1. An Historic Betrayal

As the struggle intensifies and becomes fiercer, the class definition of the sociological basis of the USSR and China as socialist states is bound to be cast more and more into oblivion. This has the effect not merely of liquidating their class definition, but also of weakening and adulterating the class consciousness of the working class, of blunting the anti-imperialist struggle, and of diverting the course of the working-class struggle against capitalist exploitation and imperialist expansion into false channels. It raises the question for all in the movement of how to approach this utterly new phenomenon.

For those who blindly start out from the viewpoint of defending one of the combatants in the arena, regardless of what political and world policy it pursues, and assumes that in the other socialist state, socialism, as they believed it to have existed, has been liquidated, the answers are all too easy. The tactics have all been worked out in advance and fashioned to perfection — until the next disappointment arrives.

Need a Marxist, class analysis of socialist countries

For serious working-class revolutionaries it is necessary to come to grips with the basic problem — a development utterly unforeseen in Marx's time or Lenin's time — a struggle between socialist states which holds out the gravest danger to the socialist future of humanity.

We must begin with the firm foundation of Marxist sociology. We must begin with the clear understanding that it is a falsehood to deny the class character of either China or the USSR as socialist states in the Leninist meaning of that term. The glorified, false, and idealistic conception that socialism as a completed, classless society exists in the USSR or China was baseless to begin with and not derived from Marx's, or later, Lenin's conceptions — of what socialism constitutes in its initial stages — that is, merely a proletarian dictatorship.

The attitude of the socialist countries toward Yugoslavia should have served as an object lesson in this regard.

Whatever might have been the merits or demerits, the rights or wrongs, in the expulsion of the Yugoslav party from the Cominform, the fact that all the socialist countries, including China at that time, wrongfully cast not merely the Yugoslav leadership and party but the nature of its social system in the mold of a fascist state and then later were obligated to reverse themselves and go to the other extreme in order to win its friendship and recast it in a wholly socialist mold at a time when there is less reason than ever to do so, points up the great danger in throwing aside fundamental Marxist theoretical criteria in developing political assessments out of purely pragmatic considerations.

It should be noted that nowhere in the world is there a serious section of the bourgeoisie which regards either China or the USSR as anything but socialist ("communist," as they call it). It is true that a great many of the learned apologists for the capitalist system characterize the Soviet Union and/or China as totalitarian or having a new governing elite or a new ruling class, as the case may be. But this is for popular consumption by the masses in order to deceive them.

To the extent that it is directed against the more educated segments of the petty-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, it is shrewdly calculated to divert them from taking a sympathetic and progressive position with relation to the socialist countries.

When it comes down to practical political dealings with the socialist countries the imperialists deal with them on the understanding that they are governed by "centrally planned economies" (their codeword for a socialist country) and public ownership of the means of production, which, together with the monopoly of foreign trade by the socialist governments, constitute the most formidable obstacles to easy economic and political penetration by finance capital. Only when the leadership of the socialist countries permits itself to be seduced by the wiles of imperialist strategy or succumbs out of weakness, ineptitude, or lack of experience to the tremendous difficulties of socialist construction and thus objectively becomes representative of alien class forces can these penetrations be of a real danger to the cause of socialist construction. Under a firm revolutionary leadership they can on occasion and within specifically defined limits prove beneficial.

There have of course been endless attempts at penetration by finance capital, especially in Eastern Europe, above all in Poland and in Hungary, not to speak of Yugoslavia. The last merely maintains the skeletal form of a socialist economy and politically is more in the camp of imperialism.

Nevertheless, in spite of these depredations by finance capital, in spite of the encroachments on the political sovereignty of socialist countries through economic and diplomatic means, in spite of many abhorrent errors in the construction of a socialist system, errors which rekindle dormant political reaction, in spite of all the divisions among the socialist countries including the recent debacle of the U.S.-China alliance, there is no question that, with the exception of Yugoslavia, it is wholly consistent with objective truth to say that there still exists a socialist camp, if not in the political and diplomatic sense, in the sociological sense, in the sense of class anatomy. All the more is it the duty of the world proletariat and oppressed to fight for the revival of unity in the socialist camp, to defend it against all forms of imperialist aggression, obstruction, and sabotage from without and bourgeois reaction from within.

How to reverse the trend toward military conflict?

