You try to present your opposition to the ideological and polemical struggle against revisionism and opportunism as opposition to Maoism. To do this, you speculate on the slogan of opposing “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” You identify the ideological and polemical struggle as “two-line struggle” and thus denounce it. With your playing with the term “two-line struggle,” you are putting forward in effect the thesis that the problem with the Chinese revisionists was that they fought too hard or polemicized too much against revisionism. This is absolutely wrong. Far from fighting too hard or polemicizing too much against opportunism, the Chinese revisionists on the contrary floated one thesis after another in opposition to the struggle against opportunism. For example, the Chinese revisionists advocated that opportunism was a “middle force” to be united with and on this basis they denounced Comrade Stalin. Among other things they opposed the term “social-fascism,” opposed the struggle against social-democracy and as well the analysis concerning the struggle against opportunism given in Section III of Comrade Stalin’s article “The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists” in which the term “main blow” appears. The Chinese revisionists were only forced by circumstances and by their pragmatic calculations to enter into the struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists; they were not happy with this struggle, found it a terribly heavy burden, vacillated and wavered, and tried repeatedly to end it. By opposing the struggle against revisionism and opportunism under the signboard of opposing “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle,’ ” you are descending to the level of giving arguments close in spirit to the Chinese revisionists’ theses under the signboard of opposing Chinese revisionism. This is a striking example of Marx’s remark that: “The antiquated makes an attempt to reestablish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form. ” (Letter to Bolte, 23 November 1871) Furthermore your crusade against “two-line struggle” is dishonest and demagogical. You replace serious analysis of the issues involved with shouting a slogan against “two-line struggle.” This reminds us of what Comrade Lenin called “ Alexinsky methods.” Comrade Lenin wrote:
At the 1907 London Congress the Bolsheviks would dissociate themselves from Alexinsky [then a Bolshevik – ed.] when, in reply to theoretical arguments, he would pose as an agitator and resort to high-falutin, but entirely irrelevant, phrases against one or another type of exploitation and oppression. ’He’s begun his shouting again,’ our delegates would say. And the ’shouting’ did not do Alexinsky any good.
There is the same kind of shouting in Kievsky’s article. He has no reply to the theoretical questions and arguments expounded in the theses. Instead, he poses as an agitator.... “ (“A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism,” Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 76)
Sad to say, that is how you argue on the question of “two-line struggle.” You refuse to discuss the serious issues involved. Instead you pose as an agitator and shout that some opportunist group or other gives the slogan “ideological struggle.” You shout that the Chinese revisionists give the slogan “two-line struggle.” Then you rush to the conclusion of condemning the ideological and polemical struggle under the cover of loud shouting that anyone who hesitates to condemn “ideological struggle” and “two-line struggle” is an opportunist, just like this or that group that also gives the slogan “ideological struggle.” It is both shocking and repulsive to see a Marxist-Leninist party such as yours descend to the use of such methods. These are Alexinsky methods.
The question of the stand of the Chinese revisionists in the struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists is a serious one and one completely tied up with the question of “two-line struggle.” In analyzing the nature of Mao Zedong Thought and in investigating the questions of the roots and origins of the taking up of the “three worlds” theory by the Chinese Communist Party, one of the crucial issues is the study and reassessment of the whole course of the struggle against modern Khrushchovite revisionism. This reassessment is for the sake of learning how to conduct the struggle against modern revisionism more powerfully, consistently and to greater effect. The path of studying the role of Chinese revisionism with respect to the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism was set forth in the Letter of the CC of the Party of Labor and the Government of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party and the Government of China (July 29, 1978), Part II, and in the monumental two-volume work Reflections on China.
Our Party set forth this path as a central point in the study and repudiation of Chinese revisionism at the NC meeting of June 1978 and in the Internal Bulletin of early August 1978. This study reveals the vacillating, wavering and disruptive stands of the Chinese revisionists. These stands of the Chinese leadership in this life and death struggle for the present-day international communist movement impel one to look for the deeper causes of these stands. Among other things these stands destroy the mystique of Mao as the alleged leader of the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism.
The struggle against Chinese revisionism and its ideological basis, Mao Zedong Thought, therefore has as one of its aims to expose and repudiate the Chinese sabotage of the struggle against modern Khrushchovite revisionism and against revisionism and opportunism in general. But you denounce the ideological and polemical struggle against revisionism and opportunism as “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” This is disgraceful. In our letter of December 1 we expressed our astonishment at this stand of yours. We wrote:
You have gone to the extreme of insisting that the slogan of ’Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists’ is in fact in your view a manifestation of Chinese revisionism and the Chinese revisionist type of ’two-line struggle.’ It is hard for us to express our sheer astonishment at seeing that our struggle against revisionism land the struggle against Chinese revisionism in particular! – ed.] is denounced as a manifestation of the ideology of Chinese revisionism. Our denunciation of Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought and of its theory of ’two (or many) headquarters in the party’ is not that it fights revisionism too hard, but that it conciliates revisionism and is opposed to the principled struggle against revisionism. The errors and monstrous crimes of the Chinese revisionists did not stem from fighting revisionism too hard or from issuing too many public polemics against Khrushchovite revisionism. The Chinese revisionists did not fail to take a sound Marxist-Leninist stand because they were too busy waging a polemical struggle. On the contrary, the failure of the Chinese to wage a stern, consistent, protracted struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists, including the open polemical struggle, was and is one of the glaring manifestations of their failure to base themselves on the sound, principled positions of Marxism-Leninism. It was one of the manifestations of their failure to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism. The theory of Mao Zedong of the ’many headquarters in the party’ was not a theory to justify fighting too hard against revisionism, but a theory to justify a liberal, conciliationist, social-democratic and nonchalant stand towards the defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, the defense of the monolithic unity of the party and the stern, unyielding struggle against the modern revisionists. (p. 5, Section III (c))
In your letters of December 5, you replied to the above passage from our letter of December 1 by denying that the Chinese revisionists had a wavering, conciliationist, reluctant stand vis-a-vis the Khrushchovites. You instead present the Chinese revisionists in effect as staunch fighters against the Khrushchovite revisionists, but from anti-Marxist-Leninist positions. (Of course, it has to be remembered that you regard the waging of the ideological and polemical struggle itself as an anti-Marxist-Leninist position, as the “Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’”) You write:
Look at how this worm poses the question: how the fundamental problem with Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought is ’not that it fights revisionism, but that it conciliates with revisionism....’ The fact of the matter is that Chinese revisionism and its ideological base, Mao Zedong Thought, and ’its theory of two (or many) headquarters in the Party’ is an anti-Leninist and revisionist trend itself, while this worm is accusing it of ’conciliating with revisionism and is opposed to the principled struggle against revisionism.’ Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought are a departure from Marxism-Leninism and between Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism there is an insurmountable gulf. Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought do fight against Soviet social-imperialism and the Khrushchovite revisionists, but they do so on the basis of anti-Leninism and revisionism and to serve their own pragmatic ends. It is to satisfy your pragmatic ends that you are creating this intellectualist hyperbole. (pp. 17-18, emphasis added)
Here you deny the many shameful facts about the crimes of Chinese conciliationism and wavering stands vis-a-vis the Khrushchovites, their repeated attempts to reestablish unity with the Khrushchovites, their opposition to “the principled struggle against revisionism” and so forth. You deny all these crimes of the Chinese revisionists by the Alexinsky method of shouting this and that slogan against the Chinese revisionists. But you shout these slogans only to end up saying that Chinese revisionism does allegedly fight the Khrushchovites, but “on the basis of anti-Leninism and revisionism and to serve their own pragmatic ends.” You thus present the Chinese revisionists as stern and implacable foes of the modern Soviet revisionists, but for their own anti-Marxist-Leninist reasons. What a backhanded compliment of the Chinese revisionists and Mao Zedong Thought!
It is absolutely astonishing to us that you believe that a stern and implacable struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism could be waged from anti-Marxist-Leninist positions. Only the Marxist-Leninists can wage a stern and consistent struggle against revisionism. As Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out in 1966 at the 5th Congress of the PLA: “...there can be no middle road. ...if the fight against revisionism is not inspired by ideological motives, but only by certain economic and political motives on a national chauvinist basis, it is a mere bluff which is short-lived. Those who uphold this line in their stand toward the renegades from Marxism-Leninism are themselves in danger of slipping, sooner or later, into the positions of the latter....” (Report to the 5th Congress of the PLA, cited in the History of the PLA, Ch. VII, Sec. 2, pp. 603-04, emphasis added)
The Chinese revisionist stand against the Khrushchovite revisionists was “a mere bluff which is shortlived.” They have today openly come out in full revisionist positions and joined openly in the dance of the inter-imperialist (and inter-revisionist) rivalries and alliances.
But before we go on to various aspects of the actual stand of the Chinese revisionists with respect to the Khrushchovite revisionists, there are a few other striking aspects of your passage that deserve comment. For one thing, your passage that we have quoted above is another backhanded defense of centrism and conciliationism. You deny that the Chinese revisionists had wavering, conciliationist, flabby stands with respect to the Khrushchovite revisionists on the basis that Chinese revisionism is anti-Marxist-Leninist. But a conciliationist and wavering stand towards the Khrushchovite revisionists is also anti-Marxist-Leninist. Lenin fought not only the open social-chauvinists, but the Kautskyites, the so-called “center,” as well. “There can be no middle road.” But you first of all absolutize the concept of conciliationism and shift the issue from whether the Chinese revisionists took a conciliationist stand on the life and death issue of struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists to whether “the fundamental problem with Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought” is CONCILIATIONISM, with a capital C, capital O, capital N, etc. You then contrast conciliationism to anti-Marxism-Leninism. You convert conciliationism into some type of middle road that is at least partially Marxist-Leninist, that does not have an impassable gulf between itself and Marxism-Leninism, etc. You directly imply this, indeed you stress this, by insisting that the fact that Chinese revisionism is anti-Marxist-Leninist and that between Chinese revisionism and Marxism-Leninism there is an “insurmountable gulf” means that Chinese revisionism could not have taken a conciliationist stand. This shows your utter confusion on the question of conciliationism and centrism, a confusion which is also manifested in your opposition to our struggle against conciliationism in the struggle against social-chauvinism in the U.S.
It should also be noted that you are accusing us of not holding that Chinese revisionism is anti-Marxist-Leninist simply to create a smoke screen and a diversion. This is part of your Alexinsky methods. You are perfectly aware that our Party unanimously holds that “Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought Are Anti-Marxist-Leninist and Revisionist.” The NC of the COUSML already came to this conclusion in February 1979. At an internal conference held in March 1979 and attended by every comrade working under the discipline of the COUSML, this stand was thoroughly discussed and unanimously endorsed. Indeed, you saw this yourself, as at our invitation you sent a delegation (one comrade) to observe this conference. This resolute stand of ours was published in The Workers’ Advocate of March 1979. And this stand has been further elaborated in a number of articles in The Workers’ Advocate since then. But instead of dealing with the serious questions of analysis concerning Chinese revisionism, you prefer to use the Alexinsky method of shouting that our Party is allegedly soft on Mao Zedong Thought. What ugly methods you are using! And what disgusting hypocrisy! For the fact is that not only are you opposing our struggle against Chinese revisionism, but your press has fallen quite silent on the burning questions of analysis concerning Mao Zedong Thought and Chinese revisionism since the beginning of 1979. It is one thing to shout slogans denouncing “two-line struggle” as Maoism and quite another to repudiate Chinese revisionism and Mao Zedong Thought. Behind your slogans, it is often hard to tell your actual position. For instance, at the time of the internationalist rally for the 6th Consultative Conference of the CPC(M-L), you questioned us concerning our stand on Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought. The Workers’ Advocate of March 1979 had just appeared. The report from our delegation includes the following:
“We did a background interview for PCDN on Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought. The Party [the leadership of CPC(M-L) – ed.] was concerned because we have spoken on Mao Tsetung and they have not. Their view is that Mao Tsetung Thought is the official ideology of the Communist Party of China and they speak to this and do not give analysis of the individual yet, nor his relationship to Mao Tse-tung Thought.” And since that time you have not gone deeply into these questions either in discussions with us or in your press. But all these questions are covered up by your Alexinsky-like shouts about Maoism, which you had already started back then.
But now let us return to the question of the stand of the Chinese revisionists in the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism. We shall see that your assertion that the Chinese revisionists did not waver and vacillate and take a conciliationist stand but instead allegedly did fight, albeit from anti-Marxist-Leninist positions, flies in the face of history. For history confirms the Marxist-Leninist teachings that a struggle against revisionism that is not inspired by sound ideological motives is “a mere bluff which is short-lived.”
To begin with, the Chinese leadership did not even want to start the polemical struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists at all. It was the Party of Labor of Albania that began this struggle and bore the burden of it for some time. The Letter of July 29, 1978 of the CC of the PLA and the government of Albania documents the conciliationist stand of the Chinese leadership. It points out:
The Bucharest Meeting and, later, the Conference of the 81 Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow [of 1960 – ed.] marked the final split between the Marxist-Leninists and Khrushchovite revisionists, and the beginning of the open polemics between them. Whereas our Party initiated and carried on the fight against Khrushchovite revisionism with consistency and resolve, the Chinese leadership wavered and failed to adopt clear-cut anti-Khrushchovite stands. In the initial stage of the fierce polemics between the Party of Labor of Albania and the Khrushchovite revisionists, China was in agreement with Albania, but this only on the surface, because, in reality, as was proved later, it was seeking a reconciliation with the Soviets and the extinction of polemics with them. (p. 25, emphasis added)
In this manner, when the reconciliation and agreement with the Soviet revisionists, so ardently sought by the Chinese leadership, did not materialize, only then [late 1963 – ed.] the Communist Party of China effectively entered the road of anti-Khrushchovism and agreed to the determined, consistent and principled struggle of the Party of Labor of Albania. This could not fail to rejoice the Party of Labor of Albania and the Albanian people who, single-handed, were for almost three years then facing up to the open frenzied attacks of Khrushchov and entire modern revisionism. (p. 27, emphasis added)
But the Chinese immediately began to vacillate again, in 1964. In April 1964 they sent Khrushchov a telegram of congratulations on his birthday. Later in 1964 the Chinese leadership began bringing up the question of territorial claims on the Soviet Union. Raising this question did not mean that the Chinese leadership was going to continue the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism, albeit from chauvinist and nationalist positions, as would follow from your view that the Chinese leadership fought although from anti-Leninist positions. On the contrary, having raised this, the Chinese leadership continued its vacillations, maneuvered towards the Titoites and the Romanians, put forward the stand of “the revisionists take the first step, we take the second,” tried very hard for reconciliation with the modern Soviet revisionists on the occasion of the downfall of Khrushchov later in 1964, and so forth.
This stand of the Chinese leadership is documented in great detail in Reflections on China. Below we quote one of many passages showing that the Chinese leadership did not want to start the polemical struggle against the Khrushchovite revisionists.
...(this document [“On the Ten Major Relationships,” April 1956 – ed.] Mao took the initiative, which might have been coordinated with the Khrushchovites, as it was in fact. Khrushchov had informed Mao of his revisionist ideas and about the actions he was to undertake. Mao was in agreement with Khrushchov, a thing which he stated publicly at the Moscow Meeting of 1957, where he praised Khrushchov, attacked Stalin, and approved Khrushchov ’sliquidation of the anti-party group of Molotov and company.’ And in this way Mao assisted Khrushchov.... The 8th Congress of the Communist Party of China was in tune with the Khrushchovites....
Mao’s aim was to help not Khrushchov, but himself, so that China would become the main leader of the communist world and Mao would replace Stalin, whom they thought they had buried. Mao acted quickly to take hegemony.
Khrushchov for his part wanted to bring Mao Tsetung into line, and under his direction, meanwhile, however, the Party of Labor of Albania intervened by defending Marxism-Leninism and the Communist Party of China. The fire of the polemic was kindled at Bucharest and the Party of Labor of Albania continued it ’with a volley of machine-gun fire’ at the Meeting of 81 Parties in Moscow. Mao was for putting out this great fire, was opposed to the polemic. He wanted meetings, wanted social-democratic agreements because he himself was a social-democrat, an opportunist, a revisionist. But Mao could not extinguish the fire or the polemic, and seeing that he was unable to establish his hegemony, he changed his stand. Mao took a somewhat ’better’ anti-Soviet stand, and here he appeared to be in accord with us who were fighting Khrushchovite revisionism consistently. But even at this time he had hopes of rapprochement with the Khrushchovite revisionists. Efforts were made to this end by the Chinese leaders, but we opposed them.
When Khrushchov fell, Mao’s hopes revived.... This was a fiasco for Mao Tsetung. Then, from the strategy of the fight on the two flanks he turned towards the United States of America.” (Reflections on China, Vol. II, from near the start of the entry for December 28, 1976, emphasis as in the original)
The Chinese leadership was reluctant to begin the struggle and constantly wavered. Even when they joined the struggle, they continued to waver. They brought forth and acted upon a number of stands directed against this struggle. For example:
All these stands of the Chinese revisionists are documented in great detail in Reflections on China. They prove that the Chinese revisionists did not fight the Khrushchovites too hard or put too much stress on the ideological and polemical struggle. On the contrary, the Chinese were forever seeking to extinguish this great polemic against modern revisionism.
You are denying the facts about Chinese conciliationism and wavering stands in the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism in order to present the Chinese revisionist stand as one of exaggeration of the struggle against opportunism, which you call waging “two-line struggle.” In fact, the Chinese revisionist theories of “two (or more) lines in the party,” “two (or more) headquarters in the party” or of the “proletarian and bourgeois staffs” in the party are all theories of factionalism, theories to justify the eternal existence of factions and hence to deny the Leninist teachings on the party of the new type, to convert the party into a social-democratic conglomerate, and to put a good face on factional strife. These theories are part of the various liberal, social-democratic, factionalist and anarchist theories of Mao Zedong Thought on the organization (or disorganization) and role of the party. The basic idea of these theories is that of the existence of different lines, factions or classes in the party. They are not theories of struggle against revisionism, but liberal, opportunist, social-democratic theories against the struggle against opportunism.
