Outright Piggery from the Camp of Counter-Revolution

The posting of this article does not imply endorsement of the views of the RCP-USA.

— Espresso Stalinist

Revolution is a serious and complex matter. It involves many different people coming together to unite on a common program of struggle, identifying and working toward the aims and means of fighting to make a radical change in the whole way humans interact with each other. Communists are fighting for a revolution which will bring an end to the power held by the capitalist-imperialists over the lives of billions, and bring into being a very different—and better—society for all of humanity. Those who hold power promote counter-revolution, working in every way they can to oppose and derail movements for revolution. This is the counter-revolution, which comes in many forms, but means active opposition to revolution, with the intent to destroy revolutionary groups or individuals. (For a fuller discussion see “What Is Counter-Revolution?” in Revolution No. 241.) It is important to have criteria for making distinctions between those who are part of the camp of the people, and those whose activities are part of, or strengthen, the camp of counter-revolution.

It is an essential part of making revolution to have lively and principled debate and political struggle in the camp of the people, among those who are in favor of revolution and also among people who disagree with all or part of a revolutionary program and approach. This will often involve sharp struggle over what are the aims and goals of the revolution and what is the strategy for getting there. This kind of struggle is aimed at getting at the heart of the disagreements over what is the problem and what is the solution. This is a key element in making revolution, a necessary part of understanding the reality we are dealing with and working to change, and it is important for drawing the masses of people into the process of determining how to go forward toward revolution and the emancipation of humanity–and steering clear of false paths. It needs to be carried out in a principled way, according to standards that help to clarify and strengthen revolution. The RCP, and Bob Avakian in particular, have fought for and have been guided by these standards in the way we carry out this kind of struggle. An important principle and method is this: if people have disagreements with the line of an organization or individual, they should take on the best representation of the line they are criticizing, based on what that group or individual publishes about their views, and then state how they differ as clearly and sharply as possible with that line.

A Crucial Distinction

There is a crucial distinction between principled struggle over differences in line and approach, on the one hand, and wrecking activities on the other. It is one thing for people to disagree with and even sharply criticize our positions, our outlook and approach—all of which we welcome because we are anxious to engage with people over the substance of this, and to learn from what people are raising. It is quite another for people to do things which have the effect of—which at least many of them know, or have every basis to know will have the effect of—aiding the actual enemy in its attempts to crush those who resist, and especially those who are proceeding from an understanding of the need to fundamentally oppose and ultimately sweep away this system through revolution.

Unfortunately, there are people who claim to be revolutionaries and communists but then conduct themselves in ways that objectively aid the counter-revolution. A very sharp example of this is the Kasama website, founded by Mike Ely several years ago with the intent of attacking the RCP and Bob Avakian in particular in very unprincipled ways. We have written and made available a substantial polemic titled “Stuck in the ‘Awful Capitalist Present’ or Forging a Path to the Communist Future? A Response to Mike Ely’s Nine Letters” which addressed the content of the political arguments that were made initially on Kasama. But this website, while posing as a platform and forum for discussion of revolution and communism, has over several years engaged in activities that promote anti-communism and strengthen counter-revolution, and has been on a mission to alienate people from and to attack and destroy the RCP and its leadership, trafficking in innuendo, lies, gossip, and personal narratives.

Specifically, including very recently, there has been a whole practice of naming individuals who are identified on the Kasama site as being connected to the RCP, and then encouraging people to try to find out about individuals, their relationship to the Party, and speculation about the composition of different bodies and membership in the Party. And there has been an ongoing campaign of posting ad hominem (personal) attacks on Bob Avakian in particular. This alone puts it in the same camp as reactionary and vicious right-wing blogs and websites, doing the work for government agencies whose mission is to collect this kind of information which is then used to destroy individuals and organizations they deem to be a threat.

