China overtakes US as world’s largest trading country

AFP Photo / China out

China has passed the US as the world’s biggest trading nation as measured by the sum of exports and imports in 2012. It’s a position the US has held for over six decades.

US exports and imports of goods last year amounted to $3.82 trillion, the US Commerce Department said last week. China’s trade in goods was $3.87 trillion, according to the country’s customs administration report in January. 

While the US recorded a surplus in services of $195.3 billion last year and a goods deficit of more than $700 billion, according to Bureau Economic Analysis, China’s 2012 trade surplus, measured in goods, totalled $231.1 billion.

“The main reason for this growth is the Chinese government policy directed at stimulating domestic demand, which improves imports to growth,” Andrey Shenk, an economic expert at Investcafe, told RT. He said China increased its import volumes 5 fold in the last five years, and that allowed it become the biggest trading nation. 

“For so many countries around the world, China is rapidly becoming the most important bilateral trade partner,” Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs’s asset management division and the economist who bound Brazil to Russia, India and China to form the BRIC investing strategy, told Bloomberg. And that can even “disrupt regional trading blocs,” for instance, “Germany may export twice as much to China by the end of the decade as it does to France,” O’Neill added.

The figures indicate the trend that China is already outpacing the US, the world’s biggest economy, in some respects. According to various estimates, China has the world’s biggest new car market, is the biggest energy user, and holds the largest foreign currency reserves. China became the world’s biggest exporter in 2009, and its GDP growth rate has averaged 9.9% a year since the 1970s. In 2011 China’s GDP growth rate stood at 9.20%, compared to 1.80% in the US during the same year.  

In November last year China surpassed the US as the world’s leading trade partner, with 124 countries considering China their largest trading partner and only 76 having that relationship with the US. This was a major shift since 2006, when the US was the larger trading partner for 127 countries, while China dominated among 70. Some historical allies of the US now consider China their top trading partner, including Australia and South Korea. Trade with China was on average 12.4% of GDP for its foreign partners in 2012, compared to only 3% in 2002 – a rate that is higher than trade with the US has been in the past 30 years.

The US dominated as the world’s main trading power since after WWII, but as the recession hit US businesses hard, China’s growth continued, and its pace has already recovered from seven straight quarters of decline, reaching 7.9% in 4Q 2012. 

Still, the US economy is double the size of China’s, according to World Bank data. In 2011, the US GDP reached $15 trillion while China’s totalled $7.3 trillion. In 2012 China’s nominal gross domestic product was $8.3 trillion, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ report. However, the US remains the biggest importer, taking in $2.28 trillion in goods last year compared with China’s $1.82 trillion of imports. The US exports innovative products in the automobile industry, aerospace, medicine, computers, finance and pharmaceuticals.  

At the same time, a significant portion of China’s trade involves importing raw materials and parts to be assembled into finished products and re-exported, an activity that provides “only modest value added,” Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official, now a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told Bloomberg.

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China & Neocolonialism: Let’s Be Clear About the Facts

Yesterday and today I noticed many people passing around an article from China Daily which attempts to defend China’s relations with Africa and defend it against the accusation of neocolonialism. This is my response.

Let’s be clear about one thing: Africa IS dominated by neocolonialism. All of the so-called “leaders” of Africa in fact preside over neocolonial governments ruling territories whose borders are the direct result of European imperialism. They are representatives of the African petty bourgeoisie and their class interests are directly opposed to those of African workers and poor peasants. And yes, I include such people as Robert Mugabe in this description.

These are the governments with whom China is now making deals. For example, China made deals with the so-called “Congo” – a neocolonial entity. They also have had extensive dealings with the neocolonial government of Sudan – this in fact was on the primary motivations behind American, Israeli and other efforts to detach South Sudan, further fracturing the continent.

Outside of Africa China has various deals with the Zionist State of Israel, an outright white power, settler-colonial entity whose existence is entirely at the expense of the colonially dominated Palestinian and Arab peoples. China even provides arms and funding to the Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka, yet another neocolonial entity, that has long attempted to violently put down the aspirations for national liberation of the Tamil people.

And that’s China today. Let’s not even start on “Maoist” China’s support for Mobuto in “Zaire” and Pinochet in Chile. The latter was a betrayal so great that many Maoists in Chile actually chose to take their own lives rather than face facts and join up with the nascent armed resistance lead by the MIR and FPMR.

Yes, certainly Chairman Mao was a great revolutionary, but Mao did not equal China or the Chinese Communist Party. If you are to believe the historical analysis of modern Maoists’ then by 1971-73 Mao had already lost control of China’s foreign policy to the rightists around Deng Xiaoping with the beginning of the collapse of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Regardless of whether you accept what the modern Maoists have to say or not (and I am by no means sold of their analysis), what this teaches us, or at least should teach us, is that China’s involvement in neocolonialism isn’t even a new phenomena, or even a phenomena of the era marked by the political collapse of the USSR.

In fact, we must be clear that what this all boils down to on the part of leftists outside of China who defend its modern policies is a line that is objectively anti-African (and anti-other colonized peoples) in its orientation and practice. It covers over the lack of self-determination for Africans and other colonized peoples.

So to echo comrade Jesse Alexander Nevel of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and Uhuru Solidarity Movement, how the fuck can anyone defend this?

However, all of this about China being said it must also be added that while we must be clear about the role of China and all foreign powers in Africa at this juncture, we must never lose sight of the fact that the #1 enemy of Africans and other colonized peoples is US imperialism. The destruction of imperialism’s domination over Africa can only be achieved by the complete liberation and unification of Africa and Africans worldwide under an all African socialist government (which is exactly what the African Socialist International is struggling towards).

When African workers and peasants control their own resources and economies then the stage will be set for the possibility of mutual cooperation between sovereign nations. The key thing for the African Revolution is that the African working class is the only social force capable of leading Africa out of the colonially imposed poverty and oppression — not the US, not Europe, not China, not India, etc, but AFRICANS.

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A View of the Reforms in China

by Vladimir Chechentsev

Review of Zbigniew Wiktor’s book, China on the course of the socialist modernisation.

A major work (546 pages) has been printed by Adam Marszalek Publishing, Poland, by the Professor of Social Sciences of the University of Wroclaw, Zbigniew Wiktor, entitled Chiny na drodze socialistycznej modernizacji (‘China on the Course of the Socialist Modernisation’, Torun, 2008).

It represents the result of Wiktor’s long-term studies of the development of social relations in the People’s Republic of China, its economic and political system, supplied by observations during his stay in China in Autumn 2005, including his scientific work in the University of Wuhan.

China’s enormous size, with 1.3 billion inhabitants, a diversity of lifestyles, its rapid development in the last thirty years, its continuous flow of reforms in politics and economics – all this sets extremely difficult tasks before a social scientist – not only to give an objective reflection of reality, but to determine the tendencies of the motive forces in its future development. While Wiktor has quite successfully accomplished the former task, he has not quite managed the latter; more details will be given below.

As Wiktor notes in the beginning, ‘The problems outlined are really vast. This made me refer to various kinds of sources, to the literature and to apply different research methods, including historical and comparative methods, to apply the political and state-law analysis, and first of all, the method of historical and dialectical materialism, so as to enable the reflection and analysis of the relations between the economics and politics in the People’s Republic of China’ (p. 11).

(The translations from the Polish hereinafter are done by the author of this review.)

Note that Wiktor refers to Marxism as his main research method. The author of this review also advocates these views. However, this does not stop us from assessing the Chinese reality from another viewpoint.

Let us now pass onto the analysis of Wiktor’s book, starting with the conclusion from the book (quoted from the English afterword of the Polish book, with minor stylistic amendments).

‘The essence of the modernisation and reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping and continued by his successor was the new attitude towards the market. The Chinese leader has stated (contrary to his predecessor – Mao Zedong) that the market does not have to be an alien and hostile category and mechanism for the socialist economy but it can lead to a huge increase of production and contribute to dynamism and modernisation in the socialist economy. This modernisation had significant effects not only for practical activities but also influenced theoretical discussion on the basic thesis of Marxist political economy and the theory of scientific socialism. New categories such as socialist market and socialist market economy (which since 1992 has been a constitutional principle of the PRC) were created.

Modernisation and Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were based on the assumption that the dogmatism of Mao Zedong (who had huge successes in leading the socialist revolution in China and creating the basis of socialism but also was not free from numerous mistakes) must be given up. Mao Zedong implemented equalising principles of socialism under the conditions of historical economic backwardness of China – with a quite high pace of development but from a very low initial level, when even extreme poverty was common and its sign was the ‘iron rice bowl’. Poverty and want – said Deng Xiaoping – even shared justly cannot be ideals of socialism like the ‘barracks socialism’ promoted by Maoists also at the international level. The CPC considered that China is still in the initial stage of socialism, when small economy dominates the countryside and plays a significant role in the cities, and that it needs to be steered towards fast development under state and legal control and the socialist state economy. It has also considered that this aim can be achieved through broad international cooperation with foreign capital and trade relations. In this issue the Chinese leadership has used earlier Soviet experience from the 1920s when V. I. Lenin proposed, after huge destruction during the civil war, a new course for the Soviet state – the New Economic Policy (NEP), which put an end to chaos after the revolution, rebuilding of the economy, reviving of international trade and, what is most important, preparing the state for the realisation of the new tasks during later period.’

The text quoted above shows that Wiktor shares the CPC’s official view that socialism is compatible with commodity-money relations, i.e. market relations. We cannot agree with such a position if we are to base ourselves on the model of scientific socialism. The errors in this position will be obvious if we understand by socialism the social system with the comradely mode of production, where wage labour is eliminated. Thus everybody becomes a worker taking part in productive labour, where the exploitation of people by people is liquidated, where the contradiction between the city and countryside and the contradiction between intellectual and physical labour are done away with, where many state functions have withered away. Socialism is the first stage of communism.

It is clear that modern China with its mixed-mode economy, with capitalist and small-production modes, is nowhere near to satisfying these criteria. The free-market socialism in the PRC is the social system of transition between capitalism and socialism.

Actually, Wiktor writes, ‘the CPC foresees that China will complete the transformations inherent to the transition period between socialism and capitalism only by 2050’.

‘This means that it is half way there; in terms of the maturity of socialist relations, it is only in the initial phase of socialist construction.’

Obviously Wiktor has not quite thought this question through, because in the Russian-language summary (p. 531) he states that China is in the initial stage of socialist construction, while in the English-language summary (p. 521) he says it is ‘in the initial stage of socialism’. Everybody would agree that the two things are not the same.

Wiktor states that the practice of economic reforms in China demands the discussion and revision of the fundamental positions of Marxism-Leninism. We are confident that there are no grounds for such statements; defending these fundamental positions, including the versatile development incorporating new aspects, is a vital task for Marxist-Leninists.

The tragic experience of the dismantlement of the USSR and Eastern European countries has shown everybody that in the end, socialism in its early stage was defeated due to the course taken for free market and privatisation. The continuous economic growth during the reforms, the fact that these reforms were carried out in the backward conditions of China’s production shows the impossibility of restricting oneself just to the planned economy.

At the same time, loosening free-market relations, assisting their functioning in all sectors of economy, means blocking the road to socialism.

The book includes four chapters and the author’s Chinese diaries. To understand the complicated processes taking place in the course of economic reforms in China the central portion of the book is Chapter 1, the Contradiction in China.

These contradictions are analysed from the viewpoint of the PRC’s international position and at the internal level. China’s current economic policy is directed at incorporating the country into international relations.

Quite symbolic is the quote in this chapter by the Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Li Shenming, ‘China has to be active and remain calm in the processes of economic globalisation. There are no other options. Globalisation carries a risk. All countries and peoples have merits and specifics which have to be honoured. So all countries have to carry out the policy of openness in relation to others. In this century with its rapid development of science and technology, no country can afford to cut itself from the international influence. These countries would remain backward, would be passive and would be subject to attacks’ (p. 12).

This incorporation into the system of international relations is taking place under conditions where world imperialism headed by the USA confronts the peoples’ drive to social and national liberation. In relation to this, Wiktor notes, ‘The United States is willing to take control of the course of globalisation today in different aspects of international relations; this is the USA that since the 1990s has wanted to implement a uni-polar system of international relations. Globalisation in military techniques means the US’ drive to new hegemony, whose expression is the expansion of NATO, the growth of armaments, the appearance of new generations of armaments, and the US-instigated local wars, under the guise of the UN and NATO. Globalisation’s other problems are the expansion of the population in the so-called Third World, the energy crisis, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, international terrorism grown beyond any reasonable limit; to stop it, actions on an international scale are necessary. Globalisation in the area of politics and culture engenders other consequences, whose analysis requires special attention’ (p. 15).

This kind of analysis of the modern world is insufficient, as it does not address the main contradiction of modern times – the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation under capitalism, engendering the antagonistic contradiction of labour and capital, leading inevitably to economic crises and social upheavals, preparing the conditions for world wars and social revolution.

A major part of Chapter 1 is devoted to the analysis of changes taking place in the relations of production in China, in the class structure of the society, in the process of class struggle and in the corruption that has affected social life.

Relations between two economic modes are considered. ‘In the last twenty years the social sector has become an important element in the free-market economy’. This is exactly the way it is described in the up-to-date version of the Constitution of the Peoples’ Republic of China. In the years of reforms, the privately-owned enterprises grew; many have turned into big corporations with multi-billion-dollar turnovers, among them the Peking Corporation of Hanjan, the Guandong Meidi, Liaoning Panpan, Zheijang Younger Group (p. 28). The private sector in the cities, which has grown in size, is complemented by the huge small-business sector in the countryside, which constantly engenders capitalist relations.

‘Private property in China has grown to the extent,’ Wiktor affirms, ‘that despite the fact that the State sector in the cities maintains the dominant position, some reviewers and theoreticians doubt the socialist character of public relations in the People’s Republic of China’ (pp. 25-26).

Wiktor notes the positive results established through the reforms in the state sector of the economy. But one of the processes draws one’s attention, the strong dependence of the results of the State sector on the external market.

Given the background of the enormous changes in all aspects of social life, Wiktor has paid much attention to the class contradictions in the modern China. According to the data given, the class structure of China has the following layout:

Workers in the production sector: 160 million people

Unemployed: 14 million people

Workers in other sectors in the economy: 146 million people

Workers in the services, the intelligentsia: 140 million people.

Economically active population (including the unemployed): 760 million (p. 76)

No doubt the relative political weight of the capitalist class is much higher than its numerical proportion of the total population. No matter how actively the representatives of this class swear to socialist principles, the class struggle of the capitalist exploiters against the working class is an undeniable fact.

‘The politics of reform and modernisation of China has led to the growth of private capital, invested in special sectors of the economy; first of all, home capital has been unleashed and is increasing its power many times over. It is now seen by a large part of party members as a major threat to the socialist relations in the future’ (p. 102).

Wiktor believes that the CPC and PRC leadership will be able respond to the new challenges of the class struggle.

Another expression of class struggle in China discussed by Wiktor is corruption. The processes of socialist market economy have made material stimuli more important. The gap between the wealth of the new bourgeoisie and the poverty of the working-class masses, the employees and the peasantry, has greatly increased. Under these conditions, bribery of full-time state and party workers has been a very important aspect in the activity of Chinese business people, especially those who have multi-billion dollar assets. However, the book has no reasonable answers to questions arising from this fact. Wiktor draws much attention to considering the changes in the property relations in the course of economic reform that have led to the differentiation of incomes among the Chinese population.

Of special interest is his detailed investigation of the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution on the development of the liberation movement in China that led to the foundation of the People’s Republic and its influence on Chinese communists searching for the course of socialist construction appropriate to the national situation.

Part two considers the specific features of the political system in the PRC, its changes in the initial stage of socialist construction in the course of the economic reform. Its other features are analysed, such as the leading role of the CPC, the interaction of the CPC with democratic parties represented in the National People’s Congress, expressing the interests of the existing classes and layers in Chinese society, the implementation of the people’s dictatorship. The stages of development of the political system in the People’s Republic of China starting from 1949 are considered, including the basic statements in the Constitutions of the PRC of 1954, 1975 and 1982 and the five amendments to the current Constitution of 1982. Wiktor considers the principle of the democratic dictatorship of the people proclaimed in the Constitution of the PRC as the expression of the proletarian dictatorship in the specific conditions of the transition period leading from capitalism to socialism. We do not think this is correct. The replacement of the proletarian dictatorship, as a principle, by a people’s dictatorship, is evidence of the tendency to compromise in the political thinking of the CPC leadership. But what do they lead to?

For a long time now, the CPC’s theory and practice has not been based on a class approach when assessing the course of the reforms taken and international events.

‘As a result of action by internal and international facts,” Wiktor states, “the class struggle will exist in a limited form for a long period of time, and it may be aggravated under certain conditions. However, this is not the main contradiction…’ (p. 66).

Such an approach inevitably strengthens the positions of the national bourgeoisie, which is aligning with the bureaucrats in the administrative, economic and party apparatuses.

The tendency to abandon the class approach in the assessment of social events has been further developed in Jiang Zemin’s Three Representatives concept. It is aimed at merging the economic elite (the bourgeoisie) brought up in the reforms since 1978 into the CPC. Thus, instead of admitting and theoretically outlining the continuous antagonistic class struggle in China, there is an attempt to reconcile their economic interests and to call for their collaboration in the name of prosperity in China.

Unless we are driven by the illusion of capitalism being rooted in socialism, the political power of the working class (the proletarian dictatorship) is aimed at steadily rooting out capitalist relations of production and at establishing new ones, and would not be stopped by the prospect of applying justified violence against the exploiters. ‘Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another’ (K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party).

The report on the activity of the CPC CC Disciplinary Commission at the 16th Congress of the CPC stated unequivocally, ‘getting rid of corruption is an important political struggle, whose course is a matter of life and death for the Party and for the State’ (p. 88). No coincidence that CPC veterans, functionaries, military service people and scientists classify the current party course as openly revisionist in a letter to CPC CC General Secretary Hu Jintao (October 2004).

In part three, ‘The development and the world,’ Wiktor presented his view of the principal stages in the history of China from the foundation of the Republic of China in 1911 up to the present time. The analysis of the economic and political development of the People’s Republic of China throughout nearly sixty years is summarised in the following statement: ‘The essence of the theoretical discovery by Deng Xiaoping is that socialist economy has to be a market-based economy, regulated accordingly by a popular state in the interests of society. It is therefore necessary to regard this in the broad historical context as the utmost of all realistic chances today for the victory of socialism world-wide’ (p. 282).

To sum up the study of distinct questions investigated by Wiktor’s book, we see his undivided support for the socio-political and economic reforms carried out since 1978 by the CPC and PRC leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping and his followers.

Economic reform in the PRC carried out in the transition period between socialism and capitalism, the reform that has lead to a significant strengthening of capitalist lifestyle, is presented as the implementation of market-based socialism. The political reform whose essence is the departure from the principles of proletarian dictatorship is regarded as the overcoming of dogmatism and the enlargement of the camp of socialism’s supporters. These views are incompatible with the development of scientific socialism; they are a revision thereof.

‘Market-based socialism,’ unless it is specifically seen as a social system in transition, and unless an emphasis is made on its transitional character, is a false concept designed to cover for capitalist restoration. Socialist economy is not a modification of market economy, not a version of it, but its historic alternative, central to which is not profit but human needs and the work to base them on a scientific plan. Politically the substitution of a class-based, proletarian approach with the notorious concept of a state of all the people led to the collapse of socialism in the USSR. The PRC is open to the same kind of threat. In essence this is all about the great difficulties of the transition period, and the rubbish and confusion related to it, and about the recognition and application of the transition and hence the contradictory forms appropriate for the epoch.

Throughout his book, Professor Wiktor stands for defending the cause of socialism in China. We also see the cause of socialism in the PRC as our own. We are therefore critical in following the questionable course of the CPC’s and PRC’s current leadership that could threaten the socialist achievements of the Chinese proletariat and the entire Chinese people.

A confirmation of how far this leadership has departed from following the principles of scientific socialism has been the support for Resolution 1874 in the UN Security Council. This resolution, adopted unanimously by the Security Council, condemns the nuclear tests carried out on the 25th of May 2009 by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and thus provides for sanctions against this socialist country.

We would like to express the hope that Wiktor’s book, which contains rich factual material on the PRC’s economics and politics valuable for continuing discussion on the methods of socialist construction, will come out in Russian.

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The Night Zhou was Drunk Under the Table

By Ian Williams

As we approached the 60th anniversary on Thursday of Mao Zedong’s declaration that the “Chinese people have stood up,” I trawled through the memories of my time in China straddling 1970 and 1971, and found, with all the accuracy of retrospective prophesy, that there were more auguries of the current China than one might suspect.

Although my putative memoirs would be called “I was a Teenage Maoist”, by the time I landed in Beijing I was a callow 21-year-old, a month older than the People’s Republic. In fact, Zhou Enlai, the first premier, from 1949 until his death in 1976, repeated to us his dictum that it was too early to tell whether or not the French Revolution had been a success, let alone China’s. Forty years later, I wonder what Zhou, one of the more sophisticated and cosmopolitan of the Chinese leaders, but nonetheless a devoted communist, would have made of present-day China.

I was part of a delegation from an obscure British party that enjoyed unprecedented access to the Chinese leadership, including a drinking competition with Zhou – and a very risky argument about literature with Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, who had, after all, instituted the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) by demonizing all but a tiny group of writers and artists. It was so long ago that even the Chinese used the old Wade-Giles Romanization system for the Mandarin language. We were in Peking (Beijing), and read the Peking Review every week. In fact, our visit featured in it.

Our sessions with the Chinese cadres were often like negotiations, conducted over innumerable cigarettes and a constant flow of tea. The idea was that whoever called for a bathroom break was conceding the field of battle. Sadly for Chinese pride, our side had been brought up on a diet of gallons of tea and bitter beer and had formidable resistance to such diuretics.

Even at the time, I had a sense of bewilderment at the relative isolation from the world outside, of the top leadership. They provided us with a daily English press summary of world affairs and the difficulties of a binary view of the world became apparent. For example, Pakistan was an ally of China, therefore it was socialist and progressive – which the Pakistanis themselves would hardly claim, while social-democratic governments, like the British Labour Party, were reactionary and capitalist to the core.

As for our visit: I suspect that Zhou had hoped that it would provide information and encouragement for his planned opening to the West. We were there before British premier Edward Heath, or former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and president Richard Nixon from the United States. Indeed, as almost the only gweilos (foreigners) in town, we could attract crowds just by peering in a shop window. In those far-off days, my hair was red, which was almost like having eyes on green stalks for some people. However, enlisting us as a resource for global realpolitik confirms the naivety of their approach.

We were a sectarian groupuscule with fewer members nationally than the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee. Our contact with the working political system in Britain was minimal and our knowledge of other countries tended to be based on contacts with equally out-of-touch groups. It would be nice to think that we changed the course of history, but there is absolutely no basis for thinking so. Our input probably pointed in the opposite direction to what they did. When we asked why they did not walk in and take Hong Kong, which was then ruled by Britain, Zhou suggested it was better to lessen the economic disparities between the two sides first.

Despite their own sectarian squabbles, despite the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese were at least dealing with some aspects of the real world. For example, they had built a state-of-the-art metro system in Beijing. Even though it was as yet unopened, Zhou took us for a ride on it, which tangentially introduced yet another paradox.

They told us, with almost schoolboyish glee at their boldness, that they were calling the metro station for Tiananmen Square “Zhuxi [Chairman] Station.” It was a paradox even then, that in the midst of history’s biggest-ever personality cult, no physical location was named after Mao, let alone any of the other revolutionary personalities. I can only presume that it was intended as a gesture of superiority to the Soviet proclivity for churning out city names in honor of top people.

This saved a lot of sign-painting during the various rectification campaigns, the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Not many of the leadership stayed in power throughout.

Apart from Zhou, we met the full Gang of Four – Jiang Qing and her close associates, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen – but we noticed the omissions. Lin Biao, the powerful military commander who rose to political prominence in the Cultural Revolution and whose picture and introduction was at the front of hundreds of millions of Little Red Books, was absent in name and person. In a seamen’s club in Shanghai, I noticed a book on sale by Chen Boda, Mao’s personal secretary. Our minders immediately took it out the case and said it was too old and faded to sell.

Our party chairman, Reg Birch, an old communist trade unionist, asked to meet his old chum, Kang Sheng. They brought along his wife instead, explaining that the head of the security and intelligence apparatus was indisposed. In fact, along with Chen Boda, it now seems as if he, and indeed Lin Biao, were at that time in the process of being purged.

Lin shortly afterwards died in a plane crash. Kang resurfaced long enough to ensure that the People’s Republic put its weight behind Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In retrospect, I am glad I never had to shake his hand. Kang was posthumously accused of sharing responsibility (with the Gang of Four) for the Cultural Revolution. The Gang of Four had effectively controlled the power organs of the Communist Party through the latter stages of the Cultural Revolution.

