And as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves, from the reality. (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, [New York: International Publishers, 1972], p. 47.)
We have already noted the remarkable extent to which the groups that style themselves part of the “new Marxist-Leninist movement” have avoided any genuine critique of their earlier theory and practice. But not only is their past devoid of honest appraisal; what passes for continuing criticism demonstrates that they are still making a travesty of criticism and self-criticism.
This is a serious charge. Criticism and self-criticism are essential for a revolutionary group or party. As the means by which mistakes and larger weaknesses are brought to the surface, analyzed, comprehended and then corrected, criticism and self-criticism are basic to any real progress. They are a vital reflection of the revolutionary spirit which inspires a communist organization. To show that an organization lacks this quality is to show that it is not really revolutionary; any organization claiming to be revolutionary which habitually abuses this fundamental practice can only be counterrevolutionary. Phoney self-criticism is worse than none at all, because it misshapes the core of Marxist-Leninist principles. Where it flourishes unchecked, it leaves behind an empty shell with the surface appearance of Marxism-Leninism, and nothing more.
In the “new movement”, phoney self-criticism abounds. It takes on varying forms: on some occasions shifting from position to position or from one organization to another with only a pretense of searching inquiry; at other times inventing seamy, shallow alibis to cover the deceptions of the past and the opportunism in which the “movement” is still rooted. But it is uniform in spirit in that the absence of self-criticism allows those involved the smug satisfaction of always believing they are on the “correct” path. It comes as no surprise that the “movement” groups conduct themselves this way since they have all been built on false criticisms of their pasts. Knowing, as they do, that genuine communist groups and parties begin their political lives with a full critical examination of their pasts, they have felt obliged to follow form – but it is only the form that they have followed. Past “errors” are given the once-over-lightly. A feature that stands out as characteristic of their “self-criticisms” is their avoidance of the question “WHY?”. They never attempt to discover the reasons behind past acts or to develop a full characterization of their history in class terms. Instead, there is more self-congratulation than there is self-criticism.
Among the most instructive episodes are the “self-criticisms” which accompany the “rallying” to the two “leading centres”. Though the practice of IS is no different, CCL’s absorption of various groupings is especially revealing. To demonstrate the differences between their “phrases and fancies” and “their real organism and their real interests”, between “their conception of themselves” and “the reality”, we will focus specifically on Workers’ Unity Toronto’s joining of CCL, an event hailed in the pamphlet Workers’ Unity Toronto Rallies to CCL (M-L)[1] published in June 1976, also a featured article in the swan-song issue of Canadian Revolution.
The groups which comprise the “new Marxist-Leninist movement” are practically unanimous in claiming to have “arisen in opposition to the petit-bourgeois leftism of the youth and student movements, and in rejection of Trotskyism.” (p. 5)[2]
Workers’ Unity in Toronto also comes out of this history. Specifically, we developed out of a reaction to a past line which was thoroughly anti-working class, the line of Red Morning a youth-culture-oriented, petit-bourgeois leftist organization which was totally divorced from the masses of people, (p. 6)
If so, how do members of organizations which were thoroughly anti-working class and totally divorced from the masses only yesterday become part of a Marxist-Leninist movement to create a vanguard today? How did people from kindred organizations like Red Morning Toronto, New Morning Halifax and Partisan Party Vancouver, all of which were, with occasional individual exceptions, nesting grounds for all kinds of acid-headed anarchists, become upholders of scientific socialism?
Their explanation, which is no explanation at all, is that “our rejection of this line took the form of a zig-zag into right opportunism, which, after the fall of 1972, became the main feature of our practice. At that time, we threw ourselves thoroughly and spontaneously into working class struggles in an attempt to correct our errors and learn from the people.” (p. 6) Why such “zig-zagging” from one wrong-headed position to another is labelled right opportunism rather than the characteristic continuation of the same vacillating petty-bourgeois leftism is one more question they fail to ask. Safer to avoid that and instead carry on about right opportunism thus obscuring the nature of the new left politics that has never actually been shed.
