First Published: The Communist, Vol. II, No. 1, September 8, 1975.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In the August 15, 1975 issue of the “People’s Tribune,” the Communist Labor Party calls the Helsinki agreement a “victory for the Socialist camp” that “served to formalize the acceptance of the boundaries in Europe which were drawn after W.W. II by the anti-Fascist Socialist forces.” But this is exactly the line of the Brezhnev clique and the thing that the revisionists took as the most important question at Helsinki. At the Conference on July 31 Brezhnev said: “the Soviet Union regards the outcome of the conference ... as a necessary summing up of the political results of World War II.”
This is what characterizes the CLP’s support for the phoney Soviet “Peace Appeal” and their analysis of the Helsinki agreement: instead of seeing Europe as the focus of contention of two imperialisms struggling to redivide the world, the CLP sees this contention as a struggle between an expansive U.S. imperialism and a “peace-loving” Socialist camp. In the same article they write: “That expansion (of U.S. imperialism) can only take place at the expense of the Socialist camp.” This completely ignores the aggressive and expansive character of Russian imperialism and quite consciously conceals the immediate war threat posed by the USSR – especially in Europe where it is armed to the teeth.
CLP represents a neo-revisionist trend. The CLP sometimes calls the leadership of the USSR revisionist, but denies that the Soviet Union is social imperialist or that capitalism has been fully restored. This neo-revisionist line is by no means unique to the United States. Throughout the world revisionist factions used the split in the international communist movement between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism as a means to break with the old revisionist parties while refusing to break with modern revisionism and maintaining a conciliatory stance toward revisionism in power.
Helsinki and the Soviet “Peace Appeal” are not the only examples where the CLP echoes the Brezhnev clique’s line on the current international situation. In the same issue of their organ they attack the “left” which supports the FNLA in Angola, claiming that the FNLA “is presently conducting a slaughter of Angolan revolutionaries” and is “led by the admitted CIA agent Holden Roberto” – i.e., that the FNLA is counter-revolutionary. Now as we point out in this issue, the source of this line that refuses to support the three liberation groups equally and that calls one of the organizations counterrevolutionary is Soviet social imperialism (cf. Peking Review, #31). CLP’s attack on the FNLA lines up with other revisionist parties that support only the MPLA in an effort to sow dissension and create strife among the three organizations thereby undermining support for the unity of the Angolan people’s struggle for liberation and national independence against the two superpowers. This only prepares the ground for Soviet social imperialism to supplant U.S. imperialism in Africa.
CLP also promises us an analysis of Portugal which it is clear will support the revisionist effort to substitute social fascism for fascism.
We call on all comrades to heighten their vigilance against modern revisionism and its efforts to pretend that the USSR is a socialist power, rather than a vicious imperialist superpower.