In contrast with all the mass campaigns and circus antics of the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in widespread social and political upheaval and and economic disarray, these purges were being conducted in secrecy with no word of them leaking out from the leadership.

A case in point was a bizarre Christmas feast with an elderly American couple, old-style communists who had moved to China and taken up citizenship and party membership. They were brought out because they knew several of the delegation, who had asked about them.

The turkey dinner was odd in several ways. The couple were Jewish for a start, and although our Chinese hosts were trying to be hospitable with the seasonal bird, they obviously found something alien about the idea of cooking an intact animal: it came as a sort of turkey construction kit, disassembled, cooked and then reassembled. As for the couple, it was only many years later that I heard that their goose had been well and truly cooked. They were languishing in prison, brought out and dusted off for us, and then returned afterwards. But nothing they said gave any of us any grounds for suspicion.

The full Gang of Four came along to join Zhou for talks and a banquet on New Year’s Eve. Jiang Qing stood out in a sea of nondescript cotton Mao suits. The still striking woman, who had reduced the repertoire of a huge nation to a handful of revolutionary Beijing operas, one ballet, the Red Detachment of Women, and pretty much one classical sonata, flounced in, every inch the imperial consort. The former actress’ cotton greatcoat was draped around her shoulders like a cape, and she carried herself like an imperial consort.

When she discovered that I had been studying English literature, she immediately pronounced that Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’ Hard Times were the only two English proletarian novels. Even as I blurted out a negative, I was thinking hard. I saw the rest of the senior leadership of the party withdraw a little in expectation of the thunderbolt to come. Jane Eyre was clearly a bit too close to home. A governess who marries the boss had too much resonance with the career of a Shanghai starlet who married the chairman. I concentrated on Hard Times, pointing out that its hero was in fact a strikebreaker – a traitor to his class in Marxist terms.

Through narrowed eyes, Jiang delivered her ultimate riposte, “You have long hair. It makes you look like a girl.” There was a barely concealed sigh of relief around the table. At least it was not “Off with his head!” or “Counter-revolutionary scum”.

The evening, after a banquet fit for an emperor, ended with drinks for us and Zhou and his entourage. The Gang of Four did not, as I remember, hang around. It became a drinking match, with shots of mao tai, the ferocious-smelling sorghum-based overproof liquor that had become the official drink of the party.

As the youngest there, but already with a reputation as a determined drinker, I was moved forward as the champion on going glass-for-glass with Zhou, a man with an iron constitution. But I saw how he stayed ahead. He only drank half his, while I was drinking the lot. Even so, he gave up first, as I remember – allowing for the fact that after large amounts of the stuff, memories can be unreliable.

Despite the Moscow-style purges going on behind the wainscoting, economically, China’s development was more balanced than that of the Soviets. We could go on a pub crawl through the streets of Beijing, pijui – beer, being one of the early accessions to our Mandarin vocabulary and although, for example, cotton was rationed, consumer goods seemed in adequate supply. In the covered market, locals looked superior as Aeroflot pilots came rushing through stocking up on things from soap to razor blades to tomatoes that the Soviets’ heavy industrial base couldn’t provide.

The variety of cigarettes, from coffin nails to the crush-proof packs of the most expensive brands, has always made me wonder about the role of tobacco in industrialization – selling the peasants highly profitable cigarettes was a financially painless way of raising state funds compared with expropriation. The other aspect was the amount of collective entrepreneurial activity that was taking place, even after years of disruption from the Cultural Revolution, which had not officially finished by then.

For example, in the countryside, communes were making cement boats for sale, while in Shanghai we visited a back-street factory that was etching silicon chips – almost state-of-the-art at the time. Even then, I remember wondering about the flue that vented the hydrofluoric acid fumes from the process onto the street. In a microchip, it encapsulated the future environmental problems of reckless development, even as it demonstrated the entrepreneurial urges that Deng Xiaoping was later to unleash.

I returned to Britain puzzled. The Cultural Revolution had not visibly destroyed the economy, as was sometimes claimed. But it was difficult to know what it was all about. It was bad enough when party leaders were denounced for esoteric sins of culture and ideology during the Cultural Revolution, but these silent purges and behind-the-scenes disappearances reduced the struggles to personalities and power-plays. Mao himself seems to have been playing off the leaders against each other.

So perhaps that was the twin legacy of the first 20 years. It developed the ground for the upsurge of economic activity in which China seems not only to have stood up but appears to be racing ahead. But it also has left the Communist Party totally committed to clinging onto power, without much in the way of ideology, while its leadership changes behind closed doors, with only the faintest pretence of consulting the masses. And by all accounts, party leaders at every level are still fond of banquets and mao tai.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush’s War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Maoist’s mansion upsets the people

'Security concerns': Nepalese security personnel keep watch outside the Kathmandu residence of Maoist leader Prachanda. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

NEPAL’S top Maoist politician, who led a 10-year insurgency which left 16,000 people dead, has been accused of selling out and moving into a lavish mansion.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who goes by the nom-de-guerre Prachanda (The Fierce One), is a former Communist guerrilla who rose from humble village beginnings to lead a “people’s war” against Nepal’s royal family and its political elites.

The rented 15-room property – 1500 square metres of prime real estate near the bustling centre of Kathmandu – includes parking space for more than a dozen vehicles and a table tennis room, his office said.

“The Maoists have deviated from their stated goal. It used to be socialism but now they have surrendered to bourgeois state power,” said Mumaram Khanal, a political analyst and former Maoist leader.

“It is natural in such a situation to transform into someone with the characteristics of a member of parliamentary politics. They are revolutionary only in words, not in deeds.”

Prachanda, 58, grew up in a family of farmers in southern Nepal, teaching in government schools before being indoctrinated in socialist philosophy by Nepal’s communist leaders.

In 1996, after witnessing the plight of the poor in the village where he grew up, he led a Maoist insurgency which culminated in the overthrow of the Shah dynasty in 2008.

He was later elected prime minister for a brief spell and is now the chairman of the ruling Maoists and a lawmaker representing a constituency in Kathmandu.

Prachanda’s personal assistant, Samir Dahal, said the politician had been advised of “security concerns” over his old residence.

“Moreover, the public bus station was nearby and several houses were under construction in the area,” the aide added.

The new mansion costs the Maoist party just over 100,000 rupees ($1200) a month, the aide said, a modest sum in many countries but almost three times the average annual income in Nepal.

Local media have reported that the landlord lives in Canada, while the aide confirmed that over 70 security guards provided by the government are housed in the complex.

“Prachanda has a penchant for lavish lifestyle, good food and other fine things in life. It may be that he was deprived of this in his youth,” Mr Khanal, the political analyst, added.

“Now in power, he wants to accumulate wealth and live in luxury. The house he has chosen is testament to this.”

The Republica newspaper said in a scathing editorial that many families “making do in dank and dark two-room lodgings” would be questioning “the communist credentials of the ‘leader of the proletariats’”.

The xNepali community blog carried a post supporting Prachanda’s right to move into a bigger house but criticising him for not being more open about the rent arrangements.

Across the border, the Indian Express quoted a senior Maoist source saying: “This only confirms the fear expressed by Maoist vice-chairman Mohan Baidhya Kiran that Prachanda has failed to honour the issue of probity in public life.”

Source

Prachanda moves into lavish house; media slams ‘red feudalism’

Prachanda, Nepal’s most powerful politician who had waged a decade-long war against monarchy, is under fire for moving into a multi-crore mansion in the heart of Kathmandu, with the local media calling it an example of “red feudalism”.

The 1,500-sq metre property costing Rs 19.60 million (USD 2.31 million) is located half a kilometre from the Prime Minister’s official residence at Baluwatar, Rastrapati Bhawan and former King Gyanendra’s mansion Nirmal Niwas at Maharajgunj. It has a huge parking area and table tennis hall.

[....]

C P Gajurel, Secretary of UCPN-Maoist and its top hardline leader, admitted during an interview to the Kantipur Television that there is no transparency within the party, which has given rise to suspicion in the minds of the cadres.

The gap between the rich and the poor is growing within the Maoist party itself, Gajurel said, pointing to the growing rift between the hardliners and the establishment faction led by Prachanda and Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai.

Although the mansion was purchased in another person’s name, the real owner is Prachanda himself, claimed political analyst and editor of Janamanch weekly Pralhad Rijal.

Prachanda, who assumed power for a brief period of nine month in 2008 to work for the poor and proletariat class of the country, is now leading a luxurious and feudal life style in sharp contrast to his party’s ideology, he said.

He compared Prachanda’s life style with that of late leader of the Nepali Congress Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, who became Prime Minister after the 1990 People’s Revolution.

Bhattarai moved out of the Prime Minister’s residence with just a water jar, an umbrella and a small zinc suitcase, Rijal recalled.

When Prachanda moved from his old house at Nayabazaar on the outskirts of Kathmandu to the new building, around 10-12 vehicles were used to transfer his belongings, Rijal claimed. [...]

Source

PCMLE: Vietnam: A Popular and Anti-Imperialist Revolution

En Marcha, October 14, 2009

Commercial and monetary relations, linkages with international institutions and transnational corporations that are practiced in Vietnam attest to the validity of a capitalist economy. As a result, have increased levels of corruption and waste and links to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have made commitments to be met like any other small country who harass the capitalist international chulqueros.

The Vietnamese revolution is one of the events in which the worker-peasant alliance, along with other social and patriotic armed insurrection constituted under warranty and fundamental to their success. The direction of this process is carried on the Communist Party led by the legendary firm and consistent revolutionary Ho Chi Minh and under the direction and guidance of Marxism-Leninism, the month of August 1945.

This revolution ended the dominance of the French colonialists and Japanese fascists, inaugurating the national independence and giving birth to the Democratic Republic, named after Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The courageous resistance of the Vietnamese people was also against the U.S. imperialists, between 1954 and 1975, whose years have seen the Democratic People’s National Revolution in the South, the socialist revolution in the North and the war ended with the expulsion of the invaders after the historic U.S. military offensive that liberated Ho Chi Minh Saigon entirely on April 30, 1975 and achieved national reunification.

Then the various congresses of the Communist Party of Vietnam have incorporated a number of ideas that claim revisionist positions and Vietnam show that the heroic days of struggle for social change and against foreign intervention, have been only as memories.

The so-called “market socialism” is one of those smuggling which aims to establish a coexistence between tenets of socialism and the capitalist market activity. This revisionist monstrosity was raised for the first time officially in the Intermediate National Conference called Communist Party of Vietnam, in February 1994 as part of the theory of renewal process that began to be handled at the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1986 , which arises, among other directives, strengthen socialist production relations and the private sector, which as noted above is totally incompatible. This is compounded by the elimination of centralized management, the basis of the so-called renewal. The set of revisionist ideas and practices were endorsed by the seventh and eighth congress of 1991 and 1997.

Commercial and monetary relations linkages with international institutions and transnational corporations that are practiced in Vietnam attest to the validity of a capitalist economy. As a result, have increased levels of corruption and waste and links to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have made commitments to be met like any other small country who harass the capitalist international chulqueros. Another element so as to reveal capitalist practices in Vietnam is the penetration of international capital through large investments for the development of light industry assembly of computers and international trade in the sale of raw materials and agricultural products.

In light of this process is convenient lived in Vietnam to rescue the role played by its people in resistance to foreign intervention that undermined its sovereignty and dignity defiled.

Source

Retrospect: A Nervous China Invades Vietnam

By TERRY MCCARTHY
Monday, Sept. 27, 1999

Early in the morning of Feb. 17, 1979, Chinese artillery batteries and multiple rocket launchers opened fire all along the Vietnamese border with protracted barrages that shook the earth for miles around. Then 85,000 troops surged across the frontier in human-wave attacks like those China had used in Korea nearly three decades before. They were decimated: the well-dug-in Vietnamese cut down the Chinese troops with machine guns, while mines and booby traps did the rest.

Horrified by their losses, the Chinese quickly replaced the general in charge of the invasion that was meant, in Beijing’s words, to teach Vietnam a lesson, and concentrated their attack on neighboring provincial capitals. Using tanks and artillery, they quickly overran most of the desired towns: by March 5, after fierce house-to-house fighting, they captured the last one, Lang Son, across the border from Pingxiang. Then they began their withdrawal, proclaiming victory over the Cubans of the Orient, as Chinese propaganda had dubbed them.

By China’s own estimate, some 20,000 soldiers and civilians from both sides died in the 17-day war. Who learned the bigger lesson?

The invasion demonstrated a contradiction that has forever bedeviled China’s military and political leaders: good strategy, bad tactics. The decision to send what amounted to nearly 250,000 troops into Vietnam had been taken seven months before and was well-telegraphed to those who cared to listen.

When Deng Xiaoping went to Washington in January 1979 to cement the normalization of China’s relations with the United States, he told President Jimmy Carter in a private meeting what China was about to do–and why. Not only did Beijing feel Vietnam was acting ungratefully after all the assistance it had received during its war against the U.S., but in 1978 Hanoi had begun expelling Vietnamese of Chinese descent. Worst of all–it was cozying up to Moscow. In November 1978 Vietnam signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. A month later the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, a Chinese ally. Although Hanoi said it was forced to do so to stop Pol Pot’s genocide and to put an end to his cross-border attacks against Vietnam, Deng saw it as a calculated move by Moscow to use its allies to encircle China from the south.

Soviet adventurism in Southeast Asia had to be stopped, Deng said, and he was calculating (correctly, it turned out) that Moscow would not intervene in a limited border war between China and Vietnam. Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said Deng’s explanation to Carter of his invasion plans, with its calculated defiance of the Soviets, was the single most impressive demonstration of raw power politics that he had ever seen.

At the time Deng was consolidating his position as unchallenged leader of China. Having successfully negotiated normalization of relations with Washington, he wanted to send a strong signal to Moscow against further advances in Asia. He also thought the Carter Administration was being too soft on the Soviets, although he did not say as much to his American hosts. Hanoi, for its part, was unfazed by Deng’s demonstration of raw power. The Vietnamese fought the Chinese with local militia, not bothering to send in any of the regular army divisions that were then taken up with the occupation of Cambodia. Indeed, Hanoi showed no sign of withdrawing those troops, despite Chinese demands that they do so: the subsequent guerrilla war in Cambodia would bog down Vietnam’s soldiers and bedevil its foreign relations for more than a decade.

The towns captured by the Chinese were all just across the border; it is not clear whether China could have pushed much farther south. Having lost so many soldiers in taking the towns, the Chinese methodically blew up every building they could before withdrawing. Journalist Nayan Chanda, who visited the area shortly after the war, saw schools, hospitals, government buildings and houses all reduced to rubble. The war also showed China just how outdated its battlefield tactics and weaponry were, prompting a major internal review of the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army. The thrust for military modernization continues to this day, even as the focus of China’s generals has shifted from Vietnam back to Taiwan–a pesky little irritant that could cause Beijing even bigger problems if it decides to administer another lesson.

Source

Enver Hoxha: The Theory and Practice of Revolution

I.

In his brilliant works about imperialism V. I. Lenin arrived at the conclusion that imperialism is a perishing and dying capitalism, the last stadium of capitalism and the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. In the analysis of the specific characteristics of imperialism he wrote:

“… all this makes the state of development of capitalism which has been reached up to now into the era of the proletarian socialist revolution, … This era has begun” and “Part of this agenda of the present epoch is the multilateral immediate preparation of the proletariat for the conquest of political power in order to effect those economic and political measures which form the core of the socialist revolution.” (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 24, p. 420, German edition)

In defining the present epoch Lenin based himself on class criteria. He emphasised that it is important to consider

which class stands in the centre of this or that epoch and defines its essential content, the main direction of its development, the most important characteristics of the historic situation in the specific epoch, etc.” (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 21, p. 134, German edition)

Defining the fundamental content of the new historic epoch as the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, Lenin remained consistently loyal to the teachings of Marx about the historic mission of the proletariat as the new social force which will carry out the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist society of oppression and exploitation and build the new society, the classless communist society.

“The Communist Manifesto” by Marx and Engels and their appeal: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” was published in order to announce that the basic contradiction of human society was now the basic contradiction between labour and capital and that the proletariat was chosen to solve this contradiction through revolution. By his analysis of imperialism Lenin showed that the contradictions of the capitalist society had sharpened to the utmost and that the world had entered the epoch of the proletarian revolution and the triumph of socialism.

The Great Socialist October Revolution confirmed this brilliant conclusion by Marx and Lenin in practice. Even after Lenin’s death the communist world movement resolutely adhered to his teachings about the present epoch, it adhered to his revolutionary strategy. The triumph of the socialist revolution in several further countries proved that the Leninist thesis of the present epoch as epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism mirrors the basic laws of the development of today’s human society. The downfall of the colonial system, the achievement of political independence by the overwhelming majority of the countries of Asia, Africa and more are a further affirmation of the Leninist theory of the our epoch and the revolution. The fact that the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution were betrayed in the Soviet Union and a number of former socialist countries does not alter the Leninist thesis on the character of the present epoch in the least, because this is nothing but a turn and twist on the way to the inevitable victory of socialism over capitalism on the global scale.

The Albanian Party of Labour has always consistently upheld these Marxist-Leninist conclusions. Comrade Enver Hoxha said:

“On a daily base the main features of our epoch are sharpened and appear more and more clearly as the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, the struggle of two opposed social systems, as the epoch of the proletarian and national liberation revolutions, the downfall of imperialism and the liquidation of the colonial system, as the epoch of the triumph of socialism and communism on a global scale.” (Enver Hoxha, Report to the 5th Party Congress of the PLA)

The Marxist-Leninists always based the definition of the present epoch and the revolutionary strategy on the analysis of the great social contradictions which characterise this epoch. Which contradictions are these?

After the triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia, Lenin and Stalin were speaking about four contradictions:

- the contradiction between the two opposed systems — the socialist and the capitalist system

- the contradiction between capital and labour in the capitalist countries

- the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations on the one hand and imperialism on the other hand

- the contradiction between the imperialist powers

Exactly these contradictions build the objective foundation of the development of today’s revolutionary movement, which in their collectivity form the great process of the world revolution in our epoch. The complete current situation world wide proves that since Lenin’s times the contradictions have neither been moderated nor disappeared but on the contrary, haven been further sharpened and have come to the surface like never before. Therefore the knowledge and acknowledgement of these contradictions is the basis for defining a correct revolutionary strategy. The denial of these contradictions, concealing them, ignoring one or another of these contradictions, distorting their true meaning — like the revisionists and the various opportunists do — leads to confusion and disorder within the revolutionary movement and serves as foundation to construct and preach a distorted, pseudo-revolutionary strategy and tactic.

II.

Today there is much talk about the division of the world into the so-called “First”, “Second” and “Third World”, about a “non-aligned” world, about a world of “developing countires”, “of the South and the North” etc. Each advocate of these divisions portrays his “theory” as the most correct strategy which allegedly match the real circumstances and the current international situation. But it is like Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasised at the 7th Party Congress:

“… all of these terms which refer to the different political powers working in the world today conceal — and don’t reveal — the class character of these political powers, the basic contradictions of our epoch, the predominant key problem on the national and international scale today, the grim struggle which is waged between the bourgeois-revisionist world on the one hand and socialism, the world proletariat and its natural allies on the other hand.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

If Marxist-Leninists speak about the world and the different countries and name them, they judge based on the principle of dialectical and historical materialism. They judge above all according to the existing socio-economic order in the different countries, according to the proletarian class criterion.

Exactly from this point of view V. I. Lenin wrote in the year 1921, so when only one socialist country, Soviet Russia, was existing in the world:

“Today (there are) two worlds in the world: the old — capitalism which has come to a dead end and will never back down and the new growing world which is yet very weak but which will become strong and big because it is invincible.”(Lenin, Collected Works, volume 33, p. 132, German edition)

J. V. Stalin also stressed in his famous scripture “Two Camps” already in 1919:

“The world has definitely and irrevocably split into two camps: the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism… The struggle between these two camps constitutes the hub of present-day affairs, determines the whole substance of the present home and foreign policies of the leaders of the old and the new worlds.” (Stalin, Collected Works, volume 4, p. 205, German edition)

Our Party holds the opinion that we must talk about the socialist world today, too, like Lenin and Stalin did, that the Leninist criterion is always true, like Leninism itself is alive and true. The argument of the theoreticians of the “Three Worlds”, the “non-aligned world” etc., who eliminated the existence of socialism in their schemata by referring to the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and in some other former socialist countries, to the dissolution of the socialist camp, is completely unfounded. This stands in absolute contrast to the Leninist teachings and the class criterion.

The revisionist betrayal, the return of the Soviet Union and a number of former socialist countries to capitalism, the spreading of modern revisionism widely in the international communist and workers’ movement and the splitting of this movement were a heavy blow to the cause of revolution and socialism. But this by no means implies that socialism was liquidated as a system and that the criterion of the division of the world into two opposing systems must be changed, that the contradiction between capitalism and socialism no longer exists today. Socialism exists and proceeds in the genuine socialist countries which are loyal to Marxism-Leninism, like the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania is. The socialist system which opposes itself to the capitalist system, exists objectively just like the contradiction and the struggle for life and death between it and capitalism exists.

By ignoring socialism as a social system, the so-called “Theory of Three Worlds” ignores the greatest historic victory of the international proletariat, ignores the fundamental contradiction of the time, the contradiction between socialism and capitalism. It is clear that such a theory, which ignores socialism, is anti-Leninist, it leads to the weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the countries where socialism is being built, while calling on the world proletariat not to fight, not to rise in socialist revolution. And this is not surprising: the renunciation of the proletarian class criteria in the evaluation of the situation leads to conclusions which are contrary to the interests of the revolution and the proletariat.

As the great and consistent Marxist he was, Lenin frequently analysed the capitalist world and the balance of power within it in his works. He did this, however, in the service of the revolution, in order to determine the tasks which lay ahead of the proletariat, the tasks of the communist parties, the tasks of the first socialist state the proletarian towards the world revolution and in order to show who were the really allies of the revolution and who were its enemies.

Lenin gives us an excellent example in this regard in his theses and reports at the II Congress of the Communist International in the year 1920:

“Now we have to ‘prove’ by the practice of the revolutionary parties”, emphasises Lenin, “that they have enough consciousness, organisation, contact with the exploited masses, determination and the ability to exploit this crisis for a successful, for a victorious revolution. We came together at this congress of the Communist International mainly in order to prepare such evidence.”(Lenin, Collected Works, volume 31, p. 215, German edition)

The so-called “Theory of the Three World”, however, does not pose a single task for the revolution; on the contrary, it “forgets” to do so. In the schemata of the “Three Worlds” the basic contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie does not exist. What is also striking about this division of the world is the non-class view of what it calls “Third World”, the disregarding of classes and class struggle, the global treatment of countries which this theory counts to this world, the regimes which rule there and the different political powers which exist there. This way the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and the reactionary and pro-imperialist powers in their countries.

It is common knowledge that a fierce struggle of the freedom-loving peoples for freedom, independence and national sovereignty is led against the old and new colonialism in the countries exploited by imperialism, the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This is a just revolutionary and liberation struggle which enjoys the unreserved support of the Marxist-Leninists, the genuine socialist countries, the world proletariat and all progressive forces.

This struggle is and inevitably has to be directed against multiple enemies:

 - against the imperialist exploiters, first and foremost against the two superpowers as the greatest exploiters and world police, the most dangerous enemies of all peoples of the world

- against the national reactionary bourgeoisie which is connected by thousands of strings with the foreign imperialism, with this or that superpower, with the international monopolies and which is the enemy of freedom and national independence

- against the strong remains of feudalism upon which the foreign imperialists base themselves on and which allies itself with the reactionary bourgeoisie against the people’s revolution

- against the reactionary and fascist regimes, the agents and defenders of the rule of these three enemies

Therefore it is absurd to claim one only had to struggle against external enemies without at the same time fighting and challenging the inner enemies, the allies and accomplices of imperialism, all those factors which hinder this struggle. Until now there was never a liberation struggle, there was never a national-democratic and anti-imperialist revolution which did not have inner enemies, reactionaries and traitors, bought and anti-national elements. One cannot — like the so-called theory of the “Three Worlds” does — equal all strata of the bourgeoisie without any exception, including the comprador bourgeoisie, with anti-imperialist forces, with the foundation and the factors which further the struggle against imperialism.

To follow this theory means to distract the revolutionary movement from the right way, to desert the revolution halfway, to separate it from the proletarian revolutions in the other countries, to the drive the struggle of the peoples and the proletariat of these countries into an anti-Marxist and revisionist way.

