First Published:The Workers’ Advocate Vol. 12, No. 2, February 25, 1982.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Today the basic feature of the revisionist circles in the U.S. is their liquidationism. In their rush to join in holy matrimony with the labor bureaucrats, the social-democrats, and the “left wing” of the Democratic Party generally, they are falling all over themselves to mock at the revolution and denounce the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. This is nowhere more apparent than in their wholesale campaign to denounce the struggle against opportunism. This has now reached the point where the followers of Chinese revisionism, who for years swore up and down that they were the only true opponents of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, are now one by one issuing testimonials to the “socialism” of the Soviet revisionist renegades.
Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, the followers of Chinese revisionism presented themselves as the leaders of the fight against Soviet revisionism. They presented Mao Zedong Thought as the alleged last word in anti-revisionism. In the mid-1970’s, they went so far as to present their counter-revolutionary “three worlds” theory and their social- chauvinist alliance with U.S. imperialism to “direct the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism” in anti-revisionist colors.
But the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists indignantly pointed out that only those who fight “their own” exploiters have the right to talk of struggle against Soviet revisionism. They poured scorn on the “three worlders” who presented support for B-l bombers, Trident submarines or U.S. lackey regimes as “anti-revisionism.” They stressed that abandoning the revolution meant joining the capitalist-revisionist camp just as the Soviet revisionists have done. As The Workers’ Advocate put it on March 10, 1977: “We hold that those who, like the October League [a “three worldist” group – ed.], have capitulated to one superpower or the other, have thereby capitulated to the world system of imperialism and are incapable of resolutely opposing any imperialism or any reactionary at all. Having capitulated to U.S. imperialism, the OL cannot possibly ’concentrate “too much fire on Soviet social-imperialism”’; it can only ’concentrate “too much fire”’ at the forces of socialism and freedom!”
And today this stand of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists has been verified to a tee, as one after another the Maoists and “three worlders” come out to scrape and bow before the “socialism” of Brezhnev and co. In this regards, a recent book by Jerry Tung is very revealing. Jerry Tung is the leader of a “three worldist” sect, the “Communist Workers Party” (formerly the Workers Viewpoint Organization), which used to rave about the Soviet Union being the “main danger.” Tung’s book is entitled The Socialist Road. But far from inspiring the workers to fight for socialism, this book is devoted to ridiculing the struggle against revisionism. It rambles on for over 300 pages trying to prove that the Soviet Union is “socialist.” Jerry Tung is so enthusiastic about the virtues of revisionism that he praises all the other revisionist regimes and goes out of his way to praise the “socialism” of the revisionist system that lies in ruins in Poland. Why, Tung considers that even Allende’s Chile and Zimbabwe are “socialist.”
Tung’s renegade stand towards the struggle against Soviet revisionism is part of his renegade stand against all the revolutionary traditions of the mass movement. This is why he writes, oh all so innocently, that: “...the CWP does not look back nostalgically and model current struggles after the struggles of the 60’s.” (p. 14) This is a common theme in liquidator literature. At its high points, the 1960’s saw the development of revolutionary consciousness, of mass disgust with the Democratic Party and the liberal-labor politicians, of militant mass actions, and it also saw the outbreak of the fierce fight against Soviet revisionism. These two features – the mass revolutionary struggle and the battle against revisionism – marked the best moments of the 1960’s and set the stage for the 1970’s. With his denigration of the 1960’s, Tung is cursing the mass struggle and the anti-opportunist fight of the last two decades. Clear the way for legalism, for chasing after Democrats, Zionists, and social-democrats, for merger with the labor bureaucracy, this is the theme of the liquidator literature.
Tung’s book vividly demonstrates that abandoning the fight against revisionism means abandoning the fight against imperialism as well. The “socialism” which Tung aspires to proves to be nothing other than state monopoly capitalism dressed up as “planning.” And this is true not only with respect to the Soviet Union but with respect to what he outlines for the United States as well. This is the ideological basis from which Tung turns his back on the fight against social-democracy and ends up snuggling cozily with the capitalist program of the “left wing” of the Democratic Party.
Lenin’s teaching remains ever fresh: “...the fight against imperialism is a sham and a humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.” Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Ch. X) It is from the standpoint of prettifying capitalism wherever it exists, in Russia, the U.S., or elsewhere, that Tung has come out with the “CWP’s” latest readjustment of line.
