First Published: Ray O. Light Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2, June 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As World War II was coming to a close, U.S. imperialism had emerged as the hegemonic power in the capitalist world. Consequently, the key characteristic of modern revisionism as it emerged from WW II (first with Browderism within the CPUSA then Titoism in Yugoslavia, and by the early 1960’s clearly with Russian revisionism and the Eastern European countries as well) was their collaboration with U.S. imperialism in particular at the expense of the oppressed peoples and the international proletariat.
In the first half of the 1960’s, one of the key propositions put forth by the emerging anti-revisionist camp led by the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labor of Albania was that U.S. imperialism was the main bastion of world capitalism, the chief adversary of the international proletariat and oppressed peoples. During those years the cause of the proletarian revolution experienced great advances primarily in the national democratic revolutionary movements which took the path of armed struggle in many countries of Asia, Africa, Arabia, and Latin America, against U.S. imperialism, and the path of massive uprisings of the Afro-American people, within the “belly of the beast”, within the U.S. imperialist state boundaries.
The focus of the worldwide struggle between capitalism and socialism in the 1960’s became the Vietnam war – waged primarily between the people of southern Vietnam organized in a National Liberation Front led by the Peoples Revolutionary Party against the feudal-comprador Saigon lackeys of U.S. imperialism and ultimately against the U.S. imperialist army of occupation aided by its international mercenaries that included large sections of the Australian, South Korean, Philippine and other U.S. imperialist puppet armies.
Hence it was no accident that the focus of the ideological struggle against Russian revisionism was precisely around how the revolutionary peoples needed to deal with imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism. It was in the course of opposing the Khruschevite revisionist thesis of “peaceful transition” to socialism, peaceful “revolution” for national liberation from the imperialist yoke, and “peaceful co-existence” and “peaceful competition” between the socialist countries and the capitalist (i.e. imperialist) system, headed by U.S. imperialism, that the Marxist-Leninist forces led by the PLA and the CPC set forth the Marxist-Leninist thesis of merciless struggle against imperialism including the preparation for and use of armed struggle in the many situations where imperialist aggression and oppression dictated its use.
It was with precisely this Leninist focus on imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, that the anti-revisionists were able to expose the opportunist betrayal of the oppressed peoples and the proletarian revolutionary cause being committed by the Russian revisionists and their ilk. It was precisely on this basis that the emerging Marxist-Leninist movement led by the PLA and CPC were able to provide direction and inspiration to the rising struggles of the oppressed peoples against feudalism and imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, during the early 1960’s.
At the dawning of the new year 1979, normalization of relations between China and U.S. imperialism was established. In light of the historical context discussed above, the question for the Marxist-Leninists is – did normalization of relations between U.S. imperialism and the P.R.C. represent “a powerful blow against the main forces of imperialism and hegemonism” as the CP-ML, the U.S. “CP” officially recognized by the Chinese revisionist leadership, has claimed, (Call, 1/8/79)? Or was this normalization actually a decisive step in the consolidation of bourgeois power in China and of subservience of China and its CP. to the interests of U.S. imperialism, i.e. merely a new giant step of the present Chinese leadership down the by now well worn path trod before by Browder, Tito, the Euro-communists and the Russian revisionists – the path of collaboration with U.S. imperialism at the expense of the oppressed peoples and the international proletariat?
In China itself in the official Peking Review (No. 51, 12/22/78) Chairman Hua Kuo-feng stated: “The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States is a historic event.... It will also contribute to peace and stability in Asia and the world as a whole.” (p.9)
Marxist-Leninist science however demands not that we take the word of a “great leader” but that we examine the time, place, and conditions which surround a new development in order that we might assess its objective significance in the class struggle. Within a few weeks after Hua’s statement and Sino-U.S. normalization the revolutionary forces of the world discovered not peace and stability in Asia as Hua had proclaimed but war between China and Vietnam, two fraternal Asian revolutionary peoples!!
In the USA today, the various organizations claiming to be Marxist-Leninist supporters of the present Chinese revisionist leadership and followers of “Mao Tse-tung Thought” unanimously praise Sino-U.S. normalization as a victory for China and the world’s exploited and oppressed peoples.