The great problem in the contemporary phase of world history facing all the socialist countries, the working class, and the liberation movements is how to arrest, how to stop the internecine struggle in the socialist camp from deteriorating into full-scale military conflict. To a limited extent we have already seen this, as witness the earlier Viet Nam-Kampuchea border conflict and the possibility that the threats made by the PRC leadership against Viet Nam may turn into a reality.

In a word, the problem is how to get out from a process which irretrievably leads to an abyss — one which holds out the danger of swallowing up the fundamental achievements of the world proletarian class struggle as embodied in the USSR China and other socialist countries. It holds out the possibility of the destruction of that which has taken millions and millions of lives and years of labor to construct, that which holds the greatest possibility for humanity to proceed in furtherance of liberation through the socialist reconstruction of society.

The strategical and tactical line which flows from this analysis makes it incumbent upon the world proletariat and oppressed everywhere to aim its fundamental thrust not against this or that socialist country, not against the USSR or China, but against imperialism which first attempted to overthrow both of them, then tried what it called local wars against socialist countries (Viet Nam, Korea), and political and economic sabotage supplemented by paramilitary intervention against all the other socialist countries.

It is imperialism which engineered the split in the socialist countries. It is imperialism which envenomed the relations between the USSR and China. It is imperialism which exerted the most severe pressures upon them, not excluding the threat of atomic annihilation. It is therefore now, as always since the development of the monopoly phase of capitalism, imperialism that is the main enemy.

This, however, tragically enough, is no longer regarded as valid in some quarters(!), precisely at the time when it is most urgent and important. To pursue such a political line means in effect to subordinate the struggle against imperialism by casting either China or the USSR in the role of the fundamental enemy.

The political line which addresses itself to imperialism and which admonishes it not to be taken in by Chinese or Soviet seduction is putting the shoe on the other foot. It is bound to fail.

Leading individual representatives of the bourgeoisie now and then can be won over for a period to championing either the Soviet or Chinese position on the basis of imperialist interests. This, however, should not be confused with the basic attitude of the ruling class as a whole. Individual representatives come and go in the bourgeois camp but virulent anti-communism is a permanent integral part, not merely of the ideological armor of the bourgeois camp, but is central to imperialist interest and is driven by the powerful engines of the omnipotent military-industrial complex and supported by the entire banking fraternity of U.S. finance capital.

From this it inexorably follows that working class propaganda has to be directed against imperialism for having attempted all these many, many years to split the socialist countries and having tried to entice their leaderships, as it has enticed, bribed, and corrupted certain leaders of neocolonialist countries into the camp of imperialism.

If, as we said, the struggle intensifies, a class approach and analysis with regard to China and the USSR, as well as Viet Nam and Kampuchea, is bound to become more and more shoved into the background, diluted, or cast into oblivion.

The political motivation for this, it is assumed, is to obtain broad mass appeal, but in reality since it lacks a working class approach it inevitably veers sharply in the direction of currying favor with bourgeois public opinion. The whole class struggle of the proletariat and the anti-imperialist struggle in particular gets lost in the course of this rivalry, supposedly to win progressive allies, but which in reality ends up in entangled and fruitless maneuvers with the bourgeois camp. This can only aggravate the harm done to both the USSR and China. It will tend to widen the struggle in Southeast Asia. The possibility of Chinese intervention against Viet Nam remains an ever-present danger.

Possibility of detente in socialist camp mustn't be denied

In the light of these ominous developments, it would be even more harmful to close the eyes of the proletariat and oppressed to the possibility inherent in the situation for a genuine socialist detente between the USSR and China and the eventual restoration of socialist solidarity in the entire camp.

To proceed on the present basis inevitably and irresistibly leads to an acceleration in the deterioration in the relations among the socialist countries. The imperialists are desperately trying to obtain the broadest possible worldwide bourgeois front in order to isolate the USSR and its socialist allies. This cannot be countered by a reasoned approach to the bourgeoisie not to do it. Diplomatic maneuvers and agreements of all sorts with the imperialists may, and in the past, have proved to be necessary and helpful, but they are no substitute for a bona fide attempt to rectify and reverse the tragic erosion of socialist solidarity among the socialist countries. It is this which has been the mainstay in the struggle against imperialism.

The real question all along since the development of the Sino-Soviet conflict has been where to direct the main thrust of the working class, the oppressed and the socialist countries. Should the main thrust be against China? Or, as the Chinese leadership would put it, against the USSR? This is the crux of the problem.

