Your letters of December 5 also present a number of theses directed against the struggle against opportunism and revisionism in general and the struggle against Chinese revisionism in particular. Along with your theory of the “special relationship,” your theses in opposition to the struggle against opportunism and revisionism constitute the main ideological content of your letters of December 5.
In your letters you denounce the struggle against opportunism as “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’ ” (p. 12 and elsewhere), deny the present-day activation of revisionism and opportunism against the revolution, accuse our Party of “spreading pessimism, gloom and a siege mentality” (p. 3). especially oppose the struggle against the conciliators of social-chauvinism, and so forth. You yourself find “the crux of the matter” in the fierce struggle of our Party against Chinese revisionism. You write, denouncing our letter of December 1, as follows:
9. Here is the crux of the matter: ’The struggle of the Marxist-Leninists against Chinese revisionism, “three-worldism” and so forth requires the closest international cooperation and the most serious and sober estimation.’ This is yet another concoction from your head. It is not just the ’struggle of the Marxist-Leninists against Chinese revisionism, “three worldism” and so forth’ which ’requires the closest international cooperation and the most serious and sober estimation,’ but it is first and foremost the unity based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues and in the defence of the purity of Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism and for the triumph of the revolution and socialism. Your logic is two-faced. Thus, if you are denounced by our Party for only highlighting ’Chinese revisionism, “three worldism’’ and so forth. ’ then, you can, of course, beat your breasts and scream blue murder that all along you really meant the struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. But you do not mean this at all and you will not be able to squirm and wriggle out of the sentence you have written which we have quoted above. (pp. 3-4, emphasis added)
In this passage, you denounce the struggle against Chinese revisionism as “only highlighting Chinese revisionism, ’three worldism’ and so forth.” With the blatant dishonesty typical of your letters of December 5, you set up the straw man of “only” highlighting Chinese revisionism or advocating international cooperation only for the sake of the struggle against Chinese revisionism. You oppose the struggle against Chinese revisionism by counterposing it to everything under the sun and “first and foremost” to “unity.” You vow that “the crux of the matter,” hence the reason why you denounce our letter of December 1 and call us “agent-provocateurs.” is that we “highlight” the struggle against Chinese revisionism. You are demanding that we tone down or stop altogether this or that aspect of the struggle against Chinese revisionism.
But we fully agree that one of the central issues, an important “crux of the matter,” is whether or not to “highlight” the struggle against Chinese revisionism. We are vigorously waging this struggle, while you are floating one thesis after another against this struggle and subordinating this struggle to “unity,” that is, to pragmatic considerations of one kind or the other.
A large number of the complaints that you raise against our Party all hinge upon or are related to your opposition to the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. This comes through clearly in such theses as the following:
It is notable that you counterpose the struggle against Chinese revisionism to the question of “unity.” You never refer directly to our stand of leading the movement against social-chauvinism and of fighting the conciliators, but repeatedly refer to the question of “unity.” Thus you write:
What is the ulterior motive behind the provocative actions of Joseph Green? The real motive lurking underneath this perfidious activity is to push his anti-Leninist tactics on the question of building and strengthening the unity amongst the genuine Marxist-Leninist forces in one country and between genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and groups and shield ’American opportunism.’ (p. 11, emphasis added)
What has damaged the interests of COUSML and the proletariat in the United States is the anti-Leninist stand of Joseph Green on the question of building the unity of the Marxist-Leninists and his anti-Leninist analysis of American opportunism, as well as his clinging to the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’. (p. 12, emphasis added)
...the criticism and repudiation by CPC(M-L) of his tactics on the questions of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists in the USA,...” (p. 14, emphasis added)
...for some time now, Joseph Green has been tearing his hair out because our Party has been opposing his anti-Marxist-Leninist road on the fundamental questions of the unity ofthe Marxist-Leninists, Party-building and the struggle against opportunism, as well as other, related questions. (p. 24, emphasis added)
Unity with whom? Who are the alleged “genuine Marxist-Leninists” with whom our Party does not wish to unite? You are expressing concern for the conciliators and “centrists”! You are afraid to say this openly, so you keep beating around the bush. You are counterposing uniting the Marxist-Leninists to polemics, and in particular you are denouncing the struggle against the conciliators as a disruption of the unity of the “genuine Marxist-Leninists.” Thus you denounce our article “How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism” of February 1978 as follows:
What are the facts? Our Party disagreed with the theses emanating from these Joseph Greens and provided comradely criticism and principled line on the question of the building of the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninist forces in the USA. One of the elements of our comradely criticism was our opposition to the use of peculiar jargon which is not only concocted but also characteristic of typical intellectualism: within this context, the use of the phrase idealist anti-revisionism was opposed. Historical facts cannot be denied.... Thus, exactly in the same manner that as before propaganda was carried out on the one hand calling for the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninist forces in the USA while, on the other hand, without exhausting the full possibilities of this opportunity of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists, hidden attacks are launched against others, today mud is dumped onto our Party from those who are calling themselves our ’dear fraternal comrades’ for whom they have the ’deepest communist regards’. (pp. 15-l6. emphasis added)
In this passage you are denouncing the movement against social-chauvinism for upsetting dreams of “unity” with the conciliators and “centrists.” You even make a direct comparison between unity with the conciliators and unity between our two fraternal Marxist-Leninist Parties. And you are so concerned about “the full possibilities of this opportunity of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists” with the social-democrats of the MLOC “CPUSA (ML).” That you vent great anger at the term “idealist anti-revisionism.” You even go to the extreme of denouncing the article “How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism” for disrupting unity even though it did not name any particular group of conciliators. This proves that you are beating around and around the bush when you talk about “peculiar jargon” and “typical intellectualism.” Your opposition to the term “idealist anti-revisionism” is based on your views of the possibility of unity with the conciliators such as the social-democrats of the MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)” and of your view on what basis they should be united with. You opposed the term “idealist anti-revisionism” not because it was ineffective “jargon” but for precisely the opposite reason, because this term struck home. That is why you also haven’t shown any enthusiasm for the term “social-democrat” either. In your above passage, you prove that you are counterposing pragmatic maneuvers under the signboard of “unity” to the vigorous development of the movement against social-chauvinism and of the great polemic against Chinese revisionism.
