First Published: Mass Line, Vol. 4, No. 54, May 6, 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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MIA Introduction: This article was written in response to Canadian Maoists – Agents of Imperialism.
In the March 7 issue of the Canadian Tribune, the propaganda tool of the revisionist clique in Canada headed by William Kashtan, there appeared an article entitled “Canadian Maoists Agents of Imperialism” written by William Stewart. The article, which we have reproduced in full in this issue of MASS LINE on page 17 is a reply to a series of articles by Joseph Redpath, entitled “Mr. Kashtan Visits Moscow”. The PCDN series appearing in January 23, 24, 26, and 27 issues, of PCDN, was an exposure of the revisionist and social imperialist ideology which Mr. Kashtan has acquired while in the service of the Soviet social imperialists here in Canada. The Tribune “reply” – it seems generous to call Mr. Stewart’s article a “reply” since he did not reply, was a scurrilous tirade of weak anti-communist witticisms, followed up by three main points which are the only points made in the article.
1) there is no difference between the line put forward by Comrade Redpath on the question of Great Russian chauvinism and the character of the Soviet state and that put forward by Lubor Zink, a pro-fascist Toronto publicist.
2) the Communist Party of Canada(Marxist-Leninist) are the left agents of imperialism seeking to split the unity of the world revolutionary forces and the unity of the world anti-imperialist forces.
3) the splitters must be exposed and isolated.
These three points are mere assertions based on Soviet social imperialist propaganda and basic anti-communism and nothing else. Bourgeois aristocrats like William Stewart who have the protection of the capitalist state machine, do not have to account for their criminal assertions and justify their stands. Instead, they arrogantly parrot out what is dispatched from Moscow which further proves that the revisionists are the agents of Soviet social imperialism. Even though Mr. Stewart refrained from dealing with the basic line of Comrade Redpath’s article and only issued assertions, for the sake of our readers, we make comments on these assertions and further show how degenerate the revisionists have become.
Revisionists, quite clearly, attempt to mix things up in order to sow confusion. For some time now, they have been making use of the word “Anti-Sovietism” and they brand anyone with it who opposes Soviet social imperialism. The word “anti-sovietism” comes out of the concrete historical conditions. Anti-soviet ideology during the times of Lenin and Stalin was the basic anti-communist ideology of international imperialism and reaction. They attempted to whip-up hysteria against communism on that basis. With the rise of Khruschevite modern revisionism, the imperialists modified this ideology: Anti-sovietism was no longer dogmatically applied as there arose a brand of “Marxism” and “Leninism” in the USSR which had common grounds and similarities with Christianity and increasing dissimilarities and opposite grounds with Marxism-Leninism of China and of Albania and other countries. So the imperialists began using anti-Sovietism more cleverly. They use anti-sovietism to discredit the Marxist-Leninist movement (the reactionaries usually refer to the Soviet social imperialist state as a model of a modern “communist” state and then run their propaganda as to how “bad” communism is) and further use Sovietism of the Khruschev type to collude with Soviet social imperialists. The exact mirror image of this imperialist propaganda is used by the Soviet social imperialists and their agents: They also mix up the real anti-sovietism of the imperialists and call it rapprochment between Marxism and Christianity while they call the Marxist-Leninist opposition to Soviet social imperialism and modern revisionism, “anti-sovietism”.
Revisionists keep mixing up the two things, that is the Marxist-Leninist opposition to Soviet social imperialism and the imperialist line against the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union under the glorious leadership of Comrades Lenin and Stalin. This entire strategy of mixing-up things in order to obliterate clarity and meaning, further places the revisionists in the camp of the bourgeoisie, and on to the road of political extinction.
According to Mr. Stewart, there is no difference between the line put forward by Comrade Redpath on the question of Great Russian chauvinism and the character of the Soviet state and the line put forward by Lubor Zink, a pro-fascist Toronto anti-communist crusader.