Why everything they have done or failed to do in the past, no matter how infantile and reactionary, is explained away as mere errors, as a simple matter of correcting mistakes, never anything more serious, is yet another question they do not address. Nor does it further anyone’s understanding when they assure us that their colossal failures resulted “despite all the ’good intentions’ in the world”, (p. 6)
Workers’ Unity admits in their “self-criticism” that their “party-building” work was “never on the principled basis of ideological and political line.” (p. 6) They claim, however, that in the fall of 1974 they “began to struggle more sharply against the rightist line which openly worshipped spontaneous trade unionism.” [emphasis in original] (p. 6) But here, they add (perhaps by way of another zig or zag?): “without yet realizing that we were objectively doing the same thing,” (p. 6) and that indeed “the ’new Marxist-Leninist movement’ that we claimed to be part of, existed only in our self-conceptions and in our knowledge of the existence of other groupings.” (p. 6) So much for the “self-criticism” of 1974.
So, by their own account, they remained stuck as firmly as ever in their “right opportunism”. But then the spring of 1975 arrived which, they tell us, “marked the beginning of a turning point in our line.” (p. 7) We learn in the next sentence, however, that this so-called turning point was no turning point at all, but rather “a partial and fragmentary change in our theory. It was certainly not yet a turning point in our practice.” [emphasis in original] (p. 7) So much for the spring of 1975’s “self-criticism”! But fear not; the real “turning point” was yet to come: “it was still several months before our practice changed qualitatively.” (p. 7)
At this crucial juncture the journal Canadian Revolution (CR) made its appearance. Remember, at this time the alleged “qualitative change” in Workers’ Unity still lay several months ahead, and they were still supposedly mired in the right opportunism which had developed as a corrective to their earlier petty-bourgeois leftism. Nonetheless, Workers’ Unity, along with other “Marxist-Leninists” in Toronto, felt qualified to undertake the publication of CR.
With parents such as these, it is no wonder, then, that the unfortunate journal, rocked by sordid internal squabbles, including charges of common thievery and counter-charges of crass opportunism, passed quickly out of existence. Yet its founders said that its death was a welcome event. With no apparent discomfort, they tried to convince readers and supporters that its premature death should not be regretted, because it had fulfilled the goals for which it had been created, a very tall order considering how ambitious these goals were. They included:
to facilitate ideological and political struggle and discussion in order to lay the basis for Marxist-Leninists to achieve a common analysis, strategy, and programme to advance the goals of a socialist revolution in Canada,
and
to focus . . .on . . .“burning issues” of the day such as the national question, social democracy, the liberation of women, building a Marxist-Leninist party, communist work in the trade unions, and all major political questions which face Marxist-Leninists at this time, because there is no revolutionary party giving leadership to the struggles of the working class in Canada, nor is there a great deal of unity among Marxist-Leninists on how to proceed with the historical tasks with which we are faced, and also because revolutionary leadership and organization are necessary and the only sound basis for their existence will be a non-opportunist ideological and political line, developed through study and struggle and consistent investigation of the concrete conditions of Canadian society. (“Political Unity and Policy of the Journal,” Vol. 1, no. 1 [May 1975], inside cover.)
These tasks were published together with the assertion that the journal’s “stand, viewpoint, and method is Marxism-Leninism” and was based “on the historical experience of the world revolutionary movement as summed up chiefly by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.” (Ibid.)
Their claim that these great tasks were fulfilled within less than a year and a half, and after a mere six issues (if we count the fourth, which was devoted to the Bolshevik Tendency’s shrill declamations, and the fifth and sixth, largely lame-duck caricatures of the first three) is outrageous. Yet the editors told CR’s readers that the journal’s passing was due to its success! (Meanwhile, CCL and IS could hardly hide their glee over the prospect that CR’s removal from the scene would give them the chance to corner the market, to hawk their own publications unopposed, and to collect from the ruins prize pieces like Workers’ Unity. See, for example, the letter from CCL in CR, Vol. 1, no. 6 [October 1976], pp. 50-51.)