It is aided and abetted by what Engels called, in his funeral speech at Marx's grave, an "overgrowth of ideology" — in this case, the heavy burden of false polemics over a period of more than two decades, to which the adversaries themselves no longer seem to adhere, and about which some would not even like to be reminded.

It must be borne constantly in mind that for the first time in history since the existence of the socialist camp, one socialist country has openly and avowedly allied itself with imperialism against another socialist state. All the more is it necessary to view the emerging struggle in the light of this new complex phenomenon that the world faces.

The worst of all things is to completely close the eyes of the working class and pretend that no such new phenomenon exists, to continue the false thesis that only one of the socialist countries is truly socialist and that the other has turned either fascist or social-imperialist.

Compounding these difficulties is that there is no longer a common language among communists, precisely because of the introduction of the new and utterly spurious and self-serving doctrine of social-imperialism on the one hand and on the other the virtual obliteration of the entire course of the Chinese Revolution with the pretense that a bourgeois restoration in one form or another has already taken place in China without in so many words saying it.

The objective basis of the split

What is the objective basis of the split?

Examining the political dispute in the socialist camp, and its subsequent degeneration into a state-to-state struggle, in isolation, separate and apart from the reciprocal relations with imperialism, guarantees a false analysis, no matter how exhaustively and minutely this is done. One has to begin with the sum total of world reality as it exists today and its multitude of interrelationships before being able to examine any part of it, however formidable, in isolation.

It is first of all necessary to take into account that the capitalist mode of production, even in the epoch of decadent monopoly capitalism, is still the predominant one. The socialist mode of production, even after more than 60 years in the Soviet Union and 30 years in China, is only in its infancy.

One of the fundamental differences between the capitalist and socialist modes of production is that capitalism grows spontaneously, blindly and independently of the will of the capitalists themselves. A socialist society, however, can only be built consciously on the basis of planning and on the basis of the common ownership of the basic means of production. These are the barest minimums necessary to begin the arduous task of constructing a new social system without exploitation and oppression.

Socialist construction also requires a minimum degree of stability and a material basis in technology, science, and the productive forces generally. Above all, it requires freedom from external interference, counter-revolutionary sabotage, threats of invasion, and imperialist military intervention. No socialist country has been free from this for any length of time, not even the Soviet Union.

It is important to go over again and again the preponderant role of imperialism, which has hung over all the socialist countries from virtually the day of their birth to the present. None of the socialist countries, not even China today with its virtual alliance with imperialism, is free of this pressure. Once this is forgotten, no appreciation on a revolutionary Marxist basis of the current state of relations among the socialist states is possible.

It is best to keep in mind the period immediately after the Second World War. The U.S. emerged from the Second World War as the predominant world force on the international arena. All of Europe was virtually in ruins. So was Japan. The Soviet Union had lost more than 20 million lives in warding off the fascist powers.

The U.S. and its Allied imperialists took a slow boat in launching the second front in Europe. It was not the might of the Nazi armies which caused the delay. It was a shrewdly calculated political maneuver. Its purpose was to bleed the Soviet Union as much as it could and drain off as much of its military power as possible.

Once it was clear that Germany was being defeated, however, and Soviet troops were actually on German soil, then the Allied imperialists launched the D-Day invasion and moved as quickly as possible in what seemed to be an effort more to confront the Soviet army than to defeat the Nazi war machine.

The whole aim was not merely to thwart the Soviet Union's military advance but also to insure the survival of the European bourgeoisie against possible proletarian revolutions in Western Europe, aided and encouraged by the presence of the Red Army.

The class perspective of the Allied imperialists was never blurred by the outlandishly reactionary and repressive character of the Nazi regime. Notwithstanding all the protestations of friendship and alliance with the USSR during the war period, the basic aim of imperialism was not only to subdue Hitler but even more importantly to make sure that the anti-Nazi alliance would inflict as little damage as possible on the ruling classes of European, Japanese, and American imperialism.

Thus when the war ended, the first item of business on the agenda of the imperialists was the "containment" of the USSR and the opening of a violent campaign to regain Eastern Europe and bring it back into the orbit of imperialism — an objective they have never lost sight of to this very day.

It must be borne in mind that the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 compelled the imperialists, particularly in the U.S., to turn their attention to the Far East. But this did not substantially diminish their interest not merely in rehabilitating the ruling classes of war-torn Europe but in promoting all kinds of diplomatic as well as political penetrations of Eastern Europe with a view to curtailing the possibilities of the socialist countries there establishing a harmonious relationship with the Soviet Union and among themselves, while building a socialist order.