Every reactionary newspaper hack such as Lubor Zink peddles the unfounded theory that communism is “imperialist”, that since the goal of the communists is world-wide revolution, they necessarily want to invade other countries and force them to become communists. Once this concoction has been repeated enough, the reactionaries go on from there to claim that all communists are foreign agents and we must “contain” those countries which have chosen the path of proletarian revolution. That is, all the communists must be killed internally and the “free world” must attack and decimate the communist countries externally. For decades every reactionary and pro-fascist ideologue has spread the story that the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the leadership of Comrades Lenin and Stalin was such an “imperialist” country.,/P>
The Marxist-Leninist line on these matters is quite different, The Marxist-Leninists say that, although countries in the process of liberating themselves may ask and receive some aid from the socialist countries, they must in fact liberate themselves by relying on their own strength, initiative and resources’. No country or people can liberate another country or people. Such “liberation” – and the Soviet Union supported it in the case of so-called “Bangla Desh” – is only another trick of the imperialists and social imperialists to enslave the people. Comrades Lenin and Stalin did not subscribe to the theory – to which the modern revisionists subscribe and which the reactionaries say all communists believe in – that it is the duty of the proletariat of one country to send its armies abroad to help “liberate” the proletariat of another country.
Imperialism means aggression and war. Social imperialism also means aggression and war.
Imperialism and social imperialism are quite happy to be bed-partners in this global counter-revolutionary strategy of dominating the world. It serves the interests of the imperialists and social imperialists to justify aggression. U.S. imperialism does it under the hoax of defending the, “free world” and “supporting allies” while Soviet social imperialism does it under the hoax of defence of “socialist community” (in the case of Czechoslovakia) and in support of “national liberation” (in the case of the Indian invasion of East Pakistan). Together the imperialists and social imperialists are attempting to confuse the Marxist-Leninist political line on these questions for Marxist-Leninists aren’t against interference which leads to subjugation and plunder of other people and lands. It is this motivation of subjugation and plunder which the Marxist-Leninists oppose.
Take for example the dispatch of Chinese volunteers to Korea. They went there to assist the fraternal Korean people against US imperialist intervention. The Chinese volunteers fought on the side of the Korean people and came back at once when they were no longer needed without making any claims on the Korean people. The U.S. imperialists instead went to Korea and are still there plundering Koreans in the southern part of their country. The Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to increase plunder and are still there. Mrs. Gandhi’s troops went to East Pakistan to plunder and subjugate East Pakistan.
From 1917 until Comrade Stalin’s death in 1952, the Soviet Union practiced proletarian internationalism, that is, freely aiding those countries and peoples in need of help without making the beneficiaries dependent on the USSR. It is only when the Soviet revisionist clique, headed by the traitor Khrushchev, usurped state power in the Soviet Union that the policy of proletarian internationalism turned into its opposite, social imperialism. Under, the guise of “socialism” and “fraternal aid”, the Soviet social imperialists developed the pernicious theories of “limited sovereignty” and the “international division of labour”, theories which they trumpet as “creative developments of Marxism, ” but which in reality are a smokescreen for imperialist exploitation of the People’s Democracies of Europe and of the nations striving to achieve national liberation in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Today the policies of the Soviet ruling clique inside the Soviet Union are the opposite of the policies of Lenin and Stalin. In the days of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the many dozens of nationalities living in the Soviet Union were all able to realize their national aspirations by putting an end to the exploitation of the bourgeois and Czarist ruling circles. Once the class rule of the proletariat, however, was overthrown in the Soviet Union and replaced by Khrushchev’s “state of the whole people” (which is, by the way, the slogan of the Hitlerite Nazis), the gate was opened wide for the renewal of national oppression as well. Class oppression in the Soviet Union must of necessity give birth to all the old antagonisms of Czarist Russia, for the ruling circles (the Soviet revisionist clique) will make use of any class or national contradiction, however small, to consolidate their dictatorship.
Mr. Stewart wishes to whitewash the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia by asking whether there is any difference between what the PCDN articles say on the matter and what the right-wing anti-communists say. As we said above, the right-wing anti-communists say that “communism is imperialist” (and modern Soviet revisionists say that this is the way it should be), while the Marxist-Leninists say that imperialism is the external manifestation of a country which is suffering under the oppression of the class rule of a tiny minority over the vast masses of the working people. The Soviet Union today is such a country. Today the working class in the Soviet Union has lost control of state power which has passed into the hands of, bureaucrat capitalists.