Marxism-Leninism teaches that the national question always has to be examined subject to the question of the revolution. From this point of view the Marxist-Leninists support each movement which is actually aimed against imperialism and serves the common cause of the proletarian world revolution.

“We as communists”, emphasises Lenin, “(have to and will) only support the bourgeois liberation movements in the colonial countries when these movements are really revolutionary, when their representatives do not prevent us from educating and organising the peasantry and the broad masses of the exploited in the revolutionary spirit. But if these conditions are not given then the communists in these countries have to fight the reformist bourgeoisie to which the heroes of the Second International belong. (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 31, p. 230, German edition)

The preachers of the thesis of the “Third World” label even more as liberation movement, as the “main force in the struggle against imperialism”, even the horse-trade of the King of Saudi-Arabia or of the Shah of Iran with the petroleum monopolies of the USA, their weapon transactions in the amount of billions and billions of dollars with the Pentagon. According to this logic the oil sheiks, who let the money from their oil flow into Wall Street and the banks of the USA, are fighters against imperialism and advocates of the people’s struggle against the imperialist rule. So this means that the US-imperialists, who sell their weapons to the reactionary and oppressive regimes of these sheiks, give these weapons the “patriotic” forces who struggle to drive the imperialists away from the “golden sands” of Arabia and Persia.

The facts prove that today, too, the anti-imperialist and democratic liberating revolution can only be consistent and brought to an end if it is lead by the proletariat with its party at the spearhead in alliance with the broad masses and the peasantry and the other anti-imperialist and patriotic forces.

Already in 1905 Lenin demonstrated in his book “Two Tactics” in detail that under the conditions of imperialism the characteristic of the bourgeois-democratic revolution consist in the fact that the force which is most interested in furthering the revolution is not the bourgeoisie, which is inconsistent and tends to ally itself with the feudal reactionary forces against the revolutionary impetus of the masses, but the proletariat which views the bourgeois-democratic revolution as an interim stage of the transition to the socialist revolution. The same applies for the current national liberation movements. J. V. Stalin emphasised that after the October Revolution

“The era of liberating revolutions in the colonies, the era of the awakening of the proletariat in those countries, the era of its hegemony, has begun.” (Stalin, Collected Works, volume 10, p. 212, German edition)

These Leninist teachings achieve a special value and a special meaning under the current given conditions. Today the two tendencies which Lenin pointed out have deepened and operate with great force in the world:

- one the one hand the tendency of the capitalist monopolies which break the national borders and internationalise the economic and political life

- on the other hand the tendency of the different countries to the intensify the struggle for national independence

This way, in regard to the first tendency, the connections of the national bourgeoisie with the foreign imperialist capital are not only maintained in many countries liberated from the yoke of colonialism but further increased and extended by a multitude of neo-colonialist forms like the multinational companies, the different economic and financial integrations, etc., etc. This bourgeoisie, which holds the key position in the economic and political life of the country and grows steadily, is a pro-imperialist power and an enemy of the revolutionary and liberation movement. With regard to the other tendency, namely the increase of the national independence towards imperialism in the former colonial countries, it is above all connected to the growth of the proletariat in these countries. This means that more favourable conditions arise for the extensive and consistent realisation of the anti-imperialist and democratic revolution, for its leadership by the the proletariat and thus its transition to a higher phase, to the struggle for socialism.

The Marxist-Leninists do not confuse the burning efforts and wishes of the peoples and the proletariat of the countries of the so-called “Third World” for liberation, revolution and socialism with the aims and the policies of the comprador and oppressive bourgeoisie of these countries. They know that there are sound progressive currents in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, within the peoples, who will further their revolutionary struggle determined until victory. But speaking about the so-called “Third World” as main force against imperialism and as main force of the revolution – like the followers of the theory of the “Three Worlds” do without making any difference between the genuine anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces and the ruling pro-imperialist, reactionary and fascist forces in a number of developing countries — means to openly abandon the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and to preach typical opportunistic views which cause confusion and disorder among the revolutionary forces. Basically the peoples of these countries, according to the “Theory of the Three Worlds”, are not allowed to fight, let’s say, the bloodthirsty fascist dictatorships of Geisel in Brazil and Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, the Shah of Iran and the King of Jordania, etc., because they all belong to the “revolutionary driving force, which turns the wheel of world history”. On the contrary, according to this theory the peoples and revolutionaries had to ally with the reactionary forces and regimes in the “Third World” and support them, in other words, abandon the revolution.

US-imperialism, the other capitalist states and Soviet social-imperialism have bound the ruling classes of the countries of the so-called “Third World” to themselves with thousands of strings. Of course these classes, which are dependant on the foreign monopolies and want to prolong their reign over the broad mass of their people, try to create the impression that they have formed a democratic block of independent states with the aim to put pressure upon US-imperialism and the Soviet social-imperialists and thus allegedly prevent interference in the interior affairs of their states.

Lenin pointed out towards the communist parties the necessity “to constantly expose and denounce every fraud the imperialist powers systematically commit by allegedly creating politically independent states, which are in fact dependent on them economical, financially and in questions of military to the broadest mass of working people of all countries, but especially of the backward countries.” (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 31, p. 138, German edition) . The Party of Labour of Albania loyally adheres to these immortal teachings of Lenin. “In the evaluation of the policies of the different governments and states” Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasised at the 7th Party Congress of the PLA, “the Marxists also base themselves on the standpoint of class, on the attitude which these governments and these countries display towards imperialism and socialism, towards their own people and the reaction.

Based on these teachings the revolutionary movement and the proletariat build their strategy and tactic, find their true allies in the struggle against imperialism, the bourgeoisie and the reaction and unite with them. The term “Third World”, “non-aligned world” or “developing countries” create the illusion among the broad masses who fight for national and social liberation that a hideout was discovered which protects us from the threat of the superpowers. They conceal the reactionary state of most of these countries which are in this or that way politically, ideologically or economical identical, bound to the superpowers as well as to their former colonial metropolises and are dependant on both.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

The modern theories about the so-called “Third World”, the so-called “non-aligned world”, etc. aim at damming the revolution and defending capitalism which is not to be hindered while exercising its hegemony but is to practice a few more acceptable forms of ruling the peoples. The so-called “Third World” and the “non-aligned world” are as like as two peas in a pot, irrespective of their different names; they let themselves be guided by the same policy and ideology, one group entwines itself with the other so that it is difficult to spot which countries belong to the “Third World” and what differs them from the “non-aligned” and which states belong to the “non-aligned” and what differs them from the states of the “Third World”. There are efforts to create yet another group, namely of the so-called “developing countries”, where the countries of the “Third World” as well as the “non-aligned” are lumped together. The authors of this theory conceal the class contradictions as well, preach the given status quo in order not to hurt imperialism, social-imperialism and the other imperialist powers by any means, provided they hand out alms for the construction of the economy of the “developing countries”. According to them the superpowers have to make some “sacrifices”, to cough up something for the hungry so that they can somehow manage to live and don’t get rebellious. That way, they claim, a compromise will be found, a “new international order” will be created in which everyone, rich or poor, exploiter or exploited will live “without war”, “without armament”, “in harmony”, “in class peace”, in coexistence á la Khrushchev. Exactly because these three “inventions” have the same content and the same aims we can notice that there is full harmony among the “leaderships” [English in the original text] of the “non-aligned countries”, the “Third World” and the “World of the developing countries”. Together they deceive the masses, the proletariat and the peoples by their theories and sermons in order to lead them away from revolutionary struggle.

The theory of the “Three Worlds” does not only disregard the contradiction between the two opposite social systems — socialism and capitalism — as well as the great contradiction between wage labour and capital but also does not analyse the other great contradiction, namely the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and world imperialism which they reduce solely to the contradiction to the two superpowers, indeed even mainly to one of them. This “theory” totally ignores the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations on the one hand and the other imperialist powers. And not only this, the followers of the theory of the “Three Worlds” call for an alliance of the “Third World” with these imperialist countries and with US-imperialism against Soviet social-imperialism.

One of the arguments which is given in order to justify the division of the world into three worlds consists of the claim that today the imperialist camp, which existed after World War II and in which American imperialism ruled, has allegedly collapsed and as a result of the uneven development of the different imperialisms ceased to exist. The supporters of this theory claim that today one could no more speak of a single imperialist world, because first of all the Western imperialist powers allegedly rose against the American ruler and secondly an always increasing fierce rivalry between the two imperialist superpowers, USA and Soviet Union, exists.

Since the stage of imperialism the inter-imperialist contradictions exist as a result of the uneven development of the different capitalist countries, they exist, deepen continuously and depending on the circumstances and conditions inter-imperialist alliances, blocks and groups form and dissolve again — this is the ABC of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin proved in detail that this typical characteristic of imperialism, which gives testimony of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism, approaching decay more and more every day, is an objective law. But does this mean that the imperialist world as social system has ceased to exist as result of these contradictions and is divided into several worlds, that the socio-economic nature of this or that imperialism has changed? By no means. The current factors do not give evidence about a collapse of the imperialist world but about one single imperialist world system which is characterised by the existence of the two great imperialist blocks today: one the one hand the Western imperialist block with US-imperialism at its head with its inter-imperialist instruments like organisms as NATO, EEC, etc., and on the other hand the block of the East under the leadership of Soviet social-imperialism with the Warsaw Pact and Comecon as its instruments of expansionist, hegemonic and war policies.

In the schema of the “Three World” imperialist, capitalist and revisionist countries belong to the so-called “Second World”, countries which do not feature significant differences in regard to the social order of the two superpowers and are also not different to various countries classified as belonging to the “Third World”. Indeed, the countries of this “world” show certain contradictions to both superpowers but these are contradictions of inter-imperialist character like the contradictions between the two superpowers are, too. In the first instance they are contradictions between such imperialisms like the West German, Japanese, British, French, Canadian, etc. and one or the other superpower as well as between themselves in regard to markets, spheres of influence, regions for capital export and the exploitation of the wealth of others.

Of course these contradictions weaken the imperialist world system and are in the interest of the struggle of the proletariat and the peoples. But it is anti-Marxist to equal the contradictions between the different imperialist powers and both superpowers with the struggle of the working masses and the peoples against imperialism and for its destruction.

It can happen by no means that the countries of the so-called “Second World”, in other words, the ruling monopolist bourgeoisie there, become allies of the oppressed peoples and nations in the struggle against the two superpowers and world imperialism. History after World War II shows clearly that these countries supported and still support the aggressive policies and actions of US-imperialism like in Korea and in Vietnam, in the Middle East and in Africa, etc. They are ardent defenders of neo-colonialism and the old order of inequality in international economic relations. The allies of Soviet social-imperialism in the “Second World” participated together with it in the occupation of Czechoslovakia and are eager advocates of its expansionist policy in the different regions of the earth. The countries of the so-called “Second World” are the economic and military main support of the aggressive and expansionist alliances of the two superpowers.

The supporters of the theory of the three worlds claim that it gives great possibilities for exploitation of inter-imperialist contradictions. The contradictions in the rows of the enemy have to be exploited, but in which way and to what aim? Generally they always have to be exploited for the sake of the revolution, the sake of the peoples and their freedom, for the sake of socialism. Generally the exploitation of the contradictions between the enemies have to lead to the growth and the intensification of the revolutionary and liberation movement and not to its weakening and its downturn, they have to lead to an always more and more active mobilisation of the revolutionary powers in the struggle against the enemies, especially against their main enemies without letting even a single illusion about their character emerge among the peoples.

To make the inter-imperialist contradictions absolute, to underestimate the basic contradiction, namely the contradiction between the revolution and the counter-revolution, to make only the exploitation of contradictions within the camp of the enemy the centre of the strategy while forgetting the most important point — the strengthening of the revolutionary spirit and the development of the revolutionary movement of the working class and the peoples -, to leave the preparation for the revolution aside, all this is in absolute contrasts to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. It is anti-Marxist to preach unity with the allegedly weaker imperialism for the struggle against the stronger one under the pretext of exploiting contradictions, to side with the national bourgeoisie in order to resist the bourgeoisie of another country. Lenin stressed that the tactic of the exploiting of contradictions between the enemies should be used to raise and not to reduce the general level of proletarian class consciousness, the revolutionary spirit, the confidence of the masses in struggle and victory.

The Party of Labour of Albania has consistently adhered to these immortal teachings and always consistently adheres to them.

“In these moments of the great crisis of imperialism and modern revisionism”, Comrade Enver Hoxha said, “we have to exploit the great contradiction between the enemies correctly for our sake, for the sake of the socialist states and the peoples rising for the revolution, have to unmask the enemies constantly and must not be content with the so-called concessions and cooperations the imperialists and revisionists make perforce until they have left the danger behind them to take revenge afterwards. Therefore we have to keep the iron steadily in the fire and forge it constantly.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

By portraying the so-called “Second World”, to which most capitalist and neo-colonialist countries belong and which presents the main pillar of the two superpowers, as ally of the “Third World” in the alleged struggle against US-imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism the anti-revolutionary and pseudo-imperialist character of the theory of the “Three Worlds” becomes evident.

It is an anti-revolutionary “theory” because class truce is preached to the European, Japanese, Canadian and other proletariat which has to struggle against the ruling monopoly of the bourgeoisie and exploitative order in the countries of the “Second World”, and also the collaboration with the bourgeoisie, meaning an abandonment of the revolution because allegedly this is in the interests of the defence of national independence and of the struggle especially against Soviet social-imperialism.

Furthermore it is a pseudo-anti-imperialist theory because it justifies and supports the neo-colonialist and exploitative policies of the imperialist powers of the “Second World” and calls upon the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America not to resist this policy, allegedly for the sake of the struggle against the superpowers. This way, the anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of the so-called “Third World” as well as of the so-called “Second World” is actually weakened and sabotaged.

III.

A revolutionary strategy is one which puts central emphasis on the revolution.

“The strategy and tactics of Leninism”, Stalin wrote, “constitute the science of leading the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.” (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism)

The Leninist strategy sees the proletarian world revolution as one single process, consisting of several great revolutionary currents of our epoch where the international proletariat is centred.

This revolutionary process takes place continuously in countries which are treading the way of genuine socialism as irreconcilable and fierce struggle between the two ways — the socialist and the capitalist way — for the achievement of the complete and final victory of the first over the second, in order to avert the danger of retrogression by counter-revolutionary violence and imperialist aggression or by the bourgeois-revisionist peaceful degeneration once and for all. The revolutionaries and peoples of the whole world follow the this struggle with lively interest and view it as a vital issue for the sake of the revolution and of socialism on a global scale. They give the socialist countries their whole support and backing against every assault of imperialism at these countries because in the socialist countries they see a strong basis and a mighty centre of the revolution, they see the practical realisation of the ideals for which they fight themselves. Lenin’s ideas about the necessity and primary importance of help and support from the part of the international proletariat for the country in which the socialist revolution was victorious are immortal. However, this requires at all times that it is a truly socialist country which applies the revolutionary teachings of Marxism-Leninism with utmost strictness and which consistently holds on to proletarian internationalism. In the case that it transforms into a capitalist country and only keep a fake “socialist” mask it must not be supported.

The revolutionaries and peoples know that the success and the struggle of the socialist countries hit and weaken imperialism, the bourgeoisie and the international reaction, that they are an immediate help and aid for the revolutionary liberation struggle of the working class and the peoples.

Lenin and Stalin always saw it as a revolutionary duty of the proletariat of a socialist country not only to make every possible effort to develop socialism in their own country but to wholeheartedly support the revolutionary liberation movement in other countries.

“Lenin”, J. V. Stalin wrote, “never regarded the Republic of Soviets as an end in itself. He always looked on it as an essential link for strengthening the revolutionary movement in the countries of the West and the East, an essential link for facilitating the victory of the working people of the whole world over capitalism. Lenin knew that this was the only right conception, both from the international standpoint and from the standpoint of preserving the Republic of Soviets itself.” (Stalin, On the Death of Lenin)

Exactly because of this a genuine socialist country cannot integrate itself into such groupings as the so-called “Third World” or the so-called “non-aligned countries” where all class boundaries are blurred and which solely serve the goal of diverting the peoples from the path of struggle against imperialism and from the revolution.

True and reliable allies of the socialist countries can only be the revolutionary, freedom-loving and progressive forces, the revolutionary movement of the working class and the anti-imperialist movement of oppressed peoples and nations. To preach the division into “Three Worlds”, to ignore the fundamental contradictions of our epoch, to call for an alliance of the proletariat with the monopoly bourgeoisie and of the oppressed peoples with the imperialist powers of the so-called “Second World” is neither for the betterment of the international proletariat nor of the peoples or the socialist countries, it is anti-Leninist. J. V. Stalin stressed:

“I cannot imagine that there will ever be a case when the interests of our Soviet Republic demand deviations to the right from our brother parties… I cannot imagine that the interests of our republic, which is the basis of the revolutionary proletarian movement of the whole world, would ever demand not a maximum of revolutionary verve and political activity of the Western workers but a decrease of this activity, hindering the revolutionary impetus.” (Stalin, Collected Works, volume 8, p. 97, German edition)

In the metropolises of capitalism the process of the proletarian world revolution gets more and more concrete today in the always increasing class struggles of the proletariat and the other working and progressive strata against bourgeois exploitation and oppression, against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to shift the burden of the current crisis of the capitalist world system on to the shoulders of the working class, against the revival of fascism in this or that form, etc. Among the working class, with the proletariat at its head, the conviction becomes accepted and will become more accepted each day that the only way out off the crises and other evils of capitalism, the bourgeois exploitation, the fascist violence and the imperialist wars is the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Live and the facts prove that neither the bourgeoisie nor their declared or disguised lackeys, from the social democrats to the modern revisionists, are able to hold up the surging wave of the revolutionary struggle of the masses.

“The present struggle of the world proletariat”, Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed at the 7th Party Congress of the PLA, “proves again the basic thesis of Marxism-Leninism that working class and its revolutionary struggle in the bourgeois and revisionist world can suppressed neither by violence nor by demagogy.”

The objective conditions for the revolution in the developed capitalist nations become more positive with every day. Today in these countries the proletarian revolution is a problem whose solution has to be faced. The Marxist-Leninist parties, which have taken up the banner of the revolution that the revisionists have betrayed and dropped, have rightfully readied themselves for the task and started seriously on the work of preparing the proletariat and its allies for the future revolutionary battles aimed at the downfall of bourgeois order. This revolutionary struggle which attacks the capitalist and imperialist world order in its strongholds has the full support of the true socialist countries as well as the revolutionary and peace-loving peoples on the whole world and must necessarily have them. Today, however, the modern revisionists, the advocates of the theory of the “Three Worlds” and the theoreticians of “non-alignment”, are making an effort by keeping silent about the revolution and its preparations and by upholding the status quo of the capitalist social order.

By trying to divert the attention of the proletariat from the revolution, the authors of the theory of the “Three Worlds” preach that nowadays the question of the defence of national independence opposing the danger of aggression from the part of the superpowers, especially from Soviet social-imperialism which they consider to be as arch-enemy, has taken precedence. The question of defining who — at a given time — is considered to be the arch-enemy on an international scale is of great importance for the revolutionary movement. Our party which takes into consideration the course of events and class analysis of the current situation, underlines that US-imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, both them superpowers, are today “the biggest and the main enemies of the peoples” and as such “present the same kind of danger” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA).

Soviet social-imperialism is a brutal, aggressive and expansionist imperialism which practices an exceedingly colonialist and neo-colonialist policy which is based on the power of capital and weapons. This new imperialism is struggling as a rival of US-imperialism in order to conquer strategic positions and to extend its clutches to all regions and continents. It excels as a fire extinguisher of the revolution and oppressor of the liberation struggle of the peoples. This does not mean in the least that the other enemy of the peoples of the whole world, namely US-imperialism, is less dangerous, although the supporters of the theory of the “Three Worlds” say so. By disfiguring the truth and betraying the peoples they claim that American imperialism is no longer a warmonger, that it is allegedly weakened, that it is in decline and that it has turned into a frightened mouse — or in other words that US-imperialism is gradually becoming more peaceful. This goes so far that they justify even the American military presence in different countries like Germany, Belgium, Italy or Japan and label it as a factor of military defence. Such views are extremely dangerous to the freedom of the peoples and for the fates of the revolution. Such theses fuel illusions about the aggressive, hegemonistic and expansionist nature of US-imperialism as well as Soviet imperialism.

The proletariat and the proletarian revolution face the task of overthrowing each single imperialism and especially both imperialist superpowers. Because of its nature each imperialism is always a furious enemy of the proletarian revolution and therefore the classification of imperialisms in more or less dangerous kinds is false from the strategic viewpoint of world revolution. Practice has confirmed that both superpowers are to the same degree and at the same level the arch-enemy of socialism, the liberty and independence of the nations, it is the main force for the defence of the oppressive and exploitative systems, the immediate danger which threatens to pitch humanity into a third world war. The denial of the great truth, the underestimation of the danger of one or another superpower, or worse, the appeal to ally with one superpower against the other bears disastrous consequences and great dangers for the future of the revolution and the freedom of the peoples.

Of course it happens and can happen that one or another country is oppressed and threatened by one of the superpowers directly but this never ever means that the other superpower poses no danger for just this country and even less that the other superpower has become an enemy of this country. The principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” cannot be applied if it is a matter of the two imperialist superpowers: the USA and the Soviet Union. These two superpowers are fighting with all means against the revolution and against socialism, they undertake all possible efforts to sabotage the revolution and socialism and suffocate both in blood. The two superpowers are fighting in order to expand their rule and exploitation to different peoples and countries. Experience shows that they attack brutally first in the one region and next in another in order to reach for the peoples with their bloodstained claws and that they furiously form up for attack so that they can oust each other. As soon as the people of one country succeeds at shaking off the rule of the one superpower, the other immediately approaches. The Middle East and Africa fully confirm this.

The other great current of the world revolution in our epoch is the national liberation struggle of the peoples which is directed against imperialism, neo-colonialism and the colonial remains. The Marxist-Leninists and the world proletariat are solidly united with the national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples and lend it all their support because they consider these struggles to be a very important and irreplaceable factor in the development of the revolutionary world process. The Party of Labour of Albania was and always is on the side of the peoples who struggle for freedom and national independence:

“We are in favour of the unity of the world proletariat and all upright anti-imperialist and progressive forces which thwart the aggressive plans of the imperialist and social-imperialist warmongers.”

The Party of Labour of Albania and the Albanian people who consistently adhere to this line… will… also in the future not spare any effort and will fight together with the other anti-imperialist and anti-social-imperialist peoples, together with all Marxist-Leninist parties, all revolutionaries and the world proletariat, with all progressive humans for the failure of the plans and manoeuvres of the enemies and for the triumph of the case of freedom and safety of the peoples.

Our country will always be on the side of all the peoples whose freedom and independence are threatened and whose rights are injured.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

 Comrade Enver Hoxha expressed this unshakable conviction in the name of the party and the Albanian state in the speech at the people’s assembly for the enactment of our new constitution:

“Most peoples of the earth”, he explained, “are making great efforts and they insistently resist the colonial laws and the neo-colonial reign, the old and new rules, practices, conventions and one-sided treaties which have been put up by the bourgeoisie in order to keep up the exploitation of the peoples, the detested differences and discriminations in the international relations… the progressive peoples and the democratic states which cannot accept this state and struggle to achieve national sovereignty over their resources, which struggle to strengthen the political and economic independence and to achieve equality in the international relations have the full solidarity and support of the Albanian people and the Albanian state.”

Since the time of Lenin, the Marxist-Leninists have always considered the national liberation struggle of the peoples and nations oppressed by imperialism as a strong ally and great reserve of the world revolution of the proletariat.

In the countries which have achieved political independence completely or partially, the revolution is in different stages of development and it does not face the same tasks. Among them are countries which are directly facing the proletarian revolution while in many others the tasks of the anti-imperialist, national-democratic Revolution are in order. But the revolution is in any case an ally and a reserve of the proletarian world revolution as long as it is also directed against the international bourgeoisie and imperialism.

But does this means that such country has to stop at the national-democratic phase and that the revolutionaries must not speak about the socialist revolution, must not prepare it out of fear of skipping stages and leaving them out and because somebody might call them “Blanquists”?! Lenin already spoke about the necessity of the transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution at a time when the bourgeois-democratic revolution was still only budding in these countries. Marx and Engels, while criticising Blanquism, have called neither the revolution in 1848 nor the Paris Commune premature. Marxism-Leninism in no way mistakes the petty bourgeois impatience which leads to skipping stages with the necessity to perpetuate the revolution consistently.

