First Published: The Call, April 1975. Republished in The Guardian, April 16, 1975.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The strategy for the revolutionary struggles of the people of the world today calls for the building of a world-wide front against imperialism. The main enemies of die peoples of the entire world are the two imperialist superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
As Teng Hsiao-ping, representing China at the UN Special Session on Raw Materials pointed out: “The two superpowers are the biggest international exploiters and oppressors of today. They are the source of a new world war. They both possess large numbers of nuclear weapons. They carry on a keenly contested arms race, station massive forces abroad and set up military bases everywhere, threatening the independence and security of all nations. They both keep subjecting other countries to their control, subversion, interference or aggression. They both exploit other countries economically, plundering their wealth and grabbing their resources. In bullying others, the superpower which flaunts the label of socialism is especially vicious.”
Today, within the communist and revolutionary movement is the U.S. there is an important struggle over the character of the Soviet Union, the once-proud bastion of world revolution and socialism, which today has been taken over by a counterrevolutionary gang of social-imperialists. While calling themselves “socialists” they have actually completely restored capitalist relations of production in that country and have turned it into a superpower, not unlike the U.S. imperialists of today and the German fascists of yesterday.
In their recent New Year’s editorial, the weekly radical newspaper, The Guardian, covers up the real character of Soviet social-imperialism in their call for “unity” against only one superpower, the U.S. imperialists. Says the Guardian: “The principal form taken by this fundamental contradiction at this time is the opposition between U.S. imperialism on the one hand and the oppressed peoples and nations of the world on the other.” (Jan. 8, p.l)
They go on further to talk about the “support” the social-imperialists have given to “those forces struggling against U.S. imperialism,” again stressing the need for people to unite against just one superpower, the U.S. In doing so, they play into the hands of the revisionists who are still trying to paint the Soviet Union socialist and friend of the Third World, as well as the ultra-“leftists” and Trotskyists who have always attacked the Soviet Union as a “degenerate workers’ (Socialist-ed) state,” covering over the differences between the Soviet Union today and the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin’s time.
The Guardian has always been weak on the question of the social-imperialist character of the Soviet Union and has wavered in the fight against modern revisionism. This has led them to make serious errors in their evaluation of the international situation and often to play the role of conciliators here in the U.S., where they have often referred to the programs of the CPUSA revisionists as “progressive,” and have attacked groups like the October League as being “flunkies” of China and “too sectarian” for our stand in firm opposition to revisionism and social-imperialism. While in the past year obvious struggle within the ranks of that paper has forced more criticism of the Soviet Union’s role in international affairs, it appears as if the New Year’s editorial represents a real step backwards.
Up until now, the Guardian editors have referred to the Soviet Union as “socialist” and as a result often downplayed the efforts of the Third World countries who were uniting together against the hegomonism and subversion of BOTH SUPERPOWERS. While often calling the social-imperialists a “superpower,” they covered over the class character of that term by insisting that “capitalism had not yet been fully restored.” While presently publishing a series of articles by Martin Nicolaus, whose evidence makes it crystal clear to all who read it, that the Soviet Union is an imperialist regime, if ever there was one, the Guardian editors have inserted an apology for the Nicolaus article in their introduction. Say the editors: “In the view of the Guardian, capitalist class relations have clearly reemerged in Soviet society and a class of state monopoly bureaucrats exert effective control over the means of production. At the same time, we do not yet believe that this process has been thoroughly consolidated or that capitalism has been fully restored in the Soviet Union.” Furthermore, the Guardian editors, Jack Smith and Irwin Silber have written that the Soviet Union was a “superpower” since World War 2. In other words, Stalin’s leadership was to blame for the state of the Soviet Union today and from the Guardian’s viewpoint, Khrushchev and Brezhnev and the rest were only following Stalin’s lead. This view flies in the face of the truth and merges with the view of Trotskyism and modern revisionism and their general assault on Stalin. It also leads to the view that socialism and superpower plunder of other countries are compatible.
Lenin first showed the real character of superpower contention for the redivision of the world. He said it was “finance capital and its corresponding foreign policy which reduces itself to the struggle of the Great Powers for the economic and political division of the world. ...” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism). He added: “an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several Great Powers in the striving for hegemony.” (ibid.)