In your letters of December 5. you make a big pretense of being the sternest opponents of “centrism.” This is a fraud. Far from your being the staunchest opponents of “centrism.” you are floating thesis after thesis against those very things that have proved to be the biggest fiascos and disasters for the conciliators and “centrists” of various shades, namely, the movement against social-chauvinism and the polemic against Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought. You don’t even recognize the existence of “centrism” as an issue in the U.S. until fall 1979. over one and a half years after our Party began open polemics against conciliationism as an obstacle in the struggle against Chinese revisionism, and you write about “...this entire centrist trend which unfolded right under his nose across the USA this fall [1979!!! – ed.].” (p. 8. bottom) All your posturing about “centrism” amounts to is denouncing us for not attacking the RCP of Chile by name in the press at your direction in the latter part of 1979. In fact, your letters defend a policy of pragmatic maneuver with certain conciliators or “centrists.” That is the meaning of your denunciation of the article “How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism” as allegedly harming the unity of the “genuine Marxist-Leninists.” You denounce “hidden attacks” in order to defend your pragmatic maneuvering with the social-democrats of the MLOC “CPUSA(ML).” You also continue in your letters your complete underestimation of our struggle against the American opportunists, including the “centrists.” You go to the astonishing extent of defending your sale of rights to the English translation of the Palacios book to the “RCP,USA.” denying that any bad consequences flowed from this act, and comparing it to a simple commercial transaction in the book and pamphlet trade.
In the rest of this section and in several following sections we shall go into these questions in more detail.
Thus, alongside your insistence on a “special relationship,” the other central issue raised in your letters of December 5 is that you are demanding that we tone down or stop altogether this or that aspect of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, from the movement against social-chauvinism to polemics on the burning ideological and political issues to the principled and consistent struggle against the conciliators and “centrists” of all shades. Thus the questions at stake concern: the carrying through to the end of the struggle against Chinese revisionism; the role of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism in general (including but not restricted to Chinese revisionism) in revolutionary work; the role of polemics in the struggle against revisionism and opportunism; and the analysis of the nature of the conciliators.
Our Party holds that the struggle against revisionism and opportunism must not only be continued, it must be deepened and intensified. The struggle against revisionism and opportunism is one of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, and this teaching of Marxism-Leninism appears especially fresh and new today when the bourgeoisie is activating the opportunists and revisionists in country after country and on a global scale for the struggle against the revolution and Marxism-Leninism. Any illusions that this struggle is a mere side issue or any loosening of the grip against the revisionists and opportunists can only give rise to grave danger for the revolutionary forces. To think that, for example, with the condemnation of Mao Zedong Thought the struggle against Chinese revisionism has come to a successful end, would be a grave mistake. On the contrary, it is essential to use the condemnation of Mao Zedong Thought to deepen and intensify the struggle against Chinese revisionism and to give that struggle a yet deeper ideological content. The question of fighting revisionism is not just the question of repudiating a phrase or of repeating a six-word quotation, as the Chinese revisionists liked to reduce everything to. Fighting Mao Zedong Thought is not just a matter of repeating “down with Mao Zedong Thought,” or of just repeating that the Chinese revisionist groups are criminals, but of elaborating Marxism-Leninism and of re-examining every question that has been confused by the Chinese revisionists. And indeed it involves other questions too and in a sense permeates much or all of the other revolutionary work. The question of the struggle against the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism – which includes both open tools of the Hua-Deng clique as well as those groups who fight for the basic stands of Chinese revisionism while professing some disagreement with the Hua-Deng clique – cannot be regarded with complacency, that they are now exposed so we can go to sleep or just call them names, nor can it be separated from the providing of a deep ideological basis to the struggle against Chinese revisionism. The great setbacks and disasters that Chinese revisionism has faced everywhere for the last few years should not be used as a pretext for complacency, but as a spur to further action. The great scientific works from socialist Albania, the great books by Comrade Enver Hoxha such as Imperialism and the Revolution, and Reflections on China and With Stalin, the Scientific Sessions, should be used to spur on the struggle, not to say that, OK, now everything’s settled.
The struggle against revisionism is not something away from the masses, not a matter of some profound thoughts for a handful while the real revolutionary work among the masses is something else. On the contrary. (1) The struggle against revisionism and opportunism is on questions of vital importance for the orientation and direction of the work of revolution. It is a fight both over the general principles of the revolution and over all the concrete problems of the revolutionary movement. It comes up in the formulation and defense of the revolutionary strategy and tactics in the concrete situations facing each party, over the questions of how and what revolutionary mass organizations to build, over the question of how work among the masses is to be conducted, etc. (2) The struggle against revisionism must be taken to the masses. This is part of imbuing the proletariat with Marxism-Leninism, it is part of the party’s task of educating the proletariat. As it was put by Comrade Fiqret Shehu in the Scientific Sessions of October 1978 in Albania: “The historical experience of the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism over the last decades too, fully confirms Lenin’s teaching that the only correct Marxist line in the world communist movement is to explain to the proletariat and all the working people the absolute need to break with revisionism and opportunism, to educate the masses through a consistent struggle against those trends, to expose their betrayal of the cause of the proletariat and the peoples and all the infamy of the policy they pursue.” (“Broadening and Deepening of the Struggle Against All Currents of Modern Revisionism – An Historical Necessity,” Problems of Current World Development, Tirana, 1979, p. 68, emphasis added)
The struggle against the revisionists and opportunists necessarily includes the polemical struggle. If someone were to say that they are for struggle, even the allegedly most stern and uncompromising struggle, against revisionism and opportunism – but yet to advocate and practice the toning down or cessation of the polemics or advocate and practice the reduction of polemics to trivialities or side issues devoid of the proper theoretical and political content – then this would be to simply pay lip service to the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism for the sake of emasculating them and undermining them. An example of the type of struggle we must wage can be seen from the example of the Party of Labor of Albania. Without ceasing in the slightest their revolutionary work among the masses and all other fronts of revolutionary work, indeed while constantly strengthening and invigorating the other fronts of work, the PLA has waged a step-by-step, careful, but bold and breathtaking in sweep, ideological and polemical struggle against Chinese revisionism. A partial listing of their recent work includes:
This work has had a tremendous effect in fighting Chinese revisionism and has been and is indispensable to the strengthening of the unity of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. It is essential to make great efforts to study and assimilate these great works. And it is also essential to learn from the PLA the importance of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the necessity of the ideological and theoretical struggle and of polemics.