The “official” CP-ML, claimed that, “It is a great step forward in the efforts of the third world countries fighting for liberation and independence and of the peoples of all countries trying to maintain world peace and delay the outbreak of a new world war.” (Call, 1/8/79, p. 12) How can the CP-ML revisionists tell that to the Iranian people who overthrew the CPC backed Shah precisely in this period! Or to the Vietnamese people who experienced a Chinese invasion within weeks of this event! The CP-ML continues, “Finally it is testimony to the growth and strengthening of socialism in the world while capitalism remains a system locked in a process of steady crisis and decay.” How can they tell that to the people of the Socialist Republic of Albania and Vietnam who in the period leading up to Sino – U.S. relations were cut off from fraternal economic aid by Chinese revisionism!
Other opportunist forces such as Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, League for Proletarian Revolution as well as the “independent” Guardian among others welcomed the normalization of Sino-U.S. relations as a “triumph” for the Chinese people and the revolutionary cause. LPR stated: “... we congratulate the people, and government and the Communist Party of China for this great victory over U.S. imperialism.” (Resistance, January, 1979)
For the most part, these opportunist forces in the USA have not even attempted to “prove” that a “victory” over U.S. imperialism had been achieved in this normalization of relations; they merely assert this position. For example the “proof” offered by RWH included the following: “(U.S. imperialism) ... is now on the strategic defensive. The different positions of the two countries are even reflected in the personalities of the two leaders. Teng is bold and self confident. Carter always looks self conscious and overly humble.” (Workers Voice, February, 1979, p. 2)
Can this subjective “analysis” be allowed to bury the objective facts of life such as official Chinese guarantees that Taiwan can continue indefinitely to keep its neo-colonialist economic system even if it is absorbed into the Peoples Republic of China! (see Peking Review, 1/5/79) Or the fact that new laws have been enacted in China granting the national bourgeoisie its guaranteed annual interest on its pre-1949 revolution investments, and ”back pay” for any years of interest that the Chinese national bourgeoisie may have missed! Likewise does such “analysis” explain away the enactment of new laws granting bourgeois and privileged strata and classes in China easy access to organs of education, culture and especially of power, including membership in the CPC? (see Peking Review, no. 7, 2/16/79; “On Policy toward the National Bourgeoisie”, p. 11 ff.)
Does the extension of large scale financial credit from Western and especially U.S. banking interests to China in this period and the open exploitation on a large scale of the Chinese working class by U.S. corporations represent a decisive weakening of U.S. imperialism or a new basis of strength? And finally doesn’t the announcement this month that 20 million Chinese people are going to be laid-off and become an army of the unemployed indicate not the development of socialism in China but the rapid strengthening of capitalism and specifically U.S. imperialist economic domination in China?
Under the aegis of U.S. imperialism, the Chinese revisionists are leading the Chinese people not on to “superpower” status, as they claim, but precisely the opposite, back into neo-colonial status![1]
And this is not all!!
To U.S. imperialism, normalization of relations with China not only means re-penetration of the vast Chinese market for goods and cheap labor but also the re-strengthening of its hegemonic position in the present world economy.
As the U.S. imperialist mouthpiece Newsweek stated: “The superpower rivalry – seen in the Nixon-Kissinger era as a ’triangular’ relationship – more closely resembles a ’V’. The growing hostility between Moscow and Peking has removed the third side of the triangle, while Washington – the only superpower having normal relations with the other two – controls the point of the ’V’. Thus the U.S. is in a favorable position to play off Moscow and Peking against each other – or to get along with both.” (Newsweek, 2/19/79, p. 53, our emphasis)
Already in the past few weeks, a dramatic example of this new “V” relationship has appeared in the economic field. It was reported that Occidental Petroleum has sold 50,000 tons of Russian urea for making fertilizer to the Chinese and that this U.S. company plans to sell “large additional amounts” to China in the future!
Our conclusion from all the above then is that the normalization of relations between China and U.S. imperialism under present conditions represents both the re-enslavement of the Chinese people to imperialism headed by U.S. imperialism and also represents the renewed consolidation of U.S. imperialist hegemony in the capitalist dominated world economy. It is a new giant step of the present Chinese leadership down the by now well worn path trod before by Browder, Tito, Euro-communism and Russian Revisionism – the path of collaboration with U.S. imperialism at the expense of the oppressed peoples and the international proletariat.
