The working class in every socialist and every capitalist country . . . must study the revolutionary experience of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, firmly support their revolutionary actions and regard the cause of their liberation as a most dependable support for itself and as directly in accord with its own interests. This is the only effective way to break down the barriers of nationality, colour and geographical location and this is the only genuine proletarian internationalism. (Chinese Letter of 14th June 1963, p.14)
Dutt has not yet reached the limit of his powers of invention in constructing his case against the Chinese.
From his concocted “Gospel of Separation” he proceeds to borrow from the leaders of the C.P.S.U. one of the most despicable and unprincipled accusations levelled against the Chinese Party – the allegation of “racialism ”.
Dutt justifies his assertions by suggesting that the Chinese Party “seek to replace the real division between the interests of the imperialist oppressors and the national liberation movement and the working class by a false division supposedly based on colour, between white and coloured races” (p.15).
Here fact and analysis, even the confused argumentation which has passed for analysis up to this point, end in a burst of wild assertion and slander. The quotation from the Letter of 14th June 1963 at the head of this section makes the Chinese position unmistakably clear.
To deny the importance of the revolutionary struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, as Dutt and Krushchev are doing, and to seek to give second class status to the liberation movement is a gross example of white chauvinism. The attitude is part and parcel of the assumption that there are “superior” and “inferior” Parties. And to introduce questions of colour and race into the discussion, as Dutt and Krushchev have done, is to reveal them, not the Chinese, as the real racialists.
The Workers’ Party of Korea have spoken out against such distortions of Marxism:
The fraternal Parties of all countries must respect and cooperate with each other on an equal footing only as class comrades in-arms, regardless of colour, region or the level of development of the country.
Some people trample upon even this elementary principle of the international communist movement nowadays.
Some people allege that the Parties of Asia are not capable of acting independently for ’lack of experience’. And still others look down on the class brothers of other countries, boasting of the ’ superiority’ and distinguished role of a certain nation or a certain race.
All these are an arrogant attitude of insulting the fraternal Parties and an act of chauvinism that undermines class solidarity. That is absolutely impermissible for revolutionaries.
The idea of ’backward Asia’ and the idea of ’superior nations’ and ’inferior nations’ are survivals of the past which were repudiated and buried long ago. The ranks of the communist movement should make clean riddance of them. (Let Us Defend the Socialist Camp, October 1963, p.l9)
In December 1963, when Khrushchev was giving his interview and Dutt preparing his Report, the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine – Krushchev’s former stalking ground – published a full length anti-Semitic treatise, “Judaism Without Embellishment”, replete with caricatures of hideous, snouted Jews the like of which have not been seen in print since the days of Hitler and Streicher. A Soviet reviewer, Gregory Plotkin, recommended the book as “a profound and substantial work”. If these are Krushchev’s standards and principles, one can well understand that he would regard the Chinese support for the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and’ Latin America with suspicion. World attention forced the Soviet leaders into a lame retreat. But it has yet to be explained how in a country where the population is supposed to be imbued with socialist principles it was possible that the many hundreds of people involved can have allowed this work to pass through the various stages of preparation and production without criticising its blatant racialism. Physician, heal thyself!
Why do Krushchev and his faithful mouthpiece Dutt produce this vile charge of racialism, an epithet used to describe Hitler, Verwoerd and John Birch? It is to replace genuine reasoned argument by abuse – here Dutt brings his attack down to the gutter level.