Comrade Lenin wrote explicitly about the sad results of trying to avoid the polemical struggle or the struggle against opportunism. In the quote below he is referring to the situation within the Swiss Social-Democratic Party, while we are discussing the present-day struggle between the revisionist and opportunist trends and the Marxist-Leninist parties, but the basic point nevertheless remains fully applicable and comes through’very clearly. Lenin wrote:
Nor can we avoid hard struggle within the party....
The real choice is this: either the present concealed forms of inner-party struggle, with their demoralizing effect on the masses, or open principled struggle between the internationalist revolutionary trend and the Griutli trend inside and outside the party.
An ’inner struggle’ in which Hermann Greulich attacks the ’ultra-radicals’ or the ’hotheads,’ without naming these monsters and without precisely defining their policy, and Grimm publishes articles in the Berner Tag-wacht larded with hints and only comprehensible to one out of a hundred readers... – that kind of inner struggle demoralizes the masses who see, or guess, that it is a quarrel among leaders’ and do not understand what it is really about.
But a struggle in which the Griitli trend within the party – and it is much more important and dangerous than outside the party – will be forced openly to combat the Left, while both trends will everywhere come out with their own independent views and policies, will fight each other on matters of principle allowing the mass of party comrades, and not merely the leaders, ’ to settle fundamental issues – such a struggle is both necessary and useful, for it trains in the masses independence and ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission. (V.I. Lenin, “Principles Involved in the War Issue,” Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 159-60, emphasis as in the original)
Without committing suicide, one can not avoid the polemical struggle, even if one wanted to. The issue is how it will be waged. Either it will be waged on matters of principle and in such a way that it “trains in the masses independence and ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission, ”or it will be waged in a way that“ demoralizes the masses. The theories that oppose the polemical struggle, or advocate polemics devoid of ideological content, or counterpose it to work among the masses or to other revolutionary work, rather than correctly defining the role, scope and methods of the polemical struggle and its proper relations to the other fields of revolutionary struggle, do not prevent the polemical struggle but instead channel it into forms that are demoralizing to the masses.
The movement against social-chauvinism led by our Party was precisely such an invigorating struggle against opportunism as is being referred to by Comrade Lenin in the above quotation. The emergence of the theses of “directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism,” the propagation of the blatant counter-revolutionary theses of the “three worlds” theory and the deepening degeneration of the Communist Party of China called forth an objective reaction against it in the U.S. This movement against social-chauvinism existed independently of the desires or wishes of our Party. The issue was not whether or not such indignation among the masses against the counter-revolutionary theses of Chinese revisionism would exist or not. The question was that either the motion among the masses would be demoralized, factionalized, trivialized, subverted, liquidated or even turned into its opposite, or else it would be led by the Marxist-Leninists and utilized to “train in the masses independence and ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission.” By leading the movement against social-chauvinism, our Party put it onto the correct path of struggle, gave it a correct orientation, and deepened and broadened it. This movement gave an immense moral prestige to the COUSML and the MLP,USA.
Starting sometime in 1978 you have repeatedly expressed doubt about or denied the existence of the movement against social-chauvinism. You have denounced it as a “peculiar movement” and as allegedly a manifestation of “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” You seem to believe that it is an invention or concoction of the National Committee of the COUSML. But the movement against social-chauvinism was an objective phenomenon, a powerful revolutionary movement. It is the American component of the great international struggle against Chinese revisionism. Today we have militants of the MLP,USA and entire units who came forward to rally around the COUSML precisely through this movement. It is this struggle against social-chauvinism that has spelled bankruptcy, disaster and utter fiasco for the neo-revisionists. It is not enough that the “three worlders” have revisionist positions for them to suffer fiasco - the struggle against the “three worlders” must be consciously organized and led. It is this struggle against social-chauvinism that has preserved the honor of Marx-ism-Leninism in the U.S.
The work of our Party in leading the movement against social-chauvinism has also been important for reexamining and clarifying the questions confused by the social-chauvinists and for providing clarification of the political line for revolution in the U.S. It is not enough that the various opportunist groups suffer defeat in and of themselves. The political and ideological basis of the bankrupt groups must be repudiated and the questions of principle put to the fore, so that it is revisionism and not just some group in and of itself that suffers defeat. Our Party gave a broad outlook and orientation to this movement. We oriented this movement to seeing the inseparable connection between neo-revisionism and social-chauvinism. We connected it to political clarification on the burning questions of the American revolution and to the repudiation of Browderite liberal-labor politics. The theoretical work done in conjunction with this movement has been indispensable for the progress of the work on the mass fronts and for the correct general orientation.
The struggle against the conciliators and “centrists” was an integral component of this struggle right from the beginning. It is in the movement against social-chauvinism that all the neo-revisionists saw their doom. Therefore, besides the open Klonskyite social-chauvinists, the Pentagon-socialist advocates of “directing the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism,” as well the conciliators of social-chauvinism came out to wage a fierce battle to liquidate the movement against social-chauvinism.