Tung Denounces the Struggle Against Revisionism
The heart of Tung’s book is the condemnation of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. In the introduction to his book, Tung emphasizes that recent developments in China have forced the “CWP” to reexamine its line and that they have made a great new discovery: “Most often the retrograde trend in the Party [“CWP” – ed.] that goes against professionalism, politics, propaganda and tight organization has its expression in trying to build a party based solely on ’anti-revisionism,’ around the theory of ’combatting and preventing’ revisionism and ’restricting bourgeois right.’ That is precisely the one-sidedness that the Chinese communists suffered from in the Cultural Revolution.” (pp. 10-11) Translated from Maoist jargon into the language of the ordinary world, this means that Tung blames the struggle against opportunism for all the ills of life.
What a fraud this new discovery is! Every three or four years the followers of Chinese revisionism in the U.S. make a big fuss as if they had discovered a new world – namely, that the fight against revisionism has been taken too far. In the late 60’s, they lectured that, although right opportunism was ultimately the main danger to the communist movement, still, the main immediate danger was “ultra-leftism” and “sectarianism.” With this sermon, they denigrated the idea of founding a single party for all the Marxist-Leninists as “ultra-left” and justified factionalizing and fragmenting the movement. In 1973, at the time of the Tenth National Congress of the CP of China, they discovered once again that “ultra-leftism” was the main danger and was “Lin Piao-ism.” In 1976-77, they discovered that struggle against revisionism was “gang of four-ism” and started a campaign to smear any opposition to the “three worlds” theory as “ultra-left” and “trotskyite.” And today, Tung has once again come to the same conclusion: the struggle against revisionism is allegedly the source of all the problems of the communist movement.
This time Tung takes his opposition to the struggle against revisionism to the limit. He preaches reconciliation with Soviet revisionism and seeks to prettify them from every angle. In order to justify “CWP’s” new line, he tries to paint the Soviet revisionists in flaming revolutionary colors and he claims that “...the CPSU has indirectly repudiated (though without public and extensive repudiation) Khrushchev’s line of peaceful transition to socialism....” (p. 298) Imagine that: Brezhnev changed his mind but didn’t bother to tell anyone! If this is the best Tung can do to prove his thesis, he has condemned himself ten times over.
Tung’s assertion is simply the lie of a political hack. Brezhnev has repudiated nothing. True, the Soviet social- imperialists are arming to the teeth, as they have for years. Soviet tanks roll across Afghanistan, Soviet troops threaten Poland with invasion, and Soviet bloc forces help drop napalm on the Eritreans. But, as far as their line for the world’s people, the CPSU repudiates revolution. The slightest look at the documents of the 26th Congress of the CPSU, held last year, reveals that there is even less revolutionary phrasemongering than usual on such occasions, and it openly calls for world problems to be settled by mutual agreement between Reagan and the Soviet Union. (See the article “On the 26th Congress of the CPSU: The Soviet Revisionists Are Sworn Enemies of the Revolution” in The Workers’ Advocate of May 20, 1981)
Actually, Tung is quite clear that the Soviet revisionists still call for the world’s people to fold their arms, go to sleep, and let the big powers decide their fate, which is what they call “detente.” Indeed, he hails these calls by the Soviet revisionists, saying “We regard the struggle for detente as a major struggle for world peace.” (p. 13) The American liquidator of revolution Tung feels quite at home with the worldwide liquidator of revolution Brezhnev.
But the centerpiece of Tung’s prettification of Soviet revisionism is his claim that the man-eating state monopoly capitalist system existing there is “socialist.” Tung informs us that: “The main difference between our present and past lines is the understanding that the Soviet Union is a socialist country.” (p. 3) Here, as with his assessment that the fight against revisionism is a one-sided excess, Tung is trailing after the positions of the present-day Chinese ultra-revisionist leadership. The Deng Xiaoping clique in China has already hinted at this reassessment. Today, in their striving to become an imperialist superpower in their own right, the Chinese revisionist leadership has allied with U.S. imperialism. But tomorrow they may embrace the new tsars of the Soviet Union. To allow themselves full freedom in the dance of inter-imperialist alliances, the Chinese revisionists have therefore begun to suggest that, while the Soviet Union may suffer from “revisionist tendencies,” it is “still socialist.”