Every Marxist-Leninist, every dialectical materialist knows that there is only one “world” on “Mother Earth”. On this one planet there are however two social-economic systems fighting for domination of the earth. One is the presently dominant but old and dying capitalist system; the other is the new and rising system of socialism (leading to Communism) which is fighting for its place in the sun against the presently more powerful capitalist system. This struggle between social-systems reflects the struggle of the two classes, the imperialist bourgeoisie and the international proletariat, which are respectively the ruling class under the imperialist stage of capitalism and under socialism.
Chinese revisionism, however, in an effort to justify its rapprochement with U.S. imperialism has projected its anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary theory of “3 Worlds” attempting to bury the historically developed objectively existing struggle between the old and dying capitalist system and its principal class representative, the imperialist bourgeoisie on the one hand and the new and rising socialist system and its principal class representative, the international proletariat, on the other.
A fundamental tenet of the Chinese revisionists has been the proposition that U.S. imperialism (as well as all other “anti-Soviet” class and national forces in the world) is an ally of China and the “Revolution” in opposition to Soviet social-imperialism, which the Chinese revisionists assert is the main enemy of the world’s peoples.
What follows is our brief effort to expose the bankruptcy of the Chinese revisionist position on this question and to substantiate our view that the main enemy, described in the early 1960’s by the PLA and the CPC leadership of the world anti-revisionist movement as “imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism”, remains a valid formulation for the world anti-revisionist movement under present conditions.
We will examine the four most important contradictions of imperialism, as Leninism teaches us, as they reflect the impact of Sino-U.S. relations and the hegemonic power of U.S. imperialism, especially in relation to Soviet social-imperialism.
In comparing the economies of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the tremendous and increasing indebtedness of the USSR to Western European, Japanese and U.S. banking interests is most noteworthy. Far from developing hegemony and “superpower” status in the capitalist world, the Soviet revisionists are leading the USSR more and more into the position of a second rate, debtor imperialist power.
According to the Swiss based Bank for International Settlements the total international debt of the seven Comecon (Soviet Bloc) countries is an estimated 42 to 50 billion dollars!! Thirty-six and one half billion of this amount is totally commercial, not backed by government guarantees and owed entirely to Western European, Japanese, and U.S. banks.[2]
Much of the servile and classical opportunist servant of imperialism role played by the Soviet social-imperialists in the oppressed nations of Africa, Asia, Arabia, Latin America and Afro-America discussed below can be attributed to this large and growing economic dependence on Western and especially U.S. imperialism.
In relation to the Comecon countries in general, western and especially U.S. imperialism is gaining an ever greater economic and political foothold at the expense of the USSR. Rumania is already more pro-U.S. imperialist than pro-Soviet in foreign policy. Even Bulgaria, perhaps the closest regime to the USSR recently signed a significant economic agreement with West Germany. At this rate it is clearly only a matter of time before the “Soviet bloc” will be only a memory.
While the major imperialist powers are integrating the “Soviet bloc” into their financial web, the struggle among Japan, West Germany and the USA for hegemony has indeed intensified over the past several years. This fact is in contradiction with the 3 Worlds Theory which claims that it is only Soviet social-imperialism which competes with U.S. imperialism. For while the USSR has the military hardware to compete with the USA, it is only Japan, West Germany, the Netherlands and other western imperialist powers which are not only increasingly competitive with U.S. imperialism but now have the economic strength to have begun large scale economic investment in the U.S. itself, especially in the U.S. South.
The Common Market and the Rockefeller created Trilateral Commission along with NATO, SEATO, etc. are among the organizational forms used by U.S. imperialism in an attempt to keep the imperialists of West Germany and Japan in particular from destroying the hegemonic position which U.S. imperialism has enjoyed in the capitalist camp since the end of WWII.
Despite the weakening of U.S. imperialism’s hegemonic position in the capitalist world under the blows of the heroic Indochinese peoples and now with the accelerating competition from West German and Japanese imperialism, nevertheless U.S. imperialism has not lost its hegemonic position nor will it lose this position without a fight. In 1973, for example, when the Japanese GNP was threatening to exceed U.S. GNP for the first time, U.S. imperialism, which controls the Middle East oil that runs Japan’s industry, cut off oil to Japan, crippling the Japanese economy! Finally, the “excellent relations” of U.S. imperialism with Soviet revisionism and now with Chinese revisionism are an aid to its struggle to maintain hegemony in the face of Japan and West Germany.