The conciliators wished to preserve the basic neo-revisionist politics, the basic corrupt Browderite liberal-labor politics that underlies and nourishes open social-chauvinism, at the expense of a bow to the left or of giving up one or the other thesis. So the conciliators would even take up this or that thesis of the Marxist-Leninists in order to maintain some credibility among the activists, but always at the same time the conciliators would move heaven and earth to smash the movement against social-chauvinism. For example, the social-democrats of the Barry Weisberg MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)” wished to preserve the basic neo-revisionist politics of the Klonskyites. Therefore they went from being advocates of “three worldsism” and most ardent Klonskyites to being vacillating opponents of “three worldsism” who, however, openly denounced the movement against social-chauvinism. They advocated everything: that the lines of demarcation had already been settled; counterposing the fight against social-chauvinism and “three worldsism” to the fight against Khrushchovite revisionism and the “C’PUSA; counterposing the fight against revisionism in general to the defense and elaboration of Marxism-Leninism; that the basic issue is ultra-leftism, etc. As well, the neo-revisionists and “three worlders” of the “RCP,USA” quickly dropped their short-lived struggle against the open social-chauvinism of the Klonskyites and also did everything possible to smother the struggle over the “three worlds theory.” They even went to the point of inventing two allegedly different “three worlds” theories, the allegedly good one of Mao’s and the bad one of Deng’s. For the leadership of the “RCP,USA” knew that the vigorous development of the movement against social-chauvinism and “three worldsism” would mean utter fiasco for their defense of Chinese revisionism and their elaboration of Mao Zedong Thought.
Our Party holds that the struggle against the ideology of Chinese revisionism and against the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism has to be continued and carried through to the end. At the same time, the struggle against the other revisionist trends can not be neglected. For example, there can be no complacency about the struggle against modern Soviet revisionism which remains a deadly enemy of the international communist and workers’ movement. And among the domestic revisionists in the U.S., there are those who follow Soviet revisionism, “Eurocommunism” and other reviosionist trends as well as those who follow Chinese revisionism. Indeed, the movement against social-chauvinism struck not just at the “three worlders,” but at the other domestic revisionists too, who are also social-chauvinist through and through. As well, at this time social-democracy is being further activated by the bourgeoisie to use against the workers’ movement and the revolution. Social-democratic campaigns are being organized, the labor bureaucracy is being given a deeper tinge of social-democracy and the “three worlders” are on the path of merger with social-democracy. Other revisionists, such as the “C’PUSA and the ”CLP,USNA,” have long been on the path of merger with social-democracy. Hence our Party holds that it is essential to step up the war on social-democracy, as an essential part of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism.
In your letters of December 5 you reiterate your denunciation of our struggle against revisionism and opportunism. But neither in your letters nor in your discussions with us on these questions do you ever stop to examine the actual development of our struggle and the situation which it faces nor do you refer to the extensive literature of our Party elaborating our views and analyzing the situation. Instead at most you pick at this or that phrase or slogan in isolation and try to deduce all sorts of things from it by abstract logic or by quibbling. Or you simply make unsupported declarations. In your letters of December 5, you not only provide no analysis to back up your declaration, but you generally fail to even indicate precisely what it is that you disagree with and what your own views are, even to the extent that you have already done so in previous discussions. You denounce this “stand” of ours or those “tactics” of ours in the harshest terms without indicating what that “stand” or those “tactics” are. You neither examine our documents nor provide your own analysis of the concrete situation facing our Parties. You have condemned our struggle without making the slightest study of it and solely on the basis of anti-Marxist-Leninist general principles against the anti-revisionist struggle, principles which you put forward as vague hints of ideas and which you leave unelaborated.
Although we hold that even regarding our phrases and slogans in themselves, your comments are wrong, that doesn’t excuse you from the necessity to take a serious attitude to the questions which you take up for discussion. Since you are denouncing our struggle, you were bound to examine the situation facing us and to deal with our documents. For example, a whole series of documents exist, starting from September 1, 1976, on the movement against social-chauvinism. These documents of our Party are a powerful body of literature that extends over years, are consistent in principle, provide an excellent picture of the development of the struggle in the U.S., and broaden and deepen their analysis and correct any errors as the movement develops and as the international struggle develops. A partial listing follows, a listing that is selected from public documents that are available to you and that we have sent to you or internal documents that we have given to you:
The above is a partial listing of the works on the movement against social-chauvinism. It excludes a great number of articles denouncing the social-chauvinists and concentrates (without listing all of them) on those articles which give the program, so to speak, for the movement against social-chauvinism with particular attention paid to the issue of what could be called the “centrist” groups. But you have condemned our struggle without any study of it at all. You have condemned it on the basis of anti-Marxist-Leninist general principles opposed to the Marxist-Leninist principles concerning the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. And so far you have shown yourself unable to even elaborate your own general principles which you leave in the form of vague hints and unworked out and half-baked theses.
In Section III of our letter of December 1 to the NEC of the CPC(M-L), we explained how your sale of the rights of the English translation of the Palacios book to the “RCP,USA” was related to your underestimation of our struggle against the domestic American opportunists. We pointed out that you have been over the last period putting forward a number of theses directed against the struggle against opportunism. We characterized a number of these theses and the evolution of your views concerning the movement against social-chauvinism. In your letters of December 5, you rail against and curse our letter of December 1. But you are unable to show that our letter contains even the slightest inaccuracy. Now we will give a lengthy excerpt concerning your views on the struggle against opportunism from our letter of December 1 and then show how your letters of December 5 verify to a tee the analysis that we have set forth.
The following comes from Section II of our letter of December 1:
Furthermore, the act of selling the rights to the book by Palacios to the ’RCP,USA’ shows an extreme underestimation on the part of the NEC of the CPC(M-L) for the struggle that the COUSML is waging against the American opportunists. The selling of the rights to the book by Palacios to the ’RCP,USA’ is related to your wrong assessment of our polemical struggle against the ’RCP,USA.’ For some time now you have been taking a hostile attitude to the polemics against the ’RCP,USA,’ to the polemics showing that U.S. neo-revisionism is the American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism, etc. You have not publicly supported them while privately you have constantly opposed them. This has amazed us. Your comments on our work have not been directed towards helping us to carry out the polemical struggle more vigorously, but have been directed towards casting doubt on this struggle. Thus your remarks have not been a motive force for the further development of the struggle, as fraternal criticism should be, but have served as a damper on the struggle. It appears that you underestimate the struggle against the American opportunists. Indeed, over the last period you have floated informally to us and in fact urged upon us insistently, if in an offhand manner, a number of theses directed against the polemical struggle against the opportunists.
