First Published: Revolution, Vol. 1, No. 11, August 15, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
The world today is undergoing rapid changes. The crisis in the world imperialist system is intensifying all the major contradictions in the world, it is turning up the flame underneath the conflicts. Overall, this is a favorable situation for the revolutionary struggle throughout the world. The exploiters are at each other’s throats and weakened by crisis, the masses of workers in the U.S. and other capitalist countries are increasingly compelled to struggle and the struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America continue to deal sharp blows to the imperialist powers. While the capitalist world is sinking into deeper crisis, the countries where the working class holds power have made important advances in building socialism.
At the same time the present world situation places new dangers, and new tasks, before the working class and masses of people of every country. In particular, the greatly intensifying rivalry between the rulers of the U.S. and the new Imperialist rulers of the Soviet Union is leading toward a third world war.
Under these circumstances, it is more important than ever that the working class and masses of people be armed with a correct understanding of what is happening in the world, how the class forces line up, and how to advance the revolutionary struggle under today’s conditions.
Yet there are certain organized forces in this country who are working overtime with views that spread confusion, paint enemies as friends and disarm the masses at the very time when it is crucial that clarity be achieved. The revisionist “Communist” Party, USA has long promoted the lie that the USSR is the great bastion of socialism and progress, the friend of the people of the U.S. and the peoples of the world.
Fortunately, the CPUSA has not been able to sell this trash to many people in this country. But unfortunately, the editors of the Guardian (which bills itself as an “independent radical newsweekly“) have recently stepped forward as a chief spokesman for an opportunist political line which, under today’s conditions, serves as a cover for the Soviet Union’s imperialist nature.
Using the excuse of a “discussion of China’s foreign policy,” and criticism of an article by William Hinton which implies (whatever Hinton’s intentions) that the U.S. bourgeoisie is at least a potential, if not present, component of a United Front against the Soviet Union (identified as the main danger), the Guardian has launched a full-scale assault on the Marxist-Leninist view of the world situation.
According to the Guardian, the peoples of the world face only one main enemy – U.S. imperialism. We are warned by long-time Guardian correspondent Wilfred Burchett not “to view Moscow undialectically’” (May 5, 1976) which means to the Guardian that it is all right to hurl insults at the Soviet Union, even to call them “social-imperialists,” but we must not forget that capitalism has not “been fully restored and consolidated in the Soviet Union.” (June 16, 1976) This could only mean the Soviet Union is a socialist country.
The Guardian declares, incorrectly, “that the principal contradiction in the world is between U.S. imperialism and the oppressed peoples and nations of the world.” (May 26, 1976) In practice the Guardian carries this incorrect view further, acting as if that were the only contradiction of major significance in the world. While they claim to be Marxist-Leninists (and even hold up Mao TseTung on special occasions) the Guardian completely negates the Marxist-Leninist view of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, the internal laws of which inevitably give rise to world wars and working class revolution.
Instead, the view of the world that shines through the pages of the Guardian is an idealist, petty bourgeois view, in which there is only one big bully in the world, the evil rulers of this country, and they will be brought down by being battered from outside by the forces of progress and light. What is missing in all this is any real class content.
One reason that the Guardian continues to exert some influence is that they appeal to the experience many people gained during the struggle against U.S. aggression in Vietnam and the revolutionary movement of the 1960s generally. They try to wrap themselves in the mantle of that movement and portray themselves as the inheritors of its revolutionary thrust. They represent themselves as the upholders of the revolutionary struggle against the U.S. bourgeoisie, but the political line they promote stands as an obstacle to the development of that struggle.
At that time, the national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America were far and away the single most powerful force dealing blows to the imperialist system. The ruling class of this country was the undisputed chieftain of the world capitalist system and the chief enemy of the world’s people. The powerful and protracted struggle that developed against the U.S. imperialists’ war on the Vietnamese people and the widespread support for the national liberation struggles of the Third World was an extremely important development and played a key role in rekindling a revolutionary movement in the U.S. and other countries.