This new flirtation between the Chinese and Soviet revisionists exposes how frivolous and hollow the Chinese stand towards revisionism has been. Jerry Tung to the contrary, the truth is that the Chinese leadership never overstressed the struggle against opportunism. There was great chaos in the so-called “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” but this stemmed from the anarchistic and anti-party ideas put forward by Mao to guide this struggle, ideas that stood in flagrant opposition to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. Thus the clash of factions reached intense heights, but there was little repudiation of revisionism, whether of Soviet revisionism or of internal, domestic revisionism. The casual attitude taken by Mao to revisionism is shown vividly by his restoration of the arch-revisionist fiend Deng Xiaoping to power. It is also shown by his anti-party theory of the eternal coexistence of several different lines in the party, whereby he justified conducting a balancing act among competing factions. This was not a theory to fight revisionism, but to coexist with it.
Not just in the “Cultural Revolution,” but right from the start the Chinese leadership took at best a vacillating stand in the struggle against Soviet revisionism. They were reluctant to embark on this struggle, reluctant to polemicize, and eager to find one pretext after another to declare the struggle over and done with. For example, they repeatedly put forward the idea of building a joint anti-imperialist united front with the Soviet revisionists.
The truth about the opportunist stands of the Chinese leadership towards Soviet revisionism are a matter of public knowledge. The Albanian comrades have provided extensive documentation on the treacherous stands of the Chinese leadership from the 20th Congress of the CPSU to the present. Our Party, too, has written on this question. Particular mention should be made of the series Against Mao Zedong Thought!, especially Part One, “Mao Zedong Thought and the Fight Against Soviet Revisionism” (The Workers’ Advocate, July 10, 1980), and Part Four, “On the Question of ’Two-Line Struggle’ ” (The Workers’ Advocate, November 30, 1980). As well, our pamphlet The Struggle for the Party Versus Chinese Revisionism outlined the permanent campaign of the followers of Chinese revisionism in the U.S. against the party concept and against the anti-opportunist struggle.
But Jerry Tung is not concerned with the truth. He is concerned with finding excuses to justify his treachery.
Tung Calls for a Mutual Amnesty of All Revisionisms
Tung doesn’t just defend Soviet revisionism as a thing in itself. On the contrary, he has broader purposes in mind. Thus Tung puts the “CWP” stamp of “socialism” not just on China and the present-day Soviet Union, but also on the Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe, on Yugoslavia, on neo-colonial Cuba, on the social-democratic Chile of Allende’s rule, on the bourgeois nationalist regime in Zimbabwe, and so on. Tung bestows the label “socialist” as freely as a priest grants communion. What it shows is that Tung has reconciled himself to the existing order, which he is determined to prettify as “socialist.”
Tung, however, stresses that he sees no way to defend the Chinese leadership without reconciling with the Soviet revisionists. Comparing the Chinese and Soviet revisionists, he says that China no longer has an “internal structural difference with ’capitalist’ Russia” and he asks: “What is the difference now? None. In terms of general direction on the relationship of economics to politics, there is no difference. I believe that in the final analysis, this is the driving force that will eventually lead advanced elements in both CPC and CPSU to converge again.” (p. 216)
Thus Tung admits that there is no fundamental difference between the ideologies guiding the Chinese and Soviet revisionists and the content of their actions. This should have led him to denounce the present Chinese leadership as sellouts and treacherous revisionists and to look into the Maoist theories that gave rise to this fiasco. Instead, with his “I’m OK, You’re OK” attitude to the class enemy, he concludes that the Soviet revisionists are “socialists.”
Tung then goes on to launch his slogan of the “rapprochement” of all revisionist countries. Indeed, it must be somewhat distressing to see that the alleged “socialists” are all going after one another with hammer and tongs, invading each other’s territory, establishing relations of brutal domination and abject subservience, and acting towards each other just like ordinary capitalists and imperialists. But Tung dismisses all this with a mere pious wish. Why shouldn’t “socialists” hit each other over the head? Tung blandly remarks: “The only difference (between the CP of China and the CPSU) lies in their national interests in the context of the international setting. We can’t underestimate the tenacity of these differences and the depth of the historical wounds inflicted. However, it is still economic necessity that will drive them closer again....”
In fact, there are deep divisions among the revisionist regimes based on “their national interests.” Each revisionist regime defends the interest of its own bourgeoisie. The CPC and CPSU may “converge again” for a time, but it will be for the sake of another social-imperialist alliance, no less dangerous than the present U.S.-China warmongering alliance. But Tung long ago gave up the attempt to change the existing reality; all that he is concerned about is to prettify it.