With the triumph of the Chinese Revolution it became imperative for U.S. finance capital in particular to exert the most acute pressure on the socialist countries, from Poland in the Western part of the socialist camp to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea in northeast Asia. There was no let-up in the ruthless campaign unleashed by the Pentagon, State Department, and the Truman administration. Aside from the domestic aspects of the rise of McCarthyism, its foreign policy aspect was an unbridled campaign to move militarily against both China and the USSR.

The revelation was recently made that even before the rise of McCarthy, none other than Churchill recommended the use of the atom bomb during the Berlin Crisis in 1948. This more than any single incident vividly demonstrates the terrifying pressure used against the socialist countries in order to bend them to the will of imperialism.

The period of the 1950s included a number of wars launched by imperialism, the two most important ones against socialist countries — one against Korea and the other against Viet Nam. There wasn't even an interval of two years for China to consolidate the victory of the Chinese Revolution before the PRC was obliged to commit a good part of its army in defense of Korea and its own borders.

In spite of the fact that French imperialism was defeated by the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu, and U.S. imperialism had been forced to a stalemate over Korea earlier, imperialism by no means diminished its worldwide counter-revolutionary efforts directed against all the socialist countries. The pressure against them has been constant, unremitting, and unrelenting.

It has been of a military interventionist character, as we have seen in Viet Nam and Korea, in addition to the economic, diplomatic, and political pressure exerted against all the socialist countries. This has forced them all to divert an ever-larger portion of their gross national product for military defense. It has forced the Soviet Union to become if not the equal, at least a near equal to the U.S. in military strength, a role which has been imposed upon them by imperialism.

Ideological struggle arose in response to imperialist pressure

Thus if we are to ask ourselves what is the basic objective cause of the struggle in the socialist camp, and more particularly what is the cause of the struggle between China and the USSR, we must first of all look to the merciless pressures exerted by imperialism.

As a matter of fact, is it not true that the ideological struggle between the USSR and China has from the very beginning been over what approach to take to imperialism? That in sum and substance has been the axis on which the polemics have developed. There would never have been a question of a soft line or a hard line in relation to imperialism if imperialism had no longer existed after the Second World War and the victory of the Chinese Revolution.

Even in the case of Yugoslavia's virtual defection, at least in part, to imperialism, one must look to the exigencies of the Balkan situation as seen from the vantage point of U.S.-British piratical policy in the Mediterranean. One must not forget that a genuine revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Greece had been going on for several years and that Yugoslavia was the target of imperialism for aiding and assisting the Greek revolutionary liberation struggle. Yugoslavia was a channel for aid from all the socialist countries to Greece.

Without, for the moment, evaluating the character of the Soviet Union's policy in relation to Yugoslavia, the fundamental objective problem lay in the fact that Yugoslavia was in the front line of the struggle, in alliance with all the socialist countries. Because of its relation to the Greek revolutionary struggle, the significance of the Mediterranean, and also its potential revolutionary attraction to the Italian proletariat, Yugoslavia was targeted for the most intense and unremitting imperialist pressure. Coming at a time of growing friction between Yugoslavia and the USSR over policy in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe, this contributed heavily, if not mainly, to what may be called the basic objective reason for Yugoslavia's ultimate defection from the socialist camp.

Why is it necessary to go into such detail to demonstrate the severe pressures exerted by the imperialists against the socialist countries? Is this not generally understood among all genuine socialists and communists?

No, not entirely. The differences in the socialist camp are regarded on the whole as stemming purely from internal causes.

Our view, on the contrary, holds that the objective basis for the split and struggle among the socialist countries lies in the external pressure from imperialism and that the internal struggle reflects that pressure in varying degrees and in different forms.

Internal legacy from earlier systems

This is not to say that all of the contradictions and antagonisms of both a social and political character are due altogether to the external pressure of imperialism. No. There is also a legacy left over by the previous social order. There are problems left over from both feudalism and capitalism which have been left unsolved.

Both in China and earlier in the USSR, as well as in Viet Nam, Korea, and other countries, the new socialist regimes have not only to solve socialist tasks but tasks that have not been solved by the previous ruling classes.

In a country like France, by contrast, the bourgeois revolution of 1789-1793 cut feudalism root and branch. It left for the proletariat the principal task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

However, the new underdeveloped socialist countries, which include China, Viet Nam, Korea, and earlier included the USSR, have the twofold task of combating bourgeois institutions as well as the more intractable older habits, customs, and institutions left as the legacy of the earlier social order. To this of course must be added the tendency of imperialism (to the extent that it finds an avenue for influence in these countries) to strengthen political reaction left over from the past as against the progressive tendencies emerging to reorganize society on a socialist basis.

