The rise to power of modern revisionism has been a serious, although temporary, setback to the international proletarian movement. When the Krushchevites took over, they opened a second front against the proletariat and oppressed peoples of the world. There are four fundamental consequences of revisionist control of the Soviet state. All have the same starting point, which is the effort to camouflage the social-fascist and social-imperialist character of the USSR, and to hold up the modern revisionists as being “true” to socialism. The essence of this deception is to give the modern revisionists a free hand to do the dirty work of imperialism to assist USNA imperialism, and when necessary to divert the attention and revolutionary blows away from USNA imperialism. As Comrade Hoxha stated at the PLA’s Sixth Congress:
The attitude to imperialism, in the first place, to US imperialism, is the ’touch-stone’ for all the political forces of the world. This is not just a tactical question, or a temporary solution in the existing circumstances. The attitude towards imperialism is a question of the content of the political line. It serves as a gauge for assessing practical actions, and, in the end, a demarcation line which divides two warring camps, dividing those who defend the vital interests of peoples and of the future of mankind from those who trample them underfoot, dividing revolutionaries from reactionaries and traitors. (Enver Hoxha, Report Submitted to the 6th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, Tirana 1971, pp.21-22)
Part of the CPSU’s arsenal of modern revisionism are the social-chauvinist parties around the world who parrot and apply the revisionist line of aid to USNA imperialism, and sabotage the revolutionary proletariat and oppressed peoples. Here, it is the “CP”USA which consistently carries out modern revisionism’s line of the ”Three Peacefuls.”
First; with its strategy of “peaceful competition” and “peaceful coexistence”, the CPSU camouflaged the role of USNA imperialism. According to the revisionists the victory of socialism in a number of countries after the anti-fascist war had split the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries into two camps, the “nice” imperialists who wanted peace and the “nasty” imperialists, the warmongers, who wanted to contain communism and engage in new wars of conquest. The way to resolve this “contradiction” was to win over the “nice” imperialists to the cause of “peaceful competition.” (A worthy cause!) Meanwhile, class struggle would have to wait and the working class would have to fight its “adventurous” tendencies; the international proletariat and oppressed peoples were commanded to cease their struggles and wait while the USSR developed its productive forces and bested the USNA Imperialists in ”friendly competition,” Moreover, USNA imperialism the revisionists said, would see the socialist light and reform itself out of existence if only the socialist camp helped it maintain world peace, i.e., imperialist exploitation and oppression. In this way, the heretofore leading socialist country was transformed into a self-appointed policeman of the proletarian revolutionary movement. Khrushchev summarized peaceful coexistence in this way:
Even a tiny spark can cause a world conflagration…we (the Soviet Union and the USNA) are the strongest countries in the world, and if we unite for peace, there can be no war. Then, if any madman wanted war, we would but have to shake our fingers and warn him off. (Quoted in Peking Review #40, 1973, p. 11)
What this brilliant counter-revolutionary synthesis deliberately disregarded is that the “madman” was not Ho Chi Minh but the USNA monopoly capitalist class, a class which used its state apparatus to protect its stolen riches and enslave oppressed people throughout the world.
Following Khrushchev’s leadership, the slimy sycophants of the “CP”USA rushed to imperialism’s defense. Gus Hall and other hacks spoke of “two power centers in Washington, one in the White House and the other in the Pentagon.” Fittingly, they courted the “peaceful” center in the form of Eisenhower, Kennedy et al whom they described as “sensible” men. While the “CP”USA was lap-dogging after the liberal bourgeoisie, USNA imperialism expanded its monopoly position and ringed the world with military bases. And of course, it just so happened that the intervention in Kuwait, Suez, Cuba and the Dominican Republic and the “tiny conflagrations” in Indo-China, the Middle East and Africa, and the subversion in Latin America were only “differences” that need resolving! Lenin was perfectly correct when he said that the opportunists in the working class movement are “better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves. If the workers were not led by these people, the bourgeoisie would not be able to hold their own.” (Quoted in The Party of Albania in the Battle with Modern Revisionism, pp.352-53)
Second, the modem revisionists not only attacked national liberation struggles with the heavy hand of peaceful coexistence, but colluded with USNA imperialism to divide national liberation struggles from the socialist world and sabotage proletarian leadership. Battered by national liberation struggles and seeing that old-style colonialism was obsolete, the imperialist powers quickly switched to neo-colonialism. Oppressed nations were given nominal independence, while the imperialists guaranteed their super-profits through hand-picked puppets. USNA imperialism, the principal beneficiary of neo-colonialism, had to create a false alternative in order to justify this trickery. Once again, the imperialists were rescued by their faithful ally, the Khrushchev clique. In an effort to divert national liberation struggles from the highway of proletarian revolution, Khrushchev appealed to the “reason and farsightedness” of the Western imperialists: “let as agree on measures for the abolition of the colonial system ...” (United Nations General Assembly Speech). Further, ”The sixties of our century will go down in history as the years of the complete disintegration of the colonial system”. (Speech at 22nd Congress of the CPSU).