(A) First of all, you began by opposition to the struggle against the forces that might roughly be called ’centrist.’ You began to express opposition to our polemics on the occasion of the publishing of the article ’How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism’ in The Workers’ Advocate of February 1978. This article began the open polemical struggle against the ’obstacles in the struggle against social-chauvinism,’ that is, against what might be called ’centrism.’ You opposed the attack in this article on ’idealist anti-revisionism.’ With respect to our pamphlet Reply to the Open Letter of the MLOC, you advocated that the only issue on which this miserable sect of ’Klonskyites without Klonsky,’ the MLOC, should be openly opposed was on Vacillation on certain theses of ’three worlds-ism.’ According to your view of the time, only open ’three worlds-ism’ or direct vacillation should be attacked. Nor did our pamphlet Why Did the RCP, USA ’ Split? of March 1978 meet with your approval. Picking out this or that issue, you also opposed it. Under one pretext or other you opposed all the attacks on what might be called the ’centrist’ forces.
(B) From opposition to the struggle against what might be called the ’centrist’ forces, you passed over to reconsidering your stand on our struggle against the open social-chauvinists and ’three worlders.’ You advocated to us insistently that the issue was that we should not be opposing the local American opportunists in public polemics at all, but dealing with international issues. In your view, these two things were two mutually exclusive categories which you counterposed to each other. This you advocated to us as a matter of principle. On this question you have informally but very sternly floated to us a number of different theses, which however all agree with each other in counterposing the struggle against the domestic opportunists to the question of the international struggle against revisionism; and counterposing the struggle against revisionism to the elaboration of Marxism-Leninism and the defense of its purity.
It should be recalled that at the end of 1976 our two organizations agreed, on your suggestion, to a certain tactical coordination in the struggle against Chinese revisionism. ...
Nevertheless, later on you made it into a principle that it is a mistake to deal with the domestic opportunists. Most recently, you have retracted the absolute opposition to such attacks. (Naturally it is impossible in practice to refuse to attack the opportunists over a long period of time – the issue is thus how the opportunists are attacked. There can be good polemics and there can be miserable polemics, but without committing suicide it is not possible to avoid all polemics.) But you still have maintained to us that such attacks should have a certain very restricted role, that they should only expose certain misdeeds of the opportunists, with the idea of the misdeeds of the opportunists or their role apparently regarded rather narrowly. Thus you still counterpose the polemics against the domestic opportunists to articles on international issues and to the elaboration of Marxism-Leninism.
(C) You have also opposed the slogan ”Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists.” (But you waited until we had gone public with this slogan to oppose it, although we had consulted with you ahead of time.) You have opposed this slogan so vehemently that you have let it get in the way of giving public support to our campaign to found the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA. You have opposed the slogan by the means of counterposing the struggle against the opportunists to the other work in building the Party. You have gone to the extreme of insisting that the slogan of ’Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists’ is in fact in your view a manifestation of Chinese revisionism and the Chinese revisionist type of ’two-line struggle.’ It is hard for us to express our sheer astonishment at seeing that our struggle against revisionism is denounced as a manifestation ofthe ideology of Chinese revisionism. Our denunciation of Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought and of its theory of ’two (or many) headquarters in the party’ is not that it fights revisionism too hard, but that it conciliates revisionism and is opposed to the principled struggle against revisionism. The errors and monstrous crimes of the Chinese revisionists did not stem from fighting revisionism too hard or from issuing too many public polemics against Khrushchovite revisionism. The Chinese revisionists did not fail to take a sound Marxist-Leninist stand because they were too busy waging a polemical struggle. On the contrary, the failure ofthe Chinese to wage a stern, consistent, protracted struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists, including the open polemical struggle, was and is one of the glaring manifestations of their failure to base themselves on the sound, principled positions of Marxism-Leninism. It was one of the manifestations of their failure to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism. The theory of Mao Zedong of the ’many headquarters in the party’ was not a theory to justify fighting too hard against revisionism, but a theory to justify a liberal, conciliationist, social-democratic and nonchalant stand towards the defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, the defense of the monolithic unity of the party, and the stern, unyielding struggle a-gainst the modern revisionists.
All these transcendental principles against the polemical struggle that you have urged us to follow were based on two things: (a counterposing one thing to another, the struggle against the domestic opportunists to the struggle on the burning international issues, the polemical struggle to the elaboration of Marxism-Leninism, the struggle against opportunism to the struggle for the building and strengthening of the party, and so forth; and (b) an underestimation of the struggle against opportunism in the U.S., an underestimation based on general, abstract, high-sounding principles and devoid of a serious, detailed consideration of the struggle here, which is brushed off in an offhand manner.
It is our view that these principles that you are urging on us would amount to, if taken to their logical conclusion and followed consistently, conciliation. We have expressed this assessment to you previously. We believe that your act of selling the rights of the book by Palacios to the ’RCP,USA’ is a verification of the accuracy of our views on the general direction in which the principles you are urging on us can lead, if taken to their logical conclusion, if errors are allowed to grow.
Your letters of December 5 confirm the analysis we gave in our letter of December 1 concerning your attitude to the struggle against opportunism.
To begin with, your letters of December 5 fully verify your complete underestimation of our struggle against the American opportunists. True, you curse at our letter of December 1 and, among other things, talk of “the villainous accusation that our Party ’shows an extreme underestimation of the struggle against opportunism in the U.S.’” (pp. 6. 14. 15. etc.) But your letters of December 5 repeatedly prove that you underestimate this struggle by sneering at it and denouncing it. As we pointed out in Section VI-G, you go to the extreme of sneering that our Party allegedly “do(es) not even recognize ’American opportunism.’” (pp. 6-7. 11. 17, 18. etc.) Is a bigger underestimation of our struggle against the American opportunists possible? We are fighting a fierce battle and you are trying to juggle words to prove that we allegedly don’t even “recognize” American opportunism! Your underestimation of our struggle is also seen in your contemptuous and sneering attitude to our very effective work against the tour of Palacios on the platform of the “three worlders” of the “RCP,USA.” We have dealt with this in Section Vl-C of this letter. Furthermore, you are concocting one thesis after another to denigrate our struggle. You have no respect whatsoever for the protracted, complicated life and death struggle we are waging against American opportunism. You don’t study it or make any concrete comments about it or any analysis of the situation facing our Party. Instead you spend your time sneering that this struggle is “American cxceptionalism” (pp. 3, 25, etc.), is a “peculiar” concoction, is “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’ ” (p. 12) and so forth.