During the 1960s the Soviet Union was emerging as an imperialist superpower and just beginning to challenge the U.S. for world hegemony. In those years much of the Soviet’s actions on the international front involved collaborating with the U.S. ruling class to sabotage many of the anti-U.S. struggles. They sought to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. at a time when they didn’t want it.
Thousands of fighters in this country were disgusted to see the Soviets try to hamstring the struggle of the Vietnamese – and later openly oppose the liberation movement of the Cambodian people – denounce the, Palestinian liberation movement, and join with the U.S. in a joint effort to encircle socialist China, all while claiming to be “revolutionaries” and “communists.”
At the same time, while there was broad opposition to the treachery of the revisionist rulers of the USSR, there was little understanding of the class basis of the Soviet ruling class, or that capitalism had been restored there and that the USSR was governed by capitalism’s internal laws.
While the understanding that was-prevalent in the 1960s among the radicalized petty bourgeoisie was never fully scientific, its revolutionary thrust was able to lead to advances in the struggle. But it was never correct to view what was then the principal contradiction in the 1960s (between U.S. imperialism and the oppressed peoples of the Third World) as something permanent and unchanging, and under today’s conditions, such a view is incapable of advancing the struggle forward as other contradictions, especially the conflict between rival imperialist powers, intensify.
The USSR’s role in the world is no longer largely one of surrender and capitulation. In the late 50s and into the 60s, though the bourgeoisie held power in the Soviet Union, they were in the process of wrecking the socialist economic base and reorganizing society along capitalist lines. They sought to avoid large-scale international conflict with the U.S. Khruschev even “theorized” about this, speaking about the “danger” of smaller wars of national liberation “sparking global holocaust.” But today, with their wrecking complete and their state capitalist economy fully geared up, they are increasingly driven by capitalism’s law – expand or die – into sharper and sharper conflict with the other superpower.
Unless the class nature of the USSR is understood, the Soviets can appear, on the surface, to be becoming more “revolutionary.” They have toned down their nonsense about “the peaceful road to socialism” and turned up the volume on their claims to be the staunch ally of the oppressed peoples of the world. But the Soviets’ opposition to the U.S. has nothing to do with supporting the fight for national liberation and socialism and has everything to do with furthering its own imperialist aims.
It is in this context that the recent events in Angola take on a particular importance. The developments in Angola are a very striking illustration of the direction in which the world is headed – both the growth of revolutionary struggle of the masses arid the squaring off of the U.S. and the USSR. It was during the Angolan war that the Guardian revealed the full flowering of its incorrect line, which obscures the real nature of the Angola conflict, reverses right and wrong, and even launches an assault on the Marxist-Leninist line on the world situation.
For ten years the Angolan people had been waging an armed struggle against the Portuguese colonialists backed to the hilt by the U.S. In the course of this long struggle, three different organizations developed, each of which participated in the fighting to one degree or another, and each of which was based mainly among one of three tribal groupings located in different sections of Angola.
The struggle of the people of Angola and the other Portuguese colonies greatly weakened the Portuguese colonial regime and contributed to the toppling of the old reactionary government. Soon after the old Portuguese regime had been toppled, the two superpowers swooped down on Angola like vultures, each pouring millions of dollars of military equipment to the organizations they hoped to control.
The U.S. pumped arms to the FNLA and UNITA while the Soviet Union, who had given only the most token aid in the long war against Portugal, sent loads of up-to-date military equipment to the MPLA. By contrast, the People’s Republic of China, which had given military aid to all three organizations during the anti-colonial war, ceased providing aid to any of the three groups and instead called on them to abide by an agreement worked out under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity which called for the three groups to unite and form a representative government.
Quickly this superpower intervention developed into full-scale war. At that point, both superpowers sent soldiers from countries under their control to fight for the side they were backing. Over 10,000 Cuban soldiers were sent riding in on Soviet tanks and planes to fight for the MPLA. South African troops and mercenaries were sent by the U.S. to fight for the FNLA and UNITA forces.
