Since the death of Mao Tsetung the People’s Republic of China has set forth a conglomeration of ideas called the Theory of the “Three Worlds”. These ideas designate the United States and the Soviet Union as the “first world”; Western Europe, Japan and the Socialist bloc as the “second world”; and China plus everyone else as the “third world.” The USSR is seen as the greatest threat to the world’s people with the “third world” as the main force for combatting it. The “second world” is to be won to aid the “third world” in this struggle. The Chinese claim that this differentiation is based on a scientific analysis of the “overall situation of the class struggle in different periods” as opposed to those who would posit the importance of the struggle for socialism and a given nation’s class struggle, which the PRC considers to be a “hard and fast formula” ignoring this “different period.” In practice this “theory” has led to the unprincipled support of the bourgeois class in several countries and a foreign policy that is objectively allied, with imperialism. The theory of the “three worlds” has come in for critique from the Party of Labor of Albania. The character of the “three worlds” theory and its critique share an interesting degree of similarity, which says a great deal about the theoretical practice of the anti-revisionist world communist movement and its role in guiding the political practice of this movement. By reading the documents of both China and Albania concerning the “three worlds” we will not only learn about their respective positions but witness their approach in reaching their positions, thereby gaining an understanding of why the political practice of the world communist movement exists in the current state that it does. We will also see how the Chinese line has changed in the last few years from one that anti-revisionist forces could endorse to one that we must reject.
1. In A proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement from 1963 the Chinese intent was to make clear that the duty of revolutionaries was to make revolution in their own countries and support the revolutionary struggles in other nations. How does the Theory of the Three Worlds parallel and break with this and other positions in the above mentioned document? What are viewed as the main contradictions of the world in each document? What is the meaning of these similarities and differences?
2. How do the Albanians criticize the “three worlds” theory? How different is their critique from what they are criticizing? Is this critique a contribution to the furtherance of critical Marxist thought and its development?
3. What does the three worlds theory and the “imperialist” and “peace-loving” camps of the Cominform documents we read share? What does this similarity mean for the continuity of these lines and their effects on the political practice of the world communist movement?
4. By viewing the character of the discourse in each document, how is Marxist-Leninist theory understood and used as an approach to producing knowledge about a concrete situation? What does this mean for the practice of the world communist movement and the American communist movement in particular?
Chairman Mao’s Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds is a Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism, pp. 25-79.
“The Theory and Practice of Revolution”, Albania Today, pp. 1-10.