Not only was class struggle unnecessary inside the Soviet Union, where they had a “state of the whole people”, but national liberation struggles against imperialism were no longer necessary. Indeed, according to Khrushchev, the imperialists were willing to abolish their own system! There was a third way or a ”new phase of development’ as Khrushchev put it. Colonial countries had received their “independence” and now economic development was the central task of the national liberation movement. Oppressed nations, therefore, should rely on economic ”aid” from the Soviet Union and the USNA to build up their economies. Thus, according to the revisionists, national liberation struggles could be led by the national bourgeoisie and were something separate from the struggle against imperialism. Finally, the revisionists said that a country could build socialism without communist leadership and under a reactionary nationalist like Nehru. (Nehru, of course, was getting plenty of rubles from the Soviet Union).
In this way, the CPSU and its faithful followers in the “CP”USA whitewashed imperialist plunder, liquidated the national question and in doing so, supported neo-colonialism. The Brezhnev gang has recently outdone even Khrushchev. Their theory of the “international division of labor” asserts that colonial countries should not even try to develop independent national economies, but instead should submit to the needs and will of the “socialist community”, i.e., Soviet Imperialism.
In the “CP”USA’s New Program, colonialism is almost completely avoided – in fact, there are only a few paragraphs about colonies, with the main emphasis being that colonialism no longer exists. Moreover, the matter of supporting oppressed nations is passed off in one sentence, and no mention is made of support for wars of national liberation and national resistance. Wars are considered to be bad and dangerous and therefore to be opposed. Remember Vietnam? Did the “CP”USA ever put forward the platforms: defeat for USNA imperialism, victory for the Vietnamese war of resistance? No. It was “peace now”, “negotiate now”, “end the bombing”, “the war is bad” – all slogans of the liberal bourgeoisie. Did the “CP”USA instruct its members in the Longshore to organise boycotts against war materials, or in factories to organize walk-outs aimed against production for the war in Indo-China? No. Lenin’s slogan of “war against imperialist war” was considered too sectarian for USNA workers, and generally not in their best interests. Finally, the “CP”USA’s program amounts to nothing more than an alliance with the bourgeoisie against the oppressed nations and people of the world.
Third, the Soviet revisionist clique carried out a relentless attack calculated to ideologically disarm communist parties in other countries and turn them into reformist political machines. The bankrupt CPSU made a frontal attack on Marxism-Leninism with its bourgeois bromide of a “peaceful transition to socialism”. According to the revisionists, violent revolution was a thing of the past and the working class could now organize itself into the ruling class within the limits of the constitutional system. And because bourgeois ruling groups could accept a planned economy, the signs were ripening for a transition from capitalism to socialism. In other words, it was now possible to attain socialism without the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
Vulgar materialists that they are, the modern revisionists see revolution as a totality of structural reforms. They obliterate the distinction between revolution end reforms. Leninist parties of the new type are replaced with “mass parties” open to every available careerist, opportunist, bourgeois sympathizer, and police agent. Advanced detachments of the proletariat become subsidiaries of the liberal bourgeoisie; parliamentary cretinism is elevated, to the level of principle. The revisionists understand that a proletariat without a party is a proletariat disarmed.
In fact, the CPSU must have studied the works of Earl Browder very carefully. For here was a “communist” leader who had implemented all of these policies years before the Khrushchev clique came to power. As early as the 1930’s Browder extolled the virtues of the USNA bourgeoisie as a democratic force against fascism and for peace. The Browderites transformed the united front against fascism into a united front of accommodation with imperialism. Communist fractions in the unions were liquidated, as was communist work in other areas, in order to placate Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the rest of the bourgeoisie. Finally, in 1944, Browder initiated the logical step to conclude the “American Exceptionalism” line: the Party dissolved itself, with Browder proclaiming that a communist party wasn’t needed in the USNA since the bourgeoisie had shown themselves willing to enter into close and friendly relations with the proletariat, and the USNA-Soviet alliance in the war had, of course, proven that the USNA was no longer imperialist. Taking its cue from the CPSU and Browder, the “CP”USA of today envisions socialism ”as an encompassing struggle for more radical measures . . . (New Program, p. 94) This struggle for reforms will take place in the context of an “anti-monopoly coalition’’ where
Every gain wrested from monopoly capital, small or large, strengthens the forces of socialism. (Ibid., p. 83).
Finally, the “CP”USA parrots Khrushchev’s line that imperialism, particularly USNA imperialism, is in such serious crisis that it will fall of its own weight:
In a new qualitative sense, capitalism has further lost its ability as a class to basically influence or intervene in world affairs. (Hall, “Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion”, New York, p. 7)
We can be sure of one thing, as long as the “CP”USA dominates the working class movement, the only way USNA imperialism will be defeated is if it does fall of its own weight! Fat chance!