In the period immediately following the death of Stalin, an ideological dispute was slowly emerging which took definite but somewhat concealed form with the so-called secret Khrushchev Report at the 20th Congress. From then on it came more and more into the open, although there were brief periods of accommodation and general political agreement.

It was only in the early 1960s that the dispute took an open, public turn. It did not appear then that within the space of a few more years the ideological dispute would take on slowly but gradually a state-to-state form and even turn into violent military confrontation. But that finally happened in 1969 with the outbreak of military warfare over the disputed border along the Ussuri river.

History of the ideological issues

The political issues are important and relevant and go to the heart of the matter if we are seeking to arrive at the axis of the polemics — how to approach the struggle against imperialism. It is not the purpose of this document to go over the issues at the present time in detail. Suffice it to say that the Chinese leadership in its view took a revolutionary, intransigent line in the struggle against imperialism, for the revival of the revolutionary class struggle, and above all for relentless prosecution of wars of national liberation against imperialism.

Most important, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) contested the prevailing position of the Soviet CP on the question of peaceful coexistence between capitalist and socialist states. It has been falsely attributed to the CCP leadership that they were against normalizing or conducting relations with imperialist states, particularly the U.S., because imperialist wars of aggression were fatalistically inevitable. But that was not their position.

In a general way, casting aside polemical sallies and exaggerations inevitable in a long period of polemics, the CCP leadership claimed to revive and resuscitate Lenin's teaching on the inevitability of imperialist wars in the epoch of monopoly capitalism.

The Soviet position, as expounded by its leaders, differed widely. They did not reject out of hand Lenin's conception of the inevitability of imperialist war, but their main and fundamental stress was not only on the possibility of a long-term coexistence between the imperialist and the socialist states but that it was such an overriding necessity in the age of the atom bomb as to make it a fundamental basis for the conduct of relations between the socialist and capitalist states.

"The struggle for peace," as Soviet political literature abundantly made it clear, was the first priority in the class struggle of the world proletariat, and the national liberation movements had to be fitted into the constricted framework of this global conception of the Soviet leadership. Only on those terms could the struggle be waged at all.

In the eyes of the Chinese CP leadership at the time, this was interpreted to be a subordination of the class struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie and a virtual renunciation of national wars of liberation. The Soviet leadership accused the Chinese leadership of being "adventurist" in relation to imperialist wars and of in fact abandoning peaceful possibilities for the solution of urgent political problems.

The CCP leadership in turn accused the Soviet leadership of surrendering the national liberation struggle and the class struggle in the West European countries and in Japan to bourgeois parliamentarism and of renouncing the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This polemic at first took on the character of a dispute between the Chinese CP and the Italian CP. (It was most fully expounded in the Chinese pamphlet, The Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Ourselves.) In reality it was directed, of course, against the Soviet leadership.

China viewed 'coexistence' as collusion with U.S.

Over the long period in which the dispute continued, it became ever clearer that the Soviet leadership was promoting the conception not merely of coexistence but also of accommodation and cooperation particularly as regards the U.S. In the eyes of the Chinese CP leaders this meant the defense of the imperialist status quo and drew dangerously close to bidding for collusion between the Soviet leadership and the imperialists against the liberation struggles, while containing China in an isolated if not subjugated position.

During this entire period, of course, there were innumerable imperialist provocations, counter-revolutionary wars of aggression against oppressed peoples, and outright brazen military intervention in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. As the leaders of China saw it, the Soviet leadership took a "soft" position as against their own hard line against imperialism.

This is not to say that, notwithstanding the political and theoretical world conception of the USSR leadership regarding the relationship between imperialism and the socialist countries, it did not resist the incursions, provocations, and military interventions of imperialism. Nor is it correct to say that the Soviet leadership reacted mainly out of revolutionary and internationalist considerations, contrary to its public accommodationist, cooperative stance politically and diplomatically, as imperialist opponents of Soviet policy maintain.

On the contrary, Soviet responses as well as its initiatives over the course of this entire period seem in historic perspective to be born of pragmatic considerations, which does not exclude revolutionary defenses or initiatives. However, pragmatism was, and still is, the hallmark of its diplomacy and world outlook.