Thus superpower intervention turned the development of the struggle away from progressive struggle against imperialism and into a war between the superpowers themselves by proxy – with Angolans and soldiers from other countries doing the fighting and dying.
How did the Guardian portray these events? The Guardian held that only the MPLA was a “legitimate” liberation organization, the other two were simply tools of imperialism. What was their evidence of this? That the FNLA and UNITA took aid from the U.S. But, one might ask, what about the MPLA – they took aid from the USSR, doesn’t that make them tools of social imperialism according to this logic? Not at all, says the Guardian. After all the U.S. is the “main enemy“ and the Soviet Union is just a social-imperialist socialist state!?
In its many articles on Angola, the Guardian went to great lengths to draw false comparisons between the war there and the war in Vietnam and between the MPLA and the Vietnamese revolutionary forces – all to try to justify their support of the MPLA, of the “heroic Cuban volunteers:” and Soviet military aid. Their logic ran as follows: the Vietnamese accepted aid from the Soviets and Marxist-Leninists didn’t claim that made them pawns of the Soviets. Why shouldn’t the MPLA do the same thing?
But the lessons of the struggle of the Vietnamese people are quite the opposite of what the Guardian would have us believe. The Vietnamese fought a heroic war, lasting a decade, in which they came up against virtually all that the U.S. imperialists could throw at them, including half a million ground troops at one point. It was the courageous struggle of the Vietnamese themselves that drove off the U.S.
The genuine internationalist aid by the People’s Republic of China was important to the Vietnamese people’s struggle; but it was not the decisive factor. The “aid” given by the Soviets was always coupled with attempts to sabotage and control the struggle, which the Vietnamese resisted. And the Soviets are still trying to push the Vietnamese for concessions – like military bases. The Vietnam war showed that by mobilizing the masses of people, relying on them and perservering in struggle, it is possible to defeat the most powerful of enemies.
Yet this lesson is totally lost on the editors of the Guardian. In justifying their 100% support for the MPLA and the “heroic Cuban volunteers” they write, “neither Cuba nor Angola (meaning the MPLA) preferred the necessity of international assistance, but with South Africans, mercenaries, and UNITA forces advancing from the south and Zaire and FNLA advancing from the north – all backed by the U.S. and Western imperialism – while the country was itself surrounded by hostile Zaire, Zambia and occupied Namibia, MPLA had little choice but to invoke its right to proletarian internationalist support from socialist Cuba. ” (May 5, 1976; emphasis added)
Leaving aside the whole distorted picture painted here of the development of events, the above statement gets to the root of the Guardian’s outlook. The “MPLA had little choice” but to open the door to 10,000 Cuban troops and Soviet tanks and rockets or it would have lost. This revealing quote shows what is common knowledge – foreign troops and military aid put the MPLA in power. While the final word has yet to be said on Angola, thousands of Cuban soldiers remain stationed there, Castro is calling for tens of thousands of Cubans to volunteer for civilian duty, and the Soviets have started pushing their all-too-familiar patterns of “aid” agreements.
Apparently, the Guardian editors are incapable of imagining a war waged by the masses of people under difficult conditions where it would be possible to win victory without surrendering to an imperialist power. This goes hand in hand with the view that Cuba had no choice but to buckle under to the Soviets in the face of U.S. extortion and aggression – a view that is brilliantly refuted by the heroic example of Albania, which, though surrounded by the U.S. bloc and revisionist countries, has stood up to all of them.
With the Guardian’s incorrect view of the Soviet Union as a “socialist“ superpower as the basis of their line on Angola, they sunk even deeper in trying to uphold their line on Angola. The Guardian tried to justify the Cuban expeditionary force by repeating Castro’s nonsense about Cuba being a “Latin-African” country. According to Wilfred Burchett, Cuban troops do not represent “outside interference” because, quoting favorably from Agostinho Neto, head of the MPLA, “the African origins of many Cubans transforms our countries into brother countries in solidarity with each other, which understand each other .... above all there is this sentimental side, that which represents our common origin.” (April 7, 1976)
Thus the Guardian combines its opportunism with utter nonsense and the basest appeal to the most backward nationalism. But two can play this game. The Guardian did not make the same point about the fact that great numbers of the South African troops were also black, or that the U.S. imperialists, working through flunkies like Roy Innis (so-called “civil rights leader,” and long on the payroll of the imperialists) made efforts to recruit Black veterans in this country as mercenaries to fight on the side of UNITA.