The Marxist-Leninist political line upheld by us and the anti-communist political line upheld by Lubor Zink on the question of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union has no similarities whatsoever. Lubor Zink’s line is only similar to the revisionists: He would like Czechoslovakia to be enslaved by international imperialists and internal reactionaries, while the revisionists would like to have Czechoslovakia under the jack-boots of Soviet social imperialism. The Marxist-Leninist political line is that neither Soviet social imperialism nor U.S. imperialism has any rights whatsoever to lord it over Czechoslovakia and that the proletariat of Czechoslovakia has every right to defeat the Soviet social imperialist occupation and overthrow the rule of their agents as well as safeguard their sovereignty and territorial integrity against U.S. imperialist or any other imperialist power. The reader can see very clearly that there is no confusion as to the political line of the Marxist-Leninists and of Lubor Zink. The revisionists are creating this confusion as a base and hysterical propaganda against the Marxist-Leninists.
Mr. Stewart also maintains that the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is the left agent of imperialism because it wants to split the unity of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces of the world at a time when such unity is gaining ground. This brings up the extremely important question: WHO ARE THE REAL SPLITTERS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT?
The history of the international communist movement is one of struggle between the proletarian revolutionary line and the opportunist and revisionist line on a host of different questions. The Marxist-Leninists have always upheld the unity of the international communist movement by demanding unity on the “basis of principle and opposing the revisionists who call for unity of all the disparate elements of the working class movement. Historically those who, like Bernstein, Trotsky and Khrushchev, have called for the unity of everyone, unfailingly mean the unity of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie. The Marxists have always opposed this sort of “unity” in order to unite the proletariat on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, that is, on the principled basis of the ideology of the proletariat and not that of the bourgeoisie. This was the struggle of Marx against the Bakunists, of Engels against Duhring, of Lenin against the various hues of Mensheviks, of Stalin against the Bukharinites, Zinovievites and Trotskyites and today, of Chairman Mao against the modern revisionists of the Khrushchev type.
Comrade Engels wrote to A. Bebel in the following manner: “people of limited intelligence... want to stir everything into one non-descript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the differences again but in much sharper contrast because they will then be all in one pot.” (June 20, 1873) Marx and Engels wrote a Circular Letter to some comrades on September 17-18, 1879: “It is impossible for us to co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement.” And Comrade Lenin wrote: “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism”. The true Marxist-Leninists have never considered that unity arises out of unity. Unity of Marxist-Leninists can only come about if there is open struggle to draw clear lines of demarcation between the Marxist-Leninists and the opponents and distorters of Marxism-Leninism. Or as comrade Lenin wrote: “Without struggle there cannot be sorting out, and without sorting out there can be no successful advance, and also no solid unity. And those who are now beginning to struggle are by no means destroying unity. There is already no unity, it has already been destroyed, destroyed all along the line... and open and direct struggle is one of the essential conditions for restoring unity.”
If unity will come about by waging unrelenting struggle to draw clear distinctions between the Marxist-Leninists and the opponents and distorters of Marxism-Leninism, then what is a splitter? A splitter of the international communist movement is the one who abandons Marxism-Leninism for something else.
Today the “Communist” Party of the Soviet Union runs about calling for “unity against imperialism” while all the time carrying on the most vicious attacks against the Communist Party of China and while massing up to one million soldiers on the northern borders of the People’s Republic of China. The same Khrushchevite revisionists, including Brezhnev and Co., who were responsible from 1956 to the present for splitting the international communist movement are the loudest in calling for unity. The same Soviet revisionists who shamelessly revised the theories of Marx and Lenin on the state, who called for peaceful collusion and contention with the U.S. imperialists and who claimed that “new” and “special” conditions allowed them to revise the theories of Marx and Lenin, these same Soviet revisionists are now clamouring that everyone should agree to unite with them in order, to liquidate revolution. They also have degenerated to the extent of forcing everyone all over the globe to follow the parliamentary way to socialism.