In promoting factionalism, the Chinese revisionists naturally at various times also promoted factional strife. Mao Zedong Thought is rife with theories to justify factional and anarchist methods of inner-party struggle. The Chinese revisionists presented these theories as “two-line struggle” in order to give them an anti-revisionist cover, just as the Chinese revisionists and especially the ultra-revisionists also present fascist suppression as allegedly the true interpretation of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the monolithic nature of the party. But the examination of the Chinese stand in the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism, or of the course of the so-called “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” or of the results of the application of the factional and anarchist methods elsewhere in the world, all prove that these theories are in essence theories of leniency and conciliation towards the revisionists and opportunists and of disruption of the ranks of the Marxist-Leninists. It is these theories that were the ideological basis for such acts as Mao’s reinstatement of the ultra-revisionist, fascist Deng Xiaoping to power after his exposure and disgrace in the “GPCR.”
Our Party and its predecessors, from the formation of the ACWM(M-L) in May 1969 to the present, have been built as disciplined fighting organizations with a monolithic unity and a single Marxist-Leninist line. We demanded not just formal adherence to the positions of the Party, but participation in making decisions, resolute implementation of the decisions, and vigorous participation in the revolutionary struggle. In mid-1974, as part of the successful conclusion of our struggle against the anarcho-syndicalist influence in the COUSML, our Party repudiated anarchist and factionalist methods of waging the inner-party struggle. Our Party repudiated the anarchist organizational practices promoted by the anarcho-syndicalist influence and codified our organizational structure in a fundamental organizational document. In the struggle against Chinese revisionism our Party has right from the start brought to the fore the question of the party concept and the role and organization of the party. In our document of March 1979 entitled “Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought Are Anti-Marxist-Leninist and Revisionist,” we repudiated Mao’s theory of “many headquarters in the party” in the section of “The Leading Role and the Organization of the Party.” We wrote:
Mao Tsetung’s factionalism was especially revealed in his theory of the existence of two headquarters in the party, with representatives of these headquarters existing in every body from the central committee and political bureau, right down to every organization at the base. This is a theory of unbridled factionalism and of destroying the party’s monolithic unity. It presents itself as a theory to fight revisionism, but actually it is a theory to coexist with revisionism.
You call our views on this question, as on others, “peculiar.” But in fact the key documents in the struggle against Chinese revisionism from the Party of Labor of Albania also denounce the Chinese revisionist theories of “two lines” or “two headquarters” in the party as factionalism and not as an exaggeration of the ideological and polemical struggle or of the struggle against revisionism. Indeed, these documents call for the broadening and deepening of the ideological and polemical struggle against modern revisionism. And these documents do not denounce the inner-party class struggle, but instead distinguish between the principled inner-party struggle and the unprincipled inner-party factional strife advocated and practiced by the Chinese revisionists. In brief, these documents give a diametrically opposite view of what the Chinese revisionist theory is than do your preachings about the two-line struggle. We shall now quote some of the key passages from these documents on this question.
Let us begin by examining Comrade Enver Hoxha’s Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA. Although, because of the year in which it was written, this document could not denounce Mao Zedong Thought by name, it nevertheless opposes many of the basic theses of Mao Zedong Thought. On the question of several lines in the party, Comrade Enver Hoxha states:
“Our Party has not allowed and will never allow the existence of factions within its ranks. It has had and has one line only, the Marxist-Leninist line, which it has loyally defended and resolutely implemented.” (Ch. III, Sec. 1, p. 80) But Comrade Enver Hoxha refuses to counterpose the monolithic unity of the party to the vigorous internal life of the party or even to “the struggle of opposites in the ranks of the Party.” He incisively points out that the monolithic unity of the party is a “unity of action, a unity of revolutionaries.” He writes:
The unity of the Party is a militant unity, a unity of action, a unity of revolutionaries. The active life of our Party cannot tolerate the existence of such basic organizations with only formal unity, where an atmosphere of ’peace and quiet’ and a life of ease prevail, where all are in agreement at meetings but fail to mobilize themselves to carry out the tasks outside and remain unconcerned about this. The genuine and durable unity of the Party of the working class and of each of its organizations is preserved and strengthened constantly only through the struggle of opposites in the ranks of the Party, through debate, principled criticism and self-criticism, by implementing the line of the Party, its decisions and directives, its proletarian principles and norms, to the letter. (Ch. Ill, Sec. l, p.81)
Comrade Hoxha also refuses to confuse factionalism with the struggle between the two roads, and he writes: “The construction of socialism is a process of stern class struggle between the two roads, the socialist road and the capitalist road, a struggle waged on all fronts, political and economic, ideological and military.” (Ch. IV, Sec. 1, p. 108)
Furthermore, instead of counterposing the monolithic unity of the party to the ideological and polemical struggle, Comrade Enver Hoxha stresses the ideological struggle, includes an entire chapter of the Report, Chapter IV, entitled “The Struggle of the Party on the Ideological Front,” and also calls for the “continuation and extension” of the ideological struggle against modern revisionism and “the deepening of that great polemic.” (p. 226)
Now let us examine the Scientific Sessions held in Albania in October 1978. Comrade Agim Popa denounced the Chinese revisionist theories on several lines in the party as follows:
The Marxist-Leninist parties in various countries have successfully waged a resolute struggle to safeguard the sound ideological, political and organizational unity of their ranks, against factionalism and splits. They reject those anti-Marxist preachings and practices which justify the existence of two or more lines in the party, and defend, in theory and practice, the view that the party has only one line, the revolutionary line, based on Marxism-Leninism, because only this line leads the proletariat to its triumphant revolution.” (“The Marxist-Leninist Parties – The Leading Force of the Revolutionary Movement Today.” Problems of Current World Development, p. 84)
Comrade Agim Popa then goes on to describe the vigorous internal life of the party, including, within the possibilities allowed by the concrete situations facing the Marxist-Leninist parties, that the parties “have fought and continue to fight for the most effective implementation of democracy in the party (emphasis as in the original) And we have already, in Section X, quoted extensively from these Scientific Sessions to show that they stood for the continuation and deepening of the struggle against all trends of revisionism.
Comrade Enver Hoxha’s brilliant work Imperialism and the Revolution also dealt with the question of Mao’s theories of several lines in the party. Comrade Hoxha wrote:
There has been and there is no true Marxist-Leninist unity of thought and action in the Communist Party of China. The strife among factions, which has existed since the founding of the Communist Party of China, has meant that a correct Marxist-Leninist line has not been laid down in this party, and it has not been guided by Marxist-Leninist thought. The various tendencies which manifested themselves among the main leaders of the party were at times leftist, at times right opportunist, sometimes centrist, and going as far as openly anarchist, chauvinist and racist views. ... Mao Tsetung himself has advocated the need for the existence of ’two lines’ in the party. According to him, the existence and struggle between two lines is something natural, is a manifestation of the unity of the opposites, is a flexible policy which unites in itself both loyalty to principles and compromise. ’Thus,’ he writes, ’we have two hands to deal with a comrade who has made mistakes: one hand to struggle with him and the other to unite with him. The aim of this struggle is to uphold the principles of Marxism, which means being principled; that is one aspect of the problem. The other aspect is to unite with him. The aim of unity is to offer him a way out, to reach a compromise with him.’
These views are diametrically opposed to the Leninist teachings on the communist party as an organized vanguard detachment which must have a single line and steel unity of thought and action.
The class struggle in the ranks of the party, as a reflection of the class struggle going on outside the party, has nothing in common with Mao Tsetung’s concepts on the ’two lines in the party. The party is not an arena of classes and the struggle between antagonistic classes, it is not a gathering of people with contradictory aims. The genuine Marxist-Leninist party is the party of the working class only and bases itself on the interests of this class. This is the decisive factor for the triumph of the revolution and the construction of socialism. Defending the Leninist principles on the party, which do not permit the existence of many lines, of opposing trends in the communist party, J.V. Stalin emphasized:
’...the communist party is the monolithic party of the proletariat, and not a party of a bloc of elements of different classes.’ Mao Tsetung, however, conceives the party as a union of classes with contradictory interests, as an organization in which two forces, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the ’proletarian staff and the ’bourgeois staff,’ which must have their representatives from the grassroots to the highest leading organs of the party, confront and struggle against each other. Thus, in 1956, he sought the election of the leaders of right and left factions to the Central Committee, presenting to this end, arguments as naive as they were ridiculous.... While renouncing principled struggle in the ranks of the party, Mao Tsetung played the game of factions, sought compromise with some of them to counter some others and thus consolidate his own positions. (Book form, pp. 399-401; or Proletarian Internationalism, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 109, col. 1-2)
We have given the above quotation at some length in order to present Comrade Hoxha’s idea in its full context and to collect here all the key passages on this question. Comrade Hoxha here repeatedly denounces Mao’s concepts on “two lines in the party.” In this passage and in Imperialism and the Revolution in general Comrade Enver Hoxha does not even use the formula “two-line struggle” in denouncing Mao Zedong Thought, although he does refer to Mao’s views on “the existence and struggle between two lines” inside the party. Thus in this passage Comrade Hoxha brings up the question of “struggle between two lines” solely with reference to the fact that the formula of struggle between opposing lines in the party implies the existence of several lines in the party. Comrade Hoxha defends the inner-party struggle and denounces Mao for “renouncing principled struggle in the ranks of the party” and instead playing the game of factions. And clearly Comrade Hoxha does not denounce Mao’s theories of the existence of several lines in the party as exaggerating the ideological and polemical struggle. On the contrary, the book Imperialism and the Revolution itself is a brilliant example of intensifying and deepening the ideological and polemical struggle against revisionism.
In Comrade Enver Hoxha’s monumental work Reflections on China there are also many revealing passages on the question of several lines inside the party. We shall quote a few of them. The entry of April 28, 1967 has the following striking passage on the liberalism and social-democratic opportunism in the coexistence of the different lines inside the party. Comrade Hoxha wrote:
As I see it (and maybe I am wrong, because we are still in the dark about many internal facts of their party), the Chinese comrades have a pronounced dose of liberalism and opportunism in their activities. Naturally, this is very harmful. These tendencies cannot be either new or accidental. The fact that for seventeen years two lines have been observed in their party and have co-existed without a great deal of friction between them (recently, it has been alleged that there was friction, although they seem so adjusted to each other, that they appear to be a single whole), proves the social-democratic opportunism in their line.
The fact is that the Communist Party of China has gone on for tens of years on end tolerating two lines in its ranks. If it proceeds from the principle that two active lines are necessary in the party, then the party cannot be a Marxist-Leninist party. Even within the party a class struggle must be waged, indeed a stern struggle, to totally liquidate the anti-party, anti-Marxist faction as quickly as possible. We have not seen such a struggle in the Communist Party of China, even when some leaders (who have not been alone) have been condemned as factionalists. On the contrary, they have remained not only in the party, but even in the main leadership.
Even now,...we see that same sort of dilettantism, soft-heartedness, slowness to act and liberalism towards anti-party elements opposed to the working class. (The above two quotations are from the Proletarian Internationalism edition, Part A, p. 98, col. 1-2, emphasis as in the original.)
The entry of January 22, 1976 also deals with this question. Comrade Hoxha points out that deviations and factions appeared in “the party of Lenin, too,” but that Lenin acted against them “with clear Marxist ideology and an iron hand.” Comrade Hoxha characterizes Mao’s factionalism not with the “two-line struggle” formula but with Mao’s quotation about a “hundred flowers.” Mao’s coexistence of factions is thus contrasted to Lenin’s struggle on the ideological and organizational fronts against all deviations and factions. Comrade Hoxha writes:
We see that until Mao came to the leadership of the party, deviations and factions like those of Li Li-san, Wang Ming, etc., etc., appeared in its organization, ideology and practice. Of course, such things occurred in the party of Lenin, too, the enemies attacked the Bolshevik Party from within and from without; but Lenin acted against them with clear Marxist ideology and an iron hand; he tempered the party and gave it the immortal norms which guide and will always guide the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and the revolution in the world correctly.
I believe that when Mao came to power he established some sort of order, created and led the army and the war, but in the organization of the party and its stands, neither the Leninist basic principles nor the Leninist norms were properly established.
This party [the Communist Party of China – ed.] grew up with factions and continued with factions, both leftist and rightist.
Its own leadership says that there are two lines in the Communist Party of China. It accepts their existence and, it seems to me, makes it a condition for the existence of the party, and calls it the class struggle in the party. However, I think that there are not just two lines in this party, but many lines which are clashing with one another for power. The party is chaotic and does not wage a class struggle on sound Marxist-Leninist revolutionary principles, or, to put it better, the party does not wage the class struggle at all, but a struggle of clans goes on within it. The clans are in the party and the state, at the base and in the leadership. All the supporters of factionists, who have allegedly been condemned, can be found within the party and are operating. All this development has been and is being carried out in the name of Mao, who is being made a taboo, his quotations are learned, but each faction is going about its own business on the quiet. Mao himself permits the ’two flowers,’ if not ’a hundred flowers.’ ’Let there be two or three factions and let them co-exist,’ he says, ’then we shall make a revolution each seven years and shall see who will triumph. If the rightists win, the leftists will rise and overthrow them.’ This is ’the brilliant theory of Mao’(Proletarian Internationalism, edition. Part C, p. 55, col. 2, and p. 56, col. 2, emphasis as in the original)
In various entries Comrade Hoxha denounced Mao as a centrist for coexisting with the various factions. Thus Comrade Hoxha wrote:
Mao has always been a centrist, an onlooker, a Marxist-Leninist a l’eau de rose (rose-watered), as the French say.” (entry of August 17, 1976, Proletarian Internationalism edition, Part C, p. 72, col. 2, emphasis as in the original)
Mao Tsetung spoke with revolutionary catchwords about the ’revolution,’ the ’class struggle’ and other questions of principle, but in practice he was a liberal, a dreamer, a centrist in the direction of the manipulation and balancing of the various currents which existed and intrigued within the Communist Party of China and the Chinese state. With such characteristics, Mao Tsetung was easily influenced by one or the other current; sometimes supported the one, sometimes the other. (entry of October 12, 1976, Proletarian Internationalism edition, Part C, p. 76, col. 2)
He [Mao – ed.] wrote a good deal about the class struggle, about contradictions, etc., but the class struggle in China, in practice especially, has not been waged sternly and consistently. In this direction, too, Mao proved to be a liberal and a moderate. He permitted rightist revisionist elements to take power and to establish deep roots in the party, the state and everywhere. Mao coexisted with them, simply looked on, and frequently approved them. In the end, he overthrew some leaders of these currents but left their base untouched. His authority, created during the war and after the victory, brought about that the factions ’were defeated,’ but the problem was only partly solved and the liberal, moderating situation always continued. Mao Tsetung was a centrist, he kept people of various currents close to him, people who called themselves Marxists but who were not Marxists and who fought on their own line under the umbrella of Mao Tsetung. When they upset the balance, Mao Tsetung intervened and ’put things in order.’
There was instability in the thoughts and actions of Mao and I think that his interpretation and application of Marxism was done rather in the way the fancy took him. (Ibid., emphasis as in the original)
For the sake of completeness, we note that the question of Mao’s theory of several lines in the party is also dealt with in Comrade Ndreci Plasari’s article in the issue #1 of 1978 of Albania Today. This article defends the principled inner-party struggle and is entitled “The Class Struggle Within the Party – a Guarantee that the Party Will Always Remain a Revolutionary Party of the Working Class.” This article points out that the class struggle inside the party “is not necessarily a struggle between two opposing lines” (p. 13) because the party should be vigilant to prevent the crystallization of the negative phenomena into factional trends and revisionist lines. Thus the article opposes the formula of the “struggle of lines” inside the party solely from the point of view that this formula implies the existence of more than one line in the party. But the party should be vigilant and the inner-party struggle should aim to prevent the existence of factions and lines. The article states that “...objectively, there is a great and continuing danger of the creation of factional trends and anti-Marxist opposition lines in the ranks of the party of the working class. At the same time,...the emergence and crystallization of these trends and lines is not decreed by fate to be inevitable.” (p. 13) Such a thing “emerges and develops only in certain conditions,” for example, “when the party of the working class does not wage a correct, determined and consistent class struggle within its ranks all the time.” If such a thing should occur, the party should not tolerate the existence of the factions and opposing lines in the slightest.
Thus the article does not identify “two-line struggle” in the party as ideological struggle. On the contrary. Not only does the article defend the inner-party struggle and go into great detail into how it should be waged, but it stresses the role of the ideological struggle. It does not counterpose ideological and organizational measures, but defines the relationship between them. Among the passages on this question are the following:
The class struggle within the party is, in the first place, an ideological struggle for the Marxist-Leninist purity of its theory, of its general line, and of the communists themselves.
But it is also a political struggle. The fight against traitors and hostile activity in the party ranks cannot be confined to the ideological field alone. ...
...this struggle is correct and complete only when it is waged as a combined ideological and political struggle, and is accompanied with the appropriate organizational measures.
Only through such a struggle can the party work out, preserve and apply a correct Marxist-Leninist line.... (pp. 10-11)
There is not doubt that, the struggle against anti-party elements, groups and views, like the entire class struggle within the party, is an ideological struggle in the first place. Through this struggle, which has continued even after the smashing of one or the other group, their anti-Marxist views have been exposed and refuted, and profound convictions have been created among the communists and working people about the hostile character of these views which have led the traitors into activity against the party and the socialist order. But the ideological struggle never fully achieves its purpose if it is not accompanied with organizational and political measures. (p. 14)
Furthermore, the article is careful to sharply distinguish between the struggle between the two roads, “between the socialist road and the capitalist road of development, which includes the struggle between the proletarian ideology and the revisionist ideology” (p. 13) and the struggle between opposing lines in the party.