But that is not all. This website has orchestrated a campaign of gathering and propagating gossip, lies, half truths, and personal narratives—including of things alleged to have been said or done many years ago—which can in no way be verified or interrogated as to their truthfulness, with the conscious effort to whip up animosity toward Bob Avakian and the RCP more generally. Mike Ely in particular has sought out and published stories that in actual fact can only serve one purpose: to assist all kinds of reactionary forces in going after genuine revolutionaries. Mike Ely is very conscious of what he is doing and knows full well the ugly history of this kind of thing which was carried out by COINTELPRO and other agencies of the government in the 1960s and ’70s, bitter lessons paid for in blood. He knows how this kind of pig activity served to isolate genuine revolutionaries and set them up for attack from all kinds of reactionaries, and what horrible consequences this led to, including assassinations of revolutionaries, destruction of revolutionary organizations, targeting of revolutionary leaders to isolate them from the masses, pitting people against each other by planting untruths and playing on the weaknesses of different individuals that would facilitate that. For example, the FBI and police would constantly foment and feed an atmosphere of rumor-mongering and gossip, often using anonymous poison-pen letters, which enabled them to surround the assassinations of people like Malcolm X, or the Black Panther Party leaders Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, with all kinds of murkiness and conceal their own roles in driving forward horrible events like that.

It can be very confusing to people when this is done in the framework of a website that claims and pretends to be promoting debate and honest struggle over questions of revolution and communism. But again, setting and acting according to standards that are designed at getting clarity over the essential matters of line is key to being able to sort things out. As we have made clear repeatedly as a matter of principle, debate and struggle over questions of political and ideological line, including on substantial differences over what will lead to revolutionary transformation and human emancipation, are essential. There is in fact a great need for more principled struggle over line to forge the kind of revolutionary movement that is sorely needed in today’s world.

Further, from what our Party says and how we continually strive to conduct ourselves, it should be clear that we welcome and engage criticisms and disagreements, even sharp and fundamental disagreements, and recognize this as part of the necessary process of building the kind of society we’re aiming for and the kind of Party that is needed to lead in getting there. Indeed, a key element at the core of the life of our Party is the struggle over what is true, and in the service of that we strive to present and engage the best representation of opposing lines; we do not go in for cheap shots, distortions or ad hominem attacks against people. This principled approach to struggle over line is a hallmark of the leadership that Bob Avakian has given our Party and has projected for the kind of future society that we are working to bring into being.

But the kinds of things we are describing that are promoted on the Kasama website about Bob Avakian and the RCP belong in the gutter and have put this site way beyond the pale, far, far from anything remotely connected to honest and principled struggle over line. Instead, all that this does is serve and assist the enemies of revolution and confuse the people, and everyone who is taking a serious approach to revolution knows, or should know, this. It has nothing to do with putting forward an alternative line as to how to change the world and in fact greatly undermines any serious efforts to get clarity on what are the source of the problems of the world and how to go about changing them. It is a telltale sign that there has been no serious engagement of any kind with the actual line of the RCP on this website—no principled approach to clarifying matters of line. Instead one finds a passion for spreading lies, inviting vendettas, and naming names and speculating about people and their association with the Party, all posted in the posture of a self-declared “expert” and authoritative voice about the RCP.

This website is no more of a reliable source about the RCP and its leadership than the FBI is. Despite Mike Ely’s attempts to confuse people and pose authoritatively as someone “in the know,” he provides no credible information that people should believe. First, he actually does not know a lot of what he claims to know; second, even more important is that honest people who have any scintilla of concern about protecting revolutionary leaders and organizations don’t do this kind of thing—and people who do this are objectively doing the work of pigs. Whatever his particular associations might have been or might be, there is no objective distinction between his actions and a whole well-documented history of actions by the FBI and others of their ilk.

Think about what happens when you work to establish as “the truth” all kinds of unsubstantiated stories, rumors and lies about someone: what purpose does that serve and who benefits from that kind of counter-revolutionary activity? Think about what happens when you start naming people in revolutionary organizations and speculating about their whereabouts and activity. Think about what it means to encourage people to seek to find out and discuss publicly who are the leaders of a communist organization—an organization which is in fundamental antagonism to those who have powerful means to crush all opposition, and further to criticize that organization for not making this information public. The state wants to know the internal workings of any force that opposes them and especially a revolutionary organization which has the potential to bring forward masses of people to challenge their whole rule. And they use this information to destroy those organizations and the individuals who lead them. Anyone who has had the slightest experience—past or present—knows this.