Fourth, as has been pointed out, Soviet social-imperialism has carried out savage attacks on the socialist camp and temporarily rolled back communism in Eastern Europe. Khrushchev began the onslaught by replacing the foremost leaders of the working class – namely the “Stalinists”, with his own self-appointed lackeys. The Brezhnev gang has made interference in the affairs of comradely countries a fundamental principal of Soviet foreign policy. With its theories of “limited sovereignty” and the “international dictatorship of the proletariat” the Soviet clique reserves the right to militarily Intervene at will. This is what the Brezhnev gang calls “socialist community.” In the revisionist empire, political line, proletarian internationalism, etc., have been twisted to be identical with the state policies of the Soviet Union. It is only because of the heroic efforts of the Party of Labor of Albania and the Communist Party of China that a genuine communist movement is growing stronger today. Their brilliant theoretical and practical leadership has exposed the poison of Soviet social-imperialism before the working class and oppressed peoples of the world. It is clear that China and Albania together with North Korea and North Vietnam constitute the international leadership of proletarian revolution, an iron bastion from which Marxism-Leninism has already begun its final counter-attack and which cannot but lead to the total defeat of modern revisionism and victory for the peoples of the world.
Although the betrayal of the modern revisionists and the consequent development of Soviet social-imperialism has been a setback to the international proletarian movement, we agree with Enver Hoxha’s statement:
US imperialism remains the main enemy of all peoples, the greatest exploiter and oppressor of their countries and the bastion of reaction ... US imperialism cannot live without economic expansion, without political intervention and military aggression ... Otherwise it dies, and the road is opened to revolts and revolutions. (Report to the 6th Congress of the PLA, p. 19)
It’s safe to say that without the incessant attacks of USNA imperialism on the first socialist state we would not be discussing the restoration of capitalism today. Likewise, as long as USNA imperialism exists, socialist countries and their main allies, national liberation struggles, will he attacked with a combination of savage brutality and cunning deception.
As we’ve pointed out, what has been different since the seizure of power by the Khrushchevite clique is that USNA imperialism has had an international ally of the most insidious type: revisionism in power. Together the strategic objective of these imperialists is to destroy socialism, strangle revolution end establish their hegemony over the whole world.
With this in mind, we reject the right opportunist formulation of the “CP”USA that USNA imperialism is being weakened because of its ”peaceful competition” with the Soviet Union. The implication here is that the “weaker” it gets, the easier it will be to establish socialism by “peaceful” means. This line covers the crimes of the USSR as well as the USNA. On the other hand, we also reject the “left” side of modern revisionism which argues that USNA imperialism is dying away and that “rising” Soviet social-imperialism is the main danger. Although this line sounds revolutionary, its affect is the same as that of the “CP”USA. Both lead us away from our primary task of smashing USNA imperialism and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
However, we would be naïve to think that the USNA and the USSR always act in complete harmony. Actually, they collude only to contend more fiercely for world hegemony. The contradiction between the USNA and the USSR is a part of the contradiction between imperialist powers. In their struggle for sources of raw materials, for the control of foreign governments and territories, they are struggling to re-divide an already divided world. As Stalin and Lenin pointed out, imperialist “thieves always fall out.” In short, while colluding and babbling about peace, these two imperialist powers are preparing for war. As USNA Secretary of Defense Schlesinger said, “Détente is a mailed fist in a velvet glove.”
Moreover, at present collusion is the principal aspect characterising the relations between the USSR and the USNA. First, faced with the rising resistance of the international proletarian movement, including their own working classes, these two conspirators hang on to each other in order to realize their counter-revolutionary schemes. Second, detente is beneficial temporarily to each power. The revisionists’ economic “reforms” have boomeranged only to place them at the feet of USNA imperialism. Confronted with unfulfilled production plans, acute shortages of commodities, etc., they have been forced to beg David Rockefeller for credits and assessments. Nowhere are the consequences of their capitalist system more apparent than in the realm of agriculture where the revisionists were compelled, with cap in hand, to appeal to USNA imperialism for nine billion dollars worth of wheat. Even though these deals are not free or without sacrifices, they have helped the revisionists tighten their stranglehold over the Soviet working class and East European colonies. On the other hand, détente has helped the USNA strengthen itself relative to its junior partners in plunder, namely Japan, England, France...
Finally, the USNA and USSR have directed their counter»revolutionary alliance against the common revolutionary front of socialist countries led by China and the national liberation movement in the colonies. Because the Communist Party of China has consistently exposed their collusion against the peoples of the world, the social-imperialists have stationed over a million troops on China’s northern borders. Likewise, both powers have not only aimed their missiles at China but have discussed the possibility of a preemptive nuclear attack, on the Chinese people. Their present contention for European markets and colonies prevents these prophets of doom from carrying out this insidious plan. At the same time USNA imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism have consistently sabotaged national liberation struggles in Vietnam, Chile, Cambodia, Indonesia, Palestine, etc.
To summarize, as Enver Hoxha has said:
The greatest counter-revolutionary force opposed to the struggle of the nations for freedom and socialism is the Soviet-US alliance. In all fields – economic, political and military the imperialist course of the US and the Soviet Union are continually drawing nearer to and embracing each other. In order to realize their aims of hegemony and domination, the two superpowers need each other, therefore they synchronies their watches, and continually coordinate their plans and concrete activity. (Ibid, p. 25-27.)