These quotations that we have cited above give an excellent exposition of the Marxist-Leninist critique of Mao’s theories of several lines or headquarters inside the party. They show that our views are not “peculiar” at all. On the contrary, it is you who vulgarize the issue to the extreme in order to convert the denunciation of Mao’s theories of factionalism into a denunciation of the ideological and polemical struggle as allegedly being “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” You direct attention away from the issue that the theories of several lines in the party are liberal, opportunist and social-democratic theories of factionalism and of opposition to the Leninist conception of the party of the new type, and instead convert the denunciation of factionalism inside the party into a denunciation of the struggle of the party against revisionism and opportunism. This amounts in essence to identifying factionalism with the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. Thus you denounce the movement against social-chauvinism in the U.S. as allegedly a manifestation of “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.”’ And you denounce the Leninist slogan “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists” as allegedly “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” By denouncing the “without and against” slogan, you prove that your shouting and raving against “two-line struggle” has nothing in common with the Marxist-Leninist critique of the Chinese revisionist theories of many lines or headquarters in the party. For the “without and against” slogan is a Leninist slogan which is particularly designed to oppose all the social-democratic theories of the coexistence of opportunism and Marxism-Leninism in one party.
It is a powerful slogan that stresses the need for a party that is both monolithic, a party without social-chauvinists and other opportunists, and that actively fights against the social-chauvinists and other opportunists. It is a dialectical slogan that doesn’t counter-pose organizational measures (building the party without the social-chauvinists) to ideological and political measures (building the party against the social-chauvinists), but instead calls for a complete struggle, a struggle waged on all fronts.
As we have pointed out earlier in this section, you use quite discreditable means to defend your tirades against “two-line struggle.” Instead of elaborating your views, you resort to demagogy. This is a sign of the weakness of your position. Here we wish to take up another example of your methods. Thus, for example, you write in your letters of December 5: ’“Our [the leadership of CPC(M-L)’s – ed.] denunciation of Joseph Green and his intellectualist hyperbole including his theory of ”two (or many) headquarters in the Marxist-Leninist Movement in the U.S.”...’ “ (p. 18) Thus you attribute to us a theory of “two (or many) headquarters in the Marxist-Leninist Movement in the U.S.” But this is just another one of your lies. We have never used such a formulation. You think that it is cute to accuse us of having a theory of “two (or many) headquarters in the Marxist-Leninist Movement in the U.S.” in order to mock at our denunciation of Mao’s theory of “two (or many) headquarters in the party.” You do this to create confusion. We have denounced “two (or many) headquarters in the party” so you try to mix everything up by attributing to us the formulation “two (or many) headquarters in the Marxist-Leninist Movement in the U.S.” What unprincipled methods you are using.
But when you mock at our denunciation of Mao’s theory of “two (or many) headquarters in the party,” you are mocking at the struggle against Mao’s theories of several lines or headquarters in the party in particular and at the struggle against Chinese revisionism in general. Our Party, as we pointed out earlier in this section and as we described to you in our discussions, has resolutely condemned Mao’s idea of several lines or headquarters in the party. In the struggle against Chinese revisionism and in the movement against social-chauvinism, we have placed the question of the party concept in the forefront. We have used the formulation “two (or more) headquarters in the party” as a clear characterization of Mao’s theory of several lines in the party. This is a vivid, expressive slogan which brings to the fore the question of Mao’s factionalism and opposition to the monolithic unity of the party.
At this point.we shall make a few comments about the formulation of “two-line struggle in the party.”
We are opposed to defining the class struggle inside the party as “two-line struggle” because one of the key aims of the inner-party struggle is to prevent the crystallization of a second line in the party. The formulation “two-line struggle” implies the existence of more than one line in the party. Beyond this, we are also continuing our theoretical examination of this term. It appears that formulations about the struggle of opposing lines can more or less appropriately describe certain situations that have arisen inside certain parties at certain times. Presumably this is why Comrade Plasari, in his article in Albania Today that we have cited above, says that the class struggle inside the party “is not necessarily a struggle between two opposing lines,” i.e., it might be such a struggle under certain circumstances, namely, if the factions or revisionist lines succeed in crystallizing. As well, the struggle between lines might be more or less appropriately used to describe certain struggles between revisionism and opportunism outside the party. It does not appear that terms like “two-line struggle” and struggle between opposing lines can be condemned without qualification as you have done.
Indeed, the Chinese revisionists used the term “two-line struggle” precisely in order to give an apparently militant and anti-revisionist appearance to their liberal, conciliationist and social-democratic practice. The Chinese revisionists tried to cover up their theories of liberal coexistence with opportunism and of factionalism and to give them a thin red coat. It is the task of the repudiation of Chinese revisionism to tear away this deception by the Chinese revisionists. But you fall for it lock, stock and barrel when you identify “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’” with ideological and polemical struggle and with the struggle against opportunism in general. This goes to the extent that in your letters of December 5 you deny the truth about the wavering, hesitant and conciliationist stand of the Chinese revisionists towards the Khrushchovite revisionists, as we have pointed out earlier in this section. You make great play with the phrase “two-line struggle” because with this phrase you try to equate the Chinese revisionist position with ideological and polemical struggle, something which is not so easy to do if one characterizes Mao’s theories on this question as “two lines in the party” or of “two (or more) headquarters in the party.” A most natural meaning of “two-line struggle” would be to denote a fight to eliminate the wrong line. However this is not what Mao meant by it. Indeed such a thing would not be in accord with Mao’s idealist and metaphysical “dialectics.” According to Mao, the opposites in struggle in a contradiction never lead to a qualitative transformation of the entity as a whole, but simply keep changing position with each other eternally. Thus for him “struggle between opposing lines in the party” was simply a way of describing an eternal balancing of one faction against another, with which faction is dominant and which subordinate capable of changing, but with the existence of factions eternal. Thus in the light of Mao’s philosophy, as well as of his practice, it is clear that “two-line struggle” is used by him as the militant-sounding cover for his theories of the necessary and eternal existence of factions. But you denounce Mao’s theories of several lines in the party as theories of the exaggeration of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism and not as theories opposed to the struggle against revisionism and opportunism.
Finally, we shall conclude this section with some references from the Marxist-Leninist classics that go against vulgarized conceptions about what Mao’s theory of “several lines in the party” is and against vulgarized views about “two-line struggle.” These quotations show that the struggle of the Marxist-Leninist trend versus all the revisionist and opportunist trends is not a principle of Maoist revisionism but of Marxism-Leninism, and that the same holds true for the principled inner-party struggle.
You have dismissed the movement against social-chauvinism as a manifestation of “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’” as it fits the formal pattern of the struggle of two ideologies or trends. But Mao’s theory of factionalism is not the theory of struggle of Marxism-Leninism versus the opportunist trends, but of the legitimate and necessary existence of factions of alleged Marxism-Leninism, of the existence of different varieties of alleged Marxism-Leninism. For example, in the article “Socialism and War” of 1915, Comrade Lenin gave a brief description of the history of the Russian party in Chapter IV, entitled “The History of the Split and the Present State of Social-Democracy in Russia.” Four of the subsections of this chapter are entitled as follows:
“The ’Economists’ and the Old Iskra (1894-1903)” “Menshevism and Bolshevism (1903-1908)” “Marxism and Liquidationism (1908-1914)” “Marxism and Social-Chauvinism (1914-1915)” Comrade Lenin concludes this article with the words: “The working class of Russia could not build up its party otherwise than in a resolute, thirty-year struggle against all the varieties of opportunism. The experience of the world war, which has brought about the shameful collapse of European opportunism and has strengthened the alliance of our national-liberals with social-chauvinist liquidationism, still further strengthens our conviction that our Party must continue further along the same consistently revolutionary road.”
Clearly, to denounce everything that fits the formal pattern of the struggle of two trends as Maoist revisionism is a position that has nothing to do with revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and that leads to the negation of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. For, to repeat a quotation from Lenin that we have cited previously in Section X-J, Leninism teaches that:
“It is in the struggle between these two tendencies [“of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists and of the masses” – ed.] that the history of the labour movement will now inevitably develop. “ (“Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 116) You have also dismissed the waging of the inner-party struggle as Maoism. But Mao’s theory is that of conciliation and the balancing of factions and of renouncing the principled inner-party struggle. On this struggle, Comrade Stalin pointed out:
If we take the history of our Party from the moment of its inception in 1903 in the form of the Bolshevik group, and follow its successive stages down to our day, we can say without exaggeration that the history of our Party has been the history of a struggle of contradictions within the Party, the history of the overcoming of these contradictions and of the gradual strengthening of our Party on the basis of overcoming them. Some might think that the Russians are excessively pugnacious, that they love debating and multiply differences, and that it is because of this that the development of their Party proceeds through the overcoming of inner-Party contradictions. That is not true, comrades. It is not a matter of pugnacity, but of the existence of disagreements based on principle, which arise in the course of the Party’s development, in the course of the class struggle of the proletariat. The fact of the matter is that contradictions can be overcome only by means of a struggle for definite principles, for definite aims of the struggle, for definite methods of waging the struggle leading to the desired aim. One can, and should, agree to any compromise with dissenters in the Party on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical nature. But if these questions are connected with disagreements based on principle, no compromise, no ’middle’ line can save the situation.” (“Once More on the Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party,” Works, Vol. 9, pp. 3-4)
Ever since Engels’s day the proposition that the development of proletarian parties takes place through the overcoming of internal Party contradictions has been axiomatic. (Works, Vol. 13, p. 45)
At the same time as you shout on and on allegedly against “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle,’” in fact you are putting forward a concept similar to Mao’s idea of several lines in the party. In Section VIII-B we examined your theories of “two (or more) trends in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement,” the two trends being “the Internationalist Movement” and all the other Marxist-Leninist parties. We pointed out that:
In your letters of December 5 you try to tone everything down and slur over the issues involved by such things as talking of ’the Internationalist Movement’ instead of the Internationalist ’trend.’ But this makes no difference. Call it what you will – trends, groupings, movements, headquarters – it makes no difference. The basic fallacy remains: the idea that not Marxism-Leninism but something else is the basis of unity between the Marxist-Leninist parties. There are only two choices. Either: the consolidation of different ’trends’ in the international Marxist-Leninist movement. Or: the vigorous development of the Marxist-Leninist trend in life and death struggle against the opportunist and revisionist trends. Those are the two possible conceptions of the matter [i.e., of the question of trends – ed.]. (emphasis added)
It is clear that the first alternative is in essence similar to or even identical with the ideological basis underlying the theories of Mao on several lines in the party, only applied to the international communist movement instead of the local party. Indeed such a conception is polycentrism. The characteristic feature of polycentrism is not the call for what you term “two-line struggle” or “ideological struggle” among the different “centers.” On the contrary, polycentrists may either call for unprincipled coexistence and peace or for equally unprincipled factional strife, or polycentrists may combine these two calls or oscillate between them according to the pragmatic needs of the moment. Polycentrism is marked by its advocacy of the idea of the legitimate existence of different varieties of socialism and by its opposition to the principled struggle against revisionism and opportunism. Only the second alternative given in the paragraph above is the conception of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism on the question of trends.
But you denounce the second alternative as “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” At the same time you explicitly put forward the idea of different trends in the international movement. You call for consolidating “the Internationalist Movement,” allegedly as a contribution to consolidating the international Marxist-Leninist movement. This conception of yours is unsound theoretically and in practice fraught with the danger of unprincipled splits and wild factionalism. Indeed, your letters of December 5 and your subsequent organization of an international boycott of our Party shows that the danger of unprincipled splits is a very real danger and not just a far-off potential danger. And, of course, each trend must have its own basis. Therefore, as we pointed out in Section VIII-B, your thesis on the different trends “inevitably boils down, when put forward consistently, to the idea of the legitimate existence of different varieties of Marxism-Leninism, one for each trend.”
Thus your division of international revolutionary Marxism-Leninism into different trends has much in common with Mao’s idea of several lines in the party. This proves once again that your crusade against “two-line struggle” is not a matter of exaggerating the struggle against Chinese revisionism or of excessive zeal in fighting Chinese revisionism. On the contrary, with your demagogical shouting about “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle,’” you are descending to giving theses close in spirit to those of the Chinese revisionists concerning the legitimate existence of different varieties of Marxism-Leninism and denigrating the struggle against revisionism and opportunism.
Part of your crusade against “two-line struggle” is your denunciation of “ideological struggle.” You denounce the ideological struggle on the pretext that some opportunist group or other gives the term “ideological struggle” as its slogan. But we by no means agree that any serious political or theoretical questions can be answered by this method. Comrade Lenin expressed himself rather strongly on this point. He wrote the following in reference to Rosa Luxemburg’s method of discussing the question of “the right of nations to self-determination and the attitude to be adopted by the socialist proletariat towards this right”
To a mouse there is no stronger beast than the cat, it is said. To Rosa Luxemburg there is evidently no stronger beast than the Fracy. ’Fracy’ is the popular term for the ’Polish Socialist Party,’ its so-called revolutionary section, and the Cracow newspaper Naprzod shares the views of that ’section. ’ Rosa Luxemburg is so blinded by her fight against the nationalism of that ’section’ that she loses sight of everything except Naprzod.
If Naprzod says ’yes,’ Rosa Luxemburg considers it her sacred duty to say an immediate ’no,’ without stopping to think that by so doing she does not reveal independence of Naprzod, but, on the contrary, her ludicrous dependence on the ’Fracy’ and her inability to see things from a viewpoint any deeper and broader than that of the Cracow anthill. Naprzod, of course, is a wretched and by no means Marxist organ .... (“The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 426)
The question of the role and nature of the ideological struggle and its interrelationships with the other work of the party cannot be answered by mechanically negating the slogan of some opportunist group.
The fact is that ideological or theoretical struggle is one of the three basic forms of the class struggle of the proletariat. This is a fundamental teaching of Marxism-Leninism. For example, in his classic work What Is to Be Done?, Comrade Lenin vigorously denounced any underestimation of the importance of the ideological or theoretical form of the class struggle. Thus Section D of Chapter I is entitled “Engels on the Importance of the Theoretical Struggle.” Comrade Lenin wrote in that section as follows: “Let us quote what Engels said in 1874 concerning the significance of theory in the Social-Democratic movement. Engels recognizes not two forms of the great struggle of Social-Democracy (political and economic), as is the fashion among us, but three, placing on a par with the first two the theoretical struggle,” (What Is to Be Done?, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1973, pp. 29-30, emphasis as in the original) Comrade Lenin then proceeded to give a long quotation from Engels which includes the following passage:
For the first time since the working-class movement has existed, the struggle is being waged in a planned way from its three coordinated and interconnected sides, the theoretical, the political and the practical-economic (resistance to the capitalists). It is precisely in this, as it were, concentric attack, that the strength and invincibility of the German movement lies. (Ibid., p. 31)
Comrade Enver Hoxha also spoke extensively about the role of the ideological struggle in his Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA. One important passage goes as follows:
Our practice of revolution and socialist construction teaches us that unless it is waged in all its main directions, political, economic and ideological, no class struggle can ever be complete. These three forms of class struggle are intertwined with and complement each other. At given periods, now one or now the other form of class struggle may come to the fore, but in every case it should be waged on all fronts. We should not forget that the enemy, too, wages his struggle in all directions: ideological, economic and political. (Ch. IV, Sec. 1, p. 116)
Of course you have been counterposing theory to the ideological struggle. You have been floating various theses that theory and ideology are one thing, and ideological and theoretical struggle, and especially polemical struggle, another. You have counter-posed the elaboration of theory and the defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism on one hand to the ideological and polemical struggle on the other. But such distinctions are pettifogging quibbling and scholasticism. It is impossible to maintain these distinctions in real life for any length of time in any sharp struggle. You are drawing such distinction to pay lip service to the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the importance of the theoretical struggle while in fact weakening, emasculating or opposing these teachings.
Consider the classic works of Comrade Lenin for example. How many of these great works are even in the form of polemic? Consider such books as What Is to Be Done?; One Step Forward, Two Steps Back; Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution; Materialism and Empirio-Criticism; The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky; “Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder; and many more. These clearly show that Marxist-Leninist literature cannot be neatly divided into two mutually exclusive categories, those that are polemics and those that elaborate or advance the Marxist-Leninist theory!