Furthermore, our letter of December 1 is absolutely correct in linking up your sale of the rights to the English translation of the Palacios book to the “RCP,USA” with your underestimation of the struggle against the “RCP,USA.” Your notably nonchalant attitude to the sale of the Palacios book, your denial that this sale is of any concern to us, your comparison of this sale to an ordinary commercial transaction, and your refusal to see the major questions of principle underlying your blunder of selling the Palacios book to the “RCP,USA.” all testify to an absolutely astonishing lack on your part of any apparent awareness or interest or sense of immediate solidarity for the sharp, bitter, protracted struggle going on against the “RCP,USA.”
Now let us pass on to your opposition to the struggle against the conciliators of social-chauvinism, these conciliators being the forces that could roughly be termed “centrist.” Here again your letters of December 5 completely verify our letter of December 1. In the introduction to Section IX above we have quoted your letters of December 5 denouncing our article “How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism.” You denounce the struggle against the conciliators as a disruption of the possibilities of building the unity of the “genuine Marxist-Leninists.” You especially come out against any “hidden attacks” on the social-democratic sect, the MLOC/“CPUSA(ML),” as a failure to take advantage of “the full possibilities of this opportunity of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists.” You thus not only opposed attacks on this or that group of conciliators, but also opposed any attacks on the ideology of conciliationism, regarding such opposition to the ideology of conciliationism as “hidden attacks.” With your talk about “hidden attacks,” you also try to pass over in silence your hostile stand to the open polemics against the MLOC/“CPUSA(ML),” works such as Reply to the Open Letter of the MLOC and the pamphlet and series entitled Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement.
Furthermore, your opposition to the polemics against the conciliators included not only a hostile stand to the polemics against the social-democratic MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)” sect, but also a hostile stand against the polemics against the “three worlders” of the “RCP,USA.” In your letters of December 5, in the main you try to pass over this in silence. You maintain an absolute silence about your diversionary theses against the pamphlet Why Did the RCP,USA ’ Split? You do not even mention them, to say nothing of trying to defend them. As well, you pass over in silence your negative attitude to the other polemics, such as “Does the ’RCP,USA’ Oppose the Theory of ’Three Worlds’?” You have negated these polemics to the point that you characterize the “RCP,USA’s” position as being that of fighting against the “three worlds” theory. On page 18 you explicitly include the “RCP,USA” in the list you give of centrist groups. But you characterize “centrism” as follows:
...the entire centrist trend which had already crystallized around the ’defence of “Mao Zedong Thought”’ and the ’contributions’ of Mao Zedong, under the mask of their so-called opposition to Chinese revisionism and the notorious theory of three worlds. ’ the offspring of ’Mao Zedong Thought’. (p. 4a; except for the word “already.” all emphasis is added)
This is an incorrect characterization of “centrism” which, among other things, prettifies the “RCP,USA.” The “centrists” are against carrying the struggle against Chinese revisionism through to the end. The “RCP,USA” in particular does not even oppose the “three worlds” theory but is a diehard defender of it. It does not flaunt a “mask” of “so-called ’opposition’” to the “three worlds” theory, but has consistently and doggedly opposed the struggle on the issue of the “three worlds” theory. Under heavy pressure from the struggle against Chinese revisionism, the “RCP,USA” finally put forward the thesis of two different “three worlds” theories. Mao’s allegedly good version and Deng’s bad version, and insisted that the criticism of Deng’s bad version is a minor and even diversionary issue. Finally, you attack the title of the polemical series “U.S. Neo-Revisionism as the American Expression of the International Opportunist Trend of Chinese Revisionism.” This is your only direct defense of your hostile stand against the polemics against the “RCP,USA.” Taken literally, your opposition to the phrase “U.S. Neo-Revisionism as the American Expression of the International Opportunist Trend of Chinese Revisionism” means that you are defending the “RCP,USA” from our accusation that it is part of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism. And indeed, you are putting forward exactly this idea when you write:
But these centrists are also not only ’opposed’ to the ’international trend of Chinese revisionism’ but to its ’American’ or any other expression, as well. (p. 18)
Thus you prettify the “RCP,USA” as not only not being part of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism, but of fighting against this opportunist trend. All this fully verifies the analysis given in our letter of December 1 concerning your opposition to the polemics against the conciliators.
Now let us continue on to the fact that you passed over from opposition to the struggle against the conciliators to reconsidering your previous support for our struggle against the open social-chauvinists as well. You took up a hostile stand against the movement against social-chauvinism as a whole. This too is verified over and over again in your letters of December 5. Among other things, you write:
The true facts are that after the initial attack against the ’domestic opportunists,’ he has today gone of/into a tangent and begun to concoct his peculiar theories ’if in an off-hand manner.’ His theory of the so-called ’weakest link’ is precisely the latest example of these peculiar theses. ’U.S. neo-revisionism is the American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism’ is another peculiar theory, and there are many more. (p. 22. bottom, emphasis added)
Thus you verify that you originally supported the struggle against the Klonskyites and then later decided that the movement against social-chauvinism “has today gone off into a tangent.” This alleged tangential activity began when we attacked the conciliators. Thus once again you are denouncing the polemics against the MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)” and the “RCP,USA.” this time as a “tangent.” Thus your passage verified that you denounced the movement against social-chauvinism not during 1977, but only after it started onto the alleged “tangent.” sometime in 1978.
