First Published: In Struggle! No. 250, May 12, 1981
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Through our different trips abroad and through our internationalist support activities, we have come into contact with various organizations that we didn’t even know existed before. Our discussions and work with these kinds of organizations have helped us see more clearly that the forces involved in the struggle against revisionism can’t he reduced to only those forces who have been struggling throughout the past years against Krushchevite revisionism, and then against the “three worlds theory”, and then against Chinese revisionism, or Eurocommunism, etc.
What kinds of forces are we talking about? Some examples of what we mean are the Peoples’ Liberation Forces (FPL) in El Salvador, the Communist Movement in Spain, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the organization Kumalah in Iran (Kurdistan)etc... All these forces base themselves on Marxism and recognize the leading role of the working class, and are working to build a proletarian leadership in the peoples’ struggle. At the same time they are also forces with which we don’t always have agreement on all important questions: like, for example, on the question of the U.S.S.R.
The development of these organizations has often been more linked to the evolution of the struggle against revisionism in their own country, rather than being shaped by the big polemics that have taken place throughout the world communist movement. But this hasn’t stopped their development from being one of a process of continual struggle, a process leading them to break with reformism or with pacifism and to reaffirm the necessity of revolution, both in the advanced capitalist countries and in the less developed countries.
Up to now we have only been able to get to know a few of these organizations. We certainly don’t pretend today that we are able to come to any defnitive judgements on their line or on their activities.
But one thing is still very clear for the future of our internationalist work. And that is the fact that the world communist movement can’t possibly solve the problem of its reconstruction as a real political force in the class struggle unless it is really linked with the preoccupations and the activities of all the organizations leading the revolutionary struggle.
This leads us to two practical conclusions. First, we have to build up still more our support and collaboration with these forces, when we agree with the immediate objectives they are putting forward. Secondly, we have to also further enlarge the range of forces that we are trying to reach in our attempts to build international unity on the basis of a communist programme.
The stakes of all this whether we are going to be all to take up the struggle for unity with the spirit of winning all the communists and revolutionaries that can he won to a real agreement on a communist basis.