First Published: The Call, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1972.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As the anti-imperialist struggle within the U.S. begins to grow and develop roots among the broad masses of the people, the fascist Nixon clique has begun to intensify its attack upon these revolutionary elements. In carrying out this attack it has enlisted the aid internationally of its favorite partner in crime, the Soviet social-imperialists, while here at home it relies upon the “Communist Party USA.”
The brunt of the most recent attacks has been directed against the growing communist movement or as the CP calls it “the Maoists” On an international scale it is China which draws the sharpest blows from the revisionists who long ago abandoned revolution for the “peaceful road to socialism.” By “peaceful” the revisionists mean that they will team up with the capitalists to crush or subvert the revolutionary organizations and dampen the aspirations of the people.
In his speech at the recent CP Convention, Chairman Gus Hall attacked Maoism as the Party’s main enemy and claimed that China had ”great nation ambitions.”
Claiming that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was “madness” he called Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought a “counter-revolutionary” ideology.
This slander has been echoed recently in all of the revisionist’ press internationally. Wherever the peoples’ struggle is sharpest that is where the attacks are strongest. In the Philippines, for example, revisionist spokesman William Pomeroy has joined in with President Marcos in slandering the aims and the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines which is presently leading the struggle for national independence, democracy and socialism.
Here in the U.S. Gus Hall, the CP presidential candidate, viciously attacked the Guardian, a progressive newsweekly for supposedly “joining hands with Nixon in support of the butchery of Bangladesh.” By this they mean that the Guardian refused to support the Indian invasion of Pakistan and the plots of the Soviet Union to make the Indian subcontinent one of their “spheres of influence.”
The real reason for the attack on the Guardian is that they have recently begun to take a stand in support of China’s policies and furthermore have refused to tail after George McGovern and the Democratic Party, The Guardian, now celebrating its 25th year of publication, has been among the strong defenders of the Vietnamese peoples’ struggles and their on-the-spot coverage has been widely read.
Irwin Silber, a member of the Guardian staff explained that the Guardian, “strongly condemned the Soviet-backed Indian invasion of East Pakistan and its installation of the bourgeois Awami League in power in Dacca.”
Silber said that “The Indian government used the plight of the Bengali people as a pretext for dismembering Pakistan, expanding its own reactionary influence in South Asia and attempting to snuff out the development of a revolutionary movement of national liberation in East Pakistan.” So we see that is the Soviet government and not China who is practicing great-power politics.
The Guardian stated that the CPUSA launched their attack in order to try and crush the “new forces” of revolution, which are presently “coming to birth.” Silber pointed out that “the reappearance of a genuinely Marxist-Leninist movement will have an appeal for many of the present members of the CPUSA, especially among those young militants who may have joined recently thinking that it was the only game in town.”
These unprincipled attacks by the revisionists against the genuine Marxist-Leninists and other progressive forces in the world are nothing new. The rise of modern revisionism and social-imperialism (socialism in words, imperialism in deeds –Lenin) has been characterized by just such slanders and attacks. Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union on its road to capitalist restoration, began with an attack at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, on Joseph Stalin, the great leader of the Soviet people. This was followed by an unprincipled attack on Albania and then China.
Stalin was called “a bandit” and a “murderer” by Khrushchev who joined in with the imperialists in this song and dance. The Albanians were told that if they didn’t bow down to the Soviet giant, they would be bombed into submission. When China stood up in defense of revolution and opposed the line of “peaceful transition to socialism” which Khrushchev was pushing, Khrushchev withdrew all aid to the then struggling China in an attempt to starve them into submission.
The revisionists then launched a world-wide propaganda campaign attacking China, Mao Tsetung and the forces of revolution and national liberation. This was the tactics which led to the present split in the communist movement. We can see from this how the rightism of the CPUSA is linked closely with “left” sectarianism.” If you refuse to follow the line of the revisionists and betray the peoples’ struggle, you are subject to slanderous attacks.
The need has never been greater for the revolutionary and progressive peoples to unite in a common front against these fascist attacks from the Nixon government and from its appendage within the peoples’ movement, the CPUSA revisionists.