Lenin stresses that the revolution in the dependent and colonial countries has to be promoted. Since the time of Lenin great changes have taken place in these countries which haven been foreseen by him in a brilliant way and in which the Leninist thesis of the revolutionary world process finds its answer. The realisation of the proletarian revolution is an universal law and the main trend of our epoch. Both must and will necessarily permeate all countries without exception, among them Indonesia and Chile, Brazil and Zaire, etc., regardless of the question by which stages the proletarian revolution will be accomplished. Disregarding this aim, preaching the preservation of the status quo and theorising about the “necessity not to skip any stages”, forgetting the fight against Suharto and Pinochet, Geisel and Mobutu means being neither for the national liberation struggle nor for the national-democratic revolution.

The proletarian revolution must and will permeate Europe, too. Whoever forgets this perspective, whoever doesn’t prepare for this aim but preaches instead that the revolution has shifted to Africa or Asia and that the European proletariat has to ally itself with its “reasonable and well-meaning” bourgeoisie under the pretext of defending national independence, is someone who takes an anti-Leninist stance and who is not in favour of the defence of the mother country and for the nation’s freedom. Whoever “forgets” that both the Warsaw Treaty and the NATO have to be fought, and that both the Comecon and the EEC have to be rejected, is someone who allies himself with them and becomes their slave.

In the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” Marx and Engels wrote: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.”

This statement by Marx and Engels is topical today, too. Both the temporary defeat which the revolution suffered because of the revisionist betrayal and the economic potential and the military oppressive power which imperialism and social-imperialism use to oppose the revolutionary movement and the ideas of communism have not been able and will never be able either to change the course of history and thus to bring the great power of Marxism-Leninism to its knees.

Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary ideology which has penetrated deeply into the consciousness of the proletariat and which has an ever increasing influence on the broad masses of the peoples seeking liberation. The influence of this theory is so strong that even the bourgeois ideologists have always been forced to reckon with it, and they have never ceased trying to find ways and means to disfigure Marxism-Leninism and to undermine the revolution.

The current anti-Leninist theories of the “Three Worlds”, the “non-alignment”, etc., also aim at undermining the revolution, to fight back the struggle against imperialism, especially the American one, to divide the Marxist-Leninist movement and the unity of the proletariat propagated by Marx and Lenin, to create a number of groups of anti-Marxist elements so that fight against the true Marxist-Leninist parties which are loyally stick to Marxism-Leninism and to the revolution.

All efforts to analyse the situation in an allegedly new manner which is different from that of Lenin and Stalin and to change the revolutionary strategy which has always been upheld by the Marxist-Leninist movement lead astray, making one take the anti-Marxist path and turning one’s back on the struggle against imperialism and revisionism. The loyalty towards Marxism-Leninism, towards the revolutionary strategy of the Marxist-Leninist communist movement, and the fight against all opportunist deviations which the modern revisionists of different colour propagate as well as the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class and the peoples against the bourgeoisie and imperialism as well as the serious preparation for the revolution are the only true way, indeed the only way towards victory.

Source

The Struggle in UCPN Maoist

Since the launch of ‘peace process’ and abandonment of the revolutionary path for peaceful way, infighting in UCPN(Maoist) has increased. A large section of the party is against the leadership of Prachanda for his alleged capitulation to the international imperialism and stabbing the revolution.

Maoist Mohan Baidhya , Party’s Senior Vice-Chairperson has warned of formation of new Maoist party if compromises were made to remain in power by sidelining the people’s liberation and changes. He said that:

“During the people’s war, the land was seized to ensure the rights of the workers in the land and calls were made to put an end to foreign intervention and unequal treaties but it was unfortunate that farmers are being evacuated from the seized lands and ‘black’ BIPPA has been signed with India,”

The hardline group led by Baidhya and Gajurel have accused Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai as being one who have stabbed the revolution and have become agents of Indian and US imperialism. Gajurel said that “Dahal and Bhattarai acted as agents of the India and discredited the people’s revolt. They have no right to stay in the Maoist party,” (Tuesday, 25 October 2011, nepalnews.com)

The hardline group has claimed that the November 1 treaty was a betrayal to the principle of Peoples’ War, “Certainly, the night of November 1 is the historic dark night. The dark night was marked as the cheerful night for the feudalists, imperialists and the expansionist and their puppets. However, on the other, the same night was marked as the night of suffering, worry and a curse for the family of the martyrs, wounded and the poor working class people. Therefore, we are presented here with the volcano of the sufferings and a thundering voice within worry.”(
http://redstarnepal.com/?p=562
).

Overall the situation in Maoist party is one where a furious two-line struggle is being waged. Which group emerges victorious is something to watch

Here we are giving news stories that appeared in Nepali news media.

Nepal: “Prachanda remains no longer Chairman of Nepal
Maoist”: C. P. Gajurel

On ideological grounds, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ remains no longer the Chairman of Unified Maoists’ Party, so said Party secretary C.P. Gajurel while addressing a press meet in Nawalpur of Sarlahi District, December 10, 2011.

“Dahal has already abandoned the ideology charted by the peoples’ revolt…… How Dahal could continue claiming that he holds significant position in the party”, asked Gajurel and said, “He has no space in the party.” ……..

……… “Differences in the party have already crossed the toleration limit. Dahal is to be entirely blamed for the ideological aberrations”, Gajurel told the media adding, “It all started with the differences over petty issues. The differences have attained a new height following unilateral decision of the Chairman to return the seized properties, humiliating rehabilitation and integration of the PLA and the fresh controversial BIPPA agreement that Baburam signed with India.”

Gajurel also disclosed that majority of the party leaders were the adherents of his own panel.

“We are not at all against peace and constitution”, Gajurel claimed and concluded by saying, that “We want honorific and scientific integration of PLA in the Nepal Army.”

Every unnatural height has a definite fall.

Source: Telegraph Nepal, Sunday, December 11, 2011

Nepal: Baidhya warns of birth of new Maoist party

KATHMANDU: Senior Vice-Chairperson of the UCPN-Maoist Mohan Baidhya has warned of formation of new Maoist party if compromises were made to remain in power by sidelining the people’s liberation and changes.

Speaking at a program organised in the capital on the occasion of the 88th memorial day of the first literary martyr Krishna Lal Adhikari on Sunday, Baiddya, who leads the hardliners in the party, said lasting peace would not be established if the new constitution was not written in favor of the proletariat.

“During the people’s war, the land was seized to ensure the rights of the workers in the land and calls were made to put an end to foreign intervention and unequal treaties but it was unfortunate that farmers are being evacuated from the seized lands and ‘black’ BIPPA has been signed with India,” Baiddya said.

He feared that attempts were being made to continue the parliamentary system in the name of republicanism, geographical federalism and secularism in the new constitution.

He claimed that the Maoists were the true followers of Krishna Lal Adhikari, the author of ‘Makaiko Kheti’, had died in jail while serving the jail sentence on the charge of writing the same book during Rana regime.

On the occasion, Maoist leader Ishwor Chandra Gyawali, Chairperson of Krishna Lal Foundation Yognath Upadhyay and others urged to declare Adhikari a martyr by recognition of his contribution to the country.

“Maoist row over returning property”

KATHMANDU, NOV 07 – The Maoist hardline faction led by Vice-chairman Mohan Baidya and party establishment camp are at odds over returning property seized or occupied by the party.

Return of property seized or occupied by the Maoists was one of the key points agreed to in the seven-point deal signed on November 1. The Baidya faction has, however, said it will resist every effort that is made to take away the land from the poor farmers and the landless.

A day after UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal issued a circular to the party’s lower organisations directing cadres to assist in the process of returning seized property, a gathering of the Baidya camp in the Capital on Sunday directed its activists to thwart the ‘takeover’.

“We will retaliate if anyone tries to take over the land from the farmers,” said Maheshwor Dahal, the Maoist central committee member of the Baidya faction.

The government should first come up with an alternative arrangement for the farmers and the landless, he said. The dispute over the return of property has also surfaced at the local level of the Maoists with the party’s hardline faction adamant on its refusal to go with what was agreed to in the seven-point agreement.

Hari Bahadur Gyawali, the Kailali district in-charge of the Maoists and a Baidya supporter, warned of ‘bloodshed’ if the authority tried removing the landless farmers and freed Kamaiya (bonded labourers) from their land.

“We captured land with orders from Pracha-nda and Baburam and distributed it to the landless and Kamaiyas. Now, we cannot throw those people out on the roads,” Gyawali said.

The establishment faction, meanwhile, has vowed to enforce the party’s central decision. “No one can stop the central directive. The land will be returned,” said Hari Bahadur Chaudhary, Maoist district secretary of the establishment side. Records at the District Administration Office showed that around 1,354 hectares of land of more than 200 people in Kailali is under Maoist control. The Baidya faction in Sankhuwasabha called a press conference on Monday and said seized property will not be returned unless the government comes up with an alternative for the current tenants.

“We are against the decision taken by the establishment side and we demand the agreement be scrapped immediately,” said Rajendra Karki, the Sankhuwasabha district joint-secretary of the Maoists. The Baidya team has said return of the seized land is possible only after a scientific land reform commission is formed to address the plight of the landless. In some parts of Dang, Maoist activists are accused of looting paddy from farmers. Janardan Sharma of Srigaun VDC-3 claimed that Maoist activists seized 33 quintals of paddy grown on his land four days ago.

According to the Maoist Victims’ Association, over 2,000 hectares of land in Dang is under Maoist control. The party is even taking away crops produced on the land.

“The Maoists are looting the produce from the farmers, while the authorities concerned are silent on the matter,” said Lokmani Giri of the association. The Bardiya local administration has started collecting data of the seized property. The Baidya faction has, however, warned it will not let the authorities take away the land distributed to the landless farmers.

As part of its plan to return such property to the rightful owners, the government is launching a campaign from Bardiya under the monitoring of Nepali Congress (NC) leader Krishna Prasad Situala and Maoist leader Suresh Singh.

The dispute within the Maoists, however, has not let the local administration create a favourable environment to return the property, said Sanjay Gautam, the NC district president.

‘No Surrender’: Kiran and Badal

The revolutionary faction of UCPN-Maoist has publicized an authentic voice for the protection of the revolution. After Prachanda and Baburam factions agreed to hand over the total achievements of the People’s War, com. Kiran and com. Badal have clearly put forwarded their voice in a pres-meet held in Kathmandu today.

In the National conference Hall packed up with journalists, intellectuals and the cadres, Senior-most Vice-chairman Com. Kiran clarified all the questions that were asked from the ground. He said, “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA); which has played a significant role in the political change of the nation, has been disarmed, dishonored and dispersed through the 7-point agreement signed at the night of November 1.” Flashing over the contribution of PLA and the people, com. Kiran said, “Just before the meeting of the central committee, party chairman has signed the agreement at mid-night. He has made a serious mistake by doing so. We are going to advise him to withdraw it, correct it in the central committee meting that is going to be held tomorrow. Along with it, we have said other political parties to correct this mistake too.” Com. Kiran publicly accepted the bitter reality that party is going to be degraded day by day. He added that party should be ideology, dream and people as well as the nation. Nation and the people are dearer than any party.

In the press-meet, General Secretary of the party com. Badal exposed all the intrigues and he strongly opposed anti-people and anti-nation plots by saying that their misdeeds will be put into dust. He said, “Today is the historic day for all of us in course of fighting against imperialism and the expansionism. The moment we are holding a press-meet is a historic moment because we are going to express our commitment but not only the opinion. The gathering here is the historic gathering that is centralized to fight against the expansionism, imperialism and their puppets. We are lined here for resisting and fighting against puppets until our death.”

Clarifying the doubts and rumours that have been spread against the revolutionary faction, he added, “Certainly, the night of November 1 is the historic dark night. The dark night was marked as the cheerful night for the feudalists, imperialists and the expansionists and their puppets. However, on the other, the same night was marked as the night of suffering, worry and a curse for the family of the martyrs, wounded and the poor working class people. Therefore, we are presented here with the volcano of the sufferings and a thundering voice within worry.”

Communist party without army can not exist. Because it presents the opposite pole than the reaction, it should be with its strong pillar that is PLA. But in Nepal, PLA is being shamelessly disarmed and dispersed. He further added, “The night was the night when PLA were shamelessly disarmed, cruelly disarmed and put into dust to surrender before the reaction. Therefore, it is the black night for the PLA soldiers, the working people and the freedom-loving people. This was misfortune! However, it has brought a hurricane with it. This misfortune has brought a bright future with it. The future of the working class will smash their momentary pleasure”

In the pres-meet, he committed to drive the revolution without surrendering before the enemy. He concluded, “Comrades and journalist friends! We want to make our promise public on this occasion by putting the martyrs, wounded, prisoners and the poor people as witnesses of our commitment that we won’t let to ruin the dream of you all in vain. We will realize your own dream. The night of November 1 was the night for the culmination of the rightist disperses in the history of the communist movement of Nepal. The rightist deviation; which dissolved the PLA that has sacrificed itself for the peace and transformation, will be demised soon. Hundred thousands of new PLA soldiers will take birth from the ashes of the dissolved PLA. The land lords, puppets, imperialists and the expansionists; who are exchanging their happiness, will have no more time to feel their happiness because we are with people and their happiness.”

http://redstarnepal.com/?p=562

Nepal: UCPN (M) infighting leads to closure of party’s FM station

[The Himalayan Times newspaper]

Monday, 03 October 2011

Radio Mirmire (89.4 MHz) , a FM radio station run by the UCPN (Maoist), has been shut down after a group of employees allegedly close to the Maoist party establishment took away its equipment Sunday night.A group of employees led by former director of the FM Bishnu Prasad Sapkota barged into the station office at Anam Nagar at around 11:30 pm and took away the computers and the transmitter.Employees involved in the capturing have said took such a step as they were not receiving salary for a long time.Employees supporting the Mohan Baidya faction have accused Sapkota of stealing the equipment.Employees and managers divided into two rival camps of the Maoist party are known to be at loggerheads for some time.

Source

Revealing Quotes from Arch-Revisionist Deng Xiaoping

“Let me add that our socialist state apparatus is so powerful that it can intervene to correct any deviations. To be sure, the open policy entails risks and may bring into China some decadent bourgeois things. But with our socialist policies and state apparatus, we shall be able to cope with them. So there is nothing to fear.”

(Reform is the Only Way for China to Develop its Productive Forces, August 28, 1985 in Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III)

“There is no fundamental contradiction between socialism and a market economy. The problem is how to develop the productive forces more effectively. We used to have a planned economy, but our experience over the years has proved that having a totally planned economy hampers the development of the productive forces to a certain extent. If we combine a planned economy with a market economy, we shall be in a better position to liberate the productive forces and speed up economic growth.”

(There is no Fundamental Contradiction between Socialism and a Market Economy, October 23, 1985 in Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III)

“Why do some people always insist that the market is capitalist and only planning is socialist? Actually they are both means of developing the productive forces. So long as they serve that purpose, we should make use of them. If they serve socialism they are socialist; if they serve capitalism they are capitalist. It is not correct to say that planning is only socialist, because there is a planning department in Japan and there is also planning in the United States. At one time we copied the Soviet model of economic development and had a planned economy. Later we said that in a socialist economy planning was primary. We should not say that any longer.”

(Planning and the Market are both Means of Developing the Productive Forces, February 6, 1987 in Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III)

Suspicions linger 30 years after Sino-Vietnam war

Chinese soldiers arrested are kept by Vietnamese fighters on the battlefield of Cao Bang, in February 1979. China invaded Vietnam 30 years ago this week, but the event will not be officially marked by Beijing, which refuses to acknowledge the war -- making life even harder for veterans who are haunted by it. (AFP/File)

Thirty years after they went to war with each other, Beijing and Hanoi have opted for cooperation, even if Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia view China’s growing presence with suspicion.

In China, the war that began on February 17, 1979 is not even mentioned, and few young people here know the history of how their nation launched a brief but bloody invasion into their small southern neighbour and later withdrew without a clear victory.

“The toning down of public statements about the Sino-Vietnam conflict reflects growing interdependence and pragmatism in today’s bilateral relations,” said Chin-Hao Huang, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

“Both sides are willing to cast aside historical grievances and work together on building trade, business and economic relations, monitoring and combating disease outbreaks like the avian flu and cracking down on narcotics trade, among many other issues of mutual interest.”

Although relations have improved, disputes remain in the oil-rich South China Sea, where Beijing and Hanoi vie for sovereignty over the Spratley and Paracel islands.

The Chinese parliament has voted to declare Chinese sovereignty over 80% of the South China Sea, but has proposed joint exploitation of resources, said Jean-Claude Pomonti, a Bangkok-based journalist.

“The Vietnamese suspicion of the Chinese remains intact, but they have no choice (but to agree to Chinese proposals),” said Pomonti, who is also the author of a book on Southeast Asia.

At the same time, three decades after deadly hostilities between the communist neighbours, a military option is out of the question.

“The fact that China has agreed and signed on to the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea with Vietnam and other Asean member states is an important step in the right direction to resolving the conflict through non-military means,” said SIPRI’s Huang.

The Cold War is over, and Indochina is no longer an arena of ideologically charged rivalry among the United States, the Soviet Union and China.

The Americans may still play an important role in the region, but China is leaving heavy footprints too.

Investment, resource exploitation and trade are the reasons why the Asian giant is so interested in the region.

Vietnam imported 15.6 billion dollars of Chinese goods last year with bilateral trade totalling 20.1 billion dollars.

Other parts of Southeast Asia are becoming engaged with China too: In the northwest of Laos, vast rubber plantations produce for the Chinese markets.

A brand new highway, one of the best in all of Laos, cuts through the country facilitating transportation between China and Southeast Asia.

As a sign of the growing engagement between the two areas, Beijing named a special ambassador to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in December.

“The strengthened presence of China especially in the economic field is an opportunity for Asean to reach a new market,” said Rodolfo C. Severino, a former Asean secretary general and now a researcher at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

“It’s not so much a question of traditional balance of power, but more an opportunity for Asean as a group to deal with the great powers to gain influence.”

But the majority of Southeast Asian countries remain worried about China’s long-term interests and regional ambitions, according to SIPRI’s Huang.

“As such, most Southeast Asian countries prefer to see a strong, continued presence of the United States and Japan to help maintain the balance in regional stability,” he said.

Source

Enver Hoxha on Pol Pot

This [the Sino-American imperialist alliance] is obvious, also, from the fact that now the American government is trying to put China, which has attacked Vietnam, on the same plane as Vietnam because, allegedly, it has attacked Cambodia. In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena.

Even Prince Sihanouk, who was incarcerated for nearly four years in Pnom Pen, has spoken publicly at UNO about the crimes of the Pol Pot government and its extermination of the Cambodian people. The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation.

The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service. When the first conflicts broke out on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, the view of socialist Albania was, and the world is witness to this, that disagreements between the two neighbour countries should be resolved through talks and without the interference of the Chinese or Soviet social-imperialists. But this was not done. On the contrary, the Pol Pot group, incited by Beijing, brought out in Pnom Pen daily communiques in which they announced that thousands of Vietnamese were being kill led by its army on Vietnamese territory.

It was quite apparent that this provocative and warmongering activity was supported and carried out for the expansionist aims of Deng Xiaoping, Hua Guofeng and on their account. And why should Deng Xiaoping not support and back the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari when he has rehabilitated all the scum of Chinese reaction, when he has returned property, money and power over the plants and factories to the big bourgeoisie, the men of the Kuomintang and all the counter-revolutionaries, and has turned China into a social-imperialist capitalist country, as our Party has rightly described it? The bourgeoisie in the party and the bourgeois intellectuals are in power in China. There this scum is considered the élite, while they demand that the working class bend its head and work for the «modernizations». It was precisely these capitalists, the clique of Deng Xiaoping and Co., who kept Pol Pot in power in Cambodia and now, after he has been overthrown, are trying with every means to restore him. The Chinese leadership are trying to cover up the aggressive act they undertook against Vietnam with the absurd pretext that Vietnam is seeking «small-scale hegemony», thinking that in this way they will be excused for the large-scale hegemony of China.

But the question must be asked: Why do the Chinese imperialists allegedly have the right to defend the barbarous fascist Pol Pot group, and Vietnam does not have the right to support the revolutionaries and the people of Cambodia to build a free, independent and sovereign country? The Vietnamese government has officially and publicly rejected the Chinese allegation that it is aiming to set up a federation of Indochina and has declared that Vietnam wants the peoples of this zone to live free, in friendship and independence, each in its own country.

 – From The Chinese Leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping have Launched a Military Attack on Vietnam from the newspaper “Zeri i Popoullit.”

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Enver Hoxha Quotes on Maoist Revisionism pt. 2

These quotes from Enver Hoxha show the PLA’s attitude toward the phenomenon of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” which portrayed itself as a movement of the working class but in reality was a decade-long student riot driven by the cult of Mao that maintained and preserved revisionist rule in China and welcomed the black reaction of Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping.

Contained also in these quotes are the beginnings of the criticism of the cult of Mao which is still upheld in China to this day, as well as criticism of the revisionist economic practices of “new Democracy” in China wherein the bourgeoisie were allowed to exist and participate in government as well as receive fixed income from their property.

The culmination of the Mao cult was the publication of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” by the Maoist revisionists in the leadership. All of these criticisms would be taken up publicly between China and Albania in the 1960′s and 70′s.

August 9th, 1966
Marx condemned the cult of the individual as sickening. However, we observe with regret that in recent months the Chinese comrades have embarked on the wrong, anti-Marxist course, of turning the cult of Mao almost into a religion, exalting him in the most sickening way, without giving the least consideration to the great harm this is doing to our cause, not to mention the ridicule to which it is giving rise.

We condemn this unrestrained, non-Marxist propaganda. But the fact is that our criticism on this question to Chou En-lai on his last visit here had no effect at all. Are we dealing with Marxists or religious fanatics?

The question arises; why all this unrestrained propaganda? I can explain it only, as the deafening beating of a drum to conceal some hostile activity.

Further, the Chinese comrades, who in so many things show themselves cautious and slow to move, now begun to smash things with axes. We agree that the axe should be used, where necessary, but in China it is falling upon every work of art, every literary creation, regardless of its overall progressive spirit.

Progressive world culture in general appears to have no value at all in the eyes of the Chinese comrades. To allow the students to display this terrible xenophobia, as is being done in China is a great mistake which has nothing in common with proletarian internationalism.

August 20th, 1966
A great puzzle! Astonishing events, dangerous to the great cause of Communism are taking place. We have a problem with many unknown factors; we have to try to see clearly into this dark Chinese forest with Marxist judgment.

The Proletarian Cultural Revolution against bourgeois elements in the field of culture should have been inspired by Marxist-Leninist, ideology and organised and led by the Party. There should have been no smell of mysticism, metaphysics or idealism in its essence, its
forms or its tactics. For then it is no longer a Proletarian Cultural Revolution, but however it may be portrayed, its opposite.

Chinese propaganda presents it as a revolution launched spontaneously from below, by the masses. But in reality it had to be organized. By whom? Here the figure of Lin Piao emerges. But how is it possible for such a Cultural Revolution to be launched by one person; while the Party and its Central Committee remain in the background? Only the Central Committee of the Party can take such decisions. It is a fact since 1956, when the 8th Congress of the CPC was held, more than five years have elapsed since the time when the 9th. Congress should have been convened. Why is this?

Normally, also, Plenums of the Central Committee of a Marxist-Leninist Party are held twice a year; but the recent Plenum of the CC of the CPC was held after four years delay! Then who is leading the Party? I suspect that since 1956, Mao has been left on the sidelines and turned into a mere symbol. Recently the Party has been completely over-shadowed by the name of, Mao Tse-tung. Behind the fanaticisation around the person of Mao Tse-tung lies something very dangerous.

August 26th, 1966
Today I read the 16-point document on the Cultural Revolution issued by the recent Plenum of the CC of the CPC. This implies that the enemy had deeply penetrated the party, to the point where it had taken over the leadership of whole Party committees.

One thing worries me: the role of the CC and of the Party as a whole emerges as weak. Another thing, strikes the eye. Although school pupils and students hold the initiative in the Cultural Revolution, the Party’s youth organisation is not to be seen anywhere. What is even more serious, there is no sign of the participation of the working class; it seems as if they are afraid of it.

Although power appears to be in the hands of the proletariat, it is possible that the bourgeoisie is still powerful and dangerous. The Chinese comrades admit this when the put the question: Which will win in China, socialism or capitalism.

Industry in China is declared to be socialist, but we see that the capitalists in enterprises still receive a fixed interest. This should not have been allowed. Instead of receiving crushing blows, all the enemies were “re-educated” and “placed in suitable jobs” where they could carry on hostile activity.

September 1st, 1966
What this “Red Guard” is and why it is being created is not clear to us. It has been said that, it is being formed “to carry out a radical purge of capitalist and revisionist culture.” But this task has been begun in an anarchic and confused manner.

Certain serious questions strike us at the start:

1. The “Red Guard” is composed mainly of youth, university students and school pupils. But it cannot be carried out by students alone.