All in all, the attitude of the “CWP” to the various revisionists is very similar to that of most trotskyites. Call the revisionists names, denounce this or that mistake, pretend to be more revolutionary than them – but support them as class brothers. Thus Sam Marcy, head of the trotskyite Workers World Party, states that: “It is one thing to attack the Soviet leadership as revisionists, renegades, opportunists, and so on. It is qualitatively different and a crossing of class lines to write off the Soviet Union itself and the social system that prevails there.” (The WWP pamphlet The class character of the USSR – an answer to the false theory of Soviet social-imperialism, p. 7)
Tung echoes this approach of Marcy over and over in his book. Criticize the revisionists, call them chauvinists on this or that issue, admit that they have rich fat bureaucracies, call them repressive – but support them. Indeed, the question of whether the parties that are in power are revisionist or not is a mere secondary question for Tung, since the issue is “whether their line speeds up or retards the consolidation of socialism” (p. 142) but, in either case, the parties are allegedly working for socialism. It is just a question of how well.
Thus Tung states: “(but) saying that the Soviet Union and China are socialist countries does not mean we endorse all their actions. We have to have a mature attitude towards socialism, instead of a simple love/hate relationship. We have to take a stand on the incorrectness of Soviet actions in Afghanistan and Poland, and of China’s pro-U.S. positions like its support of Seaga in the Jamaican election and its reactionary position on El Salvador. Moreover, we have to explain why these gross deviations are possible under socialism, but can be corrected, in fundamental contrast to the situation under capitalism.” (p. 19, emphasis added)
So how should the revolutionaries and class conscious workers deal with the bureaucratic elite, with the military aggressions, with the agricultural disasters, with the unemployment, and with the all-round crisis in the revisionist countries? Here is Tung’s answer, the fruit of his alleged great revolutionary experience: “Why can’t we be more patient with socialism [revisionism – ed.]?” (p. 8) This is what he recommends as the replacement for the allegedly one-sided emphasis on the anti-revisionist struggle.
Friendship for Revisionism Means War on Marxism-Leninism and Genuine Socialism
While Tung calls for patience with the crimes of the revisionists, he has no patience with the teachings of Marxism- Leninism. One of the recurring themes of his book is that the experience of the revolutionary Bolshevism of Lenin and Stalin is allegedly unsuitable for American conditions. Indeed, Tung has taken up the mocking at Marxism-Leninism that is so fashionable among all the liquidators today.
Tung straight-out denies the applicability of the Leninist experience to “advanced capitalist countries.” Tung contrasts “countries where the seizure of state power was accomplished based on relatively one-sided preparation by the revolutionaries” to “advanced capitalist countries where preparation needs to stretch out in all spheres due to the more thoroughgoing and sophisticated nature of capitalist rule.” He concludes that in the advanced capitalist country revolution “requires a set of leaders, a kind of cadre core with a set of experiences much more all-rounded than the Bolsheviks and the Chinese communists before their revolution.” (p. 141, emphasis added) Here Tung gives the stock social-democratic theory that Leninism applies only to backward countries, not to advanced capitalist countries. Nor is it any secret that Tung is referring to electoralism and liquidationism. And indeed, although Leninism had great experience in electoral work, it is true that it had consisted of fighting parliamentary cretinism, not providing guidelines for it.
Tung however prefers to reiterate over and over that Leninism is not applicable, rather than saying openly exactly what new types of struggle the “CWP” has added to Leninism. Tung thus comes up with the following absurd pretext. According to Tung, “In Russia, the Bolsheviks were concentrated in a few big cities.... The conditions were so particular that both CPSU’s and CPC’s preparation and forms of transition of power were unique and one-sided.” (p. 145)
At one point, for the sake of empty phrasemongering, Tung praises the October Revolution. But he immediately adds, two sentences later: “The leaders of the CPSU, beginning with Stalin, then Khrushchov and Brezhnev, have all, to different degrees, exaggerated the universal significance of the Russian experience.” (p. 213, emphasis added) Here Tung cynically implies that the revisionism of Khrushchov and Brezhnev stems from following the path of the October Revolution and “exaggerating its universal significance.” He both implies that the present-day Soviet revisionists are loyal to Leninism and converts Leninism into a peculiar Russian phenomenon.