For the most part its foreign policy especially is a reaction to imperialist encirclement, imperialist attempts at subversion and counter-revolution. Attempts to meet these challenges of imperialism have made it abundantly clear that Soviet policy had great and urgent need to find points of support on a global scale; supports which if they did not immediately improve the international position of the USSR vis-a-vis the U.S. and other imperialist powers, certainly inflicted tremendous blows against imperialism, circumscribed its area for the extraction of surplus value, and weakened it from that point of view. An example is Soviet support for the Cuban Revolution.

Both China and the USSR passionately supported the struggle of the Cuban people and their leadership against U.S. aggression. As all the world knows, the Cuban crisis very nearly led to a nuclear war. All this happened notwithstanding the Soviet leadership's vigorous espousal of cooperation and accommodation between imperialism and the Soviet Union.

Political disputes need not lead to military conflict

Had the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute continued merely as a struggle for political line in the international communist movement, there is no reason whatever to believe that it could possibly have broken out into military warfare, notwithstanding all the dire predictions (really wishful thinking) in the imperialist press at the time.

If one is to assume that the split or the expulsion, whichever way one views it, of the Yugoslav party from the Cominform was the first phase of the split in the socialist camp, one has to take into account that regardless of the severity of the measures which were imposed upon Yugoslavia by the socialist countries as a whole, which included China, it nevertheless did not lead to a military conflict. And that more than anything explains why they were able to restore normal and even somewhat fraternal relations with both China and the USSR.

The imperialist interpretation of this and also that of the Yugoslav leaders rests mainly on the fact that the Yugoslavs have a strong army and no border between Yugoslavia and the USSR. That, however, cuts little ice when one considers the enormous possibilities which could have been evoked in the potentially explosive Balkan area which would have involved East European socialist countries and the USSR.

The point is that it did not reach the level of the kind of struggle that is presently being waged between the USSR and China.

Next September will be 20 years since Khrushchev had his Camp David meeting with Eisenhower. It is true that it didn't evoke the kind of euphoria that the bourgeoisie is now pouring out over Deng's visit to this country. The euphoria was more in the USSR and other socialist countries and in sections of the communist and progressive movement (but not in China).

The avowed purpose then was to arrive at a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the part of the Soviet leadership and also to find a basis for cooperation and accommodation. But this was precisely what turned the Chinese leadership off. (Can't the Chinese leaders now see that Deng's visit is merely a Chinese version of the Khrushchev Camp David meeting?) Aside from the fact that there was no prior consultation between the Soviet and Chinese leadership on the agenda for the discussions with the U.S., it was wrong to initiate the Camp David summit meeting because it would inevitably be regarded by the Chinese leadership as conspiracy against China.

This is so because China was still not recognized by the U.S., was still virtually blockaded economically and militarily, and prevented from regaining its proper seat in the United Nations — all due to the obstructive role played by the U.S.

"Accommodation," "cooperation" — the Chinese leaders viewed these terms as codewords for collusion and conspiracy against China when employed by Soviet diplomacy as a stratagem for peaceful coexistence between two hostile social systems. But the Eisenhower administration, in line with the policy of its predecessor administrations, as well as its successors, did not at all succumb to the proposition advanced by some in the bourgeois camp of consummating a global deal with the USSR when Khrushchev was here of a kind which the U.S. is now attempting to entice the PRC into.

Why? Why did not the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations or their successors project the kind of global deal that they presumably now are consummating with China? Their reluctance does not hinge primarily on whether the approach of the Soviet leadership is reformist or revolutionary.

Why imperialism views USSR as its principal enemy

It is based on the solid fact that the USSR as a socialist state, as a workers state, after having gone through all the trials and tribulations of its 60-year existence, through all the vicissitudes of reaction and progress by succeeding administrations of the Soviet state in the post-Lenin era, and especially after having gone through the crucible of the murderous Second World War, has emerged as a strong and viable socialist state, much stronger than any of the other socialist states, including China, of course.

This is the predominant reason why the U.S. in particular and imperialism in general regard the USSR not merely with apprehension but as the principal enemy. By the very strength of its social system, its vast resources, its technological and military prowess, it can play a tremendously revolutionary and progressive role in world affairs.

It has demonstrated this only recently in the cases of Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, not to speak of the earlier and continuing support to the Cuban Revolution.