Today, the socialist integrity of the Peoples Socialist Republic of Albania remains as the bulwark of the contradiction between socialist and capitalist systems. The proletariat and oppressed peoples fighting for freedom from the imperialist yoke are part of the socialist camp as well.
Yet the socialist camp, as it developed following the great Peoples’ victory over fascism in World War II largely on the basis of the heroism of the Soviet masses and under the leadership of the Soviet Party and comrade Stalin, is no more. We discussed above the penetration of all the Comecon countries by western imperialism, their massive indebtedness to western banks. What a change from the socialist camp which stood together in rejecting the U.S. imperialist Marshall Plan just thirty years before! What a costly role Soviet revisionist collaboration with U.S. imperialism has played in the destruction of the camp that the sacrifice of the Soviet peoples had largely built!
Furthermore, on 11/1/77, as it prepared to normalize relations with U.S. imperialism, Chinese revisionism in its major statement of the Three World Theory stated, “...what was once the socialist camp no longer exists, nor do historical conditions necessitate its formation for a second time.” (p. 20, “Chairman Mao’s Theory of Differentiation...”, also see Peking Review, No. 45, 1977). What a justification for open betrayal of the international proletariat!
Continuing on this treacherous path, in early July 1978, the Chinese revisionists cut off aid to Vietnam which had contributed the most to the struggle against imperialism headed by U.S. imperialism in the contemporary period and had suffered the most at the hands of bestial U.S. imperialism. A week later the Chinese revisionists cut off aid to socialist Albania which had been the real spearhead of the anti-revisionist struggle and had supported China on a principled proletarian internationalist basis under most difficult conditions in the early 1960’s.
Finally in January 1979, on the heels of its normalization of relations with U.S. imperialism, the hegemonic power in the capitalist camp, Chinese revisionism sunk to its lowest depths and invaded Vietnam! Yet the hegemony of U.S. imperialism in relation to the former socialist camp, including Soviet social-imperialism, is so great that Soviet backed Vietnam continues to seek economic ties with U.S. imperialism despite U.S. support for China in this conflict!
Where is the Soviet social imperialist hegemony in all this?
As we pointed out previously, “Whereas ten years ago U.S. imperialism was compelled to move toward rapprochement with revolutionary China because of problems with revolutionary Vietnam, today both China and Vietnam are vying with each other to develop rapprochement with U.S. imperialism, while they are now shedding each others blood!” (Ray O. Light Newsletter, Vol. l, No. l, p.6)
Soviet social-imperialism in facing its own working class has to deal with the thirty-five year history of socialist construction in the USSR from approximately 1918-1953, a period in which the working class held state power in the USSR. The revolutionary traditions, the mass and vanguard working class organizations developed during that period of proletarian dictatorship have not yet been completely dismantled. Unemployment in the USSR is still minimal when compared to U.S. imperialist society and other advanced capitalist societies.
Consequently the strength of the Soviet working class is much greater vis a vis the new Soviet bourgeoisie than is the working class movement in the USA vis a vis U.S. imperialism.
Furthermore U.S. imperialism is still the dominant imperialist power and its extensive capital investments throughout Europe, as well as in the oppressed nations, etc. are a real source of strength for U.S. imperialism. U.S. imperialism has been able to utilize a section of its foreign super-profits to bribe a large strata of the U.S. working class and spawn a massive parasitic petty-bourgeoisie during the past thirty years of U.S. imperialist hegemony. This largely accounts for the present low level of class consciousness and class organization among the U.S. workers. Soviet social-imperialism’s foreign investments and exploitation of the working class, on the other hand, are minimal compared to the U.S. imperialist international empire.
Hence, it is not Soviet social-imperialism but U.S. imperialism which has had the parasitic U.S. imperialist society backing its maneuvers internationally in its fight to maintain its hegemonic position in the imperialist camp.
Today the working class throughout much of Europe (as is the working class of so many oppressed nations) is in motion against capital. The objective developments in the working class movements in the weaker imperialist and capitalist countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, as well as France and England indicate that, with the development of leadership by genuine Marxist-Leninist parties, the proletarian revolution in a number of countries will be the order of the day. Yet the Chinese theorists of the “Three Worlds” insist that the working class of these countries should unite with their own imperialist bourgeoisie (the so-called “second world”) and U.S. imperialism against the USSR. In line with Euro-communism, Chinese revisionism renounces the proletarian revolution and supports the continued exploitation of the working people by monopoly capital and imperialism headed by U.S. imperialism.