At least one of the Guardian’s editors has been around long enough to remember the use of Gurkhas by the British imperialists and the fact that Imperialists have long used soldiers from their dependencies to enslave others.
While continuing to pose as a “friend of China,” the Guardian’s actions opened the door to comments from a wide variety of revisionists, trotskyites and other opportunists to accuse China of siding with the U.S. bourgeoisie. But despite the slanders of the revisionists and the implications of the Guardian, the Communist Party of China has consistently put forward the line of opposing both superpowers.
At the present time, the Chinese have paid special attention to making use of the contradictions between the two superpowers, especially ripping the mask of socialism off the USSR, which presents the greatest immediate threat to China. The policy of exploiting the differences between imperialist powers while maintaining principled opposition to all imperialism is entirely consistent with Lenin’s policy after the Bolshevik revolution and the experience of all socialist states since then.
The Guardian did not thoroughly take on the line of the RCP on Angola (which consisted of upholding the struggle against the Portuguese, exposing and opposing the role of both superpowers, while aiming our main fire at our own ruling class). Instead, the Guardian implied that anyone who opposed the Soviet-Cuban aggression in Angola shared the October League’s class collaboration, and grabbed ahold of a piece of emotionalism by attacking the RCP for exposing their favorite “socialist” country, Cuba, “when Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford were threatening a military attack on Cuba.” (June 16, 1976)
But it is bourgeois logic to say that exposing the USSR and the role of its neo-colonies like Cuba means siding with the ruling class of this country. In fact, the article they criticized points out that the advances of the early years of the Cuban revolution lay precisely in the booting out of U.S. imperialism: “The revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959 was a tremendous step forward for Cuba, clearing away the rule of the U.S. imperialists and the Cuban landlords, dependent capitalists and all their parasites, pimps and gangsters.” (Revolution, February 1976)
The point of exposing the Soviet Union and Cuba’s role in Angola to the workers of this country is not mainly to convince them that the Soviets are aggressive. The important thing is to arm the working class and people with an understanding of the class basis of the Soviet Union and why, for example, Cuban troops were sent to Angola.
If people do not understand the class basis of the Soviets’ actions, they will be left to conclude that the U.S. bourgeoisie is telling the truth when they speak of “communist aggression.” Far from strengthening the hand of the U.S. ruling class, only by understanding the actual world situation in class terms will it be possible to advance the struggle against the U.S. ruling class. And it is impossible to understand the world today without recognizing the real nature of the USSR.
In fact, the Guardian editors, along with the U.S. ruling class and groups like the October League, are saying, in effect, that the people of the world have no choice but to throw in their lot with one or another of the superpowers. Refuting this argument was one of the major purposes of publishing the exposure of Cuba in the first place. And it may also explain why the Guardian was so anxious that people not read the article that they refused a paid advertisement for the February 1976 issue of Revolution which contained the article. That article concludes:
“The Soviet imperialists say that the working class and masses of people are destined to remain in chains unless they receive Soviet ’aid’ and submit to Soviet control. The U.S. imperialists, whose own economic and military aid has long been used to enslave and re-enforce the bonds of oppression of many peoples, say the same thing from their angle – if the oppressed and exploited dare to rise up against U.S. ’protection’ and plunder they are sure to fall prey to the Soviet jackals.
“But the most important lesson to be learned from the failure of the Cuban Revolution is just the opposite of this imperialist logic. The masses of people can free themselves and advance the cause of freeing all humanity only by relying on their own efforts and not the ’aid’ of the world’s exploiters-by taking the road of proletarian revolution.”