2. If this is to be a revolution in favour of “proletarian culture,” it is amazing that is the working class and peasantry are sitting by as onlookers! Whatever the Chinese comrades say, nothing satisfactorily explains this.

3. What has become of the Communist Youth? Its voice is not being heard at all. It seems as if it does not exist. The only concrete thing which the “Red Guard” does is to praise Mao Tse-tung to the skies, presenting him as a god: in the full sense of the term.

September 20th, 1966
The true purpose of the “Red Guard” movement remains unknown to us. It is certainly acting without leadership or control.

The Chinese comrades simply must inform our Party about the full decisions of the recent plenum of the CC of the CPC. The “excuse” that the Chinese ambassador in Tirana has been away from his post for five months “doing his physical labour” in China is unacceptable. Even if the Chinese comrades continue on this wrong, non-Marxist-Leninist course, we shall never allow our Party to be committed to the course of the cult of the individual.

January 29th, 1967
It is now clear that Mao found himself in a minority, and for this reason had to rely on the army. The military fist under the direction of Mao and Lin Piao is the reality standing behind the Cultural Revolution.

April 7th, 1967
The “new form” which emerged from the Cultural Revolution appears to be that the Chinese moving towards the “unification of” the Party with the state”!?

April 28th, 1967
A Marxist-Leninist Party like ours, which is building socialism correctly, cannot proceed on the road advocated by the Chinese. A Marxist-Leninist Party like ours deepens the revolution, but not like that which is going on in China today.

July 14th, 1967
Posters in China say: “Mao Tse-tung Thought is the culmination of Marxism.” Surely Mao himself cannot approve such wild exaggerations. But the fact is that they are occurring.

Guided by hasty judgments, incorrect principles and ill-considered claims, the Chinese comrades could gravely damage the new Marxist-Leninist groups and parties which are in process of creation.

In seeking to establish that “Mao is the world leader” of international Communism, it could happen that if some Marxist-Leninist group or party does not put much emphasis on Mao and the Cultural Revolution while some deviators from Marxism-Leninism emphasize these things strongly, the Chinese comrades will prefer the latter. And the damage has been done.

The Chinese have reached the conclusion that the little red book, “Quotations from Mao Tse-tung” is “the culmination of Marxist-Leninist science and philosophy.” Such claims are infantile.

Today they are carrying on without an organised party. How can they advise the Marxist-Leninists of the world how to form and consolidate new parties?

August 15th, 1967
The Chinese press is liquidating Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and making a god of Mao, reaching the scandalous level of saying; “Those who do no follow the road of Mao and the Cultural Revolution are ‘deviators.’” This wrong. This is not Marxism, but Trotskyism.

January 16th, 1968
We have almost no contact with the Chinese comrades and do not know official1y what is happening there. They withdrew their ambassador in Tirana on the grounds that he was implicated in the activities of the Liu-Teng group. When will he be replaced? There is no signal.

January 19th, 1968
The main Chinese newspapers are publishing the directive on the re-organization of the Communist Party and the mass organizations. Thus it is confirmed that up to now the CPC has been broken up and that the Cultural Revo1ution was in fact led by Mao and the “Main Group of the Cultural Revolution.”

March 20th, 1968
In the international arena the voice of China is almost, if not completely, silent. Thus it is not acting wisely. For nearly a year they have not had an ambassador even here in our country. Can this be covered by the excuse: “We haven’t a good man?” Or is it in order to reflect their silent dissatisfaction that we are not shouting `hosannas’ to Mao and not following their mistaken tactic of silence in the international field?

We see a similar superficial stand on the part of the Chinese comrades, towards the new Marxist-Leninist groups and parties. They have contacts and give aid to many groups and Parties, even to those groups separate from or hostile to the new parties, justifying these undifferentiated contacts by saying: “We assist all groups that fight imperialism and modern revisionism.” But the struggle brings about differentiation, and this must, be followed up on a principled basis.

April 25th, 1968
Under the cloak of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese have shut themselves up completely in their own shell. They are merely publishing the quotations of Mao, in millions of copies, making millions of Mao badges, and spreading slogans in praise of him.

Nothing else, absolutely nothing else!

All China’s contacts with the outside world have been completely frozen if not broken off altogether. All China’s ambassadors have been withdrawn from the countries where they were serving. Neither their newspapers, nor Hsinhua, nor Radio Peking, deal with any international question.

Even with us their closest friends, contacts are glacial. They don’t allow our ambassador in Peking any contacts; he is isolated. An astonishing situation!

They have refused our invitation to send a delegation to the May Day celebrations, and have not invited any delegation from our side either. They carry on a “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” yet ignore the celebration of the proletarians! This too is astonishing!

Prachanda: Integration of People’s Liberation Army into Nepal Army Possible Within 4 Months

Himalayan Times, 2010-05-12

KATHMANDU: Chairman of the Unified CPN-Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ today said protracted political deadlock could end if PLA integration were effected within four months.

Addressing an interaction with intellectuals, industrialists, business community and members of the civil society, he said, “We’ll dismantle the barracks of the Young Communist League within four-five days. We are ready to break the relation of the party with the cantonments.”

Prachanda also claimed that the party was ready to categorise the Maoist combatants by mid-June. He said the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Commission for Missing People and the one to resolve contentious issues related to the constitution should be formed to resolve the vexed issues.

The talks between the three major parties were called off after the NC and UML urged the Maoists to give the number of the combatants to be integrated in the security forces on May 1.

Prachanda apologised for calling the general strike ‘indefinite’. “Our party has realised that organising indefinite general strike was a mistake and we would never repeat such a mistake,” he said.

Chinese Social-Imperialism in Africa

Published in Reorganization by the KKE (1918-1955):

The year 2006 was a milestone for Sino-African relations. Only the first half of the Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited 10 African countries. In November of that year took place in Beijing in the third session of the Forum on Sino-African Cooperation (FOCAC), involving 48 of the 53 African countries. In January, no, last year, China published the “document of Chinese policy in Africa” ​​by presenting the objectives of the Chinese presence and the means to achieve them. On January 30, and the Chinese president goes to visit 10 new African countries.

Bilateral trade has jumped from 10 billion. In 2000 to $ 55 billion. $ 2006, making China the third largest trading partner after the U.S. and France. 156 loans to 31 countries, worth $ 1.38 billion donated by China in 2004, and truncate their duties on 190 products. By the end of 2005, China has undertaken over 720 projects in Africa, awarded 18,000 scholarships, sent 15,000 medical personnel who treated her roughly 170 million Africans and political support.

The many rewards: raw materials and energy sources (see below for oil), African support for China on human rights committee of the UN and the withdrawal of the Olympic Games in 2008. And despite the low purchasing power of Africans, Chinese and competitors know that this is offset by the same population of Africans.

Historically, the period of Mao and Chu Lai In the absence of significant economic exchanges across political and mutual projects such as the Tanzania-Zambia Railway in the ’70s, whose existence is in China. Just $ 770 million was a record volume of bilateral trade in 1977.Apo the early ’90s, however, the emphasis was on “cooperation” for the “exploration and exploitation” of energy sources, technology and trade.

Series on Maoist Revisionism: On the “Socialism” of the Maoist Revisionists

From the Journal “Reorganization” by the KKE (1918-1955)

The issue of socialism is today one of the most central positions in political and ideological struggle taking place between the Marxists – Leninists and revisionists of all shades (Khrushchev, Tito, Chinese, Euro-Communists).

In theory, the scientific understanding of socialism to find pleria formulated and integrated in the works of Marx – Engels – Lenin – Stalin. Prachtika socialism first built in the Soviet Union of Lenin – Stalin (1917 -1953) and now successfully built LSD in Albania, which is the only truly socialist country in the world.

The revisionists of all shades from a grossly distorting the Marxist conception of Marxism and propagate various anti-Marxist perceptions that have nothing to do with scientific socialism and the other advertised as “socialism” to capitalism that exists in the revisionist countries (USSR, Yugoslavia, Poland, China, etc.).

The revisionist “K” JV defense and wants to build in our country called “real socialism” of the current Soviet Union ie palinorthomeno capitalism that prevails there.

The various revisionist Maoist organizations and groups defending the “Chinese socialism.” Some of them want to build “socialism” of China by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping (NCSR “,” NCSR-ML KKE “:” The PR China is a country of socialism “, Materials of the first Unionist Congress 1984, p. 87), while others such as “Marxist-Leninist Communist Party” (Proletarian Flag), “Communist Party Marxist-Leninist” (Political Left “) and” The Movement for the reconstruction of Marxist – Leninist movement “only” socialism “of Mao Zedong that capitalism in China, which dominated the season. The latter believe that after the death of Mao, “palinorthothike capitalism” (most recently, in January this year, the “Proletarian Flag” speaks for “restoration of capitalism” in China).

However, as demonstrated by Comrade Enver Hoxha’s famous work Imperialism and the Revolution, Mao Zedong “was not Marxist – Leninist, but a democrat, progressive revolutionary, who was for a long time leader of the Communist Party of China and played an important role in victory of the Chinese anti-imperialist democratic revolution “(p. 315) and even that” Mao Zedong is anti-Marxist and “Mao Zedong thought is anti-Marxist” (p. 316).

Because of anti-Marxist perceptions of Mao Zedong and the Chinese party, China could not move and did not ever achieve socialism. It took over the city – a democratic revolution. Comrade Enver Hoxha said: “The transition from urban – a democratic revolution to socialist revolution can take place only then when the proletariat away decisively the bourgeoisie from power and expropriate. Once in China, the working class divided the power of the civil order, where the bourgeoisie has maintained its prerogatives, the power that was introduced in China, there might be power of the proletariat, and therefore the Chinese revolution could not have evolved into a socialist revolution “(p. 302 -303). And below: “In Chinese society were and are still not economically, politically, ideologically and socially remnants of the past, but are there and the exploiting classes, like classes, which were and still remain in power. The bourgeoisie not only continues there, but also benefit from the income of property had “(p. 305)

Article partner TOMOR CEROVA reproduced in the insert from the magazine “Albania today” No 2 / 1980 analyzes the relations of production in China at the time of Mao Zedong and shows clearly and convincingly, that these were not socialist but capitalist, suggests that the path of development of Chinese economy after 1949 until today, both industry and agriculture was permanently capitalist path of development.

Therefore can not speak for the existence of socialism and dictatorship of the proletariat in China in the era of Mao and “restoration of capitalism” after his death, as do the Maoists revisionist “Marxist-Leninist Communist Party” (Proletarian Flag) “Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (” Left Politics “) and” Movement for the reconstruction of Marxist – Leninist movement “when in China ever built socialism.

The capitalism that prevailed in China in the era of Mao Zedong dominates today there is not and can not be related to the builders of socialism in the Soviet Union of Lenin – Stalin and after Stalin’s death was abolished by Khrushchevite revisionists. The Maoists revisionist defense of “socialism” in China of the Mao era that capitalism can only reject the builders of socialism in the Soviet Union of Lenin – Stalin and being built today in Albania according to the teachings of Marx – Engels – Lenin – Stalin.

They boarded a complete inability to refer to relations of production on property relations, the relations of distribution are socialist in class relations and class now in power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, not dare to openly challenge the existence of socialism in Albania , or prefer to remain silent or resort to a different type of libel: “Without doubt, the implementation of the CRL of a reconciliation – opportunist policy towards the Soviet social imperialism distorts the cause of socialism” (“Theses on the founding conference of the” Movement for reconstruction of the Marxist-Leninist movement, ‘”p. 127, Athens 1984),” now that an approach to leadership metachotzikis Albania and the USSR is very possible and use the old naval bases of the Soviet fleet in the country “( “Left Politics, 15 December 1984) or” Communist Party Marxist-Leninist “(Proletarian Flag) resorting to the sister of revisionist Maoist parties to slander the NAC and Albania.

The Maoists revisionists of our country being able to analyze the economic-social situation in Albania have been transformed into Pythia to predict the future of socialism in Albania, that they now reject it and fight.

The struggle of the Marxists – Leninists against anti-Marxist perceptions of modern revisionists for socialism should be connected closely with the defense of the scientific socialism of Marx – Engels – Lenin – Stalin and prachtiki own construction in the Soviet Union of Lenin – Stalin and the building today in Albania. It must always be connected with the consistent defense and promotion of socialism Albania.

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Down with the “RCP-USA’s” Shameful Anti-Communist Attack on the Glorious Party of Labor of Albania!

In an editorial in the January 1979 issue of Revolution, the Central Organ of the Central Committee of the “Revolutionary Communist Party, USA”, the “RCP,USA” makes a vicious anti-communist attack on Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania. The RCP leadership displayed its U.S. great-power chauvinism and essentially called for the overthrow of the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania. The editorial is full of filth, like saying that the PLA allegedly is “challenging the entire science of Marxism-Leninism” and is following “bourgeois nationalist interests”. And what is the pretext for “RCP’s” frenzied gangster activity?

The RCP leadership is frightened by the publication in English and release of Enver Hoxha’s outstanding new work Imperialism and the Revolution. With this attack on Albania, the RCP leadership has come out openly against the only genuine socialist country in the world and exposed the RCP’s anti-revolutionary and anti-communist features. With this attack, the RCP leadership has come out in the open to claim the title of commando squad of “three worlds-ism” and wrecking crew for imperialism and revisionism. This attack marks the complete bankruptcy of the “RCP” and of its chief “theoretical” hack and “creative” interpreter of the “three worlds” theory and Chinese revisionism, Bob Avakian.

Why is the “RCP” leadership attacking the Party of Labor of Albania? The “RCP” is doing this because it is a fervent adherent of the theory of “three worlds” and of the entire arsenal of Chinese revisionism. We show in an article elsewhere in this issue the fraudulent nature of “RCP’s” criticism of the “three worlds” theory. The “RCP” has sought one way after another to hold back the struggle against “three worlds-ism” and to preserve the basic theses of “three worlds-ism”. Their differences with the Klonskyites (“CP (M-L)”) are not on fundamentals, but only on shade, they were never opponents of the social-chauvinists but only centrists, conciliators, as we showed in the pamphlet “Why Did the ’RCP, USA’ Split?’. It was inevitable that the deepening of the struggle against “three worlds-ism” and Chinese revisionism would drive the “RCP” to frenzy. They were not happy about Enver Hoxha’s historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania nor about the justly famous article “The Theory and Practice of the Revolution”. They were thrown into a panic by the July 29th “Letter of the CC of the Party of Labor and the Government of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party and the Government of China”. Instead of enthusiastically taking up the defense of socialist Albania against the attacks of the Chinese revisionists, Teng Hsiao-ping, Hua Kuo-feng and Co., they circulated attacks on Albania. The “RCP’s” article in the September 1978 Revolution on China’s attacks on Albania was not a defense of Albania but a polemic against the July 29th Letter.

The “RCP” leadership is afraid of the exposure of the long-standing roots of Chinese revisionism. Now that Imperialism and the Revolution has been published, they have let out their full anti-communist fury. The “RCP” leadership has attacked the book before reading it: the editorial admits that “we have not had an opportunity to study the book” but have only seen the summary from the December 20th issue of the Albanian Telegraphic Agency. From that alone they can tell that the PLA is allegedly “challenging the entire science of Marxism-Leninism”. What a serious scientific attitude to Marxism-Leninism, what a careful examination and study of the views of the Party of Labor of Albania! , The “RCP” leadership is in such a hurry because they want to stop the circulation of this book or, at least, to close the minds of their cadre in advance. But the “RCP’s” frenzy will only arouse even more interest in Imperialism and the Revolution. Circulation and study of Comrade Hoxha’s book will be a good way for the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists to reply to “RCP’s” treachery!

Revolution’s editorial reveals the “RCP’s” leadership’s total degeneration to gangster activity. More and more in the last half year, the RCP has stepped up its gangster style of activity and aim 3d them not at the Klonskyites but mainly at the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, both in the U.S. and internationally. The editorial utterly revels in its shame. It declares the existence of two lines in the Party of Labor of Albania and states its solidarity with those who “will fight Enver Hoxha’s attempts to drag them on the wrong side of this dividing line” and declares that the Albanian Marxist-Leninists are ”in objective unity with Teng Hsiao-ping, the Soviet social-imperialists and other revisionists”. Thus the “RCP” leadership is openly endorsing the despicable acts of the Chinese revisionists in inciting and organizing the treacherous sabotage activity of the putschist group of Beqir Balluku, Abdyl Kellezi, Koco Theod-hosi, etc. The “RCP” leadership is not expressing some difference of opinion in the common struggle nor is it writing a scientific polemic, instead on the contrary, the “RCP” leadership simply calls for the overthrow of the PLA’s leadership. This is out-and-out fascist, imperialist mentality. This is the same road as Tito, Khrushchov and the Chinese revisionists tried before the “RCP” leadership. As Enver says, referring to the Chinese attempt, “So we made the mines explode in the hands of the Chinese.” (“Albania Is Forging Ahead Confidently and Unafraid” reprinted in Proletarian Internationalism, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 55) And the “RCP’s” vicious attacks on a principled Party staunchly fighting all revisionism and upholding the purity of Marxism-Leninism, the PLA, will surely blow up in their own hands in a torrent of outrage from all genuine Marxist-Leninists!

The ”RCP” leadership has by its actions shown its hatred of socialism. The “RCP” would have the world believe that it is only motivated by its pure love for socialism in China. But how can one love socialism in China and hate it in Albania? Albania is a small country, with less population than many cities of the world. Yet it has set an example to the whole world of unflinching courage in following the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It impresses the whole world and upsets the plans of Chinese revisionism by relying neither on U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism nor any other patron. Albania stands firmly on the basis of self-reliance and the support of the world proletariat and all progressive people. It shows the tremendous power of the toiling masses when led by a genuine Marxist-Leninist Communist Party such as the Party of Labor of Albania. It shows the shining reality of socialism and shines forth as a beacon to all the oppressed and exploited masses around the world. And the “RCP” leadership has no warmth, no love, not even respect for glorious socialist Albania, but just fear and spite in front of Albania’s unflinching stand against revisionism. The “RCP” leadership, like any run of the mill Trotskyite, attacks Albania for “bourgeois nationalist interest”.

In the editorial, the “RCP” gives no serious arguments at all to explain its treachery. The editorial is written in the vulgar style that one has come to expect of the “RCP”. The editorial shouts a little about consistency. Imagine that! The “RCP”, which is jumping from this position to that position in a frenzy on the “three worlds” theory, is worried about consistency. The “RCP” leadership regards it as highly inconsistent that the PLA defended the Communist Party of China when the CPC was fighting imperialism and revisionism, refrained from making its differences public, and maintained this stand until the open alliance of Chinese revisionism with imperialism, and the Chinese revisionists’ barbarous and brutal attacks on Albania forced an open split. Anyone who wishes to know how the Albanians developed the struggle against Chinese revisionism should read the July 29th Letter and Imperialism and the Revolution. Anyone who traces the PLA’s stand on any important question through the readily available literature will see that the PLA has constantly maintained a consistent principled position – and it will be quite a relief from trying to figure out the zig-zag positions of the Chinese revisionists on anything.

The fact is that it is not consistency that the “RCP” leadership is worrying about. Instead the “RCP” leadership is trying to defend Chinese revisionism and the “three worlds” theory through the same political blackmail with respect to Mao Tsetung that the Klonskyites tried in 1977. A difference of shade is that the Klonskyites flaunted the “three worlds” theory and tried to hide their revisionism and denial of the revolutionary Marxism-Leninism of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, while the “RCP,USA” in its long series “Mao Tsetung’s Immortal Contributions” flaunts Bob Avakian’s contempt for Marx, Engels, Lenin and especially Stalin and is trying to disguise its support for the “three worlds” theory. We predict that they will have the same fiasco that the “CP(M-L)” Pentagon-socialists and volunteer advisors to the State Department had before them. The Marxist-Leninists will continue the struggle against Chinese revisionism despite the “RCP’s” hysteria. On the question of Mao Tsetung, we hold that he is not a Marxist-Leninist classicist and we are certain that Comrade Enver Hoxha’s book Imperialism and the Revolution will prove invaluable in uncovering the deep sources and long-term roots of Chinese revisionism.

As everyone knows, the “RCP” recently sponsored a big campaign to “give a fitting welcome to Teng Hsiao-ping”. In our opinion, they succeeded quite well. Nothing could have made Teng happier than anti-communist attacks on and fascist, Trotskyite slanders of socialist Albania, the sharp thorn in the side of all imperialists and social-imperialists. But besides the ”RCP” leadership with its “fitting welcome” to Chinese revisionism, there are also the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists who led the proletariat in denouncing the U. S.-China warmongering imperialist alliance . The revolutionary proletariat will never stop fighting social-chauvinism and all the “three worlder” sects and enemies of socialism. Today the defense of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania is the touchstone of proletarian internationalism. And proletarian internationalism is inseparably connected with the struggle against “three worlds-ism”, Chinese revisionism and all forms of revisionism and opportunism. Down with “RCP’s anti-communist attacks on the Party of Labor of Albania!

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought are Anti-Marxist-Leninist and Revisionist

Intro

The following resolution was unanimously and enthusiastically passed at an internal conference of the Central Organization of U. S. Marxist-Leninists in March 1979, a conference attended by all comrades working under the discipline of the COUSML: “… the March, 1979 Internal Conference of the COUSML resolutely denounces Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought as anti-Marxist-Leninist and revisionist.”

This resolution was the result of a long period of study and discussion inside the organization. In June 1978 the National Committee took up the question of various formulations, such as Mao Tsetung Thought. The National Committee set forth the task of assessing the whole course of the struggle against modern revisionism and of looking into the origins of the theory of “three worlds”. Part of this was the assessment of the role of Mao Tsetung and of the Communist Party of China. The whole COUSML began internal discussions on the assessment of the course of the struggle against modern revisionism following the publication of the July 29th Letter of the CC of the Party of Labor and Government of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party and Government of China.

The COUSML approaches the question of Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought from the point of view of the assessment of the whole course and history of the struggle against modern revisionism. The COUSML assesses the course of this struggle solely in order to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism and to wage the struggle against modern revisionism more powerfully and consistently. It is the struggle against social-chauvinism and the all-round intensification of the struggle against modern revisionism that has resulted in the exposure of Chinese revisionism and Mao Tsetung Thought.

Chinese revisionism presented itself as part of the movement against Khrushchovite revisionism and all its variants. But the facts show that the Communist Party of China did not proceed from the sound positions of Marxism-Leninism in its criticisms of the Soviet revisionists and that the Chinese leadership promoted its own revisionist theories and had a corrosive and disruptive effect on the great historical movement against modern revisionism. Finally Chinese revisionism and Mao Tsetung Thought led China and the Communist Party of China to an utter fiasco when the Chinese “third road” collapsed into social-imperialist warmongering and open alliance with U.S. imperialism.

Right from the start, the COUSML pointed out that the emergence of open social-chauvinism in the form of ”directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism” was not an accident, but that it had deep longstanding roots and stemmed from the long corrosion of opportunism inside the Marxist-Leninist movement. In the September 1976 issue of The Workers’ Advocate, the COUSML denounced the alliance of the October League (now the “CP(ML)”) with U.S. imperialism in the article “Mao Tsetung Thought or Social-Chauvinism, A Comment on the October League’s Call for ’Unity of Marxist-Leninists’” (in the title of the article, one should read “Marxism-Leninism” in place of “Mao Tsetung Thought” – at that time we still believed that Mao Tsetung upheld Marxism-Leninism and was fighting against the Chinese revisionists and all modern revisionists). In that article, we pointed to the splittist and liquidationist activities of the diehard OL social-chauvinist leaders right from their work against the youth and student movement of the 1960’s to the present (p. 8). One section of the article was written on the theme that “The OL’s social-chauvinism in the face of the war danger is only a natural outgrowth of their neo-revisionist line on class struggle and proletarian revolution in the U. S.” (p. 33). In The Workers’ Advocate of March 10, 1977, which gives the call “U.S. Marxist-Leninists, Unite in Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism!”, it is stressed that ”The rise of open social-chauvinism is not an accident. Conditions have been prepared for it by the long corrosion of neo-revisionism… inside the Marxist-Leninist movement.” (p. 1) The paper connects the denunciation of the theory of “three worlds” and of open social-chauvinism with the necessity of carrying through a thorough repudiation of Browderism and modern revisionism and with the clarification of political line on the burning questions of the American revolution. Thus the COUSML constantly stressed that the class treason of the “three worlders” and the Klonskyite Pentagon-socialists should not be viewed in isolation, but that the deep roots of the class betrayal should be uncovered and repudiated.

