Workers World Vol. 19, No. 16
April 18 – The surge of anti-Soviet hysteria is constantly increasing with a new incident every day. If it isn’t seizing the fishing vessels, it’s barring Soviet trade union officials from entering the country. The anti-Soviet campaign just doesn’t abate, and one can say it never has. The temperature is lowered now and then, but underneath it all the ruling class makes absolutely sure that virulent anti-communism and anti-Sovietism continue in every way.
The marriage of the liberal bourgeoisie with the right wing and even the ultras against the USSR is striking and has been in existence since the U.S.-Soviet wheat deal. And in the radical movement, the trend is away from the USSR – just when the latter is playing a more progressive role in foreign as well as domestic affairs.
An article in the April 13 Guardian newspaper entitled “Superpowers vying in N. Carolina?” takes the October League (OL) to task for its position on the Wilmington Ten. The Call, organ of the OL, had run an article headlined “Wilmington Ten Frame-Up Becomes Super-power Football.”
The Guardian is revolted by the position of OL and pours scorn on its thesis which regards the Wilmington Ten as a mere pawn in the struggle between the U.S. and the USSR.
It is impossible not to agree with the Guardian’s outrage at the line of OL. As is well-known, OL and a number of other Maoist groups have for several years now been following the line of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) The latter, since the early 1960s [actually late 1960s? – g.b.], has characterized the USSR as a capitalist state, and has more recently proclaimed that the Soviet Union is even more dangerous than the U.S.
By pursuing this false theoretical assumption to its ultimate and logical conclusion, the Maoists have gotten themselves into all sorts of ridiculous and dangerous situations. They have, for instance, in pursuing China’s line, taken positions with regard to Angola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico that sound truly nightmarish. This blind pursuit of China’s line on the USSR has gotten them into an ideological straightjacket from which there is no easy exit.
They would like to fight U.S. imperialism, but are in such a vise-like bind as a result of the false super-power theory that there is little they can do except support the U.S. Hence they find themselves in the unhappy position of supporting imperialism precisely on those great revolutionary questions which originally were the fundamental demarcation lines between the Soviet and Chinese CPs.
Once you assume the bourgeois class character of the USSR as the key in the world struggle, there is little you can do to pursue a revolutionary proletarian internationalist line. (Of course, the Chinese CP, let alone the Maoist groupings, have never presented a serious theoretical analysis of the USSR. Their theoretical fulminations on the bourgeois class character of the USSR and its position as the “biggest oppressor” in the world are in reality an empirical response to the spurious ideological and inter-state struggle between China and the USSR.)
According to the Guardian, The Call says, “The [Wilmington] case is now being used as a political football in the current fight between the two super-powers over ‘détente’ and ‘human rights’” and that “it has become a centerpiece in the growing struggle over ‘human rights’ between the U.S. and the USSR.”
The Guardian says that OL goes on to picture “’Soviet use of the Wilmington 10 case’ as the major factor in the increasing exposure of the frame-up and states that ‘immediately after a flurry of Soviet commentary on the Wilmington 10,’ the Justice Department ordered an investigation of the case and major newspapers and wire services began to carry articles sympathetic to the case.
“Pointing to contention between the two super-powers, the OL states, ‘A significant section of the ruling class appears ready to reverse the racist conviction in order to improve the international posture of U.S. imperialism,’ and concludes: ‘These are the real reasons the present grand jury hearings are being held.’”
The Guardian then goes on to state that this really isn’t true and that the case of the Wilmington Ten represents the struggle of the Black people in this country. It points out that OL portrays the case of the Wilmington Ten as a mere pawn of the CP, a traditional way the capitalist class has handled such cases.
What the Guardian does not do, however, is specifically address itself to the questions that are raised by the so-called super-power contention in North Carolina. It doesn’t address itself at all to the truth or falsity of the allegations made in the article.
For instance, OL states that “a significant section of the ruling class appears ready to reverse the racist conviction in order to improve the international posture of U.S. imperialism.” Let us assume, but by no means concede, that all this is true. What is the real meaning of it?
It would mean that the Soviet Union is forcing the great imperialist colossus to free the Wilmington Ten.
Were that to become a fact, it would be wholly progressive. This act in itself, were it to become consummated, could in no way be regarded as reactionary, regressive or obstructive.
Unwittingly, OL is saying that the most dangerous imperialist state is forcing the U.S. government to carry out a wholly progressive task. We would have to strain our memory and imagination very hard indeed to find a parallel case with, for instance, a real imperialist state, such as France, Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands, or Japan. Would they or could they exert such pressure in a progressive manner to help free political prisoners in a liberation struggle against U.S. imperialism?
Merely to raise the question is to answer it. Were a real imperialist country to do that, it would be a deviation, a departure from the norms of capitalist politics and imperialist diplomacy, a rare thing indeed. Whenever such a thing does occur, it is usually the result, not of an organic tendency in an imperialist state, but of working-class pressure.
