First Published: Revolution, August 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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EROL Note: The following text is excerpted from a longer document, The October League (M-L): A Cover for Revisionism. The title here was supplied by EROL.
So, in every direction we turn, we find considerable evidence that in practice, OL’s “united front strategy” closely resembles the “anti-monopoly coalition” strategy of the revisionist CPUSA. They are not helping to build a united front based on the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat. To the contrary, they are trying to get the proletariat to follow the reformist leadership of “liberal” and “progressive” petty bourgeois and bourgeois elements.
What we say about the CP without any hesitation is increasingly what must also be said about OL: they continually call for unity and united front, but when you get beneath the surface and discover what this means as far as what they are doing, it turns out they mean unity with the imperialists and united front behind the “liberals” in the ruling class, “with labor fat cats and Black bootlickers as the front men.”
OL can (and will) deny this until they’re blue in the face, but as we’ve said before, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It doesn’t matter how nice the pudding looks – it’s the taste that counts. And while OL’s “united front” may look nice and may on the surface look no different than the Marxist-Leninist understanding of united front, when you bite into OL’s united front you discover that it doesn’t taste good. It tastes all too much like the revisionists’ “anti-monopoly coalition.”
Given OL’s rightist line on building the united front in the U.S., it stands to reason that their line on building the international united front against the two superpowers – U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism – would also be rightist. And it is.
The worldwide united front against the two superpowers has at its heart the international proletariat and the oppressed peoples, and includes other elements such as the progressive national and petty bourgeoisies of many Third World countries and even to some degree reactionary and other imperialist states who, for their own reasons, are opposed to U.S.-USSR hegemony. This gives an opening to the rightist line of tailing behind these reactionary and imperialist ruling classes, and to seeing revolutionary struggle inside these countries as “sabotage” of the united front.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of line that OL is beginning to push around certain things. For example, at several meetings of anti-imperialist forces, in some speeches, etc., OL has said that it is incorrect for revolutionaries in this country to call for the downfall of the Shah of Iran because he is against the penetration of the social-imperialists into the Middle East and the Persian Gulf area, and is ready to use weapons he is getting from the U.S. imperialists to oppose any Soviet incursions into Iran or anywhere else in the area.
And when the Shah of Iran visited the U.S., in July 1973, primarily to talk to Nixon about getting more weapons, The Call in its September 1973 issue simply ran a release from Hsinhua (China) News Agency which dealt with the facts and reasons for the visit. OL had nothing itself to say about the visit, and no analysis of its own about the situation in Iran. OL did essentially the same thing when President Luis Echeverria of Mexico visited the People’s Republic of China in April 1973. They ran a Hsinhua press release and had no comments of their own about the situation in Mexico.
OL obviously is confusing the role of the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China in the world struggle with its own role and the role of Communist Parties and organizations that have not yet led the people in their countries to power. In doing this, OL has ignored the principle and the warning that Mao Tsetung set down back in 1946, when the then socialist Soviet Union was correctly attempting to maintain certain agreements with the U.S., Britain and France.
Mao wrote: “Such compromise does not require the people in the countries of the capitalist world to follow suit and make compromise at home. The people in those countries will continue to wage different struggles in accordance with their different conditions. The principle of the reactionary forces in dealing with the democratic forces of the people is definitely to destroy all they can and to prepare to destroy later whatever they cannot destroy now. Face to face with this situation, the democratic forces of the people should likewise apply the same principle to the reactionary forces.” (Selected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 87-88.)
Thus, while it is necessary and correct for the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party to make certain agreements and compromises with imperialist and reactionary states, primarily to make use of contradictions between the two superpowers and in that way strengthen the overall united front and the people’s struggle for liberation and socialism, it is not correct for communists in other countries, including the U.S., to do the same thing.
While the Chinese make certain agreements with the Shah of Iran, it does not follow that the revolutionaries in Iran should let up even the slightest bit in their efforts to mobilize the people to overthrow the Shah. And revolutionaries everywhere should not let up the slightest bit in explaining to the workers and oppressed people in their countries who the Shah is, what he represents, why the Iranian people are rising up to overthrow him, and why the exploited and oppressed people of all countries should support the Iranian people’s just struggle.
And here in the U.S. where many of the descendants and relatives of oppressed people all around the world are part of the U.S. working class, where political exiles from the revolutionary struggles in these countries are forced to take refuge, and where students from these countries are joining together with the people of the U.S. to build support for the revolutions abroad arid the revolution in the U.S., it is the responsibility of all U.S. revolutionaries to exhibit the firmest solidarity with these comrades.
Finally, we want to say categorically that the rightist line OL is beginning to push forward on the international united front is certainly no service to the People’s Republic of China. In fact, by using China as a cover for their rightist line, OL is aiding the Trotskyites and revisionists who are vehemently attacking the Chinese and the international and revolutionary united front line the Chinese have been instrumental in developing.