With its normalization of relations with U.S. imperialism Chinese revisionism will no doubt increase its support for class collaboration between the working class and imperialist bourgeoisie of the “second world”. This is a great aid to U.S. imperialism, the still dominant imperialist power throughout Europe.
The Chinese revisionist alliance with U.S. imperialism represents a powerful obstacle to vital proletarian internationalist unity. Today with the aid of Soviet and Chinese revisionism, the imperialist bourgeoisie under the leadership of U.S. imperialism through the Common Market, Trilateral Commission, NATO, etc., are still better organized than the international proletariat.
We need to fight for proletarian hegemony in the oppressed as well as the oppressor nations. We need to create a new Communist International which will enable the proletarians in the oppressor as well as the oppressed nations to unite in the struggle against international capital.
The “Three World” theorists convey the impression that they consider the contradiction between the oppressed peoples (the so-called “third world”) and imperialism as the motive force of contemporary history. However the Chinese revisionists renounce revolutionary struggle against imperialism down the line, including in the oppressed nations.
We on the other hand, have long held the view that the principal contradiction facing international imperialism today is the contradiction between the oppressed peoples especially in Asia, Africa, Arabia, Latin America, and Afro-America and imperialism headed by U.S. imperialism. On this basis we will focus on the national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples against imperialism to see most clearly the real relationship of forces in the world today including the impact of China’s rapprochement and normalization of relations with U.S. imperialism as well as the actual hegemony of U.S. imperialism.
During the past year the mightiest blows against international capital (and consequently for socialism) have been struck by the Iranian people who overthrew the bloody U.S. CIA-Shah dictatorship and its puppet Bakhtiar replacement and whose proletarian revolutionary forces are today struggling to win leadership of the democratic revolution in order to lead Iran on to socialism and communism. This Iranian revolutionary victory has been directed principally against U.S. imperialism and only very secondarily toward Soviet social-imperialism. The Chinese revisionist CP Chairman Hua came to Iran to personally attempt to help keep the Shah and U.S. imperialism in power in Iran. Following the Iranian revolutionary victories Chinese revisionism has continued to oppose the Iranian revolution. These are the basic facts. (So much for the theory of “three worlds” as an aid to the national democratic revolutions of the oppressed peoples against imperialism!)
The dramatic victories of the Iranian people during this past year have had a profound inspiring impact on the oppressed Arab peoples, which made it necessary for U.S. imperialism to compel the bloody settler state of Israel to sign the Treaty with Sadat and the Egyptian comprador bourgeoisie under the tutelage of U.S. imperialism. And this “Camp David” initiative against the Arab peoples and especially the Palestinian people was supported by Chinese revisionism! – Note that this treaty was designed, drafted and initially signed on U.S. territory!
Yet at the present time the righteous indignation of the Arab masses at Egypt’s Sadat as well as Begin and the Israeli settler state is being organized by the Arafat-led PLO dominated by the U.S. CIA-connected Royal House of Saudi Arabia, the exposed CIA paid agent Hussein of Jordan and Assad the Syrian Butcher of the Lebanese and Palestinian masses – all comprador elements tied by a thousand threads to U.S. imperialism! In the recent period Chinese revisionism has supported all these Arab compradors of U.S. imperialism!
U.S. imperialism is the dominant force behind both the Sadat-Israeli forces and their Arab “opposition”! Meanwhile though Soviet revisionism still continues to speculate on the backwardness of the present Arab leadership, giving support (along with U.S. imperialism) to Arafat etc. “against” Sadat and the Israeli settler regime, Soviet social imperialism is the “odd man out” in the Middle East.
Consequently, despite the fact that world capitalism and U.S. imperialism in particular suffered a severe blow at the hands of the courageous Iranian people led by the Iranian oilfield workers, nevertheless, U.S. imperialism remains today the hegemonic power in relation to the Middle East and therefore to the world’s oil production and reserves.
This U.S. imperialist domination of the fuel which largely drives the world’s industry coupled with the increasing U.S. imperialist domination of the world’s food supply based largely on the agribusiness industrialization of U.S. agriculture and the large and abundant U.S. land mass, as well as economic strangulation of other food production countries, almost by itself gives U.S. imperialism continued hegemony in the present world economy!