Note that Tung mixes up Khrushchov and Brezhnev with Stalin. This is typical of Tung’s whole book. Although he claims to be discussing whether capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union or not – and thus by rights should be contrasting the situation in the days of Lenin and Stalin to the situation under Khrushchov and Brezhnev in order to see whether they are fundamentally the same or fundamentally opposed – in fact, he takes good care to simply lump the revisionists and the Marxist-Leninists all together. In this way, he both attributes to the revisionists the achievements of the Marxist-Leninists, and also argues that the necessity to criticize this or that defect of the revisionists shows the necessity to take a similar attitude to Leninism.
For example, how does he discuss the deteriorating economic situation under revisionism? He takes good care to never contrast the all-round crisis in the revisionist countries to the triumphant march of socialism in Albania or to the path-breaking successes in the days of Lenin and Stalin. Instead, he contrasts the revisionist countries to each other, notes that they are all in bad shape, and says, see, that’s socialism for you. Thus he writes: “However, socialism today [read: revisionism –- ed.] in the Soviet Union, China, and other countries manifests difficulties. These difficulties range from declining productivity to low social morale.... If these problems were unique to a few countries in contrast to others where socialism was vibrant (or at least had a handle on the problems), then we could safely point to one thing as clearly socialist and another as clearly revisionist.” (p. 10)
In this passage, Tung refers gently and politely to the all-round crisis facing the revisionist countries. And indeed all the revisionist countries face decaying agriculture, industrial slump, fat bureaucracies, discontented workers, and so forth. But, Tung says in effect, what can we do, these problems are inherent in life, just as the bourgeois apologists blame it all on inherent human nature.
Of course, this trick is only made possible by completely eliminating revolutionary socialism from the picture. Today genuine socialism exists only in Albania. Socialism flourishes in Albania, which is free of exploitation, free of unemployment, inflation and galloping bureaucracy, free of escalating militarism and all of the brutal features of the capitalist-revisionist world. Moreover, this has been achieved in Albania only because the Party of Labor of Albania led the Albanian masses in a tenacious struggle to build socialism according to the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Essential to the successes of socialism in Albania has been the protracted and uncompromising struggle against revisionism of every type. Yet in over 300 pages of Tung’s supposedly major study of “socialism,” he refuses to even mention the building of socialism in Albania. In fact, the very word Albania barely appears three times in passing. And in practice, for years Jerry Tung and company have been slandering socialist Albania as “ultra-left” and trotskyite. Yet, according to the very criterion that Tung himself has chosen, the existence of vibrant and flourishing socialism in Albania exposes the rotten nature of the revisionist regimes.
As well, Tung refuses to compare the sorry revisionist reality of today to the great experience of Lenin and Stalin which he so casually throws away as of limited value and not applicable to advanced capitalist countries. Yet the very figures that Tung himself gives elsewhere in his book show that the crisis in the Soviet Union began only after Khrushchov and company had seized power and their poison had done its undermining work. For example, Tung is forced to admit the obvious, that “In the Soviet Union, there are clearly problems with (the) health of the population as measured by mortality rates, and rates of alcoholism and crime.” (p. 125) Naturally Tung fails to notice that this admission utterly contradicts his alleged proofs that the “standard of living has steadily been increasing,” that life is free from the hell of exploitation, and so forth. Or are we to believe that the Soviet people are inherently perverse and drink to oblivion and fall sick and engage in crime just to spite those kindly old bureaucrats who are doing so much for them?
But that by way of aside. The main point is that Tung, trying to explain everything away, is forced to make a second admission, namely, that “these are relatively recent problems, becoming acute only in the last two decades.” (p. 125, emphasis as in the original) Tung believes that this suffices to sweep everything under the rug, for “we must look at the impoverishment of the proletariat not on the basis of an individual factory, a specific period, or one location, but over decades, as a trend.” (p. 52) But the facts will not vanish so easily.
What does the long-term view, the “trend,” show us? The last two decades means the 1960’s and the 1970’s. Stalin lived until 1953. Thus, while Stalin was alive, while the Soviet Union followed along the path laid out by Lenin and Stalin, these problems and the all-round crisis in the Soviet Union did not exist. But after Khrushchov and company seized power in the 50’s and had time to rig up their system, immediately all the signs of social degeneration, of exploitation, of misery, spring up and become acute. And this despite the fact that the gang of revisionist cutthroats, the Khrushchovs and Brezhnevs, had at their disposal all the great material base created by socialism under Lenin and Stalin and did not have to overcome the devastation of imperialist intervention and war, as Lenin and Stalin did.