To return to Workers’ Unity where we left them when they joined others in initiating CR in the spring of 1975: the reader will recall that their elusive “turning point” that didn’t quite turn had just passed. But in August of the same year, “a self-criticism of Workers’ Unity, and an outline of our views on party-building and the tasks of communists . . . the result of several months of study, summing up of our political work, and discussion with other Marxist-Leninists” (p. 8) was completed. Surely now they must be on track. Wrong. Referring to this particular “reappraisal” and all earlier ones, Workers’ Unity says, “In retrospect it is now clear that all aspects of our line were characterized by right opportunism.” [emphasis in original] (p. 8)
How this group, all aspects of whose line were thoroughly “right opportunist”, was in a position to articulate views on party-building from a Marxist-Leninist perspective is difficult to comprehend. Undaunted, however, Workers’ Unity also came out with a Draft Statement of Unity at the same time, “which outlined: our general ideological view, analysis of the world situation, major contradictions in Canada, party-building, and the present tasks of communists.” (p. 9) But as usual, they soon discovered “several major errors in it shortly after its completion.” (p. 9) Major errors aside, it somehow “served an important function of clarifying our views” (!) (p. 9) (This sounds like a rerun of the paper they had published and circulated in 1974 which likewise had “outlined this right-opportunist line” and against which they had “received extremely sharp criticism from all sides” – criticisms which “were correct in essence” but which they “still rejected” “because these criticisms came from people whose views . . . were petit-bourgeois intellectualist (such as Stover and Perri)” (p. 6), that is, their erstwhile “Marxist-Leninist” co-instigators of the unfortunate journal they would soon together bear, then strangle.)
Meanwhile, starting in the spring of 1975, another activity which Workers’ Unity sees as central to its own “development” was taking place – its discussions with other “Marxist-Leninist” groups from Quebec, especially the forerunner of CCL, Mouvement Revolutionnaire des Etudiants du Quebec (MREQ-Revolutionary Student Movement in Quebec), groups which, like themselves, were also characterizing their recent activities as consistently right opportunist. It is more than curious that the profuse confessions of utterly bankrupt theories and practices made by Workers’ Unity and the others did not give them pause; they continued to confer upon themselves and each other the title of Marxist-Leninists.
As if to convince themselves and everyone else that their opportunism is just mistakes, that their vacillations are turning points (or sometimes zig-zags), and that their bandwagonning is self-criticism, groups such as CCL, and its satellites like Workers’ Unity, make sure to quote Lenin’s description of real self-criticism: “Frankly admitting a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analyzing the conditions which led to it, and thoroughly discussing the means of correcting it ... ” (CCL, The Struggle for the Creation . . . , p. 18.)
At the same time, they do just the opposite. Ironically, they seem unaware of the fact that when Lenin wrote the above in “Left”-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, he had groups and individuals like CCL very much in mind, ones similarly attached to the excesses of petty-bourgeois ultraleftism.
Let’s see what Workers’ Unity is thinking and doing following the summer of 1975 after their latest “self-criticism”, their Draft Statement of Unity, and their discussions with “Marxist-Leninists” from Quebec. Writing nearly a year later, they have this to say about their August 1975 “self-criticism”:
We would say now that our grasp of our errors remained still fragmentary and weak. The critique of our economism and our position on party-building was good, but partial. We had not yet re-assessed major questions of ideological and political line. We had not begun to do communist agitation and progaganda. We were still clinging to our amateurishness and “waiting” for the future ML organization to take up the tasks. We had not broken with the small group spirit and “localism” which characterizes the communist movement throughout English Canada. In short, we had not yet qualitatively changed our practice, [emphasis in original] (p. 9)
This tortured logic represents a crude kind of double-talk, double-think. They say that their grasp of errors was fragmentary and weak, that their critiques and positions were partial, that they hadn’t re-assessed major questions, that they were amateurish, stuck in localism, had not qualitatively changed their practice, etc. How in the world is it possible, if you haven’t understood what you’ve done wrong in the past and if your thinking is fuzzy on major questions, etc., to come up with a good critique of economism and a good position on party-building? With dreadful qualities such as these, there can hardly be anything remotely “good” in any Marxist sense; the avowed self-criticism can only be a bad joke.
Interestingly, they are quick to ascribe their own grave faults (from which they had suffered throughout the dreary years of their Torontonian captivity) to “the communist movement throughout English Canada.” They neglect to enlighten us about how the same “movement” in Quebec became immune to them. It is enough, apparently, that Montreal became a new Mecca where the high priests of CCL and IS are enthroned and towards which faithfuls like Workers’ Unity’ have since made their pilgrimage, otherwise called “rallying to the centre”.
Immediately after making their various pathetic confessions, adorned with matching pompous claims, they inform us that “in November and December 1975, we carried out a review of our work that resulted in fundamental changes: in our line, in our methods of work, in our practice.” (p. 10) In a few short months, the impossible had happened once again – one of those instantaneous transformations reputed to happen in deserted graveyards and on isolated deserts once or twice a millenium. After that, things moved swiftly. As the long-awaited “qualitative changes” in Workers’ Unity occurred in the first few months of 1976, they “moved forward on many fronts” (p. 18): organizing “a public meeting for International Women’s Day, a successful meeting attracting 70 people – including some working people – the first such Marxist-Leninist meeting in English Canada in some time” (p. 18); “increasing the level of debate over the two-line struggle” (p. 18); passing out The Forge (CCL’s newspaper); organizing “with the co-operation of other Marxist-Leninists in Toronto, a successful May Day dinner and celebration, a ’militant inspection of our forces’ [!], which attracted over 100 people” (p. 18); and so on and on.
