First Published: Red Front, Vol. 2, No. 1, March-April 1968.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba and Sam Richards
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At its foundation Conference in September 1967, the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain unanimously adopted a resolution characterising “the thought of Mao Tse-tung” as a creative development of Marxism-Leninism and the “cultural revolution” in the People’s Republic of China as a progressive movement.
In January 1968 the Central Committee of the M.L.O.B. issued what will in the years to come be recognised as a historic document, the “Report on the Situation in the People’s Republic of China”, which demonstrated that the resolution adopted on these questions at the conference four months earlier had been a grave mistake.
As Lenin says:
The attitude of a political party towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it in practice fulfils its obligations towards its class and the toiling masses. Frankly admitting a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions which led to it, and thoroughly discussing the means of correcting it – that is the earmark of a serious party. (“History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)”; Moscow; 1941; p. 36l).
The most serious, basic, long-term error we made on these questions was our failure to make a penetrating, objective Marxist-Leninist analysis of “the thought of Mao Tse-tung”. Had such an analysis been made, as it should have been made, many years ago, it would have revealed then that “the thought of Mao Tse-tung” – far from being “a creative development of Marxism-Leninism” – was essentially revisionist and anti-Marxist-Leninist in character. We should then have seen the counter revolutionary essence lying beneath the demagogic mask of “the great proletarian cultural revolution” headed by Mao Tse-tung far earlier than we did.
Why was such a Marxist-Leninist analysis of “the thought of Mao Tse-tung” not made until many years after it should have been made? The roots of the answer lie in the revisionist habits of thought and practice which all of us have brought with us to some extent into the new, developing Marxist-Leninist movement even though we have formally broken with the revisionist party machine. For in the revisionist party – for obvious reasons – independent, objective Marxist-Leninist analysis is strongly discouraged. In the revisionist party a “good comrade” is one who accepts uncritically “the line” which emanates from the world leading revisionist centre in Moscow.
It is not without significance that the great majority of people who constitute the so-called “anti-revisionist movement” in Britain had their eyes opened to the character of Khrushchevite revisionism not in 1955-6 – by which time its actions had clearly exposed its treacherous, renegade character – but in the 1960s, after the Chinese Marxist-Leninists had begun publicly to expose it. Even then many of these people tended to see the “Great Debate” between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism primarily as a struggle between the lines emanating from rival world leading centres in Moscow and Peking. The uncritical acceptance of a line emanating from a world leading centre was carried into the so-called “anti-revisionist movement”; only the leading centre was changed. And this led the anti-revisionist movement into a new revisionism. The uncritical acceptance of “the line from Peking” in place of independent objective Marxist-Leninist analysis blinded us to the fact that in 1966 “the line from Peking” changed from a Marxist-Leninist line to a revisionist one as a result of the coup d’etat by which the “left” revisionists headed by Mao Tse-tung seized control of the “Central Committee” of the Communist Party of China and of the armed forces. It blinded us to the fact that the “left” revisionists headed by Mao Tse-tung had cunningly transformed the socialist cultural revolution in China into a counter-revolutionary assault in the interests of the Chinese capitalist class upon the Party and the new-democratic state. It carried us to the point where we found ourselves repeating – albeit with some uneasiness - the more absurd phrases from “Peking Review” concerning the personal attributes of Mao Tse-tung. It lowered our revolutionary vigilance.
How, then, did the M.L.O.B. come to recognise the erroneous path it had begun to tread?
Just as failure to make independent, Marxist-Leninist analysis was responsible for our error, so it was resumption of independent Marxist-Leninist analysis which forced us to recognise the error. From the moment it was set up last autumn, the M.L.O.B. began to elaborate a Marxist-Leninist programme for the achievement of socialism in Britain. This compelled us to make an independent, objective Marxist-Leninist analysis of various aspects of the situation in Britain, Europe and the world. By the beginning of December 1967 it had become clear that this analysis was bringing us into irreconcilable contradiction with the line emanating from Peking. For example, our own analysis had led us incontrovertibly to the conclusion that the movement of “black nationalism” and the slogan of “black power” were reactionary and harmful; yet it became clear in November 1967 that Peking was giving this movement and this slogan full support. It was such contradictions which forced the Political Bureau to undertake what should have been undertaken long before – the initiation of an objective Marxist-Leninist analysis of “the thought of Mao Tse-tung” and of the situation in the People’s Republic of China. The end result of that analysis was the report of the Central Committee issued last month. What are the lessons to be drawn from this grave error – in order to ensure as far as we can that we do not ever again make such an error? We must wage a relentless battle against the revisionist habits of thought and practice which all of us have brought to some extent into the new, developing Marxist-Leninist movement. We must never again substitute blind faith for independent, objective Marxist-Leninist analysis. We must strive to raise the political level of our members at all levels so that they may nip any future errors in the bud immediately.
The fact that the M.L.O.B. has published the truth as soon as it became aware of it, being the first of any of the developing Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations in the world to do so, presents a good augury for the overcoming of the obstacles which lie ahead.