Thus Tung’s glorification of revisionism as “socialism” requires him to write off Leninism and to take a hostile attitude to genuine socialism in Albania. Indeed, in order to serve Chinese and Soviet revisionism, he denounces the whole struggle of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism of the 1960’s. Thus, Tung opens the preface to his book by pontificating that: “By 1965, modern revisionism worldwide had pretty much putrefied the communist movement.” Yet the 1960’s were the decade in which the struggle against modern revisionism broke out in full force worldwide. By 1965 the great polemic between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and Soviet revisionism had already been at work for several years. The fighting Party of Labor of Albania was marching ahead with sure steps. New Marxist-Leninist parties were seeking to replace those formerly communist parties that had been corrupted and destroyed by revisionism.
But Tung makes no distinction between the revisionists and the Marxist-Leninists. Everything was putrid to him.
And then came the great savior, Mao Zedong Thought. As Tung says in the next sentence: “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution rejuvenated the international communist movement, of which we are part.” So throw out the great polemic, cast aside the example of heroic Albania, fighting steadfastly like a rock against Soviet revisionist betrayal, ignore the revolutionary upsurge, only the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” was of any value. Here again we see Tung’s renegade attitude to the revolutionary struggle.
However, Tung says, there were a few problems with the “Cultural Revolution.” For example, “A major negative effect of the Cultural Revolution was that it destroyed a whole generation of the very precious, rare and able cadres.” (p. 17) What a novel way of rejuvenating the communist movement. If Tung believes this, than how can he praise this “revolution” so highly? It is clear that Tung is an unprincipled hack who will trim his sails to any breeze.
But wait, Tung has found the solution to the problems of the “Cultural Revolution.” It is to give up the struggle against revisionism and to seek “rapprochement” with Soviet revisionism. Here now we have Tung’s latest prescription for “rejuvenating the international communist movement.” And here we have the naked renegade features of a liquidationist hack.
Tung Is Still a Fervent “Three Worlder”
The “CWP” have been ardent supporters of the counterrevolutionary Maoist theory of “three worlds.” Their discovery of “socialism” in the Soviet Union does not change this at all. Both “three worlds-ism” and Soviet revisionism meet on a common platform of negation of the revolution. Hence the “CWP” has found it easy to simply readjust their “three worlds-ism” to fit in their new praise for Soviet revisionism.
In his book, Jerry Tung, knowing the unpopularity of the discredited “three worlds” theory, makes a certain attempt to disguise his “three worlds-ism.” He writes: “The Three Worlds Theory is wrong, as is the two worlds theory [revolutionary Marxism-Leninism – ed.], because both assume that the Soviet Union is capitalist.” (p. 13)
In fact, however, Jerry Tung still ardently adheres to “three worlds-ism.” He explains that: “In terms of the capitalist part of the world (that is, the Western capitalist countries of Europe, the United States, Japan, and others, and the non-socialist third world countries), we do see the configuration of three worlds.” (p. 207) Tung reiterates his loyalty to the whole range of different forms of capitulation to imperialism of the “three worlds” theory: the support of neo-colonialism, the glorification of “third world” lackey regimes, the policy of allying with one imperialism against the other, and so forth.