With these miracles and success stories to build on – in addition to having settled every pertinent question in a few issues of CR-Workers’ Unity faded into CCL “confident that [their new partnership] will make an important contribution to the proletarian revolution.” (p. 20) Workers’ Unity declared at the time: “We bring a contingent of militants who, despite serious errors, have shown a willingness to conduct thorough self-criticism.” (p. 20) “Our militants,” they continued without shame, “have shown a longstanding revolutionary commitment through many twists and turns of the struggle .... Through significant years of experience in mass movements, and most recently several years experience in the working class movement, our militants have developed a positive style of work with the masses.” (p. 20) These are the same years and the same experiences that they themselves had already admitted were marked by reactionary politics, by economism, by opportunism.
On the occasion of this amalgamation, CCL featured a set of startling claims to the effect that, thanks to Workers’ Unity’s “profound self-criticism” (p. 3)– based “firmly upon the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought” (p. 4)– CCL had “broadened [its own] horizons” (p. 3) and had just “begun to understand the situation across the country.” (p. 3) These claims are really unintentional and revealing admissions, coming as they do seven months after CCL was already in existence. How could they assert that CCL was founded “on the basis of a correct ideological and political line” (p. 4) when it turns out that they had not even begun to understand the situation across the country until seven months later?
In introducing Workers’ Unity’s “self-criticism”, CCL assures its readers that there are “many lessons to draw from the example of the group Workers’ Unity.” (p. 4) These assurances are echoed by the Toronto group: “The history and practice of our group has been very similar to that of many small groups and circles across the country; as such, our self-criticism and our struggle for unity with CCL(ML) also holds important lessons for militants throughout Canada.” (p. 5) The big “lesson”, of course, is the “hope that Marxist-Leninists in Canada will recognize the fundamental correctness of the League’s political line”, (p. 4) So sure are they of its correctness (despite the absence of investigation or evidence) that they can’t refrain from issuing an urgent appeal bordering on a command to “rally to our ranks”, (p. 4) the price for demurral being excommunication, an undisguised blessing.
For all their “learning” and “correcting”, for all their “criticisms and self-criticisms”, their self-proclamations are, on their own showing, hollow indeed. When self-criticism becomes self-congratulation, the process amounts to ignoring objective reality, and to manufacturing self-justifying and grossly exaggerated pictures of achievement. When nothing but fanciful claims are made in the name of criticism and self-criticism, the result is no less harmful than the willful perpetration of lies. Any previous position can be undone by a twist of interpretation. But these ultraleftists have been around for a while and know something about what they are supposed to be saying and appearing to do, and how to cover their “zigzags”. Thus, on occasion, they give formal verbal recognition to genuine self-criticism. Listen once more to Workers’ Unity: “Self-criticism is never a superficial process of ’turning over a new leaf, of instant transformation – and it certainly was not for us!” (p. 7)
The Workers’ Unity/CCL story is not over. There will be new turnabouts, euphemistically labelled self-criticisms. There will be new alignments and realignments, for it is in the nature of petty-bourgeois ultraleft groups to compose, decompose and recompose themselves again and again under one pretext or another. For all the new appellations they assume in rapid succession, for all the novel “theories” they spawn and senseless practices they indulge in, they do not change.
Their refusal to be critical of themselves also warps their judgments of others – not only each other, but all others. If political groups are not thoughtful, objective and honest about themselves, they cannot be thoughtful, objective and honest about anyone or anything else, and in the case of groups like CCL and IS, this has led directly to their flunkyism and dogmatism.
We all know individuals who, lacking the qualities they perceive as desirable yet unwilling or afraid to develop the qualities in themselves, take the easy road of latching onto others, who, in their view, already possess these qualities. These others they idealize; they transform them into gods and bask in their reflected glory, hoping that at least a little of the radiance will appear to be their own. Like all gods, the deified humans become, in the imaginations of the stunned beholders, mysterious entities who cannot be comprehended and must not be questioned. And like the faithful everywhere, the deifiers want only to get into their gods’ good graces. So they worship them, accept them blindly, bow to them, try to ape the behaviour they imagine their idols want to see, and in every way try to please them so as not to be rejected; in a word, they become flunkies and turn all ideas into dogmas.