The imperialists cannot particularly concern themselves, unless under a great imperative need, if a small country which does not have strategic significance and is not blessed with an abundance of oil, gas, uranium, or other precious and strategic materials, carries out a socialist revolution. It is only when that small country solicits aid to build socialism from the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union cooperates by granting such aid that it becomes a "menace to peace."

The U.S. has learned to regard China with less apprehension since the downfall of the left-wing of the Chinese CP and the dismantling of the Cultural Revolution. Even during that period, when the U.S. politically attacked China most vehemently, it was out of fear of the revolutionary repercussions of the Cultural Revolution that the U.S. directed its blows against China. Nevertheless, even during that entire period, the main enemy in the eyes of the imperialists was still the USSR precisely because of its formidable strength as a socialist country and, as we said, its tremendous potential for aid on a worldwide basis in the struggle against imperialism. This has not been the case with China.

It is not only due to the underdeveloped state of the economy in China. It is that China, for a variety of reasons, has never become the center for the worldwide revolutionary movement the way the Soviet Union became after the Bolshevik Revolution the central source for revolutionary energy, determination, political line, and of course, where possible, material support.

During the trying days when the Chinese leadership met with the Soviet leaders in early 1950, the bourgeoisie, especially the U.S. media, were daily pouring out a barrage of propaganda calculated to show the so-called divergent interests between China and the USSR and the imminence of a split.

The negotiations between the USSR and China proved most difficult. But in a document in 1950 we addressed ourselves to that very point, to the question of whether temporary, ephemeral, and narrow interests would triumph over the broader class interests which united the workers and peasants of both countries.

Broad class interests same for both China and USSR

We answered no. We based ourselves not on speculation born out of abstract theoretical premises but on the hard realities of the day, the urgent need in the struggle against the common enemy — imperialism — and that the current of history favors the triumph of these class interests over narrow interests championed in both China and the USSR.

For well-nigh two decades our thesis seemed to hold at least insofar as open military hostilities were concerned. Today the current of history is running stronger than ever for the triumph of the broad class interests of the workers and peasants.

Everywhere there are giant leaps in technology, in science, in communication, in all the modern fields of scientific endeavor, the groundwork is laid more and more firmly for cooperation and solidarity of the international working class, of the toilers of all lands and of all nationalities. It is the weight of oppression of exploitation and the divisive policy of finance capital which holds down the solidarity of the working class and oppressed. The organic tendencies in contemporary society surge constantly and incessantly forward toward unification on the basis of socialist solidarity.

Everywhere the effort of the bourgeoisie to construct a bogus internationalism is proved to be a fraud because it represents the carnivorous tendencies of the transnational corporations and not the mass of the people. It exists on the back of the people like an incubus, a parasite, and does not permit the truly giant strides in industry, science, and technology to move forward for the benefit of humanity, but holds them back and seeks to shift them in the direction of imperialist war.

All of this happens independently of the will of the imperialists. And it is the fear of the imperialists which at bottom has caused in the socialist countries the dislocation, chaos, and sabotage of what can truly be fraternal, cooperative efforts to lay the foundations for a socialist commonwealth from the tip of the Korean peninsula to the edges of the Baltic Sea.

The bourgeoisie is only too mindful of the latent possibilities inherent in the social structures of China, the USSR, and other socialist countries, including those in Southeast Asia, Cuba in Latin America, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, and the progressive democratic regime in Afghanistan, for a peaceful socialist alliance based on an identity of fundamental interests to oppose the incursions military threats and interventionist policy of imperialism.

Most dangerous to the fortunes of imperialism is the revival of a genuine normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, which could proceed to a formalized socialist detente between the two giant socialist countries.

Imperialists fear latent possibility of socialist detente

If it is possible to have a detente, a genuine detente. that is. between the USSR and imperialism as the Soviet leadership has for so long believed in, then why is it not possible for a socialist detente with China? Why is it possible to have one with imperialism, and not with the socialist countries?

The same question could be asked with even greater force and vigor of the Chinese leadership. If they can find such great virtue in a cozy relationship with the U.S., an imperialist country (the Chinese press has not denied the imperialist characterization of the U.S., at least not as of now), why cannot they find any of at least those same virtues in the USSR? Or is it that the U.S. no longer seeks "hegemony" in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and in Asia (Korea!)? And what about Taiwan?

Probably one of the lasting elements of a subjective political character in the triangular relationship of China, the U.S., and the USSR lies in the unpublicized efforts of the leadership, both in China and the USSR, not so much to conspire with imperialism against each other, as to get out of the line of fire in imperialism's efforts to foment an imperialist holocaust to which it is daily building up independently of its will and in spite of all efforts to propitiate and mollify the appetites of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

What both China and the USSR objectively need to construct and further develop the socialist economics is peace and stability. It is precisely that which imperialism is determined to deny them.