All of this is aided by the current “culture of transparency,” where millions of people promote and carry out the practice of posting in a permanent record many details about their lives, their family and friends and their daily activities, with no sense of the harm this can do, and how this can be used against them in many different ways. But beyond that, think about how the dominant culture of constant gossip spread all over the mass media, establishing “truth” and verdicts by posting things on the Internet, and using this means to accuse and “convict” people of horrible things in the media, how all this is training people how to think–or better said, training people to not think critically. And then think about the ways that this kind of thing being promoted and propagated on a website which claims it is interested in revolution both reinforces and takes advantage of that putrid culture. What does it say about people who rather than struggle with and encourage others to rise above it, sink down into it and utilize it? There is truly something very wrong with those who are more turned on by this tabloidization and bloodlust than they are concerned with trying to change the world in the interests of humanity.

What Are the Consequences?

It is important to take a serious look at what are the consequences of all this. Think about how this actually works against getting clarity on the important questions of what are the real problems that we confront if we are serious about building a movement that really can mobilize millions to change the world, a movement that is going up against very real and powerful forces who use everything in their disposal not only to directly go after those in opposition, but also to utilize, work with and unleash a whole host of people who do their work for them, whether getting paid for it or not. People should learn from history and be determined to not fall into the same kinds of traps that played such a destructive role in earlier times, like what was done at the height of the 1960s through the COINTELPRO program of the FBI and other covert operations of the government. Ask yourself, if the intention to destroy BA and the Party he leads were to succeed, how would humanity be better off? Who would benefit?

There are important reasons to keep confidential the identities of people in and associated with our Party, to keep confidential the composition of leading bodies and structure of the Party, and its ties to the masses of people. And it is not the business of those who are not members of our Party to spread gossip and speculation about these matters.

But there is no secret about what is important for people to know, which is the political and ideological line of our Party: what are our goals and methods for our work now and in the future. There is an abundance of material explaining our positions, outlook, and aims… and the reasoning for them. This is the basis on which people should judge whether what we represent is what is needed in the world or not. If people want to know how leadership is chosen and how our Party functions, go to the Constitution of our Party. If people want to know the foundation of our ideology, read the Manifesto from our Party: Communism: the Beginning of a New Stage. If people want to know our strategy for revolution, this is articulated in the statement “On the Strategy for Revolution” and in many articles and writings which can be found on revcom.us. And people can read the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) for a concrete vision of the kind of society we envision and are working toward. There are websites where people can go to find out more about Bob Avakian, and the actual work to build a movement for revolution and there are Revolution bookstores in major cities where people can find literature and discussions of our Party’s line and the work we are engaged in, and many of the books written by Bob Avakian, including his own memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond. All of this is quite accessible to those who want to know about Bob Avakian and the RCP.

Set Standards If You Are Serious About Revolution

There is a need for those who are serious about fighting to bring about a different world to set and insist on some standards for the movements that will not tolerate this kind of counter-revolutionary activity. Anyone who is serious and does not want to be part of the counter-revolutionary cesspool concentrated on Kasama website (and related activities) should denounce it and have nothing to do with it. If you are involved with it you should get out, because if you know what goes on there and you don’t then you are making a conscious choice to stay in it. There is no longer any remotely conceivable basis to think that what is put on that website regarding Bob Avakian and the RCP is any legitimate form of carrying out principled ideological and political criticisms.

Coming to grips with this form of counter-revolution and drawing a clear line in opposition to it is part of the struggle for revolution; and this kind of counter-revolutionary activity will emerge in different forms as the revolutionary movement develops. From the article “What is Counter-Revolution?”: “All of this may be disconcerting to people who are new to the revolutionary movement. Why would people who claim to be for revolution act in such a way? Unfortunately, this type of counter-revolutionary activity is an inevitable part of making revolution—but that does not mean it should be excused, or shrugged off. While not getting pulled off course or disoriented, we have to be clear that this kind of thing does real damage, providing a climate where the forces of the state in power can bring down vicious repression on the revolution. This is one way you can tell the difference between people who are raising, even sharply, principled differences with revolutionaries, on the one hand, and counter-revolutionaries on the other. …These are life and death matters which affect the lives of millions. Serious revolutionary movements have to raise their standards and learn to reject and have nothing to do with anyone who carries out these kinds of counter-revolutionary activities.”

Source

CPUSA Job Interview

Enver Hoxha on the Labor Aristocracy

The development of the economy in the West after the war also exerted a great influence on the spread of opportunist and revisionist ideas in the communist parties. True, Western Europe was devastated by the war but its recovery was carried out relatively quickly. The American capital which poured into Europe through the “Marshall Plan” made it possible to reconstruct the factories, plants, transport and agriculture so that their production extended rapidly. This development opened up many jobs and for a long period, not only absorbed all the free labour force but even created a certain shortage of labour.