And to return to Section D of Chapter I of What Is to Be Done?, it is clear that in this section Comrade Lenin does not put forward any artificial distinction between “ideological struggle” and the elaboration of theory. For example, near the start of this section Comrade Lenin compares two publishers’ announcements, one of the journal Rabocheye Dyelo and the other of a group of revolutionary Marxists. After showing how the announcement for Rabocheye Dyelo is completely silent on the theoretical tasks facing the Marxists, he then writes:
“The other announcement, on the contrary, points first of all to the decreased interest in theory observed in recent years, imperatively demands ’vigilant attention to the theoretical aspect of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat,’ and calls for ’ruthless criticism of the Bernsteinian and other anti-revolutionary tendencies’ in our movement.” (p. 27) Comrade Lenin immediately connects “ruthless criticism” of revisionism with the question of “vigilant attention to the theoretical aspect of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.” Indeed, Comrade Lenin makes the same connection in his famous statement in this section about the need for revolutionary theory. He writes:
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity. Yet, for Russian Social-Democrats the importance of theory is enhanced by three more circumstances... Under these circumstances, what at first sight appears to be an ’ unimportant’ mistake may lead to most deplorable consequences, and only shortsighted people can consider factional disputes [here Lenin is referring to the fight between the Marxists and the Economists inside the RSDLP – ed.] and a strict differentiation between shades inopportune or superfluous. The fate of Russian Social-Democracy for many, many years to come may depend on the strengthening of one or other ’shade.’ (Ibid., pp. 28-29)
Indeed, Comrade Lenin directly uses the dread phrase “ideological struggle” later on in the book. He clearly regards “ideological struggle against all opponents of revolutionary Marxism” as part of the theoretical struggle. He wrote:
The contents of this agreement on principles... make it perfectly clear that we put forward as an absolute condition for unity the most emphatic repudiation of all and every manifestation of opportunism generally, and of Russian opportunism in particular. Paragraph 1 reads: ... [we omit here all the points Lenin listed except one of them – ed.] ’The sphere of Social-Democratic activities includes... ideological struggle against all opponents of revolutionary Marxism (Ibid., Appendix, p. 228, emphasis as in the original)
Hence the theoretical struggle, as one of the three basic forms of the class struggle, is one of the revolutionary tasks facing any Marxist-Leninist party. The ideological struggle is especially pressing at the present time because of the intense battle between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and the revisionist and opportunist trends. And indeed the great polemic of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists against the modern revisionists has been a major fiasco for the revisionists. To extricate themselves from this major defeat, the revisionists and opportunists adopt various stratagems. Sometimes they oppose the polemic openly, under one pretext or another. They may do this under the guise of calling for “unity” or “unity against the main enemy” and they cry out against the “sectarianism” and “splittism” of the Marxist-Leninists, but a genuine fighting unity can only be achieved without the revisionists and opportunists and in struggle against them. At other times the revisionists call for openly stepping up their fight against Marxism-Leninism. They try to avoid the questions of principle and resort to sophistry and demagogy on a massive scale. They may either attempt to divert the discussion into side issues and irrelevancies, or they may resort to massive repetition of slanders or seek to submerge everything in sterile, allegedly theoretical discussion in which they bombard one with formulas and quotations which they deprive of their revolutionary essence and distort, deform or even apply in the opposite sense to their real meanings. Indeed, the revisionists combine all these things together. The revisionists make use also of left-sloganeering agencies to caricature the struggle against revisionism and to factionalize it.
The problem therefore arises of how to deal with those opportunists who caricature the ideological and political struggle against revisionism, seek to divert it into channels harmless to the revisionists, and promote a wild factionalism of both the Marxist-Leninist movement and the revolutionary mass movements. There are two possible responses to this problem.
(I) The first possibility is to denounce the opportunist distortions and caricatures of the ideological struggle as sabotage of the ideological struggle in general and of the great polemic against modern revisionism in particular. This is the analysis dictated by revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism teaches that pious wishes or sentimental desires for “unity” do not suffice to establish the unity of the proletariat or of the proletarian party. The only effective path is to build the Marxist-Leninist party without the revisionist and opportunist class traitors and in resolute struggle against them.
(II) The other possibility is to use the factionalist caricatures of the ideological struggle as a pretext to denounce the ideological and polemical struggle. This is an anti-Marxist-Leninist position. This position has been repeatedly advocated by various revisionists and opportunists. For a Marxist-Leninist party to take this position for any length of time means to expose itself to great danger and to set foot on a slippery inclined plane leading down towards conciliationism.
When you denounce the “ideological struggle” and go on your crusades against “two-line struggle.” you are to that extent advocating the second position. In general you have shown great inconsistency and eclecticism on these questions. You have at times simultaneously put forward theses both for and against the ideological struggle, for example, at the time when you were first putting forward slogans against “ideological struggle.” This inconsistency has reflected itself in your practice also. And in the last period the inherent logic of your denunciation of “ideological struggle” has manifested itself more and more. You have: urged insistently upon us a number of theses in opposition to the struggle against revisionism and opportunism; opposed the struggle we are waging; linked up your denunciation of “ideological struggle” with a crusade against “two-line struggle”; and your own press has shown the effect of your theses in, for example, its silence on the questions concerning Mao Zedong Thought. Your eclecticism and inconsistency, however, are not surprising. Naturally in practice no Marxist-Leninist party can, without committing suicide, stop altogether the ideological and polemical struggle. But your theses against the ideological struggle have definitely resulted in toning it down, removing the ideological content from it, diverting it into less effective forms and even stopping altogether this or that front of the struggle. And insofar as the ideological struggle is toned down, to say nothing of being stopped altogether on this or that front, the revisionists and opportunists are to that extent allowed to continue their dirty work in peace and quiet. Furthermore, at the present time, when the struggle against Mao Zedong Thought and Chinese revisionism has gone to such a profound level and when the Marxist-Leninist principles are being reaffirmed against the distortions fostered by the Chinese and other revisionists, the neglect, denial or taking of a contemptuous attitude to the ideological and theoretical struggle is especially dangerous. The theoretical struggle is essential to ensure that the proletarian parties are really built up on the firm foundations of Marxism-Leninism.
And it must be stressed that your denunciation of “ideological struggle” is not at all necessary in order to oppose the factionalist activity of those who caricature the ideological struggle. On the contrary, your denunciation of the ideological struggle only weakens the struggle against the factionalizers. For example, in early 1978 in our pamphlet How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism, we took up the question of the factionalization of the mass movement by the neo-revisionists and of the caricature of the ideological struggle by certain social-chauvinists and conciliators. The pamphlet vigorously denounced these activities from the point of view of defending and carrying through the movement against social-chauvinism and the struggle against revisionism and opportunism in general. Thus the pamphlet showed how the factionalization was part of the neo-revisionist war on the party concept, and how the neo-revisionists take up both the positions of Khrushchovite monocentrism and Togliattiite polycentrism, depending on the circumstances, in their struggle against the party concept and against the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists. The pamphlet showed not only how the factionalization springs from negation of the party concept, but how it is designed to oppose the struggle against opportunism, pointing out:
“This [the factionalization of the mass movement – ed.] is done allegedly as part of the struggle for principles, but in fact it is done to stop the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism and make it more difficult for the masses to gain political experience. A few years ago, the struggle against opportunism was alleged to break the ’unity of the left,’ now it is usually attacked by trying to divide the mass movement into parts where the masses are kept in sterile, germ-free containers free from contamination by Marxism-Leninism. This splitting of the revolutionary masses is a terrible crime against the revolution by the opportunists. As a result, all sorts of bad elements can sneak back into the mass movement.” (p. 28 of the pamphlet edition) And the pamphlet vigorously denounced the idealist caricature of the ideological struggle. It showed how this caricature did not come from exaggeration of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, but was in essence conciliationism and was based on the carry-over of the methods of the opportunists and social-chauvinists into the movement against opportunism and social-chauvinism.
Furthermore, the question of the caricature and diversion of the ideological struggle by the opportunists is not a new one. In various different forms and variants, it has come up before repeatedly. The principle of carrying through the polemic in opposition to this caricature and not of denouncing the polemic has already been established. We will take an example from the early 1960’s and the struggle against modern revisionism. Facing utter disaster in the polemics on principle, the Khrushchovites tried to stop the polemics while the infamous Italian revisionist Togliatti had another plan for saving revisionism. Comrade Hoxha describes this in his article “Togliatti’s Testament, the Crisis of Modern Revisionism and the Struggle of the Marxist-Leninists.” Comrade Hoxha pointed out:
They [the Italian revisionists – ed.] express themselves as firmly opposed to any cessation of the open, public struggle against Marxist-Leninists, even temporarily and for the sake of appearances, because otherwise they cannot carry out their treacherous mission. At the same time, they are telling Khrushchev with this that his demagogic manoeuvres that the ’polemics must be stopped’ are completely in vain and deceive no one, that the polemics cannot be stopped either by the revisionists or the ’dogmatists.’”
In the polemics, with the Marxist-Leninists over major questions of principle, as P. Togliatti himself is forced to admit, the modern revisionists have suffered utter defeat, their demagogy has failed and they are not in a position to denigrate the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. The polemics of principle is certain disaster for the revisionists, because it is demonstrating openly to the masses of communists and working people the revisionists’ flagrant deviation from the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, is bringing to light their real features as renegades.
Consequently, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists everywhere are organizing, creating new groups and parties, which are fighting with determination against revisionism in defense of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. P. Togliatti is afraid of this situation and perspective. Therefore, to avoid the complete exposure of revisionism, he demands that the polemics must be shifted from questions of principle and concentrated on discussion of second rate matters, on day-to-day problems. (Enver Hoxha, Speeches and Articles (1963-1964), pp. 274, 275)
What does Comrade Hoxha conclude from Togliatti’s attempt to shift the polemics and to convert them into squabbles on second-rate matters? Does he denounce polemics as squabbles and go on a crusade against Togliatti’s line of “polemical struggle”? No. On the contrary. To begin with, he denounces Togliatti’s scheme not as “ideological struggle” but as ideological coexistence and conciliationism. He writes, continuing the quotation from where we left off:
What Togliatti means by this is: let everybody stick to his own ideological views and let there be no polemics over these matters of principle; the communists should not concern themselves about the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism; the process of the creation of new revolutionary groups and parties should be hindered in every way; the revisionist renegades should be left in peace in their activity so that they will have fewer problems and headaches in putting into practice their opportunist line, the line of giving up revolutionary struggle, the line of the liquidation of revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, the line of alliances with the bourgeoisie and imperialism.” {Ibid., pp. 275-76)
Comrade Hoxha then calls for the continuation of the polemics. Continuing the quotation, we find: “But for all the efforts of Togliatti and Co. to divert and quell it, the great polemics which is going on today between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism must never be stopped. This polemics, will cease only when modern revisionism has been totally destroyed. The Marxist-Leninists consider it their lofty internationalist duty to carry this ideological struggle, which has vital importance for the fate of the communist and revolutionary movement, through to the end.” (Ibid., p. 276)
Instead of complaining that the revisionists are writing polemics, Comrade Enver Hoxha points out that the intensification of the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism is a great victory for the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists. In the last section of the article, which is entitled “Resolute and Principled Struggle against all Revisionist Trends – A Sacred Duty of Communist Revolutionaries,” he writes:
Togliatti’s ’testament’ shows clearly that the modern revisionists are determined to carry through to the end the struggle against Marxism-Leninism and all the revolutionary forces of the world. There is no other road for them. The consistent principled struggle of Marxist-Leninists has exposed their revisionist features, now they can no longer act ’under the rose’ but are obliged to come out in the open to defend their revisionist positions and fight the Marxist-Leninists actively. This is a great victory achieved, a victory which must be carried deeper by means of the constant strengthening of our struggle against modern revisionism, under whatever disguise or in whatever form it may present itself.” (Ibid., pp. 314-15)
Comrade Hoxha then goes on to describe other victories of the Marxist-Leninists in the struggle against revisionism. He then concludes the article by setting forth a stirring and confident perspective of the struggle:
“These historic victories of Marxism-Leninism will increase and become more thoroughgoing from day to day. The decisive condition and guarantee of this is the principled, uncompromising struggle of all Marxist-Leninist parties and forces against the treacherous aims and activities of the modern revisionists, to bring about their complete and total defeat. Victory in this struggle inevitably belongs to Marxism-Leninism.” (Ibid., p. 316) How different from the Marxist-Leninist conception of the issue of polemics and struggle against revisionism is the feeble whining that the opportunists are engaged in “ideological struggle”! The Marxist-Leninists say: the class enemies are attacking! So, to arms, comrades, to the front lines! The whiners, pacifists and conciliators say: the class enemies are attacking! So let’s wring our hands, call for peace and quiet and denounce the horrors of struggle! The Marxist-Leninists say: the revisionists are in such disarray and have suffered such fiasco that even they are forced to admit the impossibility of stopping the ideological struggle! Therefore let us step up the battle and strike them some new blows! There is no stopping until the utter destruction of modern revisionism! The whiners shake their heads and suggest that perhaps this whole struggle is one big diversion. After all, aren’t there better things to do? But the ideological and polemical struggle cannot be stopped by either side. It is a reflection of the irreconcilable antagonism between Marxism-Lenin-ism and revisionism, of the fierce life and death struggle between socialism on one side and imperialism and its lackeys on the other. The revolutionary Marxist-Leninists wage this struggle as one of the decisive parts of the theoretical struggle, which is one of the three great fronts of the class struggle. In denouncing the polemical struggle with the revisionists, you have been led to denounce the entire ideological struggle itself. This shows where your wrong theses on this question are leading. Your denial of the ideological struggle is neither revolutionary nor principled. It is a retreat from the class struggle and a negation of some of the most basic and fundamental tenets of the scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism.
In the introduction to Section IX we began the discussion of the controversy over the term “idealist anti-revisionism.” We showed that you are making a big fuss on the question of “unity” and in opposition to the term “idealist anti-revisionism” and the article “How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism” because you are opposed to the struggle against the conciliators and “centrists.” You want us to abandon the principled struggle against conciliationism and “centrism” and replace it with pragmatic maneuvers with the conciliators and “centrists” under the signboard of “unity.” In this section, we shall continue the discussion of the term “idealist anti-revisionism.” Your denunciation of the term “idealist anti-revisionism” is thoroughly intertwined with your crusade against ideological struggle and hysterical sophistry over “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle,’” so it is appropriate at this point in our letter to return to the controversy over the term “idealist anti-revisionism.”
It must be stressed that you have sought to hide the real issues at stake behind your objections to the term “idealist anti-revisionism.” Instead of bringing the issues of principle to the fore, you have sought to hide everything behind quibbles, trivialities and absurdities. Thus you call the term “peculiar,” which merely means that you disagree with it. Or you rave that the term is “jargon,” as if you were simply worried that the term is ineffective. But, as we showed in the introduction to Section IX of this letter, you are opposed to the term “idealist anti-revisionism” not because the term was ineffective, but for the exact opposite reason, that the term struck home. The blow was aimed at and struck home against a certain section of the American conciliators, yet strangely enough the leadership of CPC(M-L) suddenly jumped up and shouted “ouch!” As well, you have denounced the term as not being a well-known international term, but this is both absurd and philistine. It is absurd because the term “idealism” is indeed one of the best-known international terms. It is also absurd as we are not writing articles as an empty show for international consumption, but as part of a serious struggle against the opportunists. Those who want to understand the struggle in the U.S. must seriously study and not simply complain that everything isn’t reduced to one or two stereotyped patterns. If you can’t understand the term “idealist anti-revisionism,” then instead of spouting nonsense you should study the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism in the U.S. and not just rely on a few preconceived ideas or detached incidents. And your objection to the term that it is a new one is also philistine, as the course of the struggle inevitably brings forth new terms, some of which have only a temporary use while others endure for a shorter or longer period of time. For example, anyone who seriously studies the works of Comrade Lenin finds that the struggle against opportunism in Russia involved many new and particular terms.
With your quibbles and trivialities you are trying to hide the real reasons behind your opposition to the term “idealist anti-revisionism.” In fact, the controversy over the term “idealist anti-revisionism” brings up a number of questions of principle. And for Marxist-Leninists, it is the questions of principle that should be put in the forefront.
(A) To begin with, we have denounced various opportunist practices as manifestations of “idealist anti-revisionism,” and we thought at one time that you were denouncing the same opportunist practices when you attacked “so-called ideological struggle.” By denouncing such opportunist practices as “idealist anti-revisionism,” we indicate that we are in favor of the anti-revisionist struggle and of the ideological and polemical struggle, but are opposed to idealist and other distortions or diversions of this struggle. But when you denounce the ideological struggle under the pretext of opposing certain opportunist practices, you are putting forward the opposite view that the problem is that an ideological struggle takes place at all. Hence you are putting forward the view of down with the great polemic a-gainst revisionism. Instead of denouncing diversions, distortions or caricatures of the ideological struggle, you are denouncing the ideological struggle itself. These are two opposite views on a cardinal question of principle, namely, the ideological struggle, which is one of the basic fronts of the class struggle. Thus your opposition to the term “idealist anti-revisionism” is, among other things, based on your negation of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the ideological and theoretical struggle. Whether to denounce the ideological-theoretical struggle, or to denounce deviations and distortions of this struggle, this is one of the key questions of principle behind the controversy over the term “idealist anti-revisionism.”
(B) Another crucial question of principle concerns the struggle against the conciliators and “centrists.” The term “idealist anti-revisionism” was put forward as part of the attack on the conciliators of social-chauvinism. But you opposed the term as a “hidden attack” on the conciliators. Should the conciliationism and “centrism” be opposed in the struggle against social-chauvinism and Chinese revisionism, or should there be pragmatic maneuvers with the conciliators under the signboard of “unity”? Should the “three worlds-ism” of the “RCP,USA” and the social-democracy of the Barry Weisberg “MLOC-CPUSA(ML)” sect be opposed or not? We have waged vigorous struggle against “centrism” and conciliationism while you have opposed this struggle. Your opposition to the term “idealist anti-revisionism” is entirely tied up with your opposition to the struggle against conciliationism and “centrism.” The evaluation of the struggle against conciliationism and “centrism” is therefore another key question of principle behind the controversy on the term “idealist anti-revisionism.”
(C) Another important question is that the term “idealist anti-revisionism” stresses that the problem is idealism, and thus calls for the rigorous application of materialism and the materialist dialectics. But you have been putting forward an opposite analysis, that the problem is naive materialism. For example, in various discussions you attacked our views on the ideological and polemical struggle and characterized them as “naive materialism.” In the discussions of May 1978 your representative stated, in regard to your opposition to the pamphlet Reply to the Open Letter of the MLOC:
What worries me is this: by giving them [certain American opportunists – ed.] a specific and distinct character [idealist anti-revisionism – ed.] you weaken the struggle and strengthen their situation. They are part of opportunism and should be hit at in this way. By diverting the struggle to a peculiar trait of theirs [idealist anti-revisionism – ed.] you weaken the struggle. It gives them too much credit. This is the mistake which we always made when we were naive materialists, especially in 1970-71. We would sum up the features of a thing and attack it, giving it a name. Naive materialism was important but now we are scientists. (emphasis added)
Aside from your sophistry that the fight against opportunism is something that strengthens opportunism, the basic thing you raise in the above passage is that the problem is naive materialism and that ideological and polemical struggle against the conciliators is a manifestation allegedly of naive materialism.