It is worthy of note that amidst all the euphoria in the capitalist press calculated to embellish the nature of the U.S.-China rapprochement, President Carter went out of his way to deliberately insert a sentence in his formal statement before the press communique was issued in which the U.S. asserted that it "has its own separate interests and that China has its own responsibilities." It was as near a pronouncement as was possible within the framework of a so-called honeymoon period, of telling the Chinese leadership that they have their own class interests, and that the U.S. has its own imperialist interests, which China does not share but which the U.S. expects China to approve and help American finance capital to safeguard and secure.

Thus Carter's line of demarcation, although sketched in the language of imperialist diplomacy, is a class line which the political, diplomatic, and military alliance between China and the U.S. cannot easily overcome. The class line is still the fundamental obstacle. That is why a segment of the bourgeoisie has its fears and doubts about the alliance. And a number of them are apprehensive that a reconciliation, as they call it, between the USSR and China is not only possible but probable.

It is for that reason, more than for reasons of the narrower advantages of super-profits in Taiwan, that the U.S. wants to hold the island as a hostage to prevent a revival of the Sino-Soviet relationship.

If the bourgeoisie is so fearful of that, is that not in itself enough to stimulate a measure of confidence in the broader perspective of socialist solidarity being revived, rather than the deterioration being carried to the length of utter and destructive folly?

Socialist goal must be unity of workers' movemenT

Just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin after them continually preached and promoted the cause of unity in the working class movement, regardless of the differences between its reformist and revolutionary elements, so it is our duty today to promote socialist solidarity among the socialist countries in a situation where the lines of demarcation are not at all that between reformists and revolutionaries, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. No, the lines of revolutionary demarcation in political policy as between the Soviet leadership and the Chinese leadership depend almost wholly on circumstance.

The USSR is in the vanguard of the world movement and stands out as the defender of oppressed people more than any other socialist country because it is capable of assuming that role in the concrete historical situation of today.

The political changes in the USSR and China are not by any means dominated solely by the external relations with imperialism and the domestic situation in the respective governments of China and the USSR. The rest of humanity also exists. There are limitless opportunities for profound revolutionary changes which can encourage and induce a turn to revolutionary policy in both China and the USSR.

Notwithstanding Deng's promise to give moral support to the efforts of the U.S. and other imperialists to solve the Iranian crisis, the revolutionary momentum in Iran can go far beyond the political horizon envisioned by Khomeini and his supporters, and the possibilities for a revolutionary overturn along genuine socialist lines can cause a lot of second thinking both in Moscow and Beijing that perhaps the paper tiger is neither in the Soviet Union nor in China but in the citadel of imperialism, the U.S.A.

At the moment, nothing is as unstable and tenuous as the position of the U.S. in the Middle East, although it is by no means the only area where imperialism is vulnerable and debilitated. The Iranian conflagration may spread far beyond the Persian Gulf. The sparks of the Iranian Revolution may light up areas of revolutionary struggle where tanks, guns, and missiles cannot overwhelm the ground swell of popular rebellion. Such indeed are the prospects American finance capital faces.

It is no wonder that the imperialist media is beginning to ooze with pessimism growing out of its frustrations and failures in attempts to stifle the ever-growing number of rebellions in oppressed countries. Nor is there any peace between exploited and exploiter in Western Europe. The instability of the regime in Italy, the growing number of strike struggles in Britain, the bankruptcy of the reactionary government which took over in Portugal, and the intractability of the world economic situation make for poor prospects for stability in the precarious situation of world finance capital.

Under these circumstances, do revolutionary Marxists have any reason at all to renounce the existence of virtually the strongest pillars of the socialist camp?

On the contrary, it was never more important to strengthen the revolutionary class camp of the proletariat, which extends from one end of the earth to the other and encompasses a whole grouping of socialist states which includes both China and the USSR. That is what has to be borne in mind as imperialism moves closer and closer to perilous adventures in order to save itself from the destiny which it cannot avoid.

Index
Introduction | 1. An Historic Betrayal | 2. Behind the U.S. 'Neutrality' Posture | 3. The Early Harvest of the Deng-Hua Policy | 4. The Great Socialist Destiny of China and Viet Nam

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Last updated: 14 June 2018