So too with certain political groups which do not think for themselves yet want to puff themselves up as being always “correct”. Whether found in a neurotic, insecure individual, or in an arrogant, dishonest political group, the syndrome is the same. Hand in glove with the absence of self-criticism is the presence of dogmatism and flunkyism.
Though CCL and IS look down in condescension at CPC-ML for these very traits, they are equally afflicted. Instead of studying the experience of other revolutions to see what lessons they can learn and then apply to their own conditions, they transcribe selected self-serving phrases from Peking Review and Albania Today into The Forge and In Struggle. These become their dogmas. Instead of developing a genuine respect for these revolutions based on an understanding of their complexities and of their achievements and problems, groups like CCL and IS revere them. This makes them flunkies. They are repeating the dogmatism and flunkyism practiced by the Communist Party of Canada which, early on in its downhill slide into revisionism, left its critical powers behind and displayed abject servility to the Russian Party.
For all flunkies and dogmatists, any questioning of their idols, any criticism or disagreement is branded as heresy . . . until they themselves discover a flaw. Then the legendary gods come crashing down, as all gods must eventually, and right away become just as totally imperfect as they supposedly were perfect. As might be expected, the flaws which they claim to find are often just as imaginary as their earlier notions of infallibility.
When one idol falls, the flunky immediately needs to erect a replacement. Thus, no sooner did CPC-ML drop China than it grabbed Albania. Overnight, the previously perfect China was suddenly all wrong, and Albania became the greatest show on earth.
The CCL/IS response to this CPC-ML flip-flop is significant. With the desertion of China by these standard-bearers of slavish flunkyism and ossified dogmatism, CCL and IS immediately began vying with each other to prove their “loyalty” to China. One of CCL’s early moves was their melodramatic reaction to CPC-ML’s switch. While superficially leaving the impression that they vehemently opposed CPC-ML’s flunkyism and dogmatism, they betrayed the extent to which they suffer from the same things. Here are some examples of the accusations CCL hurled at CPC-ML: “they have tried to appear pro-China to gain legitimacy from this great socialist country”, have “vainly hoped that support for China would rub off on them”, have “filled issue after issue [of their newspaper] with reprints from Chinese publications and articles on China”, have parroted “slogans and analyses appropriate to China” which they have “applied unchanged in Canada”; they are now “trying to use Albania, like they did before with China, to gain some credibility”; “for years [they have] been dragging the glorious name of socialist China and socialist Albania through the mud.” (“CPC-ML launches an all-out attack on socialist China,” The Forge, April 28, 1977, p. 12.) All true, but isn’t this a case of people in glass houses throwing stones?
The same article, however, goes on to complain that CPC-ML has stopped selling Chinese publications, that their newspaper no longer focuses on the Communist Party of China, says nothing about what is going on in China, doesn’t even mention Hua Kuo-feng’s name, etc. Real Marxist-Leninists would say good riddance. Only super-flunkies and super-dogmatists could bemoan this stroke of fortune: the fact that CPC-ML has, at long last, stopped rendering its disservice to the Chinese Revolution.
CCL has also attacked IS – in this case not so much for switching loyalties as for not being loyal enough. Infuriated by IS’s Draft Program for the Canadian Proletarian Party (December 1977), CCL condemned it, claiming that IS, as “agents of the bourgeoisie”, had produced a programme for a thoroughly “revisionist party” aimed at “sabotaging” the proletarian revolution. (“A Program to create a revisionist party,” The Forge, January 6, 1977, p. 15.) After listing a number of major issues that they claim would substantiate their serious charges, but not discussing them (“we will not attempt to explain everything here”), they turn to those items they consider important, but here too, they explain nothing, and merely harp on them. First and foremost is their observation that “the 16 point program doesn’t mention Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin nor Mao Tsetung, it doesn’t contain a single reference to Mao Tsetung Thought, nor does it voice support for the authentic socialist countries.” Still fuming, CCL devotes even more space in its phony critique to reiterate: “There is no point in wasting your time looking for any reference to the five great leaders of the world proletariat in the 16-point program, because there isn’t any”; “there isn’t any mention of Mao Tsetung Thought either”; “there isn’t anything about any of the authentic socialist countries like Albania and Kampuchea in the programme.” {Ibid.)