It is notable that in your letters of December 5 you characterize our views differently, as “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” Putting your ideas all together, it emerges that you believe that the problem with Maoist philosophy is naive materialism and not idealism. Indeed you put this forward at the internal meeting of your Party on Thursday, November 1, 1979, that replaced the planned conference on Mao Zedong Thought. Addressing the question of whether Mao Zedong Thought was vulgar materialism or idealism, your representative stated:
You can’t say he [Mao Zedong – ed.] is idealist because he did wage a revolutionary war. Thus, he is vulgar materialist, not idealist. He has a very definite approach. It is petty bourgeois anarchy. ... (From the notes taken by our delegate)
True, with regard to Mao Zedong Thought you have stressed the slogan of opposing pragmatism. But you have in essence identified pragmatism not as a variety of idealism, as Marxism-Leninism teaches, but as a variety of materialism, as naive or vulgar materialism. In fact you have attacked materialism under the pretext of repudiating pragmatism. You “defended” the Marxist-Leninist principles from pragmatism by insisting that the scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism belonged to a realm above and independent of investigation, facts, observation, etc. You regarded it as necessary to separate theory and practice and to create a transcendental category of truth independent of experience in order to refute pragmatism. Actually, in this way, under the banner of cursing pragmatism, you in fact created a theoretical rationale for pragmatic maneuvering and the implementation of pragmatism under the guise that tactics and practical work occur in a sphere totally detached from the realm of strategy and principles. Thus, for example, without blinking an eye you can and do advocate as a “tactic” pragmatic maneuvering for “unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists” and “unity in one party” with certain opportunists, such as various conciliators, and the cessation of polemics, while insisting that your “strategy” is to totally annihilate these same opportunists. You have tried to cover up your attack on materialism and your separation of theory from practice and of strategy from tactics by frantic confusion-mongering, such as by counterposing historical materialism and the theory of class struggle to the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.
Thus one of the issues of principle involved in the controversy over the term “idealist anti-revisionism” is over whether to attack idealism as part of the struggle against opportunism. This is related to the question of whether pragmatism is to be denounced as a variety of idealism or as a variety of materialism.
A serious consideration of the term “idealist anti-revisionism” would start from a consideration of the principles at stake, such as the three major questions we have outlined above. Only if there is agreement on the basic questions of principle, do other secondary questions take on any particular importance. Of course your views on the secondary and tertiary questions concerning this term are as wild and unfounded as your views on the major questions of principle. But you are raising such secondary or tertiary issues in an attempt to hide your position on the major questions of principle at stake by raising irrelevant, absurd and quibbling objections to the term.
This is the backhanded way you admit the utter weakness and hollowness of your stand concerning the issues of principle.
Now let us return to your crusade against “ideological struggle.” In order to give an allegedly “Leninist” coloring to your denunciation of the ideological struggle, you have tried to present your opposition to the ideological and polemical struggle as oppostion to the opportunist slogan of “freedom of criticism.” It is of course well known that Comrade Lenin fought hard against the opportunist slogan of “freedom of criticism.” Therefore by invoking the revolutionary authority and traditions of the Leninist fight against the opportunist slogan of “freedom of criticism,” you are trying to dress up your denial of the role of the ideological and theoretical front of struggle as allegedly “Leninist.”
But Comrade Lenin, in his classic work What Is to Be Done?, upheld the ideological, theoretical and polemical struggles against the opportunist followers of the slogan of “freedom of criticism.” “Freedom of criticism” was a slogan to let the revisionists and opportunists live in freedom, freedom from the ideological and polemical struggle of the Marxists. “Freedom of criticism” meant freedom from the ideological struggle against opportunism and the freedom for opportunism to coexist inside the Marxist parties and to corrode them from within. Hence you are slapping yourself in the face when you invoke Comrade Lenin’s withering repudiation of “freedom of criticism,” for this repudiation proves precisely the bankruptcy and anti-Marxist-Leninist nature of your opposition to the ideological and polemical struggle.
Comrade Lenin dealt with the opportunist slogan of “freedom of criticism” in detail in his book What Is to Be Done? and in particular in Chapter I entitled “Dogmatism and ’Freedom of Criticism.’” This classic work of Comrade Lenin’s should be studied to see what the Leninist conception of struggle against opportunism is, and how it is being turned on its head and utterly negated by your crusade against the “Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’” and against “ideological struggle.”,
Section A of Chapter I is entitled “What Is ’Freedom of Criticism’?” The “criticism” that is being referred to is not the criticism and self-criticism that goes on all the time in a truly Leninist party. Nor is it the self-critical evaluation by the Leninist party of its work. Nor is it the criticism by the Leninist party of all opportunist and revisionist trends. Nor is it the vigorous discussion by the working masses of the burning issues of the revolution. No. The “criticism” that is being referred to in this slogan is a very particular “criticism,” it is “bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism” (What Is to Be Done?, Ch. I, Sec. A) and it is the revisionist trend that took up this “criticism” and “transferred (it) bodily from bourgeois literature to socialist literature” (Ibid.). In brief, the “criticism” that is being referred to is opportunism, an opportunism which in those days, like today, liked to present itself as opposition to “dogmatic” Marxism.
Thus Comrade Lenin pointed out who the “critics” he is referring to are:
In fact, it is no secret that two trends have taken shape in the present-day international Social-Democracy. ... What this ’new’ trend, which adopts a critical attitude towards obsolete dogmatic’ Marxism, represents has with sufficient precision been stated by Bernstein, and demonstrated by Millerand. (Ibid., emphasis as in the original)
He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new ’critical’ trend in Socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people not by the brilliant uniforms they don, not by the high-sounding appellations they give themselves, but by their actions, and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that ’freedom of criticism’ means freedom for an opportunistic trend in Social-Democracy, the freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, the freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into Socialism.(Ibid., emphasis as in the original)
Hence “freedom of criticism” meant “freedom for an opportunistic trend.” In order to corrode the socialist movement, the “critics,” i.e., the opportunists, demanded the right to coexist with the Marxists. They demanded freedom from the struggle against opportunism. The “critics” were not in favor of “ideological struggle” between “criticism” and Marxism, but were opposed to that struggle. They wanted the right to corrode socialism without the hindrance of the revolutionary struggle of the Marxists against them. They wanted to have the right to throw mud at Marxism, but the Marxists were not to have the right to reply, for that would be a violation of “freedom of criticism.” The Marxists were to tolerate them and to be silent and not to fight against their ideological poison. Thus Comrade Lenin denounces the advocates of “freedom of criticism” not for advocating “ideological struggle” but for advocating the cessation of ideological struggle, for advocating ideological coexistence. He writes:
“’Freedom’ is a grand word, but under the banner of free trade the most predatory wars were conducted: under the banner of free labour, the toilers were robbed. The modern use of the term ’freedom of criticism’ contains the same inherent falsehood. Those who are really convinced that they have advanced science would demand, not freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old. The cry ’Long live freedom of criticism,’ that is heard today, too strongly calls to mind the fable of the empty barrel. (Ibid.)
Comrade Lenin exposes the “inherent falsehood” in the slogan “freedom of criticism” in that it does not demand “substitution of the new views for the old. ” i.e., a life and death ideological struggle, but instead asks for coexistence.
In Section C of Chapter I entitled “Criticism in Russia,” Comrade Lenin pointed out “the connection between, and interdependence of, legal criticism and illegal Economism. ” (Ibid., Ch. I, Sec. C) He showed that, far from welcoming ideological struggle, the Economists displayed a “fear of publicity.” (Ibid.) He pointed to the opposition by the Economists to the discussion of theoretical issues and to ideological strife and wrote:
This fear of criticism being displayed by the advocates of freedom of criticism cannot be attributed solely to craftiness (although, on occasion, no doubt craftiness has something to do with it: it would be unwise to expose the young and yet frail shoots of the new trend to attacks by opponents). No, the majority of the Economists quite sincerely disapprove (and by the very nature of Economism they must disapprove) of all theoretical controversies, factional disagreements, broad political questions, schemes for organizing revolutionaries, etc. ’Leave all that to the people abroad!’ said a fairly consistent Economist to me one day, and thereby he expressed a very widespread (and again a purely trade unionist) view: our work, he said, is in the working-class movement, the workers’ organizations, here, in our parts; all the rest are merely the inventions of doctrinaires, an ’exaggeration of the importance of ideology’...(Ibid.)
Hence far from advocating “ideological struggle,” the Economists, as fervent advocates of ”freedom of criticism,” crusaded against “exaggeration of the importance of ideology.” Indeed, there is a striking similarity of spirit between the Economist complaints about “exaggerating the importance of ideology” and your whining against “ideological struggle.”
...the celebrated freedom of criticism does not imply the substitution of one theory for another, but freedom from all integral and considered theory; it implies eclecticism and lack of principle.”(Ibid., Ch. I, Sec. D)
In opposition to this. Comrade Lenin stressed the importance of the theoretical struggle. Section D of Chapter I is entitled “Engels on the Importance of the Theoretical Struggle.”
Thus Comrade Lenin calls for theoretical work against the “critics.” As to what should be done to oppose “criticism,” he states:
The question now arises: such being the peculiar features of Russian ’criticism’ and Russian Bernsteinism, what should have been the task of those who desired to oppose opportunism, in deeds and not merely in words? First of all, they should have made efforts to resume the theoretical work... Without such work the successful growth of the movement was impossible. Secondly, they should have actively combated legal ’criticism’ that was greatly corrupting people s minds. Thirdly, they should have actively opposed confusion and vacillation in the practical movement, exposing and repudiating every conscious or unconscious attempt to degrade our program and tactics. (Ibid., Ch. I, Sec. C)
Thus to wage a real fight against economism and opportunism, not just a verbal paper fight but a fight in deeds, vigorous theoretical work and theoretical struggle are necessary. And this great teaching of Lenin’s remains just as fresh and lively as on the day it was written.
We shall end this section with an additional simple observation. Your perversion of the repudiation of “freedom of criticism” from meaning support for the ideological and theoretical struggle to meaning opposition to this struggle reminds us of a rather similar incident described by Comrade Lenin in Section D of Chapter I of What Is to Be Done? Comrade Lenin showed how the Economists quoted Marx’s statement “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs” in order to justify their opposition to the theoretical struggle. Comrade Lenin exposed that the Economists had turned Comrade Marx’s idea on its head. Lenin pointed out:
“Moreover, these words of Marx are taken from his letter on the Gotha Program, in which he sharply condemns eclecticism in the formulation of principles: If you must unite, Marx wrote to the party leaders, then enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make ’concessions’ in questions of theory. This was Marx’s idea, and yet there are people among us who strive – in his name – to belittle the significance of theory! (Ibid., Ch. I, Sec. D. emphasis as in the original)
It is just the same with your use of the slogan of opposing “freedom of criticism.” Comrade Lenin stressed the importance of the theoretical struggle, but you are striving – in his name – to belittle the significance of theory. You are turning Comrade Lenin’s idea on its head when you use it to denounce ideological struggle, for Comrade Lenin’s struggle against “freedom of criticism” was precisely in favor of the theoretical and ideological struggle. You are putting forward anti-Marxist-Leninist ideas under cover of perverting and interpreting in the opposite sense the Leninist slogans.
Another method by which you negate the ideological struggle is by counterposing the ideological struggle to organizational methods in creating and preserving the monolithic unity of the party. You have repeatedly quoted part of the following famous and important passage by Comrade Stalin, but you have misinterpreted it to mean that Comrade Stalin has denounced the inner-party ideological struggle:
The theory of ’defeating’ opportunist elements by ideological struggle within the Party, the theory of ’overcoming’ these elements within the confines of a single party, is a rotten and dangerous theory, which...threatens to make the Party a prey to opportunism, threatens to leave the proletariat without a revolutionary party, threatens to deprive the proletariat of its main weapon in the fight against imperialism. ... [Our Party succeeded in achieving internal unity and unexampled cohesion of its ranks primarily because it was able in good time to purge itself of the opportunist pollution, because it was able to rid its ranks of Liquidators and Mensheviks. Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists, social-patriots and social-pacifists.] (Foundations of Leninism, near the end of Chapter VIII; the brackets have been added to indicate that you always omit that part when you quote this passage)
Actually, every time you quote this statement you leave off the end, the part about proletarian parties developing and becoming strong through purging the opportunists, that is, through inner-party struggle. You just quote the first sentence. By cutting short this quotation from Comrade Stalin and, more importantly, by the erroneous theses that you have continually floated to us over the past few years, including those that you have used to justify your opposition to the slogan “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists,” you have shown that you not only negate the importance of the ideological struggle but also the importance of the inner-party struggle in general. Thus you oppose the ideological struggle by in effect advocating the Khrushchovite and social-democratic thesis of “inner-party peace.” Thus although you counterpose ideological struggle to organizational measures, we by no means agree that you have the correct conception of the nature of the organizational steps to be taken with respect to party unity or of the distinction between the purging of opportunist elements and the process of rectification of erring comrades. On the contrary, you have given wrong theses on these questions too. We shall deal with the question of “inner-party peace” further at the end of this section. For the time being, however, we shall deal with your counterposition of organizational methods and ideological struggle in ensuring the monolithic unity of the party.
Thus the question arises of how should unity be achieved in the Marxist-Leninist parties and how should their monolithic character be ensured. By ideological means or organizational means? But no, the question cannot be posed in that way. Such a counterposition of the two methods is not proper. The Marxist-Leninist classics stress the proper use of both methods. Thus the famous passage from Comrade Stalin that we have quoted above speaks against relying solely on ideological measures and leaving the party paralyzed and faction-ridden. But this cannot be understood as meaning that one should neglect the ideological struggle or ideological clarification. Comrade Stalin repeatedly emphasized the role of the ideological struggle. In a striking remark, Comrade Stalin stated:
To expel Brandler [a German type of Browder–ed.] and Thalheimer is an easy matter, but the task of overcoming Brandlerism is a difficult and serious one. (“A Letter to Comrade Me-rt,” Works, Vol. 7, p. 46)
This sentence occurs in the midst of a passage that is full of a number of profound ideas. This passage reads in part as follows:
... To disavow Trotsky and his supporters, we Russian Bolsheviks carried out an intense campaign based on an explanation of principles in support of the foundations of Bolshevism as against the foundations of Trotskyism, although, considering the strength and prestige of the Central Committee of the R.C.P(B.), we could have dispensed with such a campaign. Was that campaign needed? Certainly it was, for by means of it we educated hundreds of thousands of new Party members (and also people who are not Party members) in the spirit of Bolshevism. It is very sad that our German comrades do not feel it necessary that repressive measures against the opposition should be preceded or supplemented by a wide campaign based on an explanation of principles, and are thus hindering the education of the Party members and Party cadres in the spirit of Bolshevism. To expel Brandler and Thalheimer is an easy matter, but the task of overcoming Brandlerism is a difficult and serious one. In this matter, repressive measures alone can only cause harm; here the soil must be deeply ploughed, minds must be greatly enlightened. The R.C.P.(B.) always developed through contradictions, i.e., in the struggle against non-communist trends, and only in that struggle did it gain strength and forge real cadres. The same path of development through contradictions, through a real, serious and lengthy struggle against non-communist trends, especially against Social-Democratic traditions, Brandlerism, etc., lies before the C.P.G. [Communist Party of Germany – ed.]. But repressive measures alone are not enough in such a struggle. (Ibid., pp. 45-46, emphasis added)
It is quite significant that Comrade Stalin connects the failure to wage the ideological struggle with failure to understand the role of the inner-party struggle in general. He stresses that a communist party develops ’through contradictions, i.e., in the struggle against non-communist trends’ and that only in that struggle does it “gain strength and forge real cadres.” It is clear that at least for the Communist Party of Germany of 1928 and for our two Marxist-Leninist parties today there is the perspective of development “through contradictions,” that is, through “a real, serious and lengthy struggle against non-communist trends,” especially against social-democratic, liberal-labor and revisionist traditions.
Comrade Stalin reiterated the importance of the ideological struggle in an article on the situation in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In part, the relevant passage reads:
The immediate task is, while combating ultra-Left deviations, resolutely to combat the danger from the Right with the aim of altogether isolating and completely eliminating the Rights. ...
That, of course, does not mean that all the Rights must necessarily be expelled. Expulsion is not the decisive weapon in the struggle against the Rights. The main thing is to give the Right groups a drubbing, ideologically and morally, in the course of a struggle based on principle and to draw the mass of the Party membership into this struggle. That is one of the chief and most important means of educating the Party in the spirit of Bolshevism. Expulsion must come, if it is really necessary, as a natural result of the ideological rout of the enemy. (“The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Works, Vol. 7, p. 66. emphasis added)
Comrade Stalin wrote other articles on the relationship between organizational and ideological measures in the inner-party struggle. His works give model examples of penetrating analysis in deciding when ideological measures should be primary in the inner-party struggle and when it is necessary to organize an extensive organizational purge of opportunist elements. Thus in November 1928 in the fight against the Right deviation in the CPSU(B), he pointed out:
I think that we must pursue the same course in the fight against the Right deviation. The Right deviation cannot as yet be regarded as something which has taken definite shape and crystallized, although it is gaining ground in the Party. It is only in process of taking shape and crystallising. Do the Right deviators have a faction? I do not think so. Can it be said that they do not submit to the decisions of our Party? I think we have no grounds yet for accusing them of this. Can it be affirmed that the Right deviators will certainly organise themselves into a faction? I doubt it. Hence the conclusion that our chief method of fighting the Right deviation at this stage should be that of a full-scale ideological struggle. This is all the more correct as there is an opposite tendency among some of the members of our Party – a tendency to begin the fight against the Right deviation not with an ideological struggle, but with organisational penalties. They say bluntly: Give us ten or twenty of these Rights and we’ll make mincemeat of them in a trice and so put an end to the Right deviation. I think, comrades, that such sentiments are wrong and dangerous. Precisely in order to avoid being carried away by such sentiments, and in order to put the fight against the Right deviation on correct lines, it must be said plainly and resolutely that our chief method of fighting the Right deviation at this stage is an ideological struggle. (“Industrialisation of the Country and the Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U. (B.),” Works, Vol. 11, pp. 298-99, emphasis as in the original)
... Of course, it is easier to remove people from their posts than to conduct a broad and intelligent campaign explaining the Right deviation, the Right danger, and how to combat it. But what is easiest must not be considered the best. Be so good as to organise a broad explanatory campaign against the Right danger, be so good as not to grudge the time for it, and then you will see that the broader and deeper the campaign, the worse it will be for the Right deviation. That is why I think that the central point of our fight against the Right deviation must be an ideological struggle. (Ibid., p. 300)
(Parenthetically, let us note that here Comrade Stalin commits a double heresy according to your mode of thinking. Not only does he call for an ideological struggle, but for the organizing of a “campaign” of ideological struggle, while you have been pontificating about the alleged harmfulness and Maoist nature of both “campaigns” and of “ideological struggle.” But we shall speak further about the issue of “campaigns” later on, in Section XI-H.)