Thus Tung reiterates, one after the other, all the basic theses of “three worlds-ism.” He declares that “the third world” is “the main force against imperialism.” (p. 207) He supports the so-called unity of the second and third world, saying: “We also support the right of third world countries to utilize the contradiction between U.S. imperialism and the European and Japanese imperialism.” (p. 207) This means to support the neo-colonial schemes of the so-called “second world.” He reiterates his support for the “non-aligned countries movement,” only now adding the claim that, “independent of conscious intentions,” the non-aligned movement is objectively “aligned.” (pp. 206, 207) Indeed, even Tung’s claim that the Soviet Union is “socialist” does not alter his support for the “three worldist” view of allying with U.S. imperialism against the Soviet Union. For the sake of phrasemongering, Tung bombastically proclaims: “One final note. In the event of a U.S.-Soviet war or a war between the United States and any socialist country, we will unequivocally defend socialism, including the Soviet Union.” (p. 212) But, for the time being, it is business as usual in defending U.S. imperialism and the warmongering U.S.-China alliance. Tung argues that: “The contradiction between the Soviet Union and the United States is very sharp. Mao rightfully utilized this contradiction to develop a relationship with the United States after attacks by the Soviet Union in the 60’s. The legitimate purpose of this relationship was to facilitate China’s construction through reducing its defense budget.” (p. 157) And later Tung exclaims that: “We have to support communists within China who want to exploit the contradiction between the United States and the Soviet Union...(by) normalizing relations with the United States, which is a deterrent to the Soviet Union moving in.” (pp. 209-10)
Here we have “CWP’s” disgusting renegacy gone wild. Tung believes that it is fine for one allegedly “socialist” country, China, to create a warmongering alliance with U.S. imperialism against another allegedly “socialist” country, the Soviet Union. “Socialism” fighting “socialism” is the renegade perspective of the “CWP.”
Tung also goes all out to prettify U.S. imperialist plunder and penetration of other countries. It is well known that through the export of capital, through loans and “aid,” the various imperialist powers reap super-profits from the sweat and blood of the working people of other countries. As well, economic penetration is used by the imperialists to get their claws in other countries and to subjugate them not only economically, but also politically. But Tung and the “CWP” paint imperialist plunder in liberation colors claiming that the export of capital is a “weakness” of Western imperialism. He urges that this “weakness” should be exploited by the rest of the world.
For example, he argues: “Another question is whether to join the International Monetary Fund. Just on the philosophical level, it is appealing: in any real fight, any real struggle, there has to be close body contact. If one keeps the enemy away with a ten-foot pole, it is not a fight.... There is nothing wrong in and of itself with the Soviet Union and the COMECON countries borrowing from the Western imperialist countries. These countries understand that Western imperialist countries have to export capital. They know imperialists have to ’recycle’ the excess dollars outside their economic system to alleviate their critical inflationary problems. Knowing the weakness of the enemy, these countries borrow money to import plants, raw material, technology, and whatever else they can get. Yet, it is true that they will be influenced economically as well as ideologically by the imperialists.
“But the fact that they suddenly become dependent and problems abound such as the situation in Poland does not mean that it is not a good fight.... And in the Polish situation, besides the crucial strength of the working class represented by the growth of Solidarity union, the verdict on foreign debts is not yet in. Both sides are tied down, and both are affected. To have it otherwise if puritanism.” (pp. 160- 61, emphasis added)
Here Tung combines his praise of enslaving U.S. imperialism with his justifications that Poland and other Soviet-bloc countries are “socialist.” Why, becoming “dependent” on Western imperialism is not such a bad thing – it is really a “close body contact.” Along with this, he expresses his support for the Solidarity misleaders, who are trying to move Poland over to the Western imperialist orbit.
At the same time, Tung adjusts the “three worlds” theory to allow him to defend the enslaving deeds of both superpowers. So, while he defends alliances with U.S. imperialism against Soviet “socialism,” he also now defends the social-imperialism of the Soviet revisionists, saying that: “...in the main it is a good thing that the Soviet Union is a superpower” and prettifying the enslaving Soviet “aid” to the “third world.” Indeed, Tung grants the right to ally with any imperialism against any other imperialism. For example, he stresses: “We must support the right of third world countries to utilize for their own survival whatever contradictions that exist between two chauvinist ’superpowers.’... It gives socialism strong allies as well as forces socialist countries not to impose any nationally specific doctrines on third world countries....” (p. 157) In short, as a good “three worlder,” Tung will prettify any imperialism and capitalism. The only thing that the world’s peoples do not have the right to do in his view is to fight imperialism and join the forces of revolution and genuine socialism.
In the next part of our article, to be published in a future issue of The Workers’ Advocate, we show that Tung’s idea of socialism turns out to be simply state monopoly capitalism, complete with a “mixed” economy and a bourgeois democratic system of “balances,” and dressed up in pro-worker colors as “planning.” We also examine in more detail the particular arguments that Tung uses to prettify Soviet revisionism and show that he completely negates Marxism-Leninism, engages in the word-chopping and confusion-mongering of a complete charlatan, sings praises of the corrupt revisionist bureaucracy, and denigrates the role of the party and of the dictatorship of the proletariat in socialism.