Now, leaving aside the real demerits of IS’s programme, what is CCL doing but a head count? It looks like they went through the programme with a pocket calculator counting references, and in the end, IS just didn’t measure up to CCL’s standards of flunkyism. Try as they may, IS failed the dogmatist test as well. In the same article, CCL berates IS for omitting or altering the exact wording of certain dogmas in vogue among the ultraleft. Even though IS’s party programme already reads like a catechism, they apparently slipped up a few times.
CCL’s sycophancy is further attested by their instant pronouncements on events in China after Mao’s death. Thoughtful people have been watching and studying these events with great interest and concern; CCL has acted like they have had all the answers all along. They endorsed every item that came out of China down to the last detail, as if they knew the personal and political histories of all the principals from day one of their lives, as if they were the childhood buddies of every Chinese leader, both in and out of office. How is it possible that, sitting on the other side of the world in Montreal, they were so certain and had no questions whatsoever? How is it that such a complex struggle has been so simple for them, especially considering that they had been taking the exact opposite positions on events in China, and with equal certainty and fervour, just a few months before?
The extent of their blase flunkyism is, at times, embarrassing, such as when the President of the Montreal friendship organization, the Canada-China Society (CCS), over which CCL has gained control, announced at a public meeting that “the Canada-China Society and thousands of other Canadian friends of China rejoiced on learning of the crushing of the Gang of Four.” (From speech delivered at National Day celebrations, October 1977, p. 1.) Even though we in Halifax are often considered the country cousins of central Canada, we don’t think Nova Scotia is so remote that our experience here is totally unique. We saw no rejoicing; in fact we saw no one who was even aware of the existence of any gang up to that time. How could any thoughtful person rejoice without knowing who was being crushed by whom and for exactly what reasons? This flunkyist fabrication of fact is bad enough, to say nothing of the inappropriateness of such a statement when uttered by a leader of a friendship organization, which should exist for the promotion of friendship between the Canadian and Chinese peoples based on an understanding of each other’s achievements, aspirations and problems.
Numerous other examples can be cited of CCL’s China flunkyism in China friendship work. During discussion of aims suitable to friendship organizations at a November 1977 meeting of such groups from across the country, they sought acceptance (which they failed to get) of their view that friendship associations “should work ... to develop a broad base of support for China in the face of any sort of attack.” (Montreal Canada-China Society, The Aims, Principles and Priorities of Friendship Work, October 1977, p. 2.) What this means in practice is that such controversial issues as the three worlds theory and the establishing of party-to-party relations with Yugoslavia, both of which have been challenged by Albania, or the conflict between China and Vietnam are not to be frankly discussed. If friendship associations blindly follow the prescriptions of the flunkies on such matters, they will have to prove their “support” of China by mounting counterattacks against the Albanians and the Vietnamese. Perhaps official government spokespeople must do this sort of thing, but surely not mass-based people-to-people friendship organizations.
Apparently, in CCL’s judgment, disagreement with and perhaps even questions about a Chinese policy constitutes an “attack”, judging from another idea they tried to push at the meeting: that friendship associations should “present the Chinese explanation of China”. This appears acceptable on the surface, but their elaboration urges that “a unified point of view” be presented because “personal and contradictory interpretations that are not based on the Chinese positions can cause much confusion among the public at large and much harm to the friendship movement.” (Ibid., p. 5.) They are telling us how to swindle the public: give them pat answers; make them all definite with no if’s, and’s, but’s, or maybe’s; don’t ever open up any possible “contradictory interpretations” so as not to “confuse” anyone. This presumably is how they “respect and educate the masses”.
The same evening that this issue was discussed, CCL (alias Montreal CCS) held a large public meeting featuring a speaker from China. Outside the auditorium was a long literature table filled with an array of numerous books and pamphlets on China in English and French – every single one of which was printed in China! Clearly, their policy of presenting the Chinese explanation of China means to exclude the views of even the best friends of China. As good flunkies, they wouldn’t even sell books like Red Star over China!
We could go on. Take the symbols on their newspapers, banners, posters and buttons. CCL, which has Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao all neatly lined up at the top, is outdone only by CPC-ML, which has added Hoxha. The appropriateness and meaningfulness of such picture galleries is not the concern of flunkies. Can we look forward to bickerings among the ultraleft groups, as already happens in some countries, over who is included and excluded on their banners and buttons, whose picture is larger or more prominent than the others, etc?