One consequence of the Guardian’s view of the Soviet Union and their overall line is a gross underestimation of the danger of world war. From reading the Guardian, one might draw the conclusion that the only kind of imperialist war is aggression by the U.S. against peoples of the Third World. Rarely is the possibility of inter-imperialist war, world war between rival imperialist bandits, even discussed. This is entirely in keeping with their view that “capitalism has not been fully restored or consolidated in the Soviet Union.” They describe the USSR as “social imperialist” but deny that “the export of capital is a compulsion that flows inexorably out of the Soviet system.” (June 16, 1976)
But the export of capital, the seeking of super-profits off the backs of the working people of dependent countries, the drive to monopolize sources of raw materials – these are some fundamental features of imperialism. To talk of “social imperialism” while denying the economic basis of the Soviet system, is to reduce imperialism to a policy, dependent on the will of governmental leaders. (The book How Capitalism Has Been Restored in the Soviet Union and What This Means for the World Struggle, published by the Revolutionary Union and adopted by the RCP in 1975, has demonstrated that the USSR must and does export capital and has analyzed outstanding examples of this.)
If the laws of capitalism are not the basis of the Soviets’ aggression and plunder of other countries, there is no other explanation for it; no explanation, that is, but the deception of the revisionists themselves who claim their actions are proof that they are the staunch ally of the world’s people, or the slander of the U.S. ruling class who paint social imperialism as “communist aggression.”
In fact the Guardian’s line amounts to calling the Soviet Union a friend and ally of the world’s people, despite their protestations to the contrary. On one of the few occasions when the Guardian has even discussed the possibility of world war, Irwin Silber wrote in an article aimed at proving the Soviets had nowhere near the military capacity of the U.S. “The most likely scenario for such a war was provided by the U.S. in Vietnam when Washington undertook to expand its ’police action’ in the south to start bombing the north because of its support to the national liberation movement. In other situations which the Pentagon is likely to view as ’strategic’ to U.S. interests, the possibility of Washington raising the stakes and forcing a military confrontation with the Soviet Union is certainly real.” (June 30, 1976)
The implications of Silber’s statement are obvious: a world war between the two superpowers would not be an inter-imperialist war but a war of U.S. imperialism launched against the Soviets for supporting national liberation movements. According to this logic, the only correct stand would be for the working people of the world to support the Soviet Union in such a conflict.
Pretending that the danger of world war is not growing and portraying the Soviet Union as a friend or even a harmless enemy is a dangerous line which would lead the masses of people in this country into an ambush. The USSR will continue to launch new Angola-like military adventures, and the U.S. bourgeoisie will continue to label this aggression as “communist” as it steps up its own aggression and war preparations. Trying to portray Soviet social imperialism as “socialist” and its aggression as “support for liberation movements” will never succeed in mobilizing the masses of workers in this (or other) countries against U.S. imperialism’ because this picture of the USSR does not reflect reality, it is simply not true.
Only by understanding the actual class basis of the increasing superpower rivalry can the working class come to realize that it has no interest in siding with the exploiters of this country in a war between exploiters.
The Guardian’s line does nothing to advance the struggle of the U.S. working class in a revolutionary struggle of the U.S. working class in a revolutionary direction. True, the words “working class revolution” occasionally find their way into the pages of the paper, in much the same way as do pious proclamations that “sooner or later” “all peoples must stand up against the two superpowers” (1975 New Year’s editorial): something that exists in the far off and nebulous future (much as the priests talk about the kingdom of heaven on earth) totally without significance for action.
But the actual direction for the struggle offered in the pages of the Guardian is anything but revolutionary. While portraying the workers’ struggle as something limited to strikes and other struggles around economic issues, “progressive” union officials like Cesar Chavez and Arnold Miller, leaders of bourgeois organizations like NOW and the NAACP, progressive lawyers and congressional liberals are, in practice, promoted as the leaders of the “political struggle.”