Of course it does not follow in the slightest that inner-party ideological struggle must be the only method of struggle nor that it must always be the chief method of struggle. Thus Comrade Stalin stressed that the situation in the Communist Party of Germany in 1928 was different from the situation in the CPSU(B). In Germany the Rights were an arrogant faction who flouted party discipline, organized their own factional group and even had their own press organs. The time had clearly come for the expulsion of the Rights. Comrade Stalin pointed out:
In opposing the expulsion of the Rights, Humbert-Droz and Serra refer to the resolution of the Sixth Congress [of the Comintern – ed.] which says that Right deviations must be overcome by means of an ideological struggle. That is perfectly true. But these comrades forget that the resolutions of the Sixth Congress by no means limit the struggle of the Communist Parties against the Right danger to measures of an ideological order. While speaking of methods of ideological struggle against deviations from the Leninist line, the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, in its resolution on Bukharin’s report, at the same time declared that:
’far from precluding, this presumes the utmost strengthening of iron inner-Party discipline, unqualified subordination of the minority to the majority, unqualified subordination of the lower bodies, as well as of other Party organisations (groups in parliament, groups in trade unions, the press, etc.) to the leading Party centres. (“The Right Danger in the German Communist Party.” Works, Vol. 11. pp. 316-17. emphasis as in the original)
The 12th point of the twenty-one conditions [for admission to the Comintern, conditions endorsed by the Second Congress of the Comintern – ed.] says that the Party must be ’organised on the most centralised lines.’ that within it must ’prevail iron discipline bordering upon military discipline.’ You know that the Rights in the German Communist Party refuse to recognize iron discipline, or any discipline whatever, except their own factional discipline. The question arises, can this scandalous state of affairs be tolerated any longer? (Ibid., p. 318, emphasis as in the original)
I learned today from some of the speeches made here that some of the German conciliators plead in their justification the speech I made at the November plenum of the CC. C.P.S.U.(B.) [some excerpts from this speech. “Industrialisation of the Country and the Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.),” have been quoted above – ed.] on the methods of combating the Right elements. As you know, I said in my speech...that at this stage of development of the fight against the Right danger in the C.P.S.U.(B) the chief method of struggle is the ideological struggle, which does not exclude the application of organisational penalties in individual cases. I based this thesis on the fact that the Rights in the C.P.S.U.(B) had not yet crystallised, did not yet represents group or a faction, and had not yet provided a single instance of violation or non-fulfillment of decisions of the CC. CP.S.U.(B). I stated in my speech that if the Rights were to pass to a factional struggle and begin to violate decisions of the CC. C.P.S.U.(B), they would be treated in the same way as the Trotskyists were treated in 1927. That is clear, one would think. Is it not then stupid to refer to my speech as an argument in favour of the Rights in Germany, where the Rights have already passed to factional methods of struggle and systematically violate decisions of the C.C. C.P.G., or as an argument in favour of the conciliators in Germany, who have not yet broken, and are apparently unwilling to break, with the Right faction? I think that nothing more stupid than such a plea can be imagined. Only people who have abandoned all logic can fail to understand the vast difference between the position of the Rights in the C.P.S.U.(B.) and the position of the Rights in the CPG. (Ibid., pp. 320-21. emphasis as in the original)
Comrade Stalin then continued to go into other factors that have to be taken into consideration when comparing the situations inside the CPSU(B) and the CPG with respect to the problem of the danger from the Right. Thus he pointed out that, unlike the situation in the USSR:
... In Germany, on the contrary, there is alongside the Communist Party the stronger and fairly firmly organised Social-Democratic Party, which fosters the Right deviation in the German Communist Party and objectively converts this deviation into its agency. (Ibid.. p. 322)
As well, Comrade Stalin also points to the fact that “The tradition of struggle against open opportunism ” (Ibid.) is not so strong in the CPG as in the CPSU(B). Indeed, the CPG was still “far from having rid itself of Social-Democratic traditions, which foster the Right danger in the C.P.G.” (Ibid., p. 323)
Thus Comrade Stalin gives in these articles striking examples of the concrete analysis of the particular situation facing the communist party, an analysis necessary for the determination of the precise methods to be used in the inner-party struggle. Clearly Comrade Stalin’s approach differs entirely from the mechanical counterposition of ideological and organizational methods. Instead Comrade Stalin defines the role and relationship of the two methods and the precise ways of implementing them in each particular case. And it is also absolutely clear that to slight the ideological struggle, to say nothing of denigrating, pontificating against or cursing at this struggle, is to cripple the principled inner-party struggle, to harm the growth, development and strengthening of the genuine communist party and to deviate away from the sound positions of Marxism-Leninism.
Now let us return to the point we made near the beginning of this section concerning “inner-party peace.” We pointed out that although you appear to counterpose the ideological struggle to organizational methods of inner-party struggle, in fact you are really counterposing inner-party struggle in general to the question of the monolithic nature of the party. Indeed, as the striking quotation from Comrade Stalin about expelling Brandler being easy but overcoming Brandlerism being a difficult and serious matter showed, to neglect the ideological struggle is to fail to comprehend that the proletarian parties develop “through contradictions, i.e., in the struggle against non-communist trends.” Slighting of the ideological struggle and of the struggle against opportunism amounts to or is closely related to negation of the inner-party struggle in general. Thus when you slight, denigrate and often outright negate the ideological struggle, the struggle against opportunism and the inner-party struggle, you are in effect putting forward a concept of the proletarian party developing without contradictions and without any internal class struggle. You are in essence putting forward the theory of “inner-party peace.”
But the theory of “inner-party peace” is a social-democratic and revisionist theory. It must be stressed that the advocacy and practice of the theories of ”inner-party peace” cannot ensure either genuine unity or a tranquil inner-party life. On the contrary, such theories and practices lead to the destruction of genuine Marxist-Leninist unity and to the replacement of the principled inner-party struggle with factional strife. This is closely related to the similar fact that the advocacy and practice of toning down and denigrating the polemics against opportunism does not thereby solve the problem of how to oppose opportunism. Indeed, in the long run it cannot even stop the polemic, but instead transforms the polemic into forms demoralizing to the masses and disadvantageous to the revolution. As for unity, there can be no solid Marxist-Leninist inner-party unity independent of the class struggle inside and outside the party.
In Section XI-A, in discussing your demagogy about “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle,’” we already gave a number of Marxist-Leninist references on the question of inner-party struggle. We shall not repeat that discussion here. We shall simply end by referring to some important passages from the work of Comrade Stalin that show that the negation of the struggle against opportunism and the inner-party struggle under the pretext of preserving the “unity” of the party is the stock, social-democratic theory. And this social-democratic theory and practice were also taken over by modern Khrushchovite revisionism and defended by speculating on and interpreting in the opposite sense the Leninist teachings on the monolithic and iron unity of the party-Comrade Stalin stressed the law of the development of the party “through contradictions” and opposed the social-democratic nature of the negation of the inner-party struggle. For example, he elaborates on this in the report entitled “Once More on the Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party.” Subsection 1 of Section I is entitled “Contradictions of Inner-Party Development.” He points out that:
It follows that the C.P.S.U.(B.) grew and became strong by overcoming inner-Party contradictions.
It follows that the overcoming of inner-Party disagreements by means of struggle is a law of development of our Party.
Some may say that this may be a law for the C.P.S.U.(B), but not for other proletarian parties. That is not true. This law is a law of development for all parties of some size, whether the proletarian Party of the U.S.S.R. or the proletarian parties of the West. Whereas in a small party in a small country it is possible in one way or another to slur over disagreements, covering them up by the prestige of one or several persons, in the case of a big party in a big country development through the overcoming of contradictions is an inevitable element of party growth and consolidation. So it was in the past. So it is today. (Works, Vol. 9, p. 8)
Comrade Stalin then goes on “to refer to the authority of Engels” and gives two collaborating quotations from Comrade Engels. One of them goes: “In the long run the contradictions are never slurred over, but always fought out.”
In the same subsection Comrade Stalin points out that the social-democratic parties, on the contrary, seek to “cover up and conceal” the contradictions and disagreements. He denounces them for not disclosing the contradictions and trying “to overcome them honestly and openly in sight of the mass of the party membership” but instead turning “their conferences and congresses into an empty parade of ostensible well-being.” Comrade Stalin pointedly remarks that: “This is one of the reasons for the decline of West-European Social-Democracy, which was once revolutionary, and is now reformist. (Ibid., p. 5) Thus denial of the development of the party “through contradictions.” denial of the principled inner-party struggle, is a social-democratic theory which is one of the reasons for the decline and corruption of social-democracy. And the social-democratic theory of “inner-party peace” has been taken up by modern revisionism as well.
Another method by which you negate the struggle against opportunism is by professing an entirely formal and empty “official optimism” concerning the unity of the Marxist-Leninists and the danger of opportunism. Thus you denounce the revolutionary struggle necessary to create, temper and preserve unity by counterposing it to the empty and purely formal “optimism” of your thesis that the Marxist-Leninists are always united, everywhere and at all times, simply by definition. You denounce the struggle to isolate and expose the opportunists and revisionists by counterposing this struggle to the fact that opportunism and revisionism are anti-Marxist-Leninist. With your “official optimism” you convert the correct Marxist-Leninist thesis that opportunism and revisionism are anti-Marxist-Leninist from a great mobilizing force and call to struggle against opportunism and revisionism into a pretext for not fighting opportunism and revisionism on the grounds that allegedly the opportunists and revisionists cannot infiltrate the Marxist-Leninist ranks by the very definition of Marxism-Leninism. You especially denounce our slogan “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists.” This slogan, which identifies the danger of social-chauvinism and calls for uncompromising struggle against it, violates your “official optimism” that social-chauvinism could have nothing to do with the Marxist-Leninist movement by definition. With empty and sophistical playing with words you try to prove that those who call for the most uncompromising, Leninist struggle against social-chauvinism and for throwing the social-chauvinists out of the movement are really believers that there is “something in common” between social-chauvinism and Marxism-Leninism – for why else, you reason, would they find it necessary to give a call to remove the social-chauvinists, opportunists and revisionists from the revolutionary movement in the first place? And behind this allegedly “revolutionary” way of denouncing the struggle against opportunism, you then substitute pragmatic maneuvering under the signboard of “unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists,” and “unity in one party” with all those “who claim to be Marxist-Leninists.” even though you are quite familiar with what these forces are in reality. Thus your “official optimism” means to put on a false front for official consumption about how excellent the situation in the Marxist-Leninist movement is, how the international communist movement has allegedly never been split since the split decades ago between Leninism and social-democracy, and so forth, exactly in the typical manner of the bureaucrat issuing pompous, soothing and meaningless statements to keep the population calm, while the opportunist poison is allowed to continue to corrode. With your “official optimism” you turn your official statements of high principle about opportunism, as distinct from your practical politics concerning the opportunist groups, into a repetition of empty assurances of ostensible well-being, assiduously covering up and slurring over the actual problems existing in the Marxist-Leninist movement and your actual policies for handling these problems.
It should be stressed that your “official optimism” about the danger of opportunism, an “official optimism” used to negate the struggle against opportunism, is an utterly social-democratic theory and practice. One of the most harmful and corrupt traditions of social-democracy was precisely their “official optimism” about opportunism. We find it shocking to see you, the leadership of a Marxist-Leninist party, slip into a practice that bears the mark of the flabby, philistine, social-democratic and opportunist spirit that corroded the Second International. Comrade Lenin long ago denounced “official optimism.” Comrade Lenin’s brilliant and well-loved quotation that “...the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism” has been repeated thousands upon thousands of times in the world Marxist-Leninist press. It is worthwhile to recall that this quotation comes from a passage where Comrade Lenin is flaying precisely the “official optimism” of the Second International and of the social-democrat Kautsky. Comrade Lenin wrote as follows:
And so there is created that bond between imperialism and opportunism, which revealed itself first and most clearly in Great Britain, owing to the fact that certain features of imperialist development were observable there much earlier than in other countries. Some writers, L. Martov, for example, are prone to wave aside the connection between imperialism and opportunism in the working-class movement – a particularly glaring fact at the present time – by resorting to ’official optimism’ (a la Kautsky and Huysmans) like the following: the cause of the opponents of capitalism would be hopeless if it were progressive capitalism that led to the increase of opportunism, or, if it were the best-paid workers who were inclined towards opportunism, etc. We must have no illusions about ’optimism’ of this kind. It is optimism in respect of opportunism; it is optimism which serves to conceal opportunism. As a matter of fact the extraordinary rapidity and the particularly revolting character of the development of opportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be durable: the rapid growth of a painful abscess on a healthy body can only cause it to burst more quickly and thus relieve the body of it. The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism. (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Ch. X, Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 301-302, except for “a la,” all of the emphasis is added)
You and Martov give somewhat different reasons for your “official optimism” concerning opportunism. Martov openly gives rightist reasons for his “official optimism” and whitewashes the labor aristocracy and labor bureaucracy. You on the contrary try to give a more “revolutionary” sounding type of “official optimism.” You are willing to call the labor aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie bad names, and you even try to prove your revolutionary credentials by always reiterating that the opportunists are police and criminals. But from this, you conclude that there is no point in seriously repudiating the political, ideological and theoretical views and practices of the opportunists, since after all they are just the ravings of the police. So you end up insisting that the struggle against opportunism is a secondary issue at best and certainly something that should not be “elevate(d)...to the level of theory.” (From your speech “The Road of the Party,” PCDN, April 3, 1980, p. 3, col. 3 and 4) Thus, despite some differences in form between your method of putting forward “official optimism” and that of Martov, it can be seen that your “official optimism” is precisely guilty of the social-democratic position being denounced by Comrade Lenin. The main thing in this regard is the struggle against opportunism. And the whole point of your “official optimism” is to downplay, denigrate and denounce this struggle. But, as Comrade Lenin stressed:
The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.
This is the key and decisive issue in the question of “official optimism.” And you are precisely guilty of denigrating the connection between the struggle against opportunism and the struggle against imperialism when you denounce ideological struggle, oppose the struggle against opportunism, preach that the struggle against opportunism should not be “taken too far” or elevate(d)...to the level of theory,” advocate that the Chinese revisionists were guilty of too much struggle against opportunism or too many polemics, oppose our struggle against opportunism as being allegedly “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’ ” and a failure to explore the full possibilities of the unity of the Marxist-Leninists, and so on and so forth.
In Section X-F of this letter we showed that you deny the well-known and obvious facts about the splits in the international communist movement and advocate the bizarre theory that the international communist movement has always been united since the time of the split between Leninism and social-democracy during and after World War I. You have gone to great pains to insist that Khrushchov and the other revisionist renegades allegedly did not arise from within the international communist movement. We dealt with these absurdities of yours in that section. But here we see why you need these theories. They are a component part of your edifice of “official optimism.” You are aware that if you simply said that the international Marxist movement was never split, that this would be too blatant a denial of Leninism. So you seek to pay lip service to Leninism while in practice relegating his teachings on the struggle against opportunism to the museum of historical antiquities and curiosities. So you concede in effect that the Leninist teachings on the split with the opportunists and on the struggle against opportunism were valid back in the days, many decades ago, of the original split between social-democracy and Leninism. But since then, you say, the international communist movement has never been split and the teachings on the struggle against opportunism must be replaced by simply defending “unity,” which you conceive of as something separate and distinct from and opposed to the struggle against opportunism. Similarly, you imply that polemics may have had their role back in the days of the split between social-democracy and Leninism, but today the issue is “the defence of Marxism-Leninism.” which you conceive of as something separate and distinct from and opposed to the ideological and polemical struggle. Oh yes, you are willing to concede that the question of splitting with opportunism was a real question and an important task back in Martov’s day, at the time of the split between Leninism and social-democracy, and you are even willing to concede that the present-day workers’ movement is split, as long as one makes a sharp distinction between the workers’ movement and the Marxist-Leninist movement. But when it comes to dealing with the issues in the Marxist-Leninist movement of today, then you relegate the Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism to the museum and advocate that the issue was settled once and for all by the split between Leninism and social-democracy decades ago. You may even be willing to use this or that phrase about opposition to opportunism, but you make sure that these phrases remain purely formal and ceremonial by never failing to stress your opposition to ideological struggle, to polemics, to “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle’” and so on and so forth.
Your repudiation of the Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism under the pretext of “official optimism” can be seen in your denunciation of the Leninist slogan of building the party without and against the opportunists. Thus you stated, in one of the discussions with us in which you attacked this Leninist slogan, the following:
You still give the line of two-line struggle. ’Build the [Marxist-Leninist – ed.] Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists.’ This is the two lines. Dangerous. We know they [the social-chauvinists – ed.] are not part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. They are a danger to it. You say two-lines: the Marxist-Leninist center and the social-chauvinist center. The implication is that they [the social-chauvinists – ed.] are part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. (from our minutes of the discussions of late May. 1979. emphasis added)
After our delegate protested against this caricature of our views, you went on and said:
The social-chauvinist center in the U.S. is the presidency [i.e., Carter – ed.]. They want to smuggle social-chauvinism into the Marxist-Leninist movement. Klonsky, the revisionists and the labor aristocracy are their main vehicle. (Ibid.)