Furthermore, these decrepit revisionist curs claim that the “new” and “special” conditions in force are that the imperialist forces have been weakened and are therefore not capable of inflicting much damage on or preventing in any significant way the revolutionary march of the people. This is the line of “Since revolution is so strong, we don’t need to do anything. We can go to sleep and let the fascists murder the people” To see how weak imperialism is, just look at Viet Nam where the U.S. imperialists were incapable of inflicting any damage on the revolution. Every fool – except a revisionist fool or knave – knows that when an imperialist power is in its death throes, it is then, most vicious and potentially most damaging to the revolution. When German imperialism was about to collapse, the Hitlerite Nazis took over to save imperialism by decimating the Communist Party and beginning a world imperialist war. When the U.S. imperialists are in their death throes, they are becoming wilder and wilder in their attempts to commit genocide in Indochina. And yet the revisionists can claim that “new” and “special” conditions prevail and that the proletariat in Canada does not need to overthrow the monopoly I capitalist class by armed revolution and resolutely smash the state machine of the monopoly capitalists. These Canadian revisionists are the same as their Soviet master: they have completely and utterly abandoned the theory of Marxism-Leninism. They are the greatest splitters and sectarians in the ranks of the people today.
To oppose the liquidation of the Communist Party by a gang of opportunists and revisionists, traitors to Marxism-Leninism and capitulators to the “liberal” bourgeoisie, is not to be a splitter, It is to uphold the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism and the true history and political line of the Communist Party of Canada. To trample Marxism-Leninism underfoot, as do the Canadian revisionists, to capitulate to and collaborate with the “liberal” bourgeoisie is to be a splitter and sectarian. You call us, the comrades of the Communist Party of Canada. (Marxist-Leninist) “splitters” and “sectarians” because we are willing to wage principled, open and direct struggle on the basic questions facing the working class movement in Canada. That sophistry will not work, Mr. Stewart. But the real splitters and sectarians are the revisionists who refuse to abide by the principles of Marxism-Leninism and to unite on that basis.
The revisionist Party supports social imperialism, finds common cause with the NDP (and the NDP is united with the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party is supported by U.S. imperialism) and is attempting to subvert, undermine and liquidate the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). Mr. Stewart must be conscious of the fact by now that those who are Quislings and traitors to the working class, are already in real unity with other Quislings and anti-working class elements. The NDP and the Liberal Party are your real friends as they are also agents of foreign imperialism and are against the working class. When you seek unity you are seeking unity with them, your real friends: with us you are only seeking disunity and we are very pleased that clear lines are being drawn between you and us.
Mr. Stewart ends his article by issuing an impotent call: “Canadian Maoists” must be isolated from the mass movement. Here Mr. Stewart is behaving like King Canute who ordered the waves to recede and found himself drowned in them. The revisionists of the Stewart-type are also getting drowned in the waves of growing revolutionary mass movement based on Marxist-Leninist political line. Far from isolating the CPC(ML) from the mass movement, the war-cry of every class conscious worker is DEFEAT REVISIONISM AND REFORMISM FROM THE WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. The target of attack are the revisionists themselves and they have wishful thinking that their sophistry will rescue them from extinction. We are very proud that the revisionists are becoming hysterical and panic-striken about us. We are heartened to see that, at last, they have come out openly in support of revisionism and reformism and against Marxism-Leninism. It is becoming easier to defeat revisionism now as our revisionist dogs are such great teachers by negative example. To respond to the call of the revisionists to isolate Marxist-Leninists from the mass movement, we also issue a call to the mass movement: WIPE OUT REVISIONISM FROM THE MASS MOVEMENT. While they are asking for our “isolation” we are calling for their total annihilation. Their gibberish defence of revisionism and attacks on Marxism-Leninism under the guise of “supporting” Marxism-Leninism will further bring them close to their disaster and doom. We are acutely conscious of the fact that “All reactionaries are the same, if you don’t hit them they won’t fall” and for that reason our opposition to revisionism is not verbal but is in practice and it is not based on co-existing with this evil but based on wiping out this evil. Already, we have much success in this endeavour. CPC(ML) has advanced in a short period of a few years to the extent that it can launch agitations and propaganda all across Canada and it can withstand the attacks of the state machine. This growing strength of the Marxist-Leninists has struck terror in the hearts of the revisionists. Get ready for another round, you revisionist dogs! We will see who isolates whom and who destroys whom. Your most reliable friend is the state machine of the capitalists and our most reliable friends are the millions upon millions of masses. What you call a mass movement is not a mass movement but a counter-current to terminate the mass movement.
For your support of this counter-current, the state is enthusiastic to support you and provide timely assistance. Without that bourgeois state machine, your lot will be no better than any individuals who are traitors to their country and to their class.