Lenin was arguing here against the reformist view of Kautsky, who said that the aggression of the Giant Powers was simply “an imperialist policy” and covered over the fact that this aggression and subversion was based upon the laws governing a capitalist society grown over into its highest stage, imperialism. No change in “policy” could eliminate this plunder and aggression.
The Guardian falls into Kautsky’s same classless view of imperialism in its attacks on the Soviet Union as a “superpower” under Stalin. While differences between the Soviet leadership and China, for example, existed under Stalin’s leadership, they were differences within the socialist camp, a camp which no longer exists as the result of the emergence of social-imperialism. The Western imperialist camp is also in a state of disintegration. As Teng Hsiao-ping said, “international relations are changing drastically. The whole world is in turbulence and unrest. The situation is one of ’great disorder under heaven,’ as we Chinese put it.”
The Guardian’s view of the Soviet Union as a “socialist country” has made it unable to deal with these ”drastic changes” in international relations. Most importantly it has weakened its stand in supporting the just struggles of the Third World countries and peoples, and the people of the whole world, who are uniting more and more each day to oppose the Giant Powers. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, the Guardian vacillated and in fact printed articles supporting the invasion, while weakly criticizing it in a sentence or two.
When the Soviet social-imperialists organized a coup d’etat in Afghanistan, in 1973, the Guardian stood silent. Today, as well, in its coverage of events in the Middle East and Africa, it emphasizes in its coverage, the internal struggles within those countries and generally supports every secessionist movement or organization without any consideration of whether that movement will strengthen or weaken the strivings of the two superpowers. For example, the Guardian recently published articles written by open Trotskyists like Fred Halliday (see Guardian, Feb. 12, p. 16), carefully taking his name off the byline, which launched attacks upon Iran and Saudi Arabia without mentioning the contention of the two superpowers in that part of the world. The Halliday article tried to paint a picture of only one superpower in the Persian Gulf which is rapidly becoming one of the sharpest areas of contention between both superpowers. They also relied on the Trotskyist Halliday’s reporting of the events in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in April 1971 to criticize China’s open condemnation of the phony ’uprising’ in that Third World country which was backed by foreign imperialists. (See “Unite the Many, Defeat the Few” – Jack A. Smith, p. 35) On International Women’s Day, the Guardian failed to support the demonstration at the U.N., which opposed imperialism and both superpowers, “not overpopulation” as the cause of the world’s problems and conciliated with the larger revisionist-led demonstration for liberal reforms and “gay liberation.” In doing so, they threw principle to the wind.
This failure to take a firm stand in support of the anti-superpower struggles of the Third World and other peoples, and the fight against revisionism is connected to the Guardian’s incorrect view of the Soviet Union. Teng Hsiao-ping summed up the role of the Third World and lesser capitalist countries and governments in opposing the superpowers when he said: “In varying degrees, all these countries have the desire of shaking off superpower enslavement or control and safeguarding their national independence and the integrity of their sovereignty.” He referred to the struggles of these countries in the present period as “a revolutionary motive force propelling the wheel of world history and are the main force combatting colonialism, imperialism and particularly the superpowers.”
While wavering in their support for the just struggles of these countries for independence from the two superpowers, the Guardian throughout their incorrect estimation of revisionism has given support to revisionist parties and opportunist-led groups in the Third World and Europe.
This is the marsh one is led into by conciliating with the Soviet social-imperialists and modern revisionists. This is serious error on the part of people who talk about contributing to efforts to build a new party.
It is true, as the Guardian states in their New Year’s editorial that the people of this country have a “primary” responsibility to oppose U.S. imperialism. This is our special duty both to the people here and in the colonies. But this should not negate our work in opposing both superpowers and condemning their imperialist aggression and subversion everywhere. Only on the basis of opposing both imperialist superpowers can we effectively fight our own. Only on the basis of exposing the real nature of the Soviet Union can we hope to show the people of this country what socialism is really like. And finally, only in the struggle against modern revisionism and Trotskyism of all stripes can a new communist party be built in this country, based upon the strategy of the revolutionary united front against imperialism, headed by the two superpowers.