Here you express the same idea as in the passages from you that we quoted in Section X-F. The bourgeoisie tries to smuggle social-chauvinism into the Marxist-Leninist movement, but it never succeeds, since the last split in the international communist movement was allegedly the split between social-democracy and Leninism decades ago. Therefore you condemn the struggle against the social-chauvinists on the incredible grounds that this struggle allegedly implies “that they [the social-chauvinists – ed.] are part of the Marxist-Leninist movement.” It should be noted that you condemn the “without and against” slogan on general principles. You do not discuss any concrete aspect of our struggle or of our analysis. Indeed you simply caricature the “without and against” slogan and introduce talk of two “centers” and so forth, although these are not our formulations.
However, the fact is that the “without and against” slogan is a Leninist slogan. Comrade Lenin pointed out that this slogan (or the basic ideas behind it) is an essential part of any real program of action to deal with the question of opportunism. For example, he wrote:
The purpose of a real programme of action can be served only by a Marxist programme which gives the masses a full and clear explanation of what has taken place, explains what imperialism is and how it should be combated, declares openly that the collapse of the Second International was brought about by opportunism, and openly calls for a Marxist International to be built up without and against the opportunists. Only a programme that shows that we have faith in ourselves and in Marxism and that we have proclaimed a life-and-death struggle against opportunism will sooner or later win us the sympathy of the genuinely proletarian masses. (“Socialism and War,” Collected Works. Vol. 21, p. 329, in the section on “The State of Affairs Among the Opposition,” emphasis as in the original)
But with your denunciations of the “without and against” slogan, you are denouncing the Marxist “programme of action” as allegedly “the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle.’” As we have seen, you seek to avoid the open appearance of denouncing Leninism by implying that such slogans as “without and against” were historically justifiable at the time, due to the split between Marxism-Leninism and social-democracy, but are obsolete today.
As to your oh so clever argument that the “without and against” slogan implies that the opportunists are part of the Marxist-Leninist movement, the exact same reasoning (or lack of reasoning) can be used to denounce any one of innumerable classical slogans against opportunism. For example, we pointed out at the start of Section XI-F that you have in the last few years repeatedly quoted Comrade Stalin’s famous passage about “The theory of ’defeating ’ opportunist elements by ideological struggle within the Party, the theory of ’overcoming’ these elements within the confines of a single party, is a rotten and dangerous theory....” Unfortunately you try to give this quotation the opposite sense intended by Comrade Stalin, because understood correctly this passage is an elaboration of the same idea as that behind the “without and against” slogan. But in any case presumably you believe that at least this passage from the classics is applicable to today’s conditions. But this passage ends: “Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists, social-patriots and social-pacifists.” True, you prefer not to quote this sentence, but nevertheless Comrade Stalin wrote it, and moreover it is an important truth. But this sentence is completely equivalent to the “without and against” slogan in its alleged implication that the opportunists are part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. For in order to purge an opportunist, reformist, social-chauvinist or whatever from the party, he must first be in the party. To purge someone from a party means to remove or expel a member of that party from its ranks. This is spelled out explicitly by Stalin in the final section entitled “Conclusion” of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course, 1939 edition. Stalin pointedly remarks:
4) The history of the Party further teaches us that unless the Party of the working class wages an uncompromising struggle against the opportunists within its own ranks, unless it smashes the capitulators in its own midst, it cannot preserve unity and discipline within its ranks, it cannot perform its role of organizer and leader of the proletarian revolution, nor its role as the builder of the new, Socialist society.
The history of the development of the internal life of our Party is the history of the struggle against the opportunist groups within the Party – the ’Economists,’ Mensheviks, Trotskyites, Bukharinites and nationalist deviators – and of the utter defeat of these groups. (emphasis added)
It may seem to some that the Bolsheviks devoted far too much time to this struggle against the opportunist elements within the Party, that they overrated their importance. But that is altogether wrong.
But of course to call for purging someone from the Marxist-Leninist party or the Marxist-Leninist movement means precisely that one is saying that the individual involved is not a Marxist-Leninist and hence doesn’t belong in the party or in the Marxist-Leninist movement. It is only in your topsy-turvy logic, and not in real life, that a call to purge social-chauvinists from the party means an implied recognition that social-chauvinism is, if only partially, Marxist-Leninist. All your objection amounts to is the following: that the struggle against opportunism means to recognize that there is a danger from opportunism, and that recognition violates “official optimism.”
Nevertheless you repeat the same stale objection to the struggle against opportunism over and over again in a number of different forms. For example, you have denounced in discussions with us the slogan of “re-establishing unity.” Actually, this isn’t our formulation, but that made no difference to you. The fact is that you are arguing not against any particular analysis of our Party, but in general against the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism. So your representative put forward the following:
...[you referred to a party in the capitalist part of Europe – ed.] say we must ’re-establish unity’ of the international communist movement. We oppose this thesis. We disagree. The question of unity has nothing to do with re-establishing. This unity exists. To say re-establish... means we should iron out this difference, means to compromise with revisionism and reestablish unity. Our view of the international communist movement is the opposite. To view this movement as a trend, this is a serious mistake. We used to analyze things this way. This was the influence of Mao Zedong Thought. The defense of Marxist-Leninist principles is not a matter of trends of ideas, defense of ideological theses – it means defending the line in the objective world.” (Our minutes of the discussions of early August 1979)
Here you oppose the formulation of “re-establishing unity” in the international communist movement because it violates “official optimism” which holds that the genuine Marxist-Leninists are always united, unity exists, and so on and so forth. You dragged in, in passing, the name of a particular party, but that party’s views and practices are irrelevant to the issue. Just as we do not agree that the Marxist-Leninist teachings on “ideological struggle” can be negated because some opportunist group or other gives “ideological struggle” as a slogan, so here too the phrase “re-establish unity” must be judged in a more serious fashion. And it turns out, of course, that the phrase “re-establish unity” is too general to be either supported or condemned in itself, unless it has further elaboration. If someone or some party wishes to “re-establish unity” with the revisionists or with some section of the revisionists, then such a “re-establishment of unity” is an opportunist and anti-Marxist-Leninist practice. But if the call is to “re-establish unity” without and against the revisionists, then the “re-establishment of unity” has a totally different significance. Thus, Comrade Enver Hoxha gave the stirring call at the Fifth Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania that:
unity will be re-established in the communist movement and the socialist camp, but it will be re-established by the Marxist-Leninists without revisionists and traitors and in resolute struggle against them. (Cited in the History of the Party of Labor of Albania, Ch. VII, Sec. 2, p. 605)
We are enthusiastically in favor of this type of “re-establishment of unity” and against the other type of “re-establishment of unity.” But you are simply engaging in empty playing with the words “re-establishment of unity” in order to denounce the struggle against opportunism from an allegedly super-principled and very revolutionary standpoint.
In passing, we should also note that in the passage from you that we have given above, you go to the extent of utterly negating the struggle against opportunism by denying that this struggle should have any ideological content at all. You are sternly opposed to the defense of any Marxist-Leninist “ideas” or “ideological theses” at all! Amazing! This means to either avoid the struggle against opportunism altogether or to reduce it to a meaningless squabble devoid of any ideological content in the slightest.
Furthermore you denounce the thought that Marx-ism-Leninism could be regarded as a “trend.” You try to make this sound very “revolutionary,” but it is just sophistry and phrasemongering. The Marxist-Leninist classics have often referred to Marxism as a “trend” or similar such expressions when it was appropriate. Hence with your phrasemongering you are trying to present yourself as more “revolutionary” than the Marxist-Leninist classics. The reason why you have to engage in this chSrade of phrasemongering is that you are afraid that if you allow talk of the Marxist-Leninist “trend,” then you will have to allow talk about the struggle between different trends, and then you will have to recognize the struggle against opportunism and, indeed, even the ideological struggle against opportunism. But you regard the ideological struggle against opportunism as a fate worse than death.
Let us examine an additional passage where you repeat in a slightly different form these same tired-out objections to the struggle against opportunism. In the following short passage you pile on the distortions, slanders and demagogic phrasemongering so thick that it would take pages to sort out these few sentences:
En Lutte! says everyone is in the movement except the Party [CPC(M-L) – ed.]. We agree that we are not part of the opportunist movement. You present the same thesis from the opposite side, i.e., that everyone is part of the movement. This leads to the conclusion that the international movement must purge itself. This plays into the hands of elements who speculate on the international movement. Then you get: re-construct, re-unite, re-etc. (from our minutes of the discussion of October 29. 1979)
Here you repeat once again the same stock slander that to be for struggle against the opportunists means to be for unity with them. This time you serve up this sophistry in a new sauce by saying that our thesis of building the party without and against the opportunists is allegedly the flip side of the thesis that all the opportunists should unite. You identify the following two positions as the same thing: that all the opportunists should unite against the Marxist-Leninists, and that all the Marxist-Leninists should unite against the opportunists. This is equivalent to someone saying that both those fighting arms in hand for liberation and those fighting arms in hand to slaughter and oppress the people are really in the same position, for, don’t you see, they both use weapons. Such a complaint can only be made by a pacifist. And indeed, you prove that you are taking a pacifist position in the war between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism in so far as you denounce “ideological struggle” when in the above quotation you identify the war against opportunism waged by the Marxist-Leninists and the war against Marxism-Leninism waged by the opportunists as the same position, though given “from the opposite side.”
You then proceed to denounce the conclusion that “the international movement must purge itself.” We do not use “purge yourself” as our agitational slogan. But just as in the case of the “re-establishment of unity,” this expression must be further elaborated before it can be judged. How can the idea of the international movement purging itself be denounced in general when Comrade Stalin teaches that: “Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of” the opportunist elements? Indeed, it is quite true that the international movement is purging itself in the course of the great struggle against modern revisionism. But, you say, this gives rise to such theses as “re-establishing unity,” etc. Well, what is so bad about that? It all depends on how one reestablishes unity. We have explained this above.
And there is one last comment that needs to be made on the above passage we have quoted from you. If you are aware that a certain opportunist group is actually preaching unity with everyone, including the right social-democrats, then you are consciously lying when you attribute to this group the position of “ideological struggle.” For you yourselves have thus admitted that the actual position of this group is liberalness and social-democratic coexistence. In such a case, if a group that stands for social-democratic liberalness claims to be for “ideological struggle,” then the fraud should be exposed. But when you instead denounce such a group for “ideological struggle,” you are in effect denouncing the group for not extending its liberalness and coexistence to you, for excluding you from this “movement,” which you yourself call the “opportunist movement.” Oh yes, you do not fail to add for official consumption that you “agree that we [CPC (M-L) – ed.] are not part of the opportunist movement.” But in practice you reject the slogan of building the Marxist-Leninist party without and against the opportunists and instead preach an end to the “ideological struggle.” And such preaching means to demand that the policy of liberal coexistence should be extended to you.
Thus we see from your statements that you have over and over again attacked our struggle against opportunism on the topsy-turvy grounds that to call for struggle against opportunism means to “imply” that the opportunists are part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. And you especially object to the call to struggle against opportunism when it is a call for unyielding struggle, for struggle carried through to the end, that is, for struggle conducted along the lines of building the Marxist-Leninist party without and against the opportunists and revisionists. You are opposing the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the proletarian parties developing and growing strong by purging themselves of opportunist elements through the “official optimism” that by definition the proletarian parties do not contain non-proletarian, opportunist elements. Your “official optimism” is a deeply rightist, social-democratic method, but you try to dress it in “revolutionary” colors by posturing with phrasemongering as more “revolutionary” than anyone, even than the Marxist-Leninist classics.
Thus you posture with absurd arguments that Marxism-Leninism can never be called a “trend,” that opportunist elements never arise from within the movement (at least, not since the split between social-democracy and Leninism during and after World War I) and so forth. So let us examine again and a little more closely your theories about who is or who isn’t in the Marxist-Leninist movement. We shall see in more detail how you use your “official optimism” both to denigrate the struggle against opportunism and to replace it with pragmatic maneuvering under the signboard of “unity of the Marxist-Leninists.”
Let us return to your objections to the movement against social-chauvinism in the U.S. You attack this movement, alleging that to struggle against social-chauvinism in order to purge the social-chauvinists from the revolutionary movement means to hold that the social-chauvinists are part of the movement. But the facts are that, at the time of the beginning of the movement against social-chauvinism in 1976, the open social-chauvinists and Klonskyites in particular and the neo-revisionists in general were generally accepted as being part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. Accepted by whom? By the COUSML? Did our predecessor, the COUSML, accept neo-revisionism as being genuinely Marxist-Leninist or anti-revisionist? No, the COUSML didn’t. The COUSML never accepted neo-revisionism as Marxism-Leninism and the COUSML declared relentless war upon the social-chauvinists. The COUSML fought to make the neo-revisionists, “three worlders” and social-chauvinists an object of scorn in the eyes of every progressive person. The COUSML fought not just the neo-revisionists, but it also fought neo-revisionism as a trend of thought, as an anti-Marxist-Leninist theory.
Thus the COUSML fought tooth and nail against the social-chauvinists. But it is exactly this fight that you accuse of creating illusions in the social-chauvinists and of implying that they are part of the movement. What a fraud! The fact that the social-chauvinists and neo-revisionists were generally accepted as being part of the Marxist-Leninist movement was not the doing of the COUSML. If the COUSML had closed its eyes to this unfortunate fact, the fact wouldn’t go away. Ostriches have never been regarded as the fiercest fighters of the animal kingdom. The most harmful thing in this regard is “official optimism” that closes its eyes to such generally known but unpleasant facts as the presence of opportunists infiltrating into the Marxist-Leninist, revolutionary and working class movements. What creates illusions in the opportunists is the blunting of the struggle. What destroys illusions is the sharpening and intensification of the struggle against opportunism. It is precisely the movement against socialchauvinism that has destroyed many illusions about social-chauvinism and neo-revisionism, and that has been an utter fiasco for them. It is the scientific and militant stand of the COUSML, which acted to change the situation whereby the social-chauvinists were accepted as part of the Marxist-Leninist movement not by defining the problem away, but by hard struggle, which has destroyed illusions and safeguarded the purity of Marxism-Leninism and the honor of the revolutionary movement.
Thus your holier-than-thou posturing about whether or not the social-chauvinists are in the Marxist-Leninist movement is a big fraud. More, it is utter hypocrisy. For even now you are advocating pragmatic maneuvers with some of the conciliators of social-chauvinism. In your letters of December 5 you denounce our struggle against social-chauvinism, which must of necessity include the stern struggle against the conciliators, as allegedly a failure to exhaust “the full possibilities of this opportunity of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists.” (See introduction to Section IX of this letter.) Thus behind your talk about the opportunists not being in the Marxist-Leninist movement stands the reality that you are in favor of pragmatic maneuvers under the signboard of “the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists” with those who you yourself say are not in the Marxist-Leninist movement!!
Therefore let us take a closer look into your conception of “the Marxist-Leninist movement.” You have insisted that there is some question of differences on the issue of the composition of the Marxist-Leninist movement. Very well, there are many different ways to approach a question. However, if you wished to deal with the composition of the Marxist-Leninist movement, you should have taken seriously the issue that you yourself raised. And a serious approach to this question would require, among other things, that you explain clearly what you mean by “the Marxist-Leninist movement,” who is in it and how it has developed. But you avoid this like the plague in your discussions with us. Very well, we should go into this anyway.
To begin with, what do you mean by the “Marxist-Leninist movement”? The answer to this question naturally will determine whether or not this or that opportunist is in this movement. Do you mean by “the Marxist-Leninist movement,” all those who are genuine Marxist-Leninists and true fighters against revisionism? If so, the neo-revisionists and other opportunists are not part of this movement. Or do you mean all those who are generally accepted as being in the Marxist-Leninist movement? If so, then whether the neo-revisionists or various other opportunists are in the Marxist-Leninist movement depends entirely on the exact state of the Marxist-Leninist movement of the particular country at a particular time. Or do you mean those activists from the revolutionary mass movement who took part in an objective movement to take up Marxism-Leninism and who came to the realization of the need to fight revisionism? If so, you have never said so. But clearly in this case too the composition of the movement depends entirely on the concrete situation prevailing at a particular time and place. Or do you mean all those “who claim to be Marxist-Leninists”? This movement would include the neo-revisionists and a number of other opportunists. And indeed you have many times given the call that “All individuals who call themselves Marxist-Leninists” or “All those individuals and organizations who claim themselves to be Marxist-Leninists” should join CPC(M-L). See your pamphlet of 1976 entitled On Unity of Marxist-Leninists. This is1 expressed in this pamphlet in numerous places, such as in the article “The General Method of CPC(M-L) for Building the Unity of the Marxist-Leninists in Canada and Quebec.” As well, this thesis is expressed in the major speech of your Party assessing the decade of the 1970’s, given in Hamilton on December 30, 1979. This speech specifically endorsed the calls of 1974-75 that “those who called themselves Marxist-Leninists” should join the CPC(M-L), the calls that are reproduced in the pamphlet On Unity of Marxist-Leninists. (See PCDN. Jan. 3, 1980, p. 2, col. 3) And you yourself admit that those “who call themselves Marxist-Leninists” include certain “revisionists, trotskyists, anarcho-syndicalists and opportunists of various sorts.” (On Unity of Marxist-Leninists, p. 153 and numerous other pages.)