But now look at the contradictions you have gotten yourself into. Elsewhere you have denounced the movement against social-chauvinism as being wrong in principle. You call it a “peculiar movement.” an expression of “American exceptionalism.” and a manifestation of “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’“ But clearly if the movement against social-chauvinism was wrong in principle, then it was wrong in 1977 as well as in 1978 and afterwards. After all, ”American exceptionalism” and Mao Zedong Thought weren’t Marxist-Leninist in 1977 and only go off into a tangent in 1978. And conversely, if the movement against social-chauvinism was correct in 1977, if the “initial attack” was correct, then that movement could not be wrong on the basis of general principles today. What crying contradictions! Thus it is not surprising that you seek to avoid these contradictions by your usual method, that is, by not elaborating your views.
Now let us pass on to the question of your method of arguing in favor of your demand that we tone down or stop altogether this or that aspect of our struggle against opportunism. We have already seen that our letter of December 1 was absolutely correct in pointing out that you completely underestimate our struggle against the American opportunists. As well, in Section IX-B we showed that our letter of December 1 was also correct in pointing out that your denunciation of our struggle is “devoid of a serious, detailed consideration of the struggle here, which is brushed off in an offhand manner.”
Thus your letters of December 5 rely on general, abstract, high-sounding principles and vague chitchat, such as throwing about generalities about the “unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninsts,” “tangents,” “hidden attacks” and so forth. While this general chitchat type of discussion indicates that you still uphold your various counterpositions, you write in this way to hide your actual theses under vague generalities and platitudes. Thus in your letters of December 5 you pass over in silence your repeatedly expressed views counterposing polemics to the defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, your various proposals to restrict the polemical struggle in various ways, such as to restrict polemics to internal publications and verbal agitation or to local leaflets or to restrict the denunciation of the opportunists to exposing the local crimes and misdeeds of this or that opportunist, and so forth. You also pass over in silence your counterposition of the struggle against opportunism to the struggle for the building and strengthening of the party. You only refer to these things obliquely, by patting yourself on the back for your theses while maintaining total silence on what they are. For example, you write:
Now, today, you have become desperate and are driving your head against granite because the peculiar theses which you have been attempting to float around and about have been proven politically and ideologically bankrupt. To stave off his own political extinction, meeting with failure at every pass, this worm has concocted all these lies and slanders to have his ’proof that the criticism and repudiation by CPC(M-L) of his tactics on the questions of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninist forces in the USA, on the questions relating to the defence of the purity of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and on the questions relating to the founding and building of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA, is tantamount to ’extreme underestimation ofthe struggle against opportunism’ and so on and so forth. (p. 14, top, emphasis added)
But what this “criticism and repudiation” is, you don’t say. This “criticism and repudiation” consisted of a series of anti-Marxist-Leninist counterpositions, as described in our letter of December 1. If your theses were not as we had characterized them in our letter of December 1, then it would have been easy for you to simply expound on them. Your failure to do so is a powerful if indirect verification of the accuracy of our letter of December 1.
Nevertheless, although you try to avoid openly stating many of your theses in your letters of December 5, still your letters of December 5 fully verify that you are using the method of counterposing this versus that, such as counterposing struggle against the domestic opportunists to struggle on the burning international issues. Your letters of December 5 put forth a whole series of anti-Marxist-Leninist counter-positions.
To begin with, you denounce our struggle against “our own” domestic American opportunists as allegedly “American exceptionalism.” This is anti-Marxist-Leninist rubbish. Struggle against “one’s own” domestic opportunists is not only compatible with Marxism-Leninism, but it is an absolute requirement of Marxism-Leninism. Comrade Lenin spoke repeatedly in the most abusive terms of those who try to demonstrate their revolutionary credentials by denouncing the foreign opportunists while remaining quiet about “their own” domestic opportunists. And still today, ardent struggle against “one’s own” domestic opportunists is an absolute requirement of the struggle against the international opportunist trends.
But you further develop your counterposition of the struggle against domestic opportunism to the struggle against international revisionism when you denounce the phrase “U.S. neo-revisionism is the American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism.” You do this for the first time that we are aware of in your letters of December 5. On what basis do you denounce this phrase? You write:
According to what Joseph Green himself admits, he wants the support of our Party for his opposition to the ’American expression of... [this deletion is as in your letter – ed.] Chinese revisionism’ which means that he is neither resolutely against Chinese revisionism nor is he against ’domestic opportunism’, but content to fight the ’American expression of Chinese revisionism’. (p. 23, top)
In this passage, you counterpose domestic opportunism to international revisionism from two sides and display an aversion to even the words “international opportunist trend,” to say nothing of the concept. Thus, according to your letter, to regard certain American opportunists, namely, the neo-revisionists, as being part of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism is to deny that they are American opportunists. This is a blatant counterposing of the concept of international revisionism to the issue of domestic opportunism. At the same time, you also argue from the other direction that to fight the American exponents of Chinese revisionism is not to fight Chinese revisionism. This is also complete nonsense and just more abstract counterposing of the concepts of domestic and international opportunism. How does the fight against the American component of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism prevent one from also fighting other components of this trend and from fighting the basic ideological essence of this trend? Our Party has vigorously fought in an all-round way against Chinese revisionism, while it is your press that has gone silent for some time and failed to carry articles denouncing the basic theories of Mao Zedong Thought in detail.
In fact, Chinese revisionism is an international opportunist trend. But in the passage above you strive as hard as you can to avoid the phrase “international opportunist trend.” to the point where you prefer to even misquote us than use this phrase. It is important both theoretically and practically to understand the connection between Chinese revisionism and its manifestations around the world, such as the development of neo-revisionism in the U.S. and in a number of other countries. This is a requirement of Marxist-Leninist theoretical work. Comrade Lenin explained the existence of international opportunist trends and their relation to controversies in individual countries. For example, near the beginning of Chapter I of his classic work What Is to Be Done?, he wrote: “In fact, it is no secret that two trends have taken shape in the present-day international Social-Democracy.”