It is the same with Chinese revisionism. The present U.S.-China warmongering alliance and the rule in China of the most fascist elements, such as Teng Hsiao-ping, is not an isolated accident, an unfortunate thunderbolt coming from the unknown. No, Chinese revisionism has its deep roots. In June 1978 the National Committee took up the task of assessing the history of the struggle against modern revisionism and of looking into the origins of the theory of “three worlds”. As a result of this study into the longstanding roots of the theory of “three worlds”, the National Committee came to the conclusion in February 1979 that Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought are anti-Marxist-Leninist. It was Mao Tsetung Thought that corroded the Communist Party of China from within, that put forward a number of specific revisionist theories, that negated the universal laws of Marxism-Leninism and that thus provided the basis for the wild factionalism, unprincipled eclecticism, constant zigzags in policy, and the various revisionist groupings within the Communist Party of China. The Communist Party of China put forward the pretext that Mao Tsetung Thought developed in the struggle against modern revisionism, but actually Mao Tsetung Thought springs from the 1930’s as a “Chinese form (revision) of Marxism” while the Communist Party of China vacillated repeatedly in the struggle against Titoite and Khrushchovite revisionism.

The March 1979 Internal Conference of the COUSML unanimously condemned Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought. Below we reproduce a section of a speech delivered at the Internal Conference. This extract, edited for publication, outlines the grounds upon which the COUSML condemns Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought. The COUSML will continue to deepen the repudiation of Mao Tsetung Thought as part of the crucial struggle against modern revisionism.

I. GENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF MAO TSETUNG

Mao Tsetung was anti-Marxist-Leninist and revisionist. He began as a progressive revolutionary democrat and he played an important role in the triumph of the Chinese democratic anti-imperialist revolution. But he was an eclectic who opposed the Marxist theses. As the leader of the Communist Party of China, he therefore opposed Marxism-Leninism and was anti-Marxist-Leninist.

His actual theses were eclectic combinations of all sorts of opportunist and revisionist ideas of all trends, and even including ancient Chinese philosophy. He sought to impose this on the Communist Party of China through the theory of developing an “Asian communism”, and he displayed xenophobia towards the rest of the world, including towards the world proletariat. Mao Tsetung Thought and the use by the Chinese Communist Party of the term Mao Tsetung Thought in fact dates back to the 1930’s, and it was developed as a “Chinese form of Marxism”, i.e. a Chinese revision of Marxism. With this “national Marxism” Mao Tsetung tried to take a middle road between imperialism and socialism. But no such road is possible. As a result, damage was done to the liberation movement before 1949 and especially after 1949 when the Chinese revolution was prevented from going over to the socialist stage. Although some measures of socialist transformation did take place, as a result of Mao Tsetung Thought, China did not develop socialism and was kept in a chaotic situation on all fronts. Eventually this third road collapsed altogether and gave rise to capitulation to world imperialism and to the emergence of China as a social-imperialist power. From a force fighting U.S. imperialism, China turned to an alliance with U.S. imperialism. The U.S.-China alliance has been under preparation since 1971, and as part of this Mao Tsetung personally greeted Nixon twice, the second time in 1976 after the fascist war criminal Nixon had fallen from power and even the pretext of the needs of international diplomacy did not exist.

Mao Tsetung Thought has been the basis for all the deviations of the Communist Party of China. It was Mao Tsetung Thought that corroded the Communist Party of China, prevented it from establishing a sound Marxist-Leninist basis and thus provided the basis for all the Chinese revisionist groupings. It is Mao Tsetung Thought that is the basis of “three worlds-ism”.

II. THE ENIGMA OF CHINA

One of the greatest difficulties in assessing the life and work of Mao Tsetung and the line and history of the Chinese Communist Party is that the Communist Party of China has consistently witheld information on the actual state of affairs in China, on the theories of Mao Tsetung and the line of the Communist Party of China, and has developed various ways and forms of creating a great mystery about what was going on in China – in the Party, in the state and in the economy.

One example of this is the case of Lin Piao. When he died, his death was not written about in Peking Review. This was not for reasons of state secrecy, as all sorts of bourgeois visitors were informed of his death. But it never was announced in Party channels. As a result, we upheld that Lin Piao was alive because it was simply unimaginable to us that such a thing would not be mentioned in Party literature and instead simply broadcast to all visiting bourgeoisie. Further consultation has revealed that we weren’t the only Party which had difficulties on this front.

When we began research on China, we ran into this immediately. Even the simplest questions are shrouded in mystery. For example, which units own the land in the Chinese communes? It seems that land and the means of production are owned in China’s countryside by very small units, even smaller than the commune, but discussion on this and on its significance is lacking in Chinese economic literature. What is the actual state of ownership of the means of production, what happened to the bourgeois class, etc., etc.? No discussion of this takes place. We have only found one or two articles that even approach the discussion of such matters. Often the only sources on China are bourgeois sources or by inference.

Party affairs are in a similar shape. The last Party Congress which gave a detailed description of the line of the Party was the Eighth Congress, which was well known as a revisionist Congress. After that, the Congresses do not describe the state of affairs in the Party or the line. Instead one receives various propaganda formulas or even six word quotations from Mao Tsetung quoted out of context. Great debates can be waged on such formulations. Each person is left to put his own meaning into these words. Mao Tsetung Thought is promoted by the Communist Party of China as the Marxism-Leninism of the era, but few writings by Mao Tsetung after 1949 have been officially published.

The theory of two headquarters in the Party is closely related to this veil of mystery. Every crime of the Party is attributed to the bourgeois headquarters on a totally arbitrary basis. Thus it becomes impossible to objectively figure out the line and a full field is left open for rampant speculation.

This mystery and chaos was encouraged by the Chinese Communist Party which went quite far in using elaborate methods to foster it. Therefore, Mao Tsetung’s views and life cannot be evaluated solely from his writings.

III. PHILOSOPHY

In practice Mao Tsetung was a pragmatist and an eclectic. In philosophical theory, Mao Tsetung also developed a number of erroneous theories on dialectics. One important thing, was that he regarded the transformation of opposites simply as a change in place. Thus, consider the example of the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Mao Tsetung regarded the socialist revolution simply as a change of place, as the proletariat going from the subordinate aspect of the contradiction to the dominant aspect, and the bourgeoisie going from the ruling class to the ruled class. He negated the fact that socialist revolution involves the elimination of the exploiting classes and a qualitative change of the phenomenon, in this way he opposed the Marxist-Leninist view of revolution and substituted evolutionist views.

In fact, Mao Tsetung regarded revolution itself as just an endless process, as a cycle repeated eternally. It goes from victory to defeat to victory, never rising to a higher level but eternally repeating itself. His quotation (Peking Review, No. 21, 1976. p. 9) on the need for revolution 10,000 years from now because junior officials etc., will always feel slighted by big shots is typical.

This is related to his view that the exploiting classes are never eliminated under socialism, under the pretext that the existence of class struggle in socialist society implies the existence of the exploiting classes. It is also related to his view that the class struggle inside the party, the struggle against revisionism, implies the existence of two headquarters.

Mao Tsetung also arbitrarily imposes formal opposites onto every situation. He speculates on thousands of different contradictions, logical contradictions, and imposes them on the world. Thus idealist sophistry replaces materialist dialectics.

IV. THE LEADING ROLE AND THE ORGANIZATION OF THE PARTY

Mao Tsetung was opposed to the hegemonic role of the party of the proletariat. He advocated “long-term coexistence and mutual supervision” between the Communist Party of China and the bourgeois parties in China in “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”. Thus he opposed the undivided leadership of the proletariat and its party. The existence of the bourgeois parties was presented as inevitable right up until communism, for as long as the Communist Party would exist.

In practice he used the army as the arbiter between factions in the Communist Party of China. In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Party and the mass organizations were dispersed by millions of non-party youth at the call of Mao Tsetung, and the army was also called in.

Mao Tsetung also displayed contempt for the Party in many ways. The norms of the Party were constantly violated and subordinated to his personal power. Line was constantly changed. For example, the Eighth Congress gives one line, then Mao Tsetung wrote “ On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” and gave a different line – or, to be precise, grafted on a new line eclectically to the formulations of the Eighth Congress. Subsequently another sitting of the Eighth Party Congress took place. The Party Congress apparantly found it entirely ordinary that the Party should give one line and the Party Chairman a different line, and neither endorses Mao’s views, nor condemns Mao’s deviation, but simply continues giving another line.

Mao Tsetung’s factionalism was especially revealed in his theory of the existence of two headquarters in the party, with representatives of these headquarters existing in every body from the central committee and political bureau, right down to every organization at the base. This is a theory of unbridled factionalism and of destroying the party’s monolithic unity. It presents itself as a theory to fight revisionism, but actually it is a theory to coexist with revisionism.

V. MAO TSETUNG’S OPPOSITION TO THE HEGEMONIC ROLE OF THE PROLETARIAT

Mao Tsetung downplayed the role of the proletariat. With his theory of encircling the city from the countryside he advocated the hegemonic role of the peasantry. This thesis, presented as simply a description of a military situation where the main base is in the countryside, is not true as a universal pattern and is used as a cover for definite theories negating the role and hegemony of the proletariat and the role of the cities in the revolution. In the Chinese revolution, although at the beginning the Communist Party of China had undivided leadership of the proletariat and great strength in the cities, by the liberation of China in 1949 the situation was so bad in the cities and in the proletariat that Mao Tsetung himself describes that the Communist Party of China was at a loss to find cadres for the cities. Therefore Mao Tsetung turns to the army for the cadres for the city. Even if this is accepted as an unfortunate peculiarity of the situation in China due to devastating setbacks in the cities, this would not explain or justify Mao Tsetung’s theories since, a) the Communist Party of China does not in any of its literature regard it as at all out of the ordinary that the proletariat was not organized and the cities not organized, and b) it prescribes this pattern to all other countries.

VI. ON THE TRANSITION FROM THE BOURGEOIS DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION TO THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

Mao Tsetung puts forward the view that there is a long period of capitalist economic development needed between the victory of the democratic anti-imperialist revolution and the stage of the socialist revolution. Although this view was later ascribed to Liu Shao-chi, in fact it is the theory of Mao Tsetung who developed it in his works on the question. In this way the transition of the Chinese revolution from liberation in 1949 to the socialist revolution was stopped.

Under this theory a conciliatory attitude was taken to the exploiting classes. The bourgeoisie was allowed to maintain its positions in the state apparatus. And it maintained economic positions as well.

We always took the theory of new democratic revolution to be the basic Marxist theses on national liberation and on the national liberation movement being part of the world proletarian socialist revolution. However the actual theory of Mao Tsetung was that of the great barrier between the democratic and socialist revolutions.

At first, the Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung stated that the new democratic state was not the dictatorship of the proletariat. Later on, the Chinese new democratic state was simply redefined by the Chinese Communist Party as the dictatorship of the proletariat without any fundamental change being made in the state. In the Cultural Revolution the existence of the bourgeois parties was ignored in the documents, but they continued to exist. There was never any discussion in the Chinese literature on this change of definition, which appears to be just that – a change of definition – and not a transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The theory of capitalist economic development under the new democratic state is simply replaced by the theory that the bourgeois parties and the bourgeoisie will exist throughout the entire epoch of socialism and under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

VII. ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE EXPLOITING CLASSES

Mao Tsetung had a conciliatory and favorable stand towards the exploiting classes. This is revealed in many ways. For example, he advocated the “long-term coexistence and mutual supervision” of the bourgeois parties with the communist party and the bourgeoisie with the proletariat. He opposed the abolition of the bourgeoisie as a class and maintained that the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois parties continue to exist in the entire period of socialism.

In “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”, the theory is concocted that the antagonistic contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one. Manual labor and ideological re-education was used to justify a benevolent attitude towards everyone, even the puppet emperor of Manchukuo.

VIII. ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT

Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China have for a long time maintained a chauvinist attitude towards the international communist movement. The Chinese have no interest in the revolutionary and progressive traditions, values and experiences of the peoples of other countries. But they only regard China, Chinese experience and Chinese history as of any value. They did not even bother to investigate the experience of other parties and peoples. To them their own experience was everything. They maintained a xenophobic attitude.

The Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung applied this xenophobic attitude even to the world proletariat and Marxism-Leninism. From the mid-30’s, Mao Tsetung developed a “Chinese” or “Asian Marxism”. In so far as there is any Marxist or Marxist-sounding element or phrase in it, it is taken over and renamed as a special theory and contribution of Mao Tsetung.

Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China were extremely hostile to the correct criticisms of Stalin and the Communist International concerning the deviations of the Communist Party of China from Marxism-Leninism. They spoke disparagingly of Comintern delegates and blamed the Comintern for all their mistakes while failing to give any role to the Communist International with regard to the victories of the Chinese revolution.

Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China took an extremely opportunist and vacillating stand in the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism and Titoite revisionism. They used their participation in the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism to promote their own sectarian and revisionist formulations, such as the existence of the bourgeoisie as a class under socialism and Mao Tsetung Thought as the Marxism-Leninism of the era.

The attitude and activity of the Communist Party of China toward the new Marxist-Leninist parties formed in the struggle against modern revisionism was hostile and disruptive. At first they opposed the formation of the new Marxist-Leninist parties. Later they adopted the tactic of recognizing all new parties whether or not they were Marxist-Leninist in order to cause disruption in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement and oppose the new Marxist-Leninist parties. Still later the Communist Party of China adopted the tactic of recognizing many parties in one country with the exception of the genuine Marxist-Leninist party in order to disrupt the Marxist-Leninist movement in those countries. In the U.S. every opportunist trend and sect – from the neo-revisionists to the straight-out revisionists of the Guardian – was promoted in Hsinhua. At the same time the Chinese slandered the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists of the ACWM(M-L) and the COUSML in the most extravagant terms to all sorts of opportunist visitors to China. Today the Communist Party of China recognizes only the opportunist groups and parties which kowtow to its line such as the Klonskyites in the U.S. and the Jurquets in France.

Thus the Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung have played a disruptive role in the international communist movement, a role marked by chauvinism and xenophobia, an attitude which is entirely hostile to the principles of proletarian internationalism.

IX. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST REVISIONISM

Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China present themselves as great fighters against modern revisionism and promoted themselves internationally on that basis. But in fact they used the prestige gained by the stands that they did take against Khrushchovite revisionism in order to promote their own Chinese revisionism.

Examination of the facts show that Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China played an extremely vacillating role in the struggle against modern revisionism. To begin with, they promoted the theory that revisionism and opportunism are middle forces which can be united with. This is a theoretical justification for conciliation to revisionism and coexistence with revisionism.

And in practice the Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung vacillated to the extreme. They actually supported Tito and and considered him correct in 1948 but did not come out at that time due to the stand of the Soviet Union and due to the constraints placed on them as part of the international communist movement. When Khrushchovite revisionism emerged, Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China were happy about the criticism of Stalin, and they supported the rehabilitation of Tito. They failed to distinguish between Khrushchov and Stalin in their criticism of the Soviet Union. While Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China later appeared to moderate their stand on Stalin, they never really defended his life and work and they slandered Stalin in order to push their own revisionist theses.

The July 29th Letter of the CC of the Party of Labor and the Government of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party and the Government of China gives a history of the vacillation of the Communist Party of China in the struggle against modern revisionism, which will not be gone into here.

It is notable that the Chinese revisionists used their stand against the Khrushchovite revisionists to promote their own special revisionist theories internationally, such as the continued existence of the bourgeoisie under socialism, encircling the cities from the countryside, opportunism as a middle force to be united with, etc.

Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China criticized the Khrushchovites for their alliance with U.S. imperialism, but since 1971 Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China have been developing their own alliance with U.S. imperialiism. They have developed the anti-Leninist theory of “three worlds” to justify this alliance and their own social-imperialist ambitions. The theory of “three worlds” is not just a concoction of Teng Hsiao-ping but finds its ideological roots in Mao Tsetung Thought and was widely promoted in the Chinese press and Party while Mao Tsetung was still alive. This shows that the Chinese struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism did not stem from Marxist-Leninist positions.

Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Against Chinese Revisionism and the “Theory of the Three Worlds”

Excerpt from the work, “Enver Hoxha and the Great Ideological Battle of the Albanian Communists Against Revisionism“:

Against Chinese Revisionism and the “Theory of the Three Worlds”

In the 1970s, when the Chinese Communist Party elaborated the so-called “theory of the three worlds,” Enver Hoxha denounced the anti-Marxist character of that theory, stating that it was a new variant of modern revisionism.

This means that – Enver Hoxha said – the call made by the Chinese is for the “third world” to unite in alliance with the “second world” to fight half of the “first world”?

Such a division of the world confuses the oligarchy with the oppressed and the people, their aspirations and their level of development, which are different and in struggle against that oligarchy.

“In its division of the world into three, the Communist Party of China is advocating class conciliation….

“In the first place, by juggling with the contradictions, the Chinese leaders are endeavoring to justify their stand towards US imperialism, to pave the way for their rapprochement and collaboration with it.

“The Chinese revisionists claim that there is only one contradiction in the world of today, and that this puts the ‘third world,’ the ‘second world’ and half of the ‘first world’ in confrontation with the Soviet Union. Proceeding from this thesis which unites the peoples with a group of imperialists, they advocate that all class contradictions must be set aside and that the only fight must be against Soviet social-imperialism.”9

“The Chinese revisionists continue to hold to their known standpoint of the fight only against Soviet social-imperialism… They relegate US imperialism to second place and stress that the United States of America ‘wants the status quo, that it is in decline’. From this the Chinese revisionists arrive at the conclusion that an alliance with American imperialism against social-imperialism can and should be reached.

“US imperialism is not at all weakened or tamed, as the Chinese leaders claim. On the contrary, it is aggressive, savage and powerful, like Soviet social-imperialism….
The very posing of the question that one imperialism is stronger and the other weaker, one is aggressive and the other tamed, is not Marxist-Leninist. The presentation of the question in this manner is a reflection of a reactionary view which leads the Chinese revisionists into alliance with the United States of America, NATO and the European Common Market, with the King of Spain, the Shah of Iran, Pinochet of Chile and all the fascist dictators.

“We Marxist-Leninists cannot defend the various reactionaries, the clique around Strauss or Schmidt in Germany, the British Conservative or Laborite leaders, simply because they have contradictions with Soviet social-imperialism. Were we to do so and support the preachings of the Chinese to the effect that ‘the capitalist states of Europe should unite in the Common Market’, that ‘United Europe’ should be strengthened so as to be able to face Soviet social-imperialism, that would mean our agreeing to sacrifice the struggle and efforts of the proletariat of these countries to break the chains of enslavement.”10

Enver Hoxha recalled that in the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party had quoted the well-known Marxist-Leninist theses and principles.

In the document entitled “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement,” published by the Central Committee of the CPC in 1963, it stated: “These or those necessary compromises between socialist and imperialist countries do not require that the oppressed peoples and nations also make compromises with imperialism and its stooges.” And further: “Never should anybody, under the pretext of peaceful coexistence, demand that the oppressed peoples and nations renounce the revolutionary struggle”.

Today – stated Enver Hoxha – it is the Chinese leadership that is preaching to the peoples, the revolutionaries, the Marxist-Leninist parties and the proletariat of the whole world the necessity of allying with the imperialist or capitalist countries, of allying with the bourgeoisie and all reactionaries against Soviet social-imperialism.

“Such vacillations and 180° turns have nothing to do with the principled Marxist-Leninist policy. They are characteristic of the pragmatic policy followed by all revisionists.”11

Enver Hoxha denounced the support of the Chinese government to the worst reactionary regimes.

“China defends Mobutu and the clique around him in Zaire. Through its propaganda China is trying to create the impression that it is allegedly defending the people of that country against an invasion of mercenaries engineered by the Soviet Union, but in reality it is defending the reactionary Mobutu regime. The Mobutu clique is an agency in the service of US imperialism. Through its propaganda and ‘pro-Zaire’ stand, China is defending Mobutu’s alliance with US imperialism, with neo-colonialism, and striving to prevent any change in the status quo of that country.”12

“The Chinese ‘third world’ and the Yugoslav ‘non-aligned world’ are almost one and the same thing….

“As Tito’s visit to China and Hua Kuo-feng’s visit to Yugoslavia showed, the Yugoslav revisionists are lavishing praises and cunning flattery on China…. Although they do not renounce their theory of the ‘third world’, the Chinese revisionist leaders, headed by Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-ping, have come out in open support of the Titoite theory of the ‘non-aligned world’. They have demonstrated that they want to work closely with the Yugoslav revisionists along the same lines, on two parallel rails, with the anti-Marxist aim of deceiving the peoples of the ‘third world’….

“During Tito’s visit to Peking, the Chinese leaders half admitted that the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was a Marxist-Leninist party and that genuine socialism was being built in Yugoslavia. When Hua Kuo-feng went to Belgrade, they stated this completely and officially.”13

“History shows that every big capitalist country aims to become a great world power, to overtake and surpass the other great powers, and compete with them for world domination….

“In order to become a superpower, China will have to go through two main phases: first, it must seek credits and investments from US imperialism and the other developed capitalist countries, purchase new technology in order to exploit its local wealth, a great part of which will go as dividends for the creditors. Second, it will invest the surplus extracted at the expense of the Chinese people in states of various continents, just as the US imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists are doing today….

“Nikita Khrushchev and the modern revisionists elaborated the ill-famed theory of Khrushchevite ‘peaceful coexistence’, which advocated ‘social peace’, ‘peaceful competition’, ‘the peaceful road’ of the revolution, ‘a world without arms and without wars’. It was intended to weaken the class struggle….

“The Communist Party of China has been following a policy like that of Khrushchev since the time when Mao Tsetung was alive. This policy, too, calls on both sides, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the peoples and their rulers, to cease the class struggle, to unite against Soviet social-imperialism only, and forget about American imperialism.”14

All these statements of Enver Hoxha have been confirmed by facts, by the complete degeneration of the Chinese Communist Party into a bourgeois party which has restored capitalism.

Sources for this excerpt:

9 Enver Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution, “8 Nentori” Publishing House, Tirana, 1979, English edition, p. 270, 278.
10 Enver Hoxha, ibid., p 282, 291, 296
11 Enver Hoxha, ibid., p. 305.
12 Enver Hoxha, ibid., p. 319.
13 Enver Hoxha, ibid., pp. 325, 332-334.
14 Enver Hoxha, ibid., pp. 368-369, 369-370.

Breaking News from Nepal: “Major Protests Against Disarming of People’s Army”

One of many blockades throughout the country. Photo by Eric Rebillarsi

By Eric Ribellarsi, Winter has Its End

Today, the Kiran faction of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has launched a major protest program against the disarming of the People’s Liberation Army being led by Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Baburam Bhattarai. The Maoist rebels are demanding the immediate reversal of the decision to disarm People’s Liberation Army, a process which has already begun.

So far, this programme has included:

1. A nation-wide one hour blockade of major roads and intersection throughout the country. We have heard this took place at roughly 50 locations in Kathmandu, including Kalanki, the main road used for entrance into Kathmandu.

2. A boycott of major party meetings, including today’s Standing Committee meeting.

3. Torchlight marches throughout Kathmandu and in other cities throughout the entire country, beginning tonight at 6:00 PM.

We will keep you posted as we learn more.

Source

New Maoist Prime Minister of Nepal Surrenders Weapons

UCPN (Maoist) hands over keys of arms containers to AISC monitors at five cantonments

In what would be viewed as a major headway in ongoing peace process, ruling UCPN (Maoist) Thursday started handing over keys of the weapons containers to Army Integration Special Committee (AISC) as per the party’s earlier decision.

Despite facing sharp opposition from the hardliner faction led by party vice chairman Mohan Baidya, the Maoist party started handover of the keys of arms containers to the AISC from the Third Division of PLA cantonment in Shaktikhor of Chitwan and Second Division in Dudhauli of Sindhuli district including Jhyaltungdanda cantonment of Nawalparasi, Dhaban cantonment of Rolpa and Chulachuli cantonment of Ilam district.

Organising a programme in Shaktikhor cantonment premises, Maoist Division Commander Udaya Bahadur Chalaune ‘Deepak’ and Division spokesperson Janak Bista ‘Kuber’ handed over the keys of the arms container to the AISC representatives Thursday evening.

Likewise, the Maoists have also handed over keys of the arms container at the Second Division in Dudhauli of Sindhuli district. According to the source, the keys were handed over as per the command of the PLA headquarter Thursday afternoon.

Dr Bhattarai elected Prime Minister

“Trotskyism has become more relevant than Stalinism to advance the cause of the proletariat” — Dr Bhattarai in “Red Spark,” 2009.

Kathmandu, Aug.28: Vice-chairman of the UCPN (Maoist), Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has been elected the Prime Minister of Nepal. In the elections held today at the meeting of the Legislature-Parliament, Dr. Bhattarai won with 340 votes. His only contender, Nepali Congress Vice-president Ram Chandra Poudel garnered 235 votes. A total of 575 votes were cast today out of the total 594 members present in the Legislature-Parliament.