Most of our attention has focused on CCL’s flunkyism and dogmatism, which should not suggest that IS is any freer of them. They also take their swipes at these traits in CPC-ML “which until very recently was still repeating mechanically the programmes of Peking Radio and ... is today trying to be ’recognized’ by Albania, and now parrots the programmes of Tirana Radio” (“On the theory of three Worlds: Differences to solve on the Basis of Marxism-Leninism,” In Struggle.’, September 1, 1977, p. 2) and CCL “which contents itself with removing the documents of the international communist movement that don’t fit with its position of the theory of three worlds from the shelves of its bookstores, and for whom knowing whether you’re for or against the theory of the three worlds is enough to classify you as a revisionist or a real Marxist-Leninist” and which “with one simplistic attitude after another, ... is in the process of sabotaging the ideological struggle by misleading its members, sympathizers and readers as to what’s at stake in the current debate in the international communist movement.” (Ibid., p. 1.)
If CCL is disgusting in its flunkyism, IS is pathetic. As usual, IS is less sure-footed and less successful than CCL and, being uncertain of whose bandwagon to board, does more flailing about. So, for example, on July 7, 1977, IS turned over a major part of its newspaper to “China’s Foreign Policy – The Policy that Supports the Revolutionary Struggles of the Peoples!”, stating in summation that China’s foreign policy is a correct policy based on proletarian internationalism that serves the interests of the peoples, and of world-wide revolution. In fact, this policy is mainly determined by a new situation: the transformation of socialist Russia into an imperialist country competing for world-wide hegemony. This situation leads the Chinese Communist Party to put forward that the universe [?!] is divided into three worlds, the first being composed of the two superpowers, the third (the Third World) of the developing countries, and the second of all the advanced capitalist countries other than the superpowers (the European countries, Canada). This analysis of the three worlds is conjunctural, it is the product of the four fundamental contradictions that govern imperialism’s whole era. At present, this conception of the balance of power on a world-wide scale takes the international situation as a whole well into account. To recognize this implies that all Marxist-Leninists must draw lessons from the principles and correct analyses of the Chinese comrades, [emphasis in original] (p. 11.)
Less than two months later, however, as IS’s China flunkyism paled in comparison with CCL’s more obvious servility, IS saw its chance with Albania’s publication of the now famous article which took issue with the three worlds theory (and which ironically came out on precisely the same date when IS had originally emblazoned their pro-three worlds theory across their own pages). Without so much as a word of self-criticism, avoiding even mention of the fact that they had changed their minds on this important question, IS slunk off the China bandwagon and onto the Albania one and published a special supplement, heralding their new “correct” position:
The theory of three worlds . . . ignores the class viewpoint and replaces it with an analysis of the balance of power between countries. To consider the division of the world into three types of countries as a strategic concept leads to the weakening of national liberation struggles by including the imperialist countries of the “second world” and the reactionary forces of the “Third World” that are the agents of imperialism in the countries among the friends of the people. To consider the theory of three worlds as a strategic concept leads also to the abandoning of the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries where, according to certain people who call themselves Marxist-Leninists, the proletariat should ally with the bourgeoisie against the two superpowers, or even against a single one of the two, and thus strengthen the struggle of the countries of the “second world”, most of whom are controlled by imperialist bourgeoisies, for their national independence! Finally, to consider the theory of three worlds as a strategic concept is to weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat in the socialist countries, which the theory of three worlds puts on the same footing as other Third World countries like Chile or Iran, [emphasis in original] (“On the theory of three Worlds” . . . ,p. 2.)
For IS, flunkies out-flunkied by CCL, the new viewpoint was a real lifesaver.
And so IS and CCL have gone their separate ways together, quibbling over who they should bow and scrape to and what rituals and incantations are “correct”. Deriving from bourgeois individualism and arrogance, and suffused with petty-bourgeois vacillation, insecurity and dependence, their flunkyism and dogmatism are alien to all that is scientific. They are idealist, not materialist; mechanical, not dialectical.
We are sure that revolutionaries in China and Albania do not want to be worshipped. Dogmatism and flunkyism are certainly not the lessons they want us to learn from their revolutions.
[1] Except where otherwise specified, quotations in this section are from this pamphlet.
[2] See, for another example, our quote from Western Voice on p. 13 of this text.