This situation, which brought the bourgeoisie great superprofits, allowed it to loosen its pursestrings a little and soften the labour conflicts to some degree. In the social field, in such matters as social insurance, health, education, labour legislation etc., it took some measures for which the working class had fought hard. The obvious improvement of the standard of living of the working people in comparison with that of the time of the war and even before the war, the rapid growth of production, which came as a result of the reconstruction of industry and agriculture and the beginning of the technical and scientific revolution, and the full employment of the work force, opened the way to the flowering amongst the unformed opportunist element of views about the development of capitalism without class conflicts, about its ability to avoid crises, the elimination of the phenomenon of unemployment etc. That major teaching of Marxism-Leninism, that the periods of peaceful development of capitalism becomes a source for the spread of opportunism, was confirmed once again. The new stratum of the worker aristocracy, which increased considerably during this period, began to exert an ever more negative influence in the ranks of the parties and their leaderships by introducing reformist and opportunist views and ideas.

Under pressure of these circumstances, the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line.

 – Enver Hoxha, Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism

Enver Hoxha on Class Struggle Under Socialism

“[The Party of Labor of Albania] has waged and is waging the class struggle in the correct Marxist-Leninist way, inside and outside the Party, and this is the motive force during the whole period of the transition from capitalism to socialism.”

– Enver Hoxha, 1968 Selected Works Vol. IV p. 427,  “The Working Class in the Revisionist Countries Must Take the Field and Re-Establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”

“The ideological and cultural revolution is a part of the general class struggle to carry the socialist revolution through to the end in all fields. Contrary to the views of the modern revisionists, who have declared the class struggle in socialism outdated and a thing of the past, our Party holds that class struggle remains one of the main motive forces of society, even after the exploiting classes have been eliminated. This struggle includes all fields of life. It has its ebbs and flows and zigzags, sometimes it surges up, sometimes it falls back, sometimes becomes fierce, at other times more «mild», but it never ceases and dies right away.”

– Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV, p. 165, “Report to the 5th Congress”

“Acceptance or non-acceptance of the class struggle in socialism is a question of principle, it is a line of demarcation between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists, between revolutionaries and betrayers of the revolution. Any deviation from the class struggle has fatal consequences for the future of socialism.”

– Ibid.

“The revolution overturns a whole world, let alone a single tradition. Since the class struggle goes on during the whole period of the construction of socialist society and the transition to communism, and since political parties express the interests of specific classes, the presence of other non-Marxist-Leninist parties in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be absurd and opportunist, especially after the economic base of socialism has been built.”

– Enver Hoxha, 1967, Selected Works Vol. IV, p. 307 “On the Role and Tasks of the Democratic Front in the Struggle for the Complete Triumph of Socialism in Albania”

“In practice we often come across a narrow concept on the class struggle and class enemy, which regards only the kulaks and other elements of the former exploiting classes, or the imperialists and Titoite and Khrushchevite revisionists abroad as class enemies, and only the struggle against their anti-socialist activities as class struggle. The struggle against these enemies remains, as always, a primary task for our Party, our state and our working people. But we should take a broader view of the class struggle. It is a many-sided struggle which is, first and foremost, an ideological struggle today, a struggle for the minds and hearts of people, a struggle against bourgeois and revisionist degeneration, against all alien remnants and phenomena which still exist and manifest themselves in various degrees among all our people — it is a struggle for the triumph of our communist ideology and morality.”

–  Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV p. 166, “Report to the 5th Congress”

“The issues we are raising at this Plenum are closely linked with a major cardinal problem, that of the understanding and development of the class struggle in the proper way. The Party has long made it clear that the class struggle is one of the main motive forces of our socialist society, that it is a very broad struggle which is waged in all fields, both against internal and external enemies and within the ranks of the people and the Party, and that in the existing conditions the class struggle on the ideological front assumes special importance.”