The United Democratic Madhesi Front’s support played a decisive role in Dr. Bhattarai’s win, based on a four-point agreement reached earlier today between the UCPN (Maoist) and the Front on matters relating to peace, constitution and a coalition government.

Voting in favour of Dr. Bhattarai today were the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum Nepal, the CPN (ML-Socialist), the Rastriya Janamorcha, the CPN (Unified), the CPN (United), the Samajbadi Janata Dal, the Nepal Pariwar Dal, the Nepal Sadbhawana Party (Giri), the Rastriya Janamukti Party and the Nepal Democratic Socialist Manch, besides his party the UCPN (Maoist).

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Extracts from the Letter from the CC of the Party of Labor of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party of China

Stamp with President Mobutu of Zaire meeting Chairman Mao; Mao gave Mobutu $100 million in technical aid

Aid to Albania from China

On July 7, 1978 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People‘s Republic of China handed an official note to the Embassy of the People‘s Socialist Republic of Albania in Peking, whereby it announces the decision of the Chinese Government to stop its economic and military aid and its aid payments to Albania and bring back its economic and military experts working in Albania up till that date. With this perfidious and hostile act towards socialist Albania, you unscrupulously scrapped the agreements officially concluded between the two countries, brutally and arbitrarily violated elementary international rules and norms and extended ideological disagreements to state relations with Albania. Taking this hostile step against socialist Albania, you seek to hit at, and damage, the economy and defence capacity of our country, to sabotage the cause of the revolution and socialism in Albania. At the same time, you gravely undermine the fraternal friendship between the Albanian and Chinese peoples. Wishing ill to a socialist country, such as the People‘s Socialist Republic of Albania, you give satisfaction to the enemies of socialism and the revolution. The responsibility for this reactionary and anti-Albanian act, as well as its consequences, lies completely with the Chinese side.

The Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania and the Albanian Government denounce the brutal cessation of aid and loans to socialist Albania before all world public opinion as a reactionary act from great power positions, an act which is a repetition, in content and form, of the savage and chauvinistic methods of Tito, Khrushchev and Brezhnev which China, also, once condemned.

[...]

To any normal person it is unbelievable and preposterous that Albania, a small country, which is fighting against the imperialist-revisionist encirclement and blockade and which has set to large-scale and all-round work for the rapid economic and cultural development of its country, which is working tirelessly for the strengthening of the defence capacity of its socialist Homeland, should cause and seek cessation of economic co-operation with China, refuse its civil and military loans and aid. Inspired by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism, the Albanian people, their Party and Government have sincerely and consistently fought for the strengthening of friendship, fraternal co-operation and mutual aid between Albania and China.

[...]

Now, as in the past, the Albanian people, their Party and Government stick to their assessments of this aid and its role, among other external factors, in the development of our country. Socialist Albania has never considered its friendship with the peoples of other countries a means of economic profit. At the same time, it has permitted nobody to consider economic aid and co-operation an investment whereby political and ideological views, which run counter to Marxism-Leninism and socialism, are dictated to, and imposed on, our country. The People‘s Socialist Republic of Albania has never sold out its principles, it has never traded on them.

Series on Maoist Revisionism: Mao Endorses the “Three Worlds Theory” & Deng’s U.N. Speech

San fen shi jie lun, or The Theory of the Three-Part World

Mao Zedong first talked about his idea of the “three-part world” in his meeting with Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, on 22 February 1974. He said that there were “three worlds.” The United States and the Soviet Union belonged to the first world. Japan, Europe, Canada, and Australia made up the second world. Asia (minus Japan), Africa, and Latin America belonged to the third world. China was a part of the third world, because politically and economically it was behind the rich nations. There it could only stay with the poorer ones. (40 Years of Chinese Communist Party Rule, p. 375)

In March 1974, when the Political Bureau convened to choose who should lead the delegation to the United Nations, Jiang Qing disagreed with the decision to choose Deng Xiaoping. On 27 March Mao Zedong wrote to Jiang Qing: “Choosing Deng Xiaoping is my idea; it is best that you do not object.” Deng Xiaoping’s speech to the special U.N. session was approved by the Political Bureau and reviewed by Mao Zedong. On 4 April Mao Zedong commented on the speech, “Good. I endorse it.”

Source: A Glossary of Political Terms of the People’s Republic of China, by Kwok-sing Li (Author), Mary Lok (Translator), published by the Chinese University Press (December 30, 1994).

Page 363, “Entry: The Theory of the Three-Part World”

Series on Maoist Revisionism: The Processes of the Capitalist Development of the Chinese Economy

“ALBANIA TODAY» No 2 / 1980

By Tomor Cerova — Docent, Professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tirana

In the economic, as in all the other fields, the Chinese revisionists have been spreading for many years now reformist, opportunistand revisionist views, and implementing the same practices either invented by them or borrowed from the old and new bourgeois and revisionist enemies, which are in open contradiction to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, the experience of the great October Socialist Revolution and the practice of socialist construction.

In order to transform China into a superpower, the heads of Chinese revisionism draw extensively from the pragmatic and profoundly anti-socialist economic policy they have worked out and continue to follow persistently. At present this policy is centred round the “four modernizations” which, in the field of economy, aim to rush the implementation in practice of a series of reforms and reorganizations in order to put the Chinese economy definitively on the rails of the market economy, to open the doors to imperialist capital.

The Chinese revisionists have set their economy into the road of capitalist development more and more with each passing day. Their propaganda now is quite openly advertising bourgeois and revisionist views. They claim that “the concepts of a planned economy and a market economy do not in the least contradict each other”, that “the law of value should be utilized as a regulator, since it stands above all the other economic laws”, that “production should change in step with market changes”, that “unified distribution of the means of production and unified purchase of consumer goods by the state are not good”, etc.. etc. On this basis, the Chinese corporations now have been given the right to make direct contact with foreign monopolies and to keep, according to the Yugoslav model, part of the profits for themselves. Most advantageous conditions have been and are being created for the further inflow of foreign monopoly capital into China, moreover the recent session of China’s National Assembly passed a new law which came immediately into force, under which investments of foreign capital in China are encouraged and the rights of foreign investors protected. This law permits the setting up of the so-called “joint enterprises” on foreign and Chinese capital in various branches of the economy, guarantees foreign investors the right of sharing in the profit according to the amount of invested capital, as well as the right to take this profit outside China; it even accords them the privilege of being exempted from taxation on profits. Still according to the above law, foreign investors will also have the right to appoint directors and vice-directors to the “joint enterprises”, through whom they will be able to dictate both the plans of production and sale, and the recruitment or dismissal of workers, and the level of their wages. Hence, the readiness of the business circles of the capitalist world to express their enthusiasm over this new law of the Chinese revisionists, declaring that it was “extremely liberal” and that “it would be followed by an influx of foreign businessmen eager to invest in this country”.

These anti-Marxist views and practices are neither casual aberrations of the Chinese revisionists nor something detached from the whole policy and ideology they have been following and implementing. Nevertheless, their coming out so openly in this direction the more readily exposes the whole processes of the Chinese economy on the road of capitalism.

In essence, the whole processes and all the metamorphoses the Chinese economy has undergone on its road of capitalist development show that both in theory and practice, the Chinese revisionists have opposed the opportunist thesis of “gradual integration of the capitalist economy into the socialist economy”, to the principle of the absolute need for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat and the socialization of the means of production, they have opposed spontaneous, anarchic development and capitalist competition, disguised under the slogan of “the development of the economy by leaps”, to the law of planned proportional development of the economy, they have opposed the revisionist thesis on the “advantage of credits, loans and advanced technology” taken from the big monopolies of the developed capitalist countries to the socialist principle of self-reliance, etc. In this way, as Comrade Enver Hoxha points out, the Chinese revisionists never, at no historical stage, put their economy on the road of socialist development. The noise they have made and are continuing to make about the “great” results they have allegedly achieved in the field of the construction of socialism is nothing other but part of their cunning propaganda to pose as revolutionaries in order to carry put their treacherous work more easily to the detriment of the vital interests of the proletariat and the working masses of China, as the zealous servants of the capitalist bourgeoisie they are.

“Mao Tsetung thought” has been and remains the ideological basis of capitalist metamorphoses in the Chinese economy.

The economic policy followed by the Chinese revisionists has always been based on “Mao Tsetung thought”, which, as Comrade Enver Hoxha points out, is nothing but “an amalgam of views in which ideas and theses borrowed from Marxists are mingled with other idealist, pragmatic and revisionist philosophical principles” (E. Hoxha, “Imperialism and the Revolution”, p. 388).

An important place in “Mao Tsetung thought” is occupied by revisionist distortions of a series of essential problems of Marxism-Leninism related to the economy. Proceeding from Mao Tsetung’s idea that the development of capitalism is allegedly in the interest of the people, that the contradictions between the working class and the big bourgeoisie in the Chinese conditions are allegedly “contradictions amongst the people” and that allegedly they must be resolved through democratic methods, they have promulgated and continue to promulgate many decrees and laws which do not affect the interests of the big bourgeoisie, the kulaks and foreign monopolies, which made and continue to make them many concessions to the detriment of the interests of the working masses.

A considerably long time passed before the land reform was implemented, a considerable number of private enterprises were not nationalized and those nationalizations that were made had a capitalist character, because they were carried out against compensation, with their owners being paid the full value of the property. In the field of organization and management of production, the distribution of material blessings, investments, utilization of accumulated funds, development of internal and foreign trade, according to “Mao Tsetung thought”, anti-Marxist forms and ways which defend the interests of the bourgeoisie, which ensure the development of the economy on the capitalist road, were used and are still used. At the same time, not unlike the revisionists of other countries and times, the Chinese revisionists have tried to coat their treacherous actions with revolutionary phrases and to present them as creative implementation of Marxism-Leninism in the conditions of China.

When Mao Tsetung had not yet come to the head of the Communist Party of China, he was the author of many revisionist formulations, theses and slogans which advocated the conciliation of the interests of the working class and labouring peasantry, on the other hand, with the interests of the big bourgeoisie landowners and kulaks, on the other. He instructed that “As far as relations of work are concerned this two-sided policy is aimed, on the one hand, to help, possibilities allowing, improve the living of workers and, on the other hand, not to impede the development of the capitalist economy within reasonable limits. In the agrarian field, this two-sided policy, on the one hand, lays down the condition that the landowner should reduce the rent and the interest on loans and, on the other, exacts the payment by peasant of this reduced rent and interest” (Mao Tsetung, Selected Works, vol. 4, p. 13, Alb. ed.). Or in 1934 he pointed out: “Not only we do not hinder the private economic activity, but on the contrary we encourage and stimulate it, if the owners of private enterprises do not violate the laws promulgated by the government, because the development of the private economy now is necessary, it is in the interests of the state and the people” (Mao Tsetung, Selected Works, vol. 1, p, 180, Alb. ed.). And, raising this question to principle, he stressed that “The labour legislation of the People’s Republic defends the interests of the workers, but it is not directed against the enrichment of the national bourgeoisie… for this development is not in the interest of imperialism, but in the interest of the Chinese people” (Mao Tsetung, Selected works, vol. 1, p. 209, Alb. ed.).

To accept that the development of the capitalist economy furthers the interests of the people means to renounce the revolutionary road, to become servant and defender of the big bourgeoisie which works for the perpetuation of the capitalist exploitation of the working masses.

After the proclamation of the PR of China, in 1949, the Chinese revisionists with Mao Tsetung at the head, carried on their anti-Marxist course both in theory and in practice. But the internal and external conditions which existed at that time forced them to honour some of the promises they had made to the working masses during the civil war, though even these did not go beyond the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. These measures were received with joy by the working people in China and also hailed by the revolutionary forces of the world. But, as their later activity showed, the Chinese revisionists did not intend to deepen them further and to set the. Chinese economy on the road of socialist development. After Stalin’s death and the advent of Khrushchevite revisionism to power in particular, Mao Tsetung and his collaborators not only supported the revisionist course in the Soviet Union and the other countries, but at the same time came out openly with their anti-Marxist theses on the dying out of the class struggle, the integration of capitalism into socialism, the definition of state capitalism as a form of socialist construction, etc. These anti-Marxist theses which were included in “Mao Tsetung thought” underlie practical actions in the field of the economy. It is obvious from this that the Chinese economy has developed and continues to develop on the capitalist road, because it is known that without the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party, without establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, without waging the class struggle, without affecting the economic interests of the big bourgeoisie, socialist relations of production cannot be established and developed.

While acting as servants of the Chinese and international big bourgeoisie, the Chinese revisionists never cease in make a big noise about their building socialism in the “conditions” and with the “peculiarities” of China. They distort the teachings of Marxism-Leninism in the most despicable manner. Thus, for example, in their efforts to present state capitalism or state-private capitalism as a socialist form of the economy, they try to justify it with the policy of NEP which was implemented as a temporary withdrawal in the Soviet Union, but they pass in silence the extremely short period of this withdrawal and the lessons that were drawn from it, fail to mention the whole experience of the October Socialist Revolution in the direction of the socialization of the means of production without compensation, of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the exploiting classes, the planned development of the economy according to the directives laid down by a Marxist-Leninist party.

It is known that Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin gave the proletariat and the oppressed masses scientific socialism, discovered the general laws of the construction of socialism, such as the carrying out of the revolution through violence, the establishment and ceaseless strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialization of the means of production, the enhancement of the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist party, etc. They have argued that the class struggle and the proletarian revolution are not aims in themselves, but through them the emancipation of the oppressed classes is realized, conditions for their general development and the raising of their standard of living and general well-being are created. However, contrary to these teachings, the Chinese revisionists have gone so far as to declare that Marx’s theory does not define the ways of the construction of socialism and communism and that allegedly the Chinese have discovered them. The newspaper “Guanmin Zhibao” of January 29, 1959 states that Marx, Engels and Lenin “have not indicated the forms of transition”, that “we found the best organizational form of the construction of socialism and the gradual transition to communism”.

The sophisms and the eclectic, pragmatic formulations, the anti-socialist ideological platform, as well as the pro-bourgeois, pro-imperialist stands of the Chinese revisionists have always been at the basis of all their actions in the field of the economy, too. This has caused China serious damage and created a gloomy outlook for it.

Some of the main roads of capitalist development of the Chinese industry and agriculture

The revisionist course of the Chinese leadership in the economy is materialized in the long-standing utilization of various capitalist ways and forms. Thus, with the property confiscated from the main war criminals and the nationalized enterprises that belonged to the monopolies of the fascist coalition, as well as the capital which belonged to the bureaucratic apparatuses, as early as 1949, the state sector of the economy was set up. However, this sector never assumed socialist features, because, while the means of production of this sector were proclaimed state property, distribution of goods was still left in the hands of capitalists who, through trade commissions, handled the sale of goods produced in the state sector, and in return for this enjoyed the right of appropriating the profit that was created through the differential between wholesale and retail prices. For example, in 1957 the Tiamen State Coal Enterprise sold its production through 1,400 private units, which, under the contracts, took 15 per cent of the income from the sale; the Fats and Oil Enterprise carried out its sales through 1,200 private units, which had the right to share 14-16 per cent of the income, etc. The old and new capitalist elements, being the true lords in the field of distribution of goods of the state sector, not only met their own needs and those of private enterprises, but, through their market transactions, also participated directly in the exploitation of the working class engaged in the state sector. In this way, instead of developing as a socialist sector of the economy, right from the first years of its existence, the state sector of production developed as a capitalist sector.

About the other capitalist enterprises, the Chinese revisionists declared that, after studying the situation, they would take measures to transform them into socialist property. But this remained a promise, because the measures that were taken later did not affect in the least the capitalist mode of production and distribution. It is a fact that from 1949 to 1951 commissions for the recording of the assets of capitalists, landlords and kulaks were set up and operated throughout China. State and capitalist representatives participated in these commissions. This being the first concession. The task of these commissions was to assess the assets, to study the situation of financial transactions, to record the property of capitalist enterprises and the capital invested by every capitalist in shareholders’ companies. This measure was intended to create the illusion among the Chinese working people that the new rulers were preparing for revolutionary measures, that they would nationalize the means of production in the city and the countryside. But in fact nothing of the sort happened. Though the Chinese leadership declared that private capital was estimated at 3 billion and 800 million yuan, however the state, with due regard for the “patriotic” character of the Chinese big bourgeoisie and with a desire to strengthen “unity” would not nationalize the assets immediately or within 20 years, paying them an annual 5 per cent of the value of their capital (From the book, “Socialist Transformations of Capitalist Industry and Commerce in China”, Peking, 1962, p. 55). Both the Chinese big bourgeoisie and the international big bourgeoisie rejoiced over this stand.

To achieve the so-called “integration of the capitalist economy into socialism” the Chinese revisionists utilize some forms which, with their content, ensure the road of capitalist development of the economy. Some enterprises of heavy industry, of rail and sea transport were bought over by the state with immediate compensation, and their owners were kept as directors and given fat salaries. The income accruing from the sale of these enterprises were deposited by the capitalists in the National Bank of China, which began immediately to pay them an interest rate equal to the average profit when the enterprises were their property. In this manner, the promise about the nationalization of the means of production was partially, though only formally and for demagogic reason, honoured, but the relations of exploitation were maintained, except that now the exploitation of the working masses by the bourgeoisie was achieved through finance capital.

The Chinese revisionists went into partnership with another section of capitalists by making investments from state funds in the capitalist enterprises, or by setting up new enterprises with joint funds of the state and the capitalists, In both categories of enterprises, the capitalists were recognized the right of sharing in the profits with the state to the extent of capital invested, of remaining in the more important leading posts and receiving wages from two to five times higher than those of high state functionaries for equal work. From this practice, until 1970 the Chinese big bourgeoisie made a profit of 6 billion 150 million yuan (2 billion 350 million yuan more than its estimated capital in the first years after liberation), of which 2 billion 800 million yuan from the sharing of profits and the rest from bonuses, from the 5 per cent interest rate and high salaries. This process continues up to this day. As the revisionist chiefs themselves have admitted, this practice includes also the Chinese capitalists who have assumed American citizenship, most of whom have emigrated for the crimes they have committed against the Chinese people and their close collaboration with the Chiang Kai-shek regime (From the newspaper “Wenhuibau”, May 1968).

Many other existing capitalist enterprises were left free to carry out their activity, while a number of capitalist enterprises were set up. In 1952, as against 1949, their number in the sector of industry grew 1.4 per cent and in trade – 7 per cent.

These data prove the fact that the capitalist sector, both in industry and trade, not only was not limited, but on the contrary, the conditions were created for it to develop further at rapid rates. This also for the fact that taxation on income was low and the private sector was assisted by the state through orders, raw materials, transport means and bank credits.

Under the slogan on the “valuable private initiative”, the Chinese revisionists encouraged the merchants and other elements bent on enrichment to set up enterprises for the production of broad consumer goods, spare parts and tools. Officially, these enterprises were called artisans’ collectives. They purchased the means of work from private owners with cash from the financial resources created through the contribution of their participants. The state exercised no control on them. Production assortments, working regime, prices, markets of sale, sources of raw materials and wages were laid down by the leading groups of these collectives. The incomes from the sale of goods were mostly appropriated by the new owners, for they were shared not only according to the work done, but also according to the contributions of each in the common fund, and it was but natural for the capitalist to come first. The Chinese publicised the setting up of these capitalist enterprises as an implementation of the principle of self-reliance and a means for reducing unemployment, while in reality they were used to assist the capitalist elements ruined by competition, as well as to increase the income of the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie from taxation on licences.

When the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed, there was one commercial bank with 50,000 employees, as well as 900 private banks. State control was established on capital as the National Bank, but the interests of its shareholders were not affected, whereas the other banks lost the right of exporting capital abroad, but were left free to such extent as they could even grant credits to capitalist elements. After 9 years the national bank “absorbed” the activity of private banks, but did not touch the interests of its shareholders. It recognized them the right of compensation with a 5 per cent interest rate as well as payment of bank interest. It continued to accord credits to private enterprises and to protect them against bankruptcy (Chen Lin and Nan Lei “Monetary Circulation in the PR of China”, 1959).

Both when they came to power and later the Chinese revisionists did not carry out the nationalization of the enterprises and capital belonging to the monopolies and various companies of the United States of America, Britain, France and other capitalist countries which carried on their activity in China. They justified this with their alleged desire to preserve “friendship” with the former countries of the anti-fascist coalition. This stand proves that the Chinese revisionists had been working for a long time to maintain good relations with the big imperialist monopolies and the powerful imperialist states. On the other hand, they wanted to use these enterprises as examples of the capitalist mode of production and as a basis of building their links with the big capitalist monopolies.

The setting up of new enterprises jointly-owned by the state and the capitalists, the participation of the state in the existing capitalist enterprises with investments, and the presentation of these enterprises as a socialist sector, was a flagrant distortion of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, which led to the consolidation of private ownership in various forms. Thus, at present, three forms of capitalist ownership prevail in industry, trade and the other branches of the Chinese economy, namely state capitalist ownership resulting from the nationalized property of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie that was overthrown in 1949, and the confiscated property of the great war criminals and the monopolies of the countries of the fascist coalition; joint state and private capitalist ownership, comprising all the private enterprises in which the state makes investments, the new enterprises created with joint investments by the state and the capitalists, or through the merger of groups of state capitalist enterprises with private capitalist enterprises: alongside or them there also exists direct private ownership.

Both state capitalist ownership and joint state and private capitalist ownership have nothing in common with socialist ownership, because private ownership is preserved in various ways, in production and circulation, individual appropriation of the surplus value and exploitation of the workers by the bourgeoisie still exist there. This is proved by the fact that only in the period 1949-1970 the Chinese bourgeoisie has made a profit of 2,800 million yuan. There have been cases of such capitalist as Chun Yi-cheng, who in 1957 owned a capital of 18 million yuan and took a monthly profit equal to the total of the wages of 1,500 Chinese workers. (This year, this came capitalist headed the delegation of the Chinese industrialists to the GFR.) On a whole, average profit has steadily increased. Thus, in the period 1951-1955 it had grown to 20-30 per cent, from 13.7 per cent, which was the ceiling for the period before 1949 (Fram the bank “Modem History of Chinese Industry”, vol. 1. 1957).

The Chinese revisionist leadership has always tried to protect the national bourgeoisie and ensure the capitalist development of the economy. This has been apparent both in the field of propaganda and legislation. This has led to the actual expansion of private ownership, which otherwise should have been limited or altogether eliminated. Thus, in 1955 private property in Shanghai was estimated at 2 billion yuan as against 1,700 million yuan in 1950 (Wu Xian-the, “Questions of the Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Trade in the PR of China”, 1960).

Not only have the old Chinese capitalists made economic profits, but through the political rights they enjoy, they have also been allowed to occupy important posts in the economy and the legislative and state power organs. Thus, old capitalist elements occupied 50 per cent of the seats of the manager’s board of a dairy factory in the suburbs of Peking. In state capitalist enterprises and private enterprises prices are fixed by the capitalist, with the state representatives and the workers examining them only formally and returning them to the capitalist for approval. The capitalist has the right to share in the profits to an amount not less than 10 per cent and not more than 30 per cent. This formal restriction does not in the least worry the Chinese capitalists, because the margin of profit is very advantageous to them.

The Chinese revisionists have created a number of other privileges and facilities for the bourgeoisie as a class. They have guaranteed it the right to inherit means of production, bank deposits, to donate or transfer legacies, have given their heirs or any other people of their choice the right of drawing 5.5 per cent from the capital, and so on. This has caused that the number of capitalists in China has steadily increased with the passing years.

In the question or the land, too, the Chinese revisionists have followed the capitalist road of development. The land reform was implemented in the context of the measures taken during the bourgeois-democratic revolution. However, apart from the inherent weaknesses of the law on land reform a number of instructions were also issued with the aim of defending the interests of landowners and kulaks, In this manner, land reform was carried out contrary to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. The law on land reform openly defended capitalist property in the countryside. Article 6 of the law on land reform has it that …“all the land which belongs to the rich peasants and which is cultivated by them or through hired labour, as well as any other property of the rich peasants is protected by the law and inviolable. This is the only way to defend the economy of rich peasants… all the not-too-large plots of land which the rich peasants have given out on rent, are protected and inviolable.”

Just as in industry, in agriculture, too, the land was estimated at a guaranteed price of 240 yuan for one mu (1/5 hectare). Encouraged by the promise that the plots of land purchased from the landowners and kulaks would remain property of the buyer, thousands of middle and poor peasants rushed to buy the most fertile plots from the landowners and became heavily indebted, This caused land prices to go up to nearly 5,000 yuan per mu. As for the plots of land which were not sold but distributed to the peasants under the law on land reform, the landowners and kulaks were entitled to an annual 5 per cent of compensation for the total value of the plot. In this manner, land reform was implemented through compensation, though in a disguised and indirect manner, not by the peasants, but by the state, which made up for this expenditure through a system of heavy taxation on land, income, etc.