But if you are willing to appeal for unity to “all those who claim to be Marxist-Leninists,” even groups that you do not regard as being in the Marxist-Leninist movement but as groups that are revisionist, trotskyist or opportunist and only “Marxist-Leninist” in words, well then, why bother to waste time and effort arguing about who is or who isn’t in the Marxist-Leninist movement. Of what possible value or significance is a “Marxist-Leninist movement” whose extent does not even put a limit on the boundaries of possible Marxist-Leninist unity? Such a “Marxist-Leninist movement” is only an ornament, something to be displayed for ceremonial and official purposes, while in fact you work with a different movement, consisting of all those who are Marxist-Leninist in words.
Just look at the ugly, disgusting hypocrisy behind your mask of “official optimism.” You denounce the struggle against social-chauvinism and the slogan “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists” as allegedly “implying” that the social-chauvinists are in the Marxist-Leninist movement. Meanwhile you yourself give appeals that everyone who “claims” to be a Marxist-Leninist or who “calls themself” a Marxist-Leninist should take part in the “unity of the Marxist-Leninists” and should join the Marxist-Leninist party although it is precisely such an appeal to those who you yourselves call opportunists, revisionists, trotskyists and so forth that is utterly anti-Marxist-Leninist in principle and extremely dangerous in practice and that creates great confusion on what the relation is between opportunism and Marxism-Leninism. Either you are admitting that you are not serious when you call these groups opportunists, revisionists and trotskyites or you are putting forward the position of unity in one party with the opportunists.
Thus your whole facade of “official optimism” is meant to cover up and conceal your actual political practice and policies. Your sophistry and moralisms about the composition of the Marxist-Leninist movement serve not only to provide a “revolutionary”-sounding argument against the struggle against opportunism, but also to conceal that you are willing to call for a “unity of the Marxist-Leninists” with groups that you yourself brand as opportunist and not part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. What a shocking conception of “unity”! The struggle against opportunism is replaced by maneuvers with the opportunists under the signboard of “unity of the Marxist-Leninists.” You describe this method of calling for “unity of the Marxist-Leninists” with various opportunists in the pamphlet On Unity of Marxist-Leninists. For example, the article “CPC(M-L)’s Consistent Line on the Question of Opposing Opportunism and Building the Unity of the Marxist-Leninists, A PCDN Editorial Comment” starts by raising the following issue:
Certain comrades and friends of the Party have asked us why, since we consider certain organizations and individuals to be erroneous and go to the extent of pointing out that they are revisionists, trotskyists, anarcho-syndicalists and opportunists of various sorts, does the Party issue the call to unite with them. [Bear in mind that what is being referred to here is unity in a single party – ed.] How can Marxist-Leninists unite with the revisionists, trotskyists, anarcho-syndicalists and opportunists? Certain friends of the Party are puzzled by this. So this editorial is written to explain the Party’s view on the question. We will answer the question point by point: 1) The task of building the unity of the Marxist-Leninists; 2) The task of opposing revisionism, trotskyism, anarcho-syndicalism and opportunism.” (Ibid., p. 153) It should be remembered that this article is talking about “unity of the Marxist-Leninists” and the call that all those who “call themselves Marxist-Leninists” should be united into one party, the CPC(M-L).
The article explicitly points out that this call applies to certain organizations and individuals who are “revisionists, trotskyists, anarcho-syndicalists and opportunists of various sorts.”
The article does, as promised, take up the question of the task of opposing opportunism. It states: “For us, to unite the Marxist-Leninists it is absolutely necessary to struggle against revisionism, trotskyism, anarcho-syndicalism and opportunism!” (Ibid., p. 155) The article even talks of “an irreconcilable struggle against these elements,” referring to “all those who are pursuing these opportunist political lines irrespective of what they call themselves.” But how does the article define this struggle? It clearly and explicitly states the following:
Certain comrades and friends also raise questions about how the struggle against these opportunist political lines should be waged. In the practical movement, the opportunists are all those who are unwilling to sit together with others and sort out their differences. (Ibid., p. 155)
Thus here the article explains that the task of opposing the opportunist lines is basically a struggle to have everyone, Marxist-Leninist and opportunist, “sit together” to sort out their differences. Opportunism is to be opposed, but opportunism is defined as being “unwilling to sit together.” As the article declares:
Not to join the Party and not to sit together to deal with questions relating to the theory and tactics of Canadian revolution amounts to opportunism. (Ibid., p. 156)
And it should be noted that this view too was endorsed in the major speech of your Party in Hamilton on December 30, 1979. This speech, in discussing the period dealt with in the pamphlet On Unity of Marxist-Leninists, upheld as correct that your Party “differentiated between sham Marxist-Leninists and real Marxist-Leninists” on the basis of who joined CPC(M-L). (PCDN, Jan. 3, 1980, p. 3, col. 2)
In passing, it should be noted that this article sheds a very interesting light on your opposition to ideological struggle. The article opposes ideological struggle on the grounds that the differing views should all come into the party and be worked out there. And it should not be forgotten that the article is referring to views that differ so significantly on principle that you call them revisionist, trotskyist, anarcho-syndicalist or so forth. The article calls this ideological struggle under “Party discipline,” but in fact it is clearly a theory of ideological coexistence in the party. The article states: “We hold that we should firmly oppose revisionism, trotskyism, anarcho-syndicalism and other opportunist trends, and at the same time mat all Marxist-Leninists should be in one Party where they wage ideological struggle as to what is the correct or incorrect line for the Party. Ideological struggle without Party discipline is to merely engage in the bourgeois pursuit of having endless discussions without reaching any conclusions.“ (Ibid., p. 156) Here the struggle of the party against opportunism outside the party is denounced as “ideological struggle without Party discipline.” Nowadays you would probably not call for ideological struggle inside the party or for the struggle between correct and incorrect. But this change in formulation simply deepens the error and draws out more clearly the opposition to any ideological struggle at all inside or outside the party.
Of course at the same time that you are calling for unity with certain groups or individuals that you yourself say are opportunist, you also take care to say that these groups are not in “the Marxist-Leninist movement.” You keep referring to them as ”Marxist-Leninists.” but apparently as Marxist-Leninists who are not in the “Marxist-Leninist movement.” Thus the article expresses the hope that MREQ, one of the organizations that is included in the call for unity, “joins the Marxist-Leninist movement”:
We hope that MREQ does overcome its rank opportunism, adopts Marxism-Leninism and joins the Marxist-Leninist movement. Our articles dealing with them are written in this light. (Ibid., p. 157)
Thus the article holds that MREQ was not then in the Marxist-Leninist movement, but might later join it. Thus the article never violates your principle that there are no opportunists in the Marxist-Leninist movement by definition. Never! You simply call for Marxist-Leninist unity with groups that are not in the Marxist-Leninist movement. This is amazing, but it is true.
Thus under the banner of “official optimism” you have in fact developed a whole rationale for justifying pragmatic maneuvers, to say nothing of actual unity, with the opportunists. This rationale replaces the struggle against opportunism with the struggle for the unity of all those “who call themselves Marxist-Leninists.” We shall deal further with this in Section XII-A. It should be noted that you have never repudiated the pamphlet On Unity of Marxist-Leninists. Since you have published it you have changed certain formulations, such as dropping certain formulations in the pamphlet that refer to the importance of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, a change which further deepens the basic error, but you follow the same basic theory. This is fully revealed in your crusade against ”the Maoist theory of ’two-line struggle,’” your opposition to ideological struggle and your denunciation of our struggle against opportunism by counterposing it to “unity of the Marxist-Leninists.” And this is completely verified by your endorsement of these theories in your major speech in Hamilton on December 30, 1979, assessing the decade of the 1970’s. We have referred to the pamphlet On Unity of Marxist-Leninists because it is one of the few places where you have attempted to elaborate your ideas of “unity of the Marxist-Leninists” in some detail and in writing.
Hence you never speak precisely about what you mean by “the Marxist-Leninist movement” because your whole method of “official optimism” is designed to conceal your actual policies concerning the Marxist-Leninist movement. And behind the mask of “official optimism” you denounce the struggle against opportunism and advocate a policy of pragmatic maneuvering under the signboard of “unity.” You try to present your “official optimism” as “revolutionary” through extravagant phrasemongering and outrageous sophistry. You attack any presentation of the actual situation in the Marxist-Leninist movement with respect to the danger of opportunism as allegedly a failure to understand that opportunism is anti-Marxist-Leninist, and with the complacent assertion that opportunism cannot infiltrate into or corrode inside the Marxist-Leninist movement by the very definition of the words “opportunism” and “Marxism-Leninism.” You oppose with a holier-than-thou air expressions such as “the corrosion of neo-revisionism within the Marxist-Leninist movement.” In this way you are in effect posing as more “revolutionary” than the Marxist-Leninist classics themselves, for these classics often spoke about the question of opportunist infiltration. The Marxist-Leninist classics teach how to lay bare the actual situation and contradictions inside the communist movement. Thus far from phrasemongering about the impossibility of opportunists ever arising from within the communist movement or similar such rubbish, Comrade Lenin, who was free from even an ounce of “official optimism,” described old-style or Bernsteinian revisionism as follows: “And the second half-century of the existence of Marxism began (in the nineties) with the struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism itself.” (“Marxism and Revisionism,” Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 32, emphasis added. This was written in 1908.) And Lenin went on to add: “Pre-Marxist socialism has been defeated. It is continuing the struggle, no longer on its own independent ground, but on the general ground of Marxism, as revisionism.’’ (Ibid., p. 33, emphasis added) Comrade Lenin did not fear to write this way, because he relied on relentless and unyielding struggle to combat the revisionist danger, while “official optimism” relies on defining the danger out of existence in order to justify a policy of pragmatic maneuver.
Comrade Stalin also denounced “official optimism”; he flayed the method of concealing the contradictions in the movement as a social-democratic method and connected this to the “middle line” in matters of principle. He wrote:
How do the Social-Democratic parties of the West exist and develop nowadays? Have they inner-party contradictions, disagreements based on principle? Of course, they have. Do they disclose these contradictions and try to overcome them honestly and openly in sight of the mass of the party membership? No, of course not. It is the practice of the Social-Democrats to cover up and conceal these contradictions and disagreements. It is the practice of the Social-Democrats to turn their conferences and congresses into an empty parade of ostensible well-being, assiduously covering up and slurring over internal disagreements. But nothing can come of this except stuffing people’s heads with rubbish and the ideological impoverishment of the party. This is one of the reasons for the decline of West-European Social-Democracy, which was once revolutionary, and is now reformist.
We, however, cannot live and develop in that way, comrades. The policy of a ’middle’ line in matters of principle is not our policy. The policy of a ’middle’ line in matters of principle is the policy of decaying and degenerating parties. Such a policy cannot but lead to the conversion of the party into an empty bureaucratic apparatus, running idle and divorced from the masses of the workers. That path is not our path.
Our Party’s whole past confirms the thesis that the history of our Party is the history of the overcoming of inner-Party contradictions and of the constant strengthening of the ranks of our Party on the basis of overcoming them. ” (“Once More on the Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party,” Works, Vol. 9, pp. 4-5)
It is quite clear that Comrade Stalin’s idea applies fully to the question of the present-day Marxist-Leninist movement. To pretend that everything is fine, to fail to disclose the contradictions and to fail to try to deal with them honestly and openly “in sight of the mass of the party membership,” is in fact to introduce a spirit akin to that of social-democracy. It is clear that from such “official optimism” “nothing can come... except stuffing people’s heads with rubbish and the ideological impoverishment of the party.’’ In order to rally all genuine Marxist-Leninists around the Marxist-Leninist party, in order to eliminate all opportunism from the Marxist-Leninist movement not by closing our eyes to it but by driving it out, the Marxist-Leninists must wage a vigorous, determined and open fight for Marxist-Leninist principle. The movement against social-chauvinism led by our Party is precisely an example of such a powerful struggle, and the Call of the NC of the COUSML “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists” is precisely an example of a manifesto for such a struggle.
You have also denounced the struggle against opportunism by playing with the words “movement” and “campaign.” For example, in the major speech “The Road of the Party,” you say that:
According to Maoism, all that is needed is to start any kind of struggle and then extend this as a ’movement.’ For the Maoists, a ’movement’ is always parallel to the working class movement, a separate entity and separate from the interests of the proletariat. They never deal with the question of the proletariat as a class, they never deal with the class struggle in a concrete manner, and they do not recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat. (PCDN, April 3, 1980, p. 3, col. 3)
You deduce all these things from the question of “movement.” This shows your addiction to empty phrasemongering. And the main target of this tirade against “movement” is to attack the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. Thus you immediately go on to give, as “one salient example,” your stock denunciation of ideological struggle in particular and the struggle against opportunism in general. You link this up with denouncing “campaigns.” Thus you are denouncing a whole front of the class struggle, the ideological struggle, as something that is allegedly only “parallel to the working class movement, a separate entity and separate from the interests of the proletariat.” You are stressing that you hold that the struggle against opportunism “never deal(s) with the question of the proletariat as a class” and “never deal(s) with the class struggle in a concrete manner.
In particular, you have used this denunciation of “campaigns” and “movements” to denounce the powerful and invigorating movement against social-chauvinism led by our Party. What, you cry, it is a “movement” and a “campaign.” There is no need to examine it in detail and/or to even consider the concrete policies and principles underlying our guidance of this struggle. Oh no! It is enough that it is a “movement” and you are able to characterize it as a manifestation of the Maoist line. In discussions with us on October 29, 1979 you put forward this phrasemongering in opposition to the movement against social-chauvinism. And you stated: “We must be consistent Marxist-Leninists, not have campaigns.” At the same time, you stated: “As well, you have some specific offensives. But not in such a way as to negate the on-going general defense of Marxism-Leninism;” What word-chopping! If a “specific offensive” can be consistent with “the ongoing general defence of Marxism-Leninism,” then why not a “movement against social-chauvinism” or a “campaign”? Indeed, is the “on-going general defence of Marxism-Leninism” even conceivable without specific polemics, campaigns, movements, programs, and so forth? Your position is that of denouncing meals, but supporting the “on-going general” process of eating. But you went on to make the question of “campaigns” into a major issue and stated: “The whole idea of campaign is erroneous. It involves erroneous assessment of actual motion, of what can be accomplished through such a struggle, of what is the scope of the struggle.” How can one discuss “campaigns” in the abstract? With such anti-Marxist-Leninist stupidities you seek to present yourselves as more “revolutionary” than anyone else, even than the Marxist-Leninist classics. Why, you have gone right down to the root of the issue, to the very idea of “campaigns.” True, the Marxist-Leninist classics talk about “campaigns,” “movements,” “main blows,” and so on, but presumably you have advanced science so much further!
Your counterposition of the specific work of the party to its “on-going general” work is utterly nonsensical. Since you are making a general, abstract point about “the whole idea of campaign,” we shall discuss this general issue. Let us consider an analogy to the army. After all, military analogies are sometimes made to illustrate certain points about the party, such as when the party is called “the general staff” of the proletariat. In considering the army one sees that it is a model of “on-going general” work. It has a constant, rigid discipline, a discipline which is never so tightly enforced as when the army is in battle. And it has a constantly enforced rigid structure. The army maintains constant maintenance of weapons, constant concern for provisions, a well-developed division of labor and so on and so forth. But what is all this “on-going general” work for? It is to allow the army to be a model of “campaigns,” “movements,” attacks and retreats, forced marches and sudden change of plans. Indeed, the army is the model for the word “campaign.” An army which tries to fight a war by ruling out all “campaigns” and a party which is afraid of concrete revolutionary actions and “movements” are both absurdities and ripe for ignominious defeat. To denounce “campaigns” and “movements” is an absurd blunder. The science of Marxism-Leninism requires not that, but instead a correct definition of the role and relationship of specific and particular struggles to the “on-going general” work and the formulation of correct policies adapted to the concrete conditions of the revolutionary struggle.
Indeed a correct Marxist-Leninist analysis shows that there are various constant fronts of the work of the party, fronts that are essential and needed at all times. The ideological or theoretical struggle, which is one of the three basic forms of the class struggle, is such a front. Party-building is another. The struggle against opportunism, which is very closely linked with the theoretical struggle, is also such a front of struggle. Work on these fronts should not be done in fits and starts, so that some work is done and then things go to sleep for years until some emergency arises and the rot has already set in. But naturally, however, constant work entails that there will be many campaigns, movements, specific battles, all linked together into a consistent front of work. Each front of work may rise or lower in intensity at times, but it must never be interrupted. Such consistent work is not ensured by your nonsensical sophistry about “campaigns,” but by vigilance, by consistent, unflagging efforts. Thus you curse “campaigns” and “movements,” but it is you who give a shocking example of advocating work by fits and starts when you assert, in summing up the 1970’s, that:
There is no way that revisionism and opportunism can arise in this country again with the same kind of bluster which they had during the 1974-77 period. (PCDN, Jan. 3, 1980, p. 3, col. 3)
This assertion is a manifestation of complacency, of neglecting the front of struggle against opportunism and of dealing with it only when there is a crisis, an emergency. It is further deepened when you assert that the party must not “elevate this [the struggle against opportunism – ed.] to the level of theory.” (From the major speech of your Party on the tenth anniversary of its founding, the speech entitled “The Road of the Party”) This type of complacency ensures work by fits and starts.
Hence your denunciation of “campaigns” and “movements” shows that you are suffering from an addiction to phrasemongering and empty play with words. If you dislike something, then it is a “campaign.” If you like it, it is a ”specific offensive.” Since you are opposed to the struggle against opportunism in general and the movement against social-chauvinism in particular, you call it an example of the “Maoist” line of “campaigns” and “movements.” Meanwhile, you yourself develop your own “movements,” such as the “worker-politicians movement.” This proves the utterly frivolous nature of your complaints about “movements.”
Thus when you make the denunciation of “movements” and “campaigns” a central feature of your denunciation of Maoism, this shows, among other things: 1) That you have very little serious criticism or analysis of Mao Zedong Thought at all; 2) That you are making an absurd counterposition of the particular to the general; and 3) That you are still trying to prove that the struggle against opportunism is really a manifestation of Maoism.