The basis of the Guardian’s line is not love for the Soviet Union but contempt for the working class and the masses of people and their ability to make revolution. Instead, they search for “saviors” and easy solutions – sometimes trailing “progressive” union bureaucrats and other times justifying reliance on Cuban troops and Soviet rubles and tanks. With a line incapable of mobilizing the masses for revolutionary struggle, the Guardian will find itself left high and dry as developments lead toward a superpower showdown.
In such circumstances, and especially the actual outbreak of such a war and the increased exploitation and oppression it will bring in this country, those who hold the line of the Guardian will find themselves with little of substance to say to the masses, little to base themselves on in opposing U.S. imperialism and will find they have “little choice” but to capitulate to the U.S. bourgeoisie in one form or another.
A quick look at one of the Guardian’s current part-time pals, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, (the above-ground mouthpiece of the Weather Underground) shows how such “revolutionaries” can flip from one opportunist’ line to another. When they started out, the Weathermen claimed they were going to tear down “pig amerika” by the actions of a small handful, while screaming about how they opposed revisionism and the Soviets.
They quickly ran up against the futility of this line which was not based on relying on the masses and concluded that even the Vietnamese people, let alone the masses in this country, were incapable of winning victory through their own efforts. The supporters of the Weathermen flipped into supporting George McGovern. Now the’ Prairie Fire crowd is trying to outdo the Guardian in cheering on the Soviet/Cuban aggression in Angola, gleeful in fact that they have finally found a force – an imperialist force – capable of “standing up” to the U.S. bourgeoisie. But without basing themselves or the masses of people in this country, these people, also, could easily abandon this stand and capitulate to U.S. imperialism.
One of the charges the Guardian levels at the People’s Republic of China is that, in making use of contradictions within the ruling circles of different countries, China has quoted imperialist spokesmen the Guardian deems “more reactionary” or “more right wing.” (May 26, 1976)
But the world is not divided into “wings” between the “right” and the “left” but into classes, a basic fact which the Guardian continually ignores. This view of the world goes hand-in-hand with their attempt to obscure and cover up the class nature of the Soviet Union.
The label worn by imperialists is of little concern to the victims of their plunder. The U.S. launched its first imperialist war (the Spanish-American War) under the guise of aiding the people in Spain’s colonies in fighting for their liberation. But the results of U.S. imperialist “liberation” are well known – the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico were seized from Spain and made into colonies of the U.S. Similarly, when the U.S. went all-out following World War II to replace-the old colonial powers, Britain and France, as the chief exploiters of the people of Asia and Africa, they did so under the name of “democracy and freedom” and of opposing colonialism. In 1956 the U.S. condemned the British, French and Israeli effort to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt – did this make the U.S. imperialists more democratic, progressive or less reactionary? Obviously not. Imperialist powers have always opposed the imperialism of their rivals.
Several years ago India and the Soviet Union launched a phony “national liberation movement” in East Pakistan and used it as an excuse for Indian troops armed with Soviet military equipment to “liberate” the people there and form “independent” Bangia Desh. At that time there were many who hailed this aggression as liberation. But today, five years later, few would dare argue that the invasion led to progress for the masses there.
Yet there are some, including the Guardian, who repeat the same error today around Angola and, under the guise of focusing on the “main enemy,” promote a political line which in effect gives the Soviet Union a blank check for their imperialist aggression.
The framework the Guardian has tried to create for the debate on the international situation is one in which two opposing and equally wrong camps argue over which superpower is the “main enemy” of the world’s people. What the Guardian (and for that matter the October League) try to obscure and cover up is that there is a third stand, the Marxist-Leninist stand on the world today where, revolutionary struggles are on the rise and the danger of war is increasing. This is the stand of opposing both superpowers, arming the working class of this country with the understanding necessary to advance the struggle against the U.S. bourgeoisie in the context of worldwide struggle against the two superpowers. The working class does not have to pick its poison – choose which superpower to side with. In this country, the working class, armed with the understanding of the class nature of both superpowers and the conflict between them, will direct its main blow against its own exploiters – the U.S. imperialist ruling class, and will build the kind of movement that can really stand up to it and actually bring it down.