First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 2, January 17, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Marxist-Leninists around the world have hailed the victory of the Chinese people under the leadership of Chairman Hua Kuo-feng in smashing the counter-revolutionary “gang of four.” But the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) here in the U.S. has taken its stand with the “gang.”
At their “Conference on the International Situation” last November and again in the January issue of their newspaper, Revolution, the RCP openly attacked Chairman Hua. They insinuated that the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people had elected a “chimpanzee” as party leader and that China had turned revisionist.
At the November Conference, the RCP refused to answer questions about their stand on the “gang of four.” When asked about the struggle in China, long-time RCP spokesman Clark Kissinger could only respond by denouncing the OL and other Marxist-Leninists as “flunkeys” for making statements congratulating Hua Kuo-feng on his leadership in defending socialist China.
Kissinger finally blurted out: “If a chimpanzee had been elected Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, he would have gotten a telegram of congratulations from Michael Klonsky (OL Chairman).”
The January issue of Revolution features a letter of “clarification” from Kissinger, in which he repeats his disgusting slander. This is RCP’s only concrete statement about the current struggle in China in the January issue of the paper. In recent comments by RCP leaders, they have chimed in with the Guardian centrists and the bourgeois press in speculating that “revisionism” has triumphed in China and that Chairman Hua Kuo-feng does not uphold the line of Chairman Mao.
The reason the OL and other Marxist-Leninists internationally have expressed full support for Chairman Hua is because the struggle against the “gang” is part of the worldwide fight against capitalism and revisionism.
The struggle in China is one between the socialist road and the capitalist road. The “gang of four” attempted to seize party and state power and carry out capitalist restoration as Khrushchev did in the Soviet Union in 1956. Restoration of capitalism in China would have been a terrible blow to the working class in every country which draws its hope and inspiration from China.
For these reasons, the struggle in China is a question of major importance for communists everywhere.
The RCP, while claiming to be a “Marxist-Leninist party,” is actually opposing the Marxist-Leninists in the world today and particularly the great Communist Party of China. Not surprisingly they have found themselves in the company of Trotskyists, centrists and revisionists who have also used Chairman Mao’s death and the struggle against the “gang” as an opportunity to step up their attacks on socialist China. The RCP leadership has even found it difficult to sell their counter-revolutionary line on China to their own cadres.
The RCP’s stand on the recent events in China is actually not a new phenomenon. It flows from their long-standing opposition to China’s line on many questions.
The November Conference, organized immediately after Chairman Mao’s death, fully revealed RCP’s opposition to the line of Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party on the international situation. Prettifying Soviet social-imperialism, attacking the world countries’ struggle, and siding with the “gang of four,” the RCP was hardly distinguishable from the many Trotskyists and centrists whose participation in the conference was fully encouraged.
Even RCP was embarrassed by its unity with these class enemies. In the January issue of Revolution, RCP claims that they “snuck in” and “got onto panels, by denying affiliation with any Trotskyist or revisionist group.” But these excuses are to no avail, because RCP admits in the very same article that they themselves “screened” and selected all the panelists.
The RCP’s growing unity with the Trotskyists, centrists and revisionists is the result of their political line which completely liquidates the fight against modern revisionism. In the January Revolution, for example, the RCP says that it is “ludicrous” to call revisionism one of imperialism’s main props and denounces the OL for carrying out consistent struggle against the revisionist Communist Party USA.
Support for revisionism and capitalist restoration is the essence of the RCP’s stand on China. In China, Marxism-Leninism has dealt revisionism a crushing blow. But RCP insists on standing on the wrong side of this struggle, giving aid and comfort to the revisionism of the “gang of four.”