In the case of the USSR, such intervention as presumably exists in the Wilmington Ten is not at all a deviation from the norms of socialist conduct of a workers’ state. On the contrary. Not to take notice of the case, to deliberately keep the Soviet press silent on the matter – that would be a deviation from the norms of socialist internationalism.
But what really happened with the Wilmington case, insofar as the Soviet Union is concerned? Pravda gave the case wide coverage. The Tass wire services, which go to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, certainly gave the Wilmington Ten considerable publicity.
Is this super-power contention? If so, more of it is needed on the part of the USSR, and is wholly in conformity with the elementary duty of working class solidarity.
It should be mentioned that Pravda also gave coverage to Assata Shakur’s case – publicity which is sorely needed, even in the U.S. The fact that the Tass services will reach practically all parts of Africa and other parts of the Third World could be of help. Really, it is the least that the USSR, as a workers’ state, can do.
The situation would be different, of course, if the USSR tried by its policies to interfere with the Wilmington Ten Defense Committee’s policy, or in other ways tried to adversely affect the progress of the case and the struggle for the freedom of the Ten.
As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union’s so-called “intervention” in the Wilmington case is only a very faint echo of the Leninist, internationalist position on the struggle to free political prisoners throughout the world and in the U.S. in particular.
The Bolshevik Party, even at the height of the Russian revolutionary crisis, called a demonstration in 1917 to free Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, who had been framed up in the U.S. because they opposed the imperialist war. Only because of the demonstration did the U.S. Ambassador take note of the case and cable Washington. To some degree this helped stave off the death sentence for these two anti-war fighters and save their lives, although it didn’t free them.
If the worldwide campaign to free the Rosenbergs had had much more international support and if the Soviet government at that time, or rather its mass organizations, had pushed it much earlier, perhaps much more would have been accomplished in the way of saving these two martyrs. Even such a country as Uruguay passed a resolution expressing concern about the case. (Israel did not, even though the Rosenbergs were Jewish and the target of anti-Semitism.)
Of course, fundamentally, these cases and the entire class struggle have to be fought on home ground and won that way. But international aid and assistance is absolutely necessary and should not be confounded and confused by a false, reactionary theory which aids red-baiting and anti-Soviet hysteria.
Would that the Soviet Union were strong enough socially and politically (as a workers’ state) to influence a judicial matter in one of the strongholds of virulent racism – North Carolina.
In the very early 1960s, before the Cuban missile crisis, the Spanish government was getting ready to execute one of the leaders of the Spanish CP. Not much was done about it, even in Europe, and certainly not in the U.S., where there was a conspiracy of silence and no publicity whatever.
Learning of the impending execution of the CP leaders, Khrushchev in a panic personally reached President Kennedy to use his good offices to stop the execution. This, of course, failed. But that’s not what should be held against Khrushchev – that he intervened directly to save the life of a Spanish CP leader.
During the 1963 March on Washington, Chairman Mao Tse-tung directly addressed himself to the demonstrators by sending a greeting urging them to continue the “national and class struggle” against U.S. imperialism. Roy Wilkins treated this letter contemptuously, but many Black militants regarded it as a contribution to the liberation struggle.
Again, in the early 1970s, Chou En-lai demonstratively shook hands with and allowed himself to be photographed with Huey Newton. That irritated ruling circles of the class struggle here, but the New York Times advised them at the time not to be much upset about it, that it was merely a passing incident, and that they should look further ahead for “closer cooperation.”
The Guardian is unable to deal with OL’s “super-power contention” in North Carolina. It half conceded to OL and half ridicules their theory, without coming to grips with it.
Small wonder. It is unable to do so because it has no line, no clear-cut class characterization of the USSR. It is baffled by this contradictory social phenomenon and is unable to take a clear-cut position when once the issue gets down to the nitty-gritty of a practical political question.
It is unable to concede that it is not only possible but wholly progressive for the USSR to utilize its enormous strength and prestige for wholly progressive purposes. It concedes to OL by regarding the USSR as a super-power in the bourgeois sense of the term.
Terminology is a class weapon. It helps one side or the other. As currently employed, the word super-power is practically synonymous with an imperialist state. Therefore, describing the USSR as a super-power covers up its progressive social character, it covers up the fact that the USSR is a socialist (workers’) state and operates an economy that is, in its essentials, socialist in character, representing a higher mode of production as against moribund, decaying capitalism.
The term super-power puts two diametrically opposed social systems under the cover of one umbrella and distorts the nature of the struggle between them and the character of the so-called contention between them.
This is most glaringly seen in the Guardian’s accompanying editorial in the same issue on the arms talk between the U.S. and the USSR, which will be discussed here in a forthcoming article.
Last updated: 11 May 2026