– Enver Hoxha, 1973, Selected Works Vol. IV,  848, “Intensify the ideological Struggle Against Alien Manifestations and iberal Attitudes Towards Them”

“The struggle for the communist education of the working people against the remnants and manifestations of alien ideologies, old and new, constitutes the broadest and most complex front of the class struggle which is going on in our country. This struggle becomes especially important and acute in the present conditions when our country is forging ahead in the construction of socialism, relying entirely on its own forces, when the struggle between socialism and capitalism, Marxism-Leninism and revisionism in the international arena has become extremely severe and when the imperialist-revisionist encirclement and its pressure on our country have become more ferocious.”

– Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. VI, pp. 372-373.

“The modern revisionists with the Soviet ones at their head claim that all class struggle ends with the elimination of the exploiting classes. This is a hoax which serves to disarm the working class and lull it into sleep and this way pave the path for the restoration of capitalism. This has been most clearly shown in the Soviet Union and in other former socialist countries where the new capitalist bourgeoisie seized power.

The experience of our country refuted these false and capitulationist theories of the disappearance of class struggle under socialism. The whole history of the construction of socialism in Albania is a story of uncompromising struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, between the two paths of development, against the internal and external enemies both within the people and the Party. This struggle has been waged continuously and always vehemently. Only its forms and methods have changed according to the circumstances and stages of development. Even after elimination of the exploiting classes as classes the inner and outer enemies have not for a single moment laid down their arms or halted their fight against socialism. Therefore our party and our people have waged the class struggle with strict consistency and in a correct Marxist-Leninist way in all areas as a crucial condition for the final victory of the socialist way over the capitalist.”

– Enver Hoxha, “Proletarian Democracy is Genuine Democracy”

“Which of them will triumph? Marx and Lenin, Marxist-Leninist science, the theory and practice of the revolution, provide us with convincing proof that, in the final analysis, the proletariat will triumph by destroying, overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie, imperialism and all, exploiters, and will build a new society, socialist society. They teach us also that even in this new society, classes, that is, the working class and working peasantry, which are closely allied to each other, will exist for a very long time, but there will also be remnants of the overthrown and expropriated classes. During this entire period, these remnants, as well as elements which degenerate and oppose the construction of socialism, will try to regain their lost power. Hence, under socialism, too, stern class struggle will exist.”

– Enver Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution

“Thus he (Mao) does not see the socialist revolution as a qualitative change in society in which antagonistic classes and the oppression and exploitation of man by man is abolished, but conceives it as a simple change of places between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.”

- Enver Hoxha, Imperialism and Revolution

“The class struggle continues and will continue in the period of the construction of socialist society, but we have the impression that in China this struggle is not carried out consistently, is weak and not based on sound and lasting principles. When there are vacillations in line there will certainly be wavering stands towards enemies.”

– Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China Vol. II, p. 147

“Only once, Chou [en-Lai], this liberal and opportunist element, when he came to our country made a criticism of us, allegedly that our Party was not waging the class struggle. When we faced him with the facts, telling him that during its whole existence our Party had waged a stern class struggle inside and outside our country, as well as within the ranks of the Party itself, he was obliged to beg our pardon, saying, «I do not know the history of your Party as well as I should».”

– Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China Vol. II, p. 241

“But Mao also put forward other theses and views with which we have never been in agreement. He wrote a good deal about the class struggle, about contradictions, etc., but the class struggle in China, in practice especially, has not been waged sternly and consistently.”

– Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China Vol. II, 283

“Liu Shao-chi, this revisionist, had delivered a whole report to the comrades of one of our delegations about the alleged rightist mistakes of Stalin, alleging that Stalin had said that the class struggle was over, etc. What irony! And who was saying this? The person who, at the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of China, advocated coexistence with the capitalists! L iu Shao-chi emerged as the Chinese Khrushchev!”

– Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China Vol. 1 , p. 328

“Even within the party a class struggle must be waged, indeed a stern struggle, to totally liquidate the anti-party, anti-Marxist faction as quickly as possible.”

– Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China Vol. 1 , p. 358

“He proves with scientific argument why the class struggle will continue until the construction of communism and why the fate of socialism depends on the correct understanding of this struggle which is waged in a coordinated manner on the internal and external plane, why socialism is threatened not only from abroad, by a military aggression, but also from within the country, by degeneration and peaceful counter-revolutionary evolution.”

 – Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV, Forward, p. VIII

“The exploiting classes could not be eliminated immediately, either in our country or in the other socialist countries. A fierce political and ideological fight, a violent war with arms, a stern and continuous class struggle under the unwavering leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party is needed for the proletariat to wrest political power by violence from the hands of the exploiting capitalist class and establish the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to eliminate the economic base of the exploiting class and private property in general, to eliminate the capitalist relations of production and establish socialist social ownership and the socialist relations of production, to turn the existing socialist property into the property of the entire people; and simultaneously, to build a new socialist superstructure, by radically purging every remnant of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois policy and ideology from the consciousness of the people.”

– Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV, p. 51-2, “Our Party Will Continue the Class Struggle”

“Hence, our Party believes that, notwithstanding that the exploiting classes have been liquidated, the danger of bourgeois and revisionist restoration always exists if you rest on your laurels and do not advance at a great revolutionary tempo, if you are not guided in everything by Marxism-Leninism, if you cease the class struggle instead of waging it consistently and uninterruptedly, if you weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat instead of further strengthening it, if you divorce yourself from the people instead of linking yourself with them as closely as possible, if you prove cowardly instead of being valiant and courageous and in continuous, dauntless, unrelenting struggle against imperialism, revisionists of all hues and all lackeys of the bourgeoisie and capital.”

-  Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV, p. 66, “Our Party Will Continue the Class Struggle”

“As you know, we have had a controversy over principles with the Chinese comrades, not mainly over the class struggle, but about “the existence of the feudo-bourgeois class as a class, as an entity which fights us, even from positions of state power, at a time when state power in our countries is the dictatorship of the proletariat.” We know what our thesis is and this we base on our struggle, on facts and on Marxist-Leninist analysis. The Chinese comrades have claimed the contrary. As you know, we have told them that it may be so in their country, but not in ours, because the class struggle in our country has been waged and continued consistently from the time of the National Liberation War and since the war right to this day, and it will go on against the remnants of the feudo-bourgeois class, etc., etc. There is no bourgeoisie in power in our country.”

–  Enver Hoxha, Selected Works Vol. IV, p. 98, “Some Preliminary Ideas about the Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution”

Lenin on Self-Determination

“Imperialism means the progressively mounting oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of Great Powers; it means a period of wars between the latter to extend and consolidate the oppression of nations; it means a period in which the masses of the people are deceived by hypocritical social-patriots, i.e., individuals who, under the pretext of the ‘freedom of nations’, ‘the right of nations to self-determination’, and ‘defence of the fatherland’, justify and defend the oppression of the majority of the world’s nations by the Great Powers.

That is why the focal point in the Social-Democratic programme must be that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism, and is deceitfully evaded by the social-chauvinists and Kautsky. This division is not significant from the angle of bourgeois pacifism or the philistine Utopia of peaceful competition among independent nations under capitalism, but it is most significant from the angle of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism. It is from this division that our definition of the ‘right of nations to self-determination’ must follow, a definition that is consistently democratic, revolutionary, and in accord with the general task of the immediate struggle for socialism. It is for that right, and in a struggle to achieve sincere recognition for it, that the Social-Democrats of the oppressor nations must demand that the oppressed nations should have the right of secession, for otherwise recognition of equal rights for nations and of international working-class solidarity would in fact be merely empty phrase-mongering, sheer hypocrisy. On the other hand, the Social-Democrats of the oppressed nations must attach prime significance to the unity and the merging of the workers of the oppressed nations with those of the oppressor nations; otherwise these Social-Democrats will involuntarily become the allies of their own national bourgeoisie, which always betrays the interests of the people and of democracy, and is always ready, in its turn, to annex territory and oppress other nations.”

— V. I. Lenin, The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1915

Lenin on the Colonial Question

First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction. . . .The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed force.[...]

Comrade Quelch of the British Socialist Party spoke of this in our commission. He said that the rank-and-file British worker would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved nations in their uprisings against British rule. True, the jingoist and chauvinist-minded labour aristocrats of Britain and America present a very great danger to socialism, and are a bulwark of the Second International. Here we are confronted with the greatest treachery on the part of leaders and workers belonging to this bourgeois International. The colonial question has been discussed in the Second International as well. The Basle Manifesto is quite clear on this point, too. The parties of the Second International have pledged themselves to revolutionary action, but they have given no sign of genuine revolutionary work or of assistance to the exploited and dependent nations in their revolt against the oppressor nations. This, I think, applies also to most of the parties that have withdrawn from the Second International and wish to join the Third International.

— V. I. Lenin, Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions, July 26, 1920