Likewise, up till 1952 purchase and sale of land was permitted, and up till 1958 income in agricultural collectives was distributed according both to the amount of work done and the acreage of land and other agricultural tools put in the collectivized farm by each or its members. Forms of capitalist development are apparent in Chinese agriculture even after the setting up of people’s communes. Proceeding further on this road, under the slogan of encouraging private initiative, the Chinese revisionists in power allow incentives to be paid for piece-work; the member of the commune may engage in production and trade activities on his own after putting in a given number of work-days in the commune, and, moreover, in order to create the necessary conditions for him to do this, the personal plot has been increased.

Chinese revisionist propaganda has made shameless efforts to present the Chinese bourgeoisie as allegedly not having made its wealth through the exploitation of others but through its own frugality, and having allegedly accepted the road of the construction of socialism after the educative work which has been done with it. “Under crackling fireworks, with drums, songs and dance,” the Chinese propaganda boasted in 1951, “the Chinese bourgeoisie is setting out on the broad road of socialism.” “We have been generous towards bourgeois right elements,” Chou En-lai emphasized, “and helped those who wanted to be re-educated. We did not divest them of their civil rights, guaranteed their jobs and their standard of living.” Chou Fin-lai, “Report on the Activity of the Government at the First Sitting of the Second Legislature”, Peking, 1959, p. 51). In 1964, one of the revisionist chiefs of the time admitted: “The Chinese bourgeoisie goes with the Party, makes the revolution, builds socialism. This is the most wonderful bourgeoisie of the world” (!).

The Chinese revisionists have maintained close contact with the Chinese capitalists abroad. Implementing in practice Mao Tsetung’s assumption of the “patriotic spirit” of the big bourgeoisie, the government repeatedly called on the Chinese capitalists in different countries of the world to transfer part of their capital to Chinese state banks, guaranteeing them a high interest rate and refunding of capital whenever they wanted. And, in this way, under the guise of Chinese origin, not only the capital of Chinese capitalist emigrants, but also the capital of the monopolies of the developed capitalist countries poured into China. This capital grew from year to year till, in the end, it took the form of open credits and loans.

In order to strengthen their links with capitalist emigrants and the monopolies of capitalist countries, with the direct interest of the Chinese revisionist leaders, several capitalist companies have long before been created in Hong Kong, like the “Overseas Chinese Corporation” and others. These companies deal with the sale of shares to Chinese emigrants and other foreigners; with the accumulation of money and with capitalist investment and its administration in mainland China. Income from these transactions is used to set up several enterprises in China. Besides, a series of privileges have been created for Chinese capitalist emigrants and their relatives and parents in China. They are given land to make investments in and to exploit for a term of 20-50 years, are given an 8 per cent interest rate on capital invested in China, are permitted to build gaudy private villas, clubs and special schools for their children, etc. In this way, since 1964 the inflow of hard currency from capitalist emigrants is not less than 200 million dollars a year (from data of the review “South China Morning Post”, October 29, 1966), Whereas from open capitalist trade and bank activities in Hong Kong the Chinese revisionists have secured a net profit of about 27 billion dollars in 1967 through their banks, trade enterprises, cinemas and theatres, film studios and the sale of water, without mentioning profits from drug traffic (“Neue Züricher Zeitung”, July 3, 1967).

The collaboration of the Chinese revisionists with capitalist emigrants, as well as the further strengthening of these links, is making itself felt not only in the economic field, but also in the political, ideological, social and cultural fields.

Contrary to the teachings of the classics of Marxism-Leninism on the necessity for the planned and centralized development of economic activities, although as early as 1953 they have formally been drafting their 5-year-plans, the Chinese revisionists have employed various forms and means to encourage competition, anarchy and market speculations. As early as 1956 Mao Tsetung himself advanced the slogan: “We must pull down the limits of the plan”. To the law on the planned and proportionate development of the socialist economy they have always opposed their so-called method of development of the economy through leaps. V.I. Lenin, combating the views of Trotsky on development through leaps, has stressed that the leap is a priority, and all priority unforeseen under the plans of development of the economy is nothing other than spontaneity, a phenomenon characteristic of the capitalist economy.

Capitalist relations of production not only make it impossible for the Chinese economy to develop according to plan, but also prevent its centralized management. In 1970 about 80 per cent of the industrial enterprises which belonged to the state sector of the economy, and many state-private enterprises were transferred to local organs. This decentralization encouraged the directors of enterprises to divert production, investments, the structure of cost and prices from their final destination. In these conditions spontaneity, hankering after profits and competition flourished, self-administrative tendencies also developed. The chief of the Chinese revisionists, Hua Kuo-feng, expressed his open admiration for the capitalist system of “self-administration” during his visit in Yugoslavia last year. And now the capitalist “self-administrative” form is more and more extensively being implemented in China. In the name of “The Four Modernizations”, they have set up “production councils”, “workers committees”, and other such organisms which will operate like those of the “self-administrative” enterprises in Yugoslavia.

Decentralization became the cause for the creation of scores of thousands of small capitalist enterprises, which have become a source for swelling the bourgeois class with new elements, for further eliminating check-up on production and distributions. Speculations and other illegal activities have assumed broad extension, and cases of abuse and theft of primary materials, spare parts, etc. have increased.

Availing itself of the facilities created for it by the state, especially after the advent to power of Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-ping, the bourgeoisie has tried to find new ways of profiteering, among which that of dodging taxes on goods production. In this context, secret companies have been created, among which a ship-yard for 500 ton ships, and the “cartel of 11 factories” operating in China’s major cities and controlling, on a cooperation basis, the production and wholesale of goods, etc. This group of the bourgeoisie declared: “In broad daylight we build socialism, in the dark of night we build capitalism”. But in fact, capitalism in China is being built both in broad daylight and in the dark of night, and this is the result of the preservation of the capitalist forms of the economy, of the ever greater degeneration of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, of the negation of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Chinese revisionist chiefs have recently adopted a number of measures for going further and deeper down the road of capitalist development, such as the restoration of all the rights and privileges of the capitalists, who will have all their capital in money, gold, or silver, as well as other assets, deposited in banks or confiscated during the cultural revolution, returned. Similarly, capitalist administrators have had their salaries and bonuses increases, so that they “could improve their living conditions”. By special decision of the State Council, in December 1978, remunerations for “inventions and technical modernisations” were approved. These remunerations attain 2,000 to 10,000 yuan per month, at a time when the average pay of the worker is 30-40 yuan a month. At the same time China has promised to give the American capitalists a compensation of about 200 million dollars for the assets which they once had in China.

Connections of the Chinese economy with capital of the big capitalist monopolies

In the field of economic relations with abroad, the Chinese revisionists have followed and continue to follow a reactionary policy which is fraught with dangerous consequences for the economy and the destinies of the Chinese people. In order to extricate themselves from their difficult economic situation, in order to step up the armaments race, which absorbs about 40 per cent of their state budget, they have come out quite openly in search of loans and credits from the monopolies and the developed capitalist countries. The facts about the connections which are being established and the agreements which are being entered into, are numerous. In comparison with the highest level of the period before 1949, foreign investments in China have increased five-fold with forecasts saying that they will increase much more in the future. The Chinese revisionists are cooperating closely with British Steel for the production of special steels, with Rolls-Royce for the construction of SHS-146 aircraft, the French company Pramatome, the West-German company KWU, and the American General Electric for the construction in China of four nuclear stations with a capacity of 600 MW each (according to the French review “Problèmes economiques”, No. 1617, April 1979).

The Chinese revisionists have great hopes in the Sino-Japanese relations. Up till today they have signed long-term agreements, extending up to the year 1990, about collaboration in the field of coal, copper, titanium, and wolfram and tin extraction, the development of non-ferrous metallurgy, etc. Japan has undertaken that till 1982 it will supply China with machinery and equipment estimated at 10 billion dollars and that it will buy from China oil and coat to the same value (from the Japanese review “Chensi Electronics”, No. 11, year 1978). China’s trade balance is more in favour of Japan, with the export of Japan to China being larger than the export of China to Japan. Thus China has begun to incur the first debts.

The Chinese economy is ever more every day into the claws of the big American monopolies. The Ministry of Trade of the USA has declared that trade exchanges between the USA and China for the year 1978 increased to 900 million dollars. Apart from this, the doors of China have been opened to large-scale American investments. Thus, Kayser Engineers are receiving numerous orders for the equipment to the iron mine of Nan Fein, east of Peking; Hotels Corporation has signed an agreement about the investment of 500 million dollars for hotel building in China; the General Motors Corporation and Ford Motor Company are investing for the construction of a powerful car industry in Simhum region, in the vicinity of Hong Kong.

The big capitalist monopolies know well the economic and political situation in China, its reserves of primary materials, the difficulties which the Chinese economy is passing through, etc. The information which they get from foreign intelligence services, especially the CIA, and which is also published from time to time in the press of the capitalist countries, serve the Western and the Japanese monopolies to enter those agreements in which they see greater advantages for themselves. The Chinese revisionists are participating in the intrigues of the imperialist powers to seize oil markets, to monopolize the technology of oil prospecting and processing and to control oil prices. Ii is known that China accounts for nearly 3 per cent of world oil production. Nevertheless, even with this little in its possession it tries to disorientate the oil market, by announcing the discovery of non-existent sources, and selling its oil at prices lower than those fixed by the OPEC. Hence, the oil monopolies of the big capitalist countries, which keep a sharp eye on the oil of the Middle East and the African continent, are ready to supply China with geophysical apparatuses, floating rigs for off-shore prospecting, to send their specialists to assess China’s oil reserves with a view to exploiting them in the future (from the review “Le Courier des pays de l’Est”, No. 197, year 1976).

The Chinese revisionists with Hua Kuo-feng, Teng Hsiao-ping and others at the head, are trying to present their collaboration with the big monopolies and the developed capitalist countries, the loans awarded and the investments made by foreign capitalists as a new and “profitable” road they have discovered for the construction of socialism. But they cannot conceal the fact that even before there were opportunists, who preached this sort of collaboration with the monopolies. And all this, as history has proved, is nothing other than imperialist occupation, carried out not with arms, but with credits and loans. “The capitalist,” Comrade Enver Hoxha points out, “does not give anyone aid without first considering his own economic, political and ideological interests”. Therefore, “the American, West-German, Japanese and other credits and investments in China cannot fail to affect its independence and sovereignty to one degree or another” (E. Hoxha, “Imperialism and the Revolution”, pp, 349-350, Engl. ed.).

The capitalist road which the Chinese revisionists are following in all fields, and especially in the economic field, has caused serious damage to the development of the forces of production in China. With a population which makes up 22 per cent of world population, in 30 years of rule of the Chinese revisionists, China has managed to produce only about 1.4 per cent of world electric power, 5 per cent of pig-iron, 3.6 per cent of steel. For years on end, Chinese agriculture has not been able to meet the needs of the country for bread grain, and only during the period 1970-1978 China had to import 33 million tons of grain, paying over 4 billion dollars for it.

The “Four Modernizations”, which the Chinese revisionists have proclaimed they will realize with the aid of the big capitalist monopolies, are putting the Chinese economy ever more into the grip of economic crises of the capitalist and revisionist world, which is making itself felt in rising unemployment, increasing parasitism of the society, ever more rapid rate of labour export, etc. The reorganizations which are being made in the Chinese economy are intended b give a further impulse to the capitalist relations of production.

The views propagated by the Chinese revisionists and their capitalist practices in all fields and, especially, in the economic field, have been and remain anti-Marxist and reactionary. They show that the Chinese revisionists have never been led by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, but by “Mao Tsetung thought”, which is in the service of the old and new Chinese bourgeoisie. The Party of Labour of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha as well as the genuine Marxist-Leninists of the world, have continuously exposed the anti-Marxist, counter-revolutionary and reactionary essence of this ideology and the practices of the Chinese revisionists based on “Mao Tsetung thought”.

“Communist” China: “China respects the choice of the Libyan people”

China said today it respects the decision of the Libyan people and that it expects the situation to stabilize as soon as possible after the rebel troops took the center of Tripoli and said they had ended the regime of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi after four decades of dictatorship.

“China respects the choice of the Libyan people and hopes that the situation is stabilized as soon as possible so that people can return to normal,” said Jiang Yu, spokesman of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement.

Beijing, close to Gaddafi’s regime for its need for oil and other natural resources in recent months received both government representatives and Libyan rebel opposition, and abstained from voting on the UN resolution to create a no-fly zone over the African country.

“China is willing to join the international community, in order to play an active role in future reconstruction” of Libya, Jiang concluded in the statement, published today in the ministerial website.

Analysts have justified the ambivalence of China due to Beijing’s major investments in the North African country’s natural resources, valued at 18,000 million dollars, and the 35,000 Chinese citizens working before being evacuated to the civil conflict started in February.

The words of the spokeswoman come a week after the Libyan rebels asked the Asian giant for help in rebuilding their country and commitment to respect the agreement that Gaddafi had closed with Beijing, reported official news agency Xinhua.

According to financial newspaper the “Securities Daily” published today, China’s state’s largest oil company, CNPC, has been forced to cancel six exploration projects in Libya and Niger in the amount of $187 million due to civil unrest in those countries.

Both CNPC as Sinopec and CNOOC state also have investments in these African countries.

West must “clear up its mess” in Libya, says China

BEIJING: China’s state media said Tuesday the West has a responsibility to “clear up its mess” in Libya after rebels overran the capital Tripoli and declared the Gaddafi era over.

The Global Times said the future of the North African country lay in the hands of the Western countries that have backed a NATO campaign against veteran strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

“Overthrowing Gaddafi is entertainment for the media, but talk of rebuilding is not,” the conservative English-language daily said in an editorial.

Maoists to Liquidate PLA into Army

P.B. Pokhrel

Kathmandu, Nepal – UCPN Maoist’s recent decision to accept the integration modality proposed by the Nepal Army has raises a hope that the long being controversies over the People Liberation Army (PLA), former Maoist combatants, would come into end leading the country towards peace and constitution. Maoist’s recent decision can be termed as a good step.

But, this decision needs to cover miles more to successfully implement. The first and foremost challenge to implement the decision is making the unanimous from the Maoist party itself as hardliner faction of the party has been objecting the decision and pressing the established faction for not to implement the decision. Hardliner faction of the Maoist has a claim that accepting the army’s integration proposal is tantamount to surrender. Another challenge to implement the decision is taking into confidence to other political parties and stakeholders.

Prachanda, Follower of Modern Revisionism

A Maoist analysis of Nepali revisionism led by Prachanda.
– E.S.

At the occasion of the 10th birthday of People’s War initiation in Nepal, Prachanda granted an interview to the reactionary newspaper “The Hindu”, which published it on February 10.

Prachanda explains there at length the new positions of the CP of Nepal (Maoist), which go against Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as Prachanda himself recognizes : “ We feel we have contributed to the ideological development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.”

This “development” consists of the conceptions that the guidance by the sole Communist Party must be abolished and that Socialism must yield the place to Democracy. Let’s study them.

***

1. According to Prachanda, the Communist Party does not have to lead and should compete with the other political parties.

“We want to analyse the experience of revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century on a new basis.

Three years ago we took a decision in which we said how are we going to develop democracy is the key question in the 21st century. This meant the negative and positive lessons of the 20th century have to be synthesised in order for us to move ahead.

And three years ago we decided we must go in for political competition. Without political competition, a mechanical or metaphysical attitude will be there. So this time, what we decided is not so new.

In August, we took serious decisions on how practically to build unity with the parliamentary political parties. We don’t believe that the people’s war we initiated was against, or mainly against, multiparty democracy. It was mainly against feudal autocracy, against the feudal structure.”

This thesis opposes the communist conception. The communist ideology wants to abolish the State and its approach is scientific, there is no time for “competition”.

On the other hand, Prachanda’s thesis links with Thorez’s one in his revisionist interpretation of People’s Democracies in Eastern Europe:

“There was no abrupt nor brutal transition to another system. There is a phenomenon which we have to study and think about: the working class power, the power exerted in the name of the working class and of the people, by a Communist Party which would not be alone, but which could unite other parties; that also appeared in our Xe Congress theses.

Like in Poland, like in Yugoslavia, this power is exerted as the parliamentary forms remain.”

***

2. Acoording to Prachanda, the principle of “communist direction” is wrong.

“That when we go for state power and are in power, then we will not do what Stalin or Mao did. Lenin did not have time to deal with issues of power. Although Stalin was a revolutionary, his approach, was not as scientific as it should have been, it was a little metaphysical, and then problems came.

We also evaluated Mao in the plenum. If you look at his leadership from 1935 to 1976 – from when he was young to when he was old and even speaking was difficult – must he remain Chairman and handle everything? What is this?”

Prachanda explicitly blames Mao for having been a potentate. He denies that Lenin wrote great works about the Soviet power and denies any role to Stalin in the Socialism edification in the USSR. In an interview granted to the review Kantipur Publications on February 7, he repeats the same charge:

« The people started to become monotonous in the 20th century communist movement, especially after the demise of Lenin”.

All that is but complete revisionism, and complete submission to the bourgeoisie propaganda, as well as to the revisionist myth of a so-called « personality worship” among Communists.

***

3. According to Prachanda, the Communists in Nepal should not aim at the Democratic Revolution any longer, but only at « Democracy ».

“Earlier, we were saying people’s democratic republic but this does not mean we have dropped that goal either. It’s just that according to today’s power balance, seeing the whole situation and the expectation of the masses, and that there [should] not be bloodshed, we also responsibly believe that to get there too we will do so through peaceful means.”

In his interview to Kantipur Publications on February 7, he expresses the impossibility of revolution in one country:

“Since we belong to a communist party, our maximum goals are socialism and communism. Those are the maximum goals of all those accepting Marxism, Leninism and Maoism as philosophical and ideological assumptions. Given the international power balance and the overall economic, political and social realities of the country, we can’t attain those goals at the moment.

We must accept this ground reality. We have mentioned democratic republic and constituent assembly, with the understanding that we should be flexible given the balance in the class struggle and international situation. This is a policy, not tactics. This is a necessary process for the bourgeoisie and the national capitalists alike, let alone the middle-class.“

This conception is basically wrong; it is completely similar to the trotskyist thesis of the impossibility to carry out revolution in one country.

It is a capitulation, which opposes the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line, for which: « If the obstacle is not completely swept away, the war will have to continue till the aim is fully accomplished…. It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” (Mao Zedong)

Here again, Prachanda joins Thorez’s theses: “Democracy’s progress throughout the world, in spite of rare exceptions which confirm the rule, makes it possible to consider other ways to walk towards socialism than those followed by the Russian Communists”.

***

4. According to Prachanda, the sole establishement of “Democracy” is enough to be “revolutionary”.

“In the overall sense we feel that in Nepal there is going to be a great leap forward in the socio-economic condition because we are going to lead the country to a democratic republican structure.”

Maurice Thorez also said that “democracy, an ongoing realisation, will be completed within socialism.”

Prachanda’s thesis denies that, when the power is seized in all the country, the Democratic Revolution turns into a Socialist Revolution; “The party’s purpose is the establishment of the political power of the proletariat, even under New Democracy where it is the leading class, and principally the establishment, strengthening and development of the dictatorship of the proletariat so as, through cultural revolutions, to win the ultimate goal, communism. This is why the proletariat must lead in everything and in an all-around way.” (Gonzalo)

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5. According to Prachanda, the Red Army does not prefigure the new State and must dissolve into a « democratic army ».

“In the multiparty democracy which comes – interim government, constitutional assembly and democratic republic – we are ready to have peaceful competition with you all. Of course, people still have a doubt about us because we have an army.

And they ask whether after the constitutional assembly we will abandon our arms. This is a question. We have said we are ready to reorganise our army and we are ready to make a new Nepal army also. So this is not a tactical question.”

This thesis completely opposes Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and People’s War principles. Besides, Prachanda affirms it also very clearly in his interview to Kantipur Publications:

“The weapons of both sides should be put together and both the armies should be transformed into one under the supervision of the United Nations or another reliable agency. (…)

The army will be formed according to the results of the election. This is what you should be clear about. We will accept it if the constituent assembly says we want monarchy. We are flexible even that far. We will accept it even if the people say we want an active monarch. “

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6. According to Prachanda, People’s War originates from the parliamentary struggle.

“For three years we struggled inside Parliament. For three years we were there. Our 40-point demands were placed but there was not even any discussion on this. So the seeds of our armed struggle were sown inside Parliament, in a manner of speaking.

This is a very big difference between us and, say, those in India who say they are waging a people’s war. They didn’t begin from inside Parliament. We were inside Parliament, so we had good relations with the parliamentary parties for a long time.”

This thesis was inevitable, since Prachanda wants to seem the true democrat, just like Thorez did at his time: “Communists are democrats. They are, among all democrats, the most consistent democrats, because they intend to substitute for a still legally and actually limited democracy, a boundless democracy.”

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7. According to Prachanda, the imperialist European countries can play a positive role.

“We also wanted to send a message to the international community that we were different from the way we were being projected ideologically. For example, right now we are having discussions with the European Union and with others, but among all the international forces, U.S. imperialism is the most dogmatic and sectarian element.

The U.S. ruling classes are dogmatic. They don’t understand what is happening. We are trying to look at the world in a new way, to change in a new way, and we wanted to send out this message. And in this regard, during the ceasefire, we were quite successful.”

Characterizing the US imperialists as “dogmatic” means nothing, neither do negotiations with others imperialist forces. Prachanda’s thesis clearly links with the Three Worlds theory, a Chinese revisionist theory stating that the Third World can lean on the Second World (the medium imperialist powers such as France, Canada, etc.) to oppose the First World made of the superpowers (the USA and, at its time, the USSR).

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8. According to Prachanda, fascistic China and expansionist India are interested in democracy in Nepal, to oppose the USA.

“We are glad with the new situation that is emerging after Shyam Saran went to China, it seems the situation can change. Our movement is also going forward and I think in 2-3 months, if the struggle continues, then there is a real chance of ending the kingship once and for all and making a democratic republic in Nepal.

This is the best outcome for China and India, and everyone else. The U.S. does not want this. They want to maintain the monarchy at all costs.”

Prachanda thus considers that, instead of « resting on our own strength” and serving the world revolution, he would rather reassure India and China and have no revolutionary program. That is logical in regard to the Three Worlds theory.

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9. According to Prachanda, the Maoists of India must negotiate with the old Indian State:

“And if you feel the Naxalite movement in India is a problem for you, we feel we are trying to deal with the problems in Nepal in a new way, so if you release our comrades and we are successful in establishing multiparty democracy in Nepal, then this will be a very big message for the Naxalite movement in India. In other words, the ground will be readied for them to think in a new political way.”

That is straightforwardly a proposal for an alliance with the Indian expansionism!

As we can see, Prachanda’s theses are in a direct line with the revisionism spread since a few time by the CPN(m); this revisionism, hiding behind “democracy”, had already been used by Thorez in France, and is now mainly embodied by the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA.

The RPCUSA, by means of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, certainly influenced the CPN(m).

The CPRUSA leader, Bob Avakian, defends more and more openly his revisionist and “democratic” theses.

According to him, Communism is one “possibility” among others, that is why he rejects the principle of “inevitability”, saying that “the world didn’t turn out the way Marx and Engels anticipated.” (January 2005, Revolutionary Worker n°1266).

He pretends that “in some instances, the Bolsheviks had a kind of « Mafia » approach in some areas, especially during the civil war that followed the October 1917 Revolution.” (December 2004, RW n°1262), that there was among Communists an “autocratic” tradition in a way.

That is why the RCPUSA focuses on Bush the “antidemocrat”, just like the Nepalese revisionists fight for a “genuine Democratic Republic”.

That is also why Avakian claims to found a “new internationalism « , which is actually but a pretext not to fight in one’s own country:

“There is a call to combine Lenin’s stance on and definition of internationalism with an approach of proceeding first and above all from the world level, and looking at the world as a whole at any given time to determine where it is that, through a combination of objective and subjective factors, the most important breakthroughs for the whole international struggle can be made—and for parties in particular countries to act accordingly, to give political support in relation to those « breakthroughs, » even at the cost of some sacrifice on the part of particular parties and in terms of the struggle in « their » countries.”

That is revisionism, no more no less, denying the fact that, as part of world People’s War, it is on the contrary necessary to open more battlefronts.

We understand, while seeing the RPCUSA revisionism, why the Canada RCP speaks so much about Nepal, whereas it is supposed to want People’s War in its own country, and as social contradictions within Canada are supposed to be the main aspect.

The “Democratic Republic” in Nepal became the new ideal of those who already rejected Stalin and who will tomorrow exchange even the usurped flag of Marxism Leninism-Maoism against an “ultrademocrat” flag.

Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist Maoist) February 2006