First Published:The Workers’ Advocate March 10, 1977. Reprinted in Against the Social-Chauvinist Theory of “Directing the Main Blow at Soviet Social-Imperialism,” n.d. [1977]
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
The November 22 issue of The Call, political newspaper of the October League (Marxist-Leninist), contained an article entitled “Lessons of Strategy and Tactics: The Direction of the Main Blow”. The article appeared in a prominent position in the centerfold. This article shows the great importance the social-chauvinist leaders of the October League place on allying with U.S. imperialism to direct the “main blow” at Soviet social-imperialism. As is well known, the OL leaders have declared this to be their strategy time and again. For this they have been roundly denounced throughout the Marxist-Leninist movement as capitulators to imperialism. This has thrown them into a predicament and has disturbed their attempts to build their opportunist party. But the OL refuses to give up this utterly bankrupt stand. This shows that the OL is not simply making a mistake, but is in essence a deeply great-power chauvinist organization hiding under the banner of Mao Tsetung Thought.
Now, in