The footnote by Lenin elaborated this further:
incidentally, this perhaps is the only occasion in the history of modern Socialism in which controversies between various trends within the socialist movement have grown from national into international controversies; and this, in its own way, is extremely encouraging. Formerly, the disputes between the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers, between the Guesdites and the Possibilists, between the Fabians and the Social-Democrats, and between the Narodnaya-Volyaites and Social-Democrats, remained purely national disputes, reflected purely national features and proceeded, as it were, on different planes. At the present time (this is quite evident now}, the English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernsteinians and the Russian critics – all belong to the same family, all extol each other, learn from each other, and together come out against ’dogmatic’ Marxism. Perhaps in this first really international battle with socialist opportunism, international revolutionary Social-Democracy will become sufficiently strengthened to put an end to the political reaction that has long reigned in Europe?
Thus Comrade Lenin is quite enthusiastic over the fact that the various national disputes have become components, expressions of the struggle of two big international trends, the trends of international revolutionary Social-Democracy (Marxism) and that of socialist opportunism. Since Lenin wrote the above passage, sometime between the autumn of 1901 and February 1902, the international communist movement has seen the struggle of international trends repeated. Today’s struggle between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and the various international currents of modern revisionism is just such a struggle.
Furthermore, to counterpose domestic opportunism to international opportunism and to deny that U.S. neo-revisionism has anything to do with the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism is, objectively, to help create an ideological basis for pragmatic maneuvering. Once the connection between U.S. neo-revisionism and Chinese revisionism is denied, then anyone can claim to be the fiercest, most uncompromising opponent of Chinese revisionism, while simultaneously engaging in pragmatic maneuvers with any of the groups that form the American component of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism.
But here we must stress very sharply that you are counterposing the struggle against the domestic opportunists to the struggle against international opportunism for the sake of downplaying both struggles. True, when you put forward this counterposition you try to pose as an adherent of struggle against international revisionism. But you apply all your theories against the polemical struggle against opportunism to any struggle against opportunism. And elsewhere in your letters of December 5 you oppose the struggle against Chinese revisionism as a whole. At that point you put forward a different counterposition, that between Chinese revisionism and “revisionism and opportunism of all hues.” And indeed you counterpose the struggle against opportunism and revisionism of all hues to “the struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues.” You write: “Thus, if you are denounced by our Party for only highlighting ’Chinese revisionism, “three worldism” and so forth’, then, you can, of course, beat your breasts and scream blue murder that all along you really meant the struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues.” (p. 4)
Indeed you also go to the extreme of counterposing the struggle against Chinese revisionism to “taking up the historic task of proletarian revolution for solution.” You denounce the sentence “The ’three worlders’ and the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism are occupying one of the advance posts in the ring of fire” and our talk of the necessity to fight Chinese revisionism by calling these Marxist-Leninist theses:
...scare-crow tactics to divide the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties from taking up the historic task of proletarian revolution for solution in their own countries and vigorously and resolutely fighting hard against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. (p. 3, bottom)
These quotations show the utterly frivolous nature and complete lack of any serious content in the various counterpositions which you use to oppose the struggle against opportunism.
Now let us give one last example of the frivolous nature of your various counterpositions. You write in your letters of December 5:
Look at the way he concocts in order to present his intellectualist hyperboles: ’For example, in 1979, it has become crystal clear to everyone that both the “RCP,USA and the Barry Weisberg MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)”...[this deletion is as in your letter – ed.] have their international significance? What is this intellectualist hyperbole presented for? It is presented to ’prove’ that they are ’international’... Here is a further self-exposure of Joseph Green’s peculiar concoctions. Joseph Green has previously scribbled that the proletariat is an international class. If this is the case, then all Marxist-Leninist parties, organizations and groups are the political and most advanced representatives and vanguard of this international class. The bourgeoisie also is an international class and thus the revisionist parties, organizations and groups are also the social prop of this bourgeoisie and in the service of its counter-revolutionary aims, and thus has (have) ’international significance’. But, according to this green Joe, ’...in, 1979, it has become crystal clear to everyone that both the “RCP,USA” and the Barry Weisberg MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)”...have their international significance.’ (p. 23, top)
Thus you argue against considering the concrete role played internationally by the “RCP,USA” and the MLOC/“CPUSA(ML)” social-democratic sect by arguing that everything, every opportunist group, sect or individual, serves the international bourgeoisie and hence has international significance. Then, you turn around and say that since everything has international significance, therefore it is a concoction to say that the “RCP,USA” and the MLOC/“CPUSA (ML)” social-democratic sect do. What a lot of empty juggling with words! What self-satisfied sophistry and empty playing with generalities to avoid dealing with the actual situation!
What was the issue we were raising? At the beginning of Section IV of our letter of December 1, we replied again to your counterposition of fighting the domestic American opportunists against fighting international revisionism. We pointed out the following:
(1) “...that time has shown that the polemics we launched against the domestic American opportunists were well chosen and did raise the burning international issues.” And (2) “This has been verified to the extent that even the groups that we hit at proved to be of significance internationally. For example in 1979 it has become crystal clear to everyone that both the ’RCP,USA’ and the Barry Weisberg MLOC/’CPUSA(ML)’ social-democratic sect, even when taken just in themselves, have their international significance and that the duty of the COUSML to protect the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement included our duty to sound the alarm against these groups.”
How did you reply to this? Consider the first point. You had in the past repeatedly counterposed dealing with the international issues to fighting the domestic opportunist groups. When we pointed out that the fight against the domestic opportunist groups in fact dealt with the burning international issues, you could not say a word. You passed over this question in silence. This proved the utter frivolous nature of all your talk about dealing with the international issues. You displayed no interest in the fight over these international issues at all. And as to the second point, you reply that you are entirely uninterested because you hold that every group has international significance. You displayed no interest at all in the concrete conditions, in that the “RCP,USA’s” anti-communist and gangster-like attacks on the great book Imperialism and the Revolution and on the heroic Party of Labor of Albania are being reprinted or distributed or hailed in some form or other in India, Scandinavia, France...and elsewhere and by the RCP of Chile. You argue from abstract generalities entirely divorced from the concrete situation. Your counterpositions are frivolous and sophistical arguments devoid of concrete analysis, which you use to downplay and oppose the struggle against opportunism.
Thus the description given in our letter of December 1 concerning your attitude to the struggle against opportunism is strikingly confirmed by your letters of December 5.