on and which groups are likely to lead in the unification?
Avakian: The question of unity is one that has to be examined from different aspects and on different levels. Our basic strategy for making revolution in this country in the context of the worldwide struggle against imperialism, aimed principally at the two superpowers, is the United Front against our imperialist rulers led by the working class and its Party, which is the RCP in this country. On the other hand, what that does not mean is that we only seek unity with those who agree with us in our entire program on how to make revolution, or even in particular cases that we need to make proletarian revolution.
What we seek to do is unite with all those who are struggling against; genuinely struggling against, and aiming their efforts against this ruling class and against imperialism. Even if they are not doing so consciously, so long as the main thrust of what they’re doing is to rise up and fight back against the real enemies, we believe it’s our duty and the duty of every genuine revolutionary to unite with them.
At the same time, any united front implies that there must be struggle. There must be struggle, not to establish who’s right and who’s wrong in the abstract, but there must be struggle because there is only one correct line that can lead us forward. That line is not the private property of any particular individual, group or organization. Neither does the RCP or any genuine communist organization want to see the correct line remain in the hands of a small number of people – exactly the opposite. We believe that only by the masses of people becoming armed with an ever deeper understanding of the actual correct line and correct road forward can revolution be achieved.
But to say that there is only one correct line means simply this: there’s only one reality out there, not ten realities. There’s only one correct analysis and only one correct method, which is the method of Marxism – dialectical material ism – to understand that, and there’s only one correct political line, one programme for how to change that reality in accordance with those laws in order to make proletarian revolution, which is on the historical agenda.
That’s what we mean when we say that there’s only one correct line. The correct line is not something that you write down and then fondle. It’s something that has to be developed in the course of struggle. But there are certain basic principles that have been worked out by the great leaders of the working class internationally – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung. We can learn from the mistakes, but mainly we have to learn from the achievements of the revolution where it continues to go forward, as in China. Nobody is perfect, the proletariat is not perfect. That’s not the point.
The point is that there is a science and that, when we make mistakes, we have to use that science to sum up the basis of them, we have to use that science to avoid mistakes and to correct them quickly; Most of all, we have to use that science to guide our struggle – in order to make revolution.
So as to the question, who can unite – all those should unite, can unite, and eventually will unite who are opposed to imperialism, exploitation and oppression – which is the great majority, over 90 of the people in this country and all countries. And as to who will take the lead in doing that – the working class and its Party will take the lead in doing that, not by declaring it but by joining with people in struggle and through the course of struggle learning from the people first, helping them to sum up their own experience, using the science of revolution and on that basis, developing the line and policies that will lead us together forward to the revolutionary goal.