An explosive revolutionary situation exists in Southern Africa. In relation to both Zimbabwe and Namibia U.S. imperialism through Andrew Young and the United Nations has attempted to maintain their economic superprofits while supervising a change from settler domestic rule to neo-colonial rule. In both Zimbabwe and Namibia, with the aid of revisionism, U.S. imperialism has a foot in the camp of revolution and in the camp of counter-revolution. The Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe has thus far foiled U.S. imperialism’s plans there. But in Namibia, SWAPO did agree to the “UN” plan drawn up by 5 major Western imperialist powers led by the USA and were politically disarmed. Then they saw the Afrikanner settler regime reject the plan.
All this “diplomatic” activity, including extensive political cooperation with U.S. imperialism by the so-called “frontline” African states influenced by Chinese revisionism as well as the active use of the UN with Soviet revisionist acquiescence, reflects the fact that U.S. imperialism remains the main danger for the revolution in Southern Africa.
Angola is often presented now as evidence of the decline of U.S. imperialism and the rise of Soviet social-imperialism. This is because the Soviet revisionists gained real influence in liberated Angola by speculating on the backwardness of the MPLA, the genuine anti-imperialist liberation organization prior to the victory over Portuguese colonialism and U.S. imperialism. (Chinese revisionism had supported FNLA and UNITA, both financed by the US-CIA, and had condemned the MPLA for not establishing “third world” “unity” with these paid agents of U.S. imperialism!)
Yet a close examination of the Soviet revisionist backed Neto regime reveals that it has allowed the key resource in the Angolan economy, the Cabinda oil fields, to remain in the blood stained hands of Gulf Oil, in the hands of U.S. imperialism! Hence Angola is an example not of Soviet hegemony but of Soviet revisionist subservience to U.S. imperialism!
Ethiopia and Eritrea on the Horn of Africa are pointed to as well by the “theorists of the three worlds” and others as an example of Soviet hegemony. Here too however Soviet social-imperialism has intervened only to find itself supporting the economic interests of U.S. imperialism! For while Soviet military advisors and equipment are playing a major and criminal role in leading the reactionary Ethiopian army’s war to destroy the just Eritrean liberation movement, and NATO and Israeli weapons along with Soviet equipment are being used jointly, nevertheless it remains U.S. imperialism whose government agencies and investors, the World Bank, etc., are behind all the economic projects in Ethiopia!
In the case of both Ethiopia and Angola then, we find evidence not of Soviet hegemony but precisely the opposite – U.S. imperialist hegemony and the subservience to U.S. hegemonic interests of Soviet social-imperialism!!
But Soviet social-imperialism is not the only junior partner or secondary imperialist power that U.S. imperialism has been able to utilize in suppressing the liberation struggles of African peoples. Such representatives of the so-called “second world” as French and Belgian imperialism sent their troops to Zaire along with comprador African troops from the King of Morocco, etc. to crush the alleged “Pro-Soviet” peoples movement in Katanga province.
Yet it is none other than Mobuto, servant of U.S. imperialism and none other than U.S. imperialist economic interests in mining which were the principal cause of concern for which the international reactionaries sacrificed their troops, etc. And Chinese revisionism here too openly sided with international reaction headed by U.S. imperialism and justified the open invasion of this African country by the French Foreign Legion et al on the basis of its bankrupt “three worlds” view of the USSR as the main enemy and of a progressive “second world” imperialism!
Over the past year the Nicaraguan people have risen up to liberate themselves from the yoke of the forty year old Somoza family dictatorship under the tutelage of U.S. imperialism. Much as they tried to help U.S. imperialism in Iran to save the Shah, Chinese revisionism, during the crisis period in Nicaragua, purchased Somoza owned and controlled cotton providing the dictatorship with some much needed economic strength with which to fight against the Nicaraguan people. China had been among the first governments in the world to recognize the bloody Pinochet regime in Chile. Soviet social-imperialism called on the Sandinista liberation fighters to put down their arms and negotiate with Somoza, much as the Soviet revisionists had helped set up the Allende regime for slaughter by the CIA-Pinochet forces in Chile with their social pacifist illusions about U.S. imperialism.
Meanwhile U.S. imperialism through the Organization of American States attempted to place one foot in the camp of the liberation forces while still keeping its other foot firmly in the West Point-trained Somoza’s camp.
The freedom forces of Latin America will some day have the last word. However today, with the relation of forces described above in Nicaragua and Chile, even with the presence there of Soviet revisionist backed Cuba, Latin America remains a U. S. imperialist domain.
The British imperialist division of the Indian subcontinent into Pakistan and India which divided the extremely important Bengal nation into East Pakistan and West Bengal originally insured continued British economic domination (through the Commonwealth) despite nominal independence for its many peoples in the post World War II period. This imperialist domination also insured that liberation struggles would continue to emerge until the imperialist yoke is finally thrown off.
During the war of the East Bengali people for autonomy and freedom from West Pakistan which led to the establishment of Bangla Desh at the beginning of this decade, both U.S. imperialism and its Chinese revisionist servants backed the Pakistani central regime. Soviet social-imperialism backed India and the new Bangla Desh, which nevertheless remains, under Indian rule, divided from West Bengal.
However the U.S. imperialist policy was accurately described as merely “tilting” toward Pakistan during the war, and U.S. imperialism was quickly able to re-establish close political ties to go along with its close economic relations with the reactionary Indian regime. Today on the vast Indian subcontinent with its hundreds of millions of people and many nationalities, while China has relations only with Pakistan and the Soviet Union relations only with India, U.S. imperialism has close relations with both Pakistan and India!
Perhaps U.S. imperialism’s hegemonic position at the point of the “V” in relation to China and the USSR can be seen most clearly in Indochina. Here only a few short years ago was the scene of U.S. imperialism’s bloodiest and most bestial crimes against the world’s peoples and here the heroic Indochinese peoples gave the world’s peoples invaluable leadership on how to deal with U.S. imperialism. Yet in the past year or so when Kampuchea and Vietnam have been at war with each other, while Soviet social-imperialism has ties with Vietnam, and China with Kampuchea, only U.S. imperialism has had the ability to influence both Kampuchea and Vietnam through its ties with the USSR and China!!
* * *
We believe that this Newsletter has demonstrated the following:
1) that normalization of relations between China and the USA represents not an advance but a setback for the international proletariat and oppressed peoples.
2) that U.S. imperialist hegemony in the imperialist camp has been strengthened by this normalization of relations with China,
3) that the Chinese revisionist “theory of the three worlds”, including on the question of the main enemy, is a bankrupt and treacherous theory to justify a bankrupt and treacherous policy,
4) that Chinese revisionism is in the classical pattern of modern revisionism; viz., its essence is class collaboration with imperialism and with U.S. imperialism in particular – it must be struggled against in the struggle for national liberation and socialism ; and
5) that the formulation of the main enemy of the world’s peoples remains valid today as when projected by the anti-revisionist movement of the early 1960’s led by the PLA and the CPC; namely, the main enemy is “imperialism headed by U.S. imperialism”.
Armed with a correct understanding of our main enemy and of the real significance of the normalization of relations between China and U.S. imperialism the international communist movement can reorient itself to channel the revolutionary blows of the masses in the most effective direction to advance the proletarian revolutionary cause.
FIGHT FOR PROLETARIAN HEGEMONY AND SMASH U.S. IMPERIALIST HEGEMONY!
DOWN WITH THE U.S.-CHINA ALLIANCE!
DOWN WITH SOVIET AND CHINESE REVISIONIST COLLABORATION WITH U.S. IMPERIALISM!
DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM HEADED BY U.S. IMPERIALISM!
PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES UNITE!
[1] There are those who while opposing Chinese revisionism and its theory of the three worlds nevertheless support ideologically the proposition put forth by the Chinese revisionists themselves that through the normalization of relations with U.S. imperialism China is in the process of achieving the status of a “superpower”. Lenin’s teachings on the nature of imperialism, however, expose the economic “facts of life” involving the massive export of international and especially U.S. imperialist capital to economically underdeveloped China. Hence the Leninist conclusion that the present normalization of relations between China and U.S. imperialism represents a big step toward the re-enslavement of the Chinese people to international capital headed by U.S. imperialism.
[2] When the government of the U.S. owes billions to U.S. banks this represents merely a cementing of the servant relationship occupied by the U.S. imperialist state apparatus in relation to its imperialist bourgeois masters. But when such indebtedness is incurred by sovereign (not to mention “socialist”) states and they are forced to submit to the dictates of foreign imperialist masters, this involves violation of their sovereignty. The constitution of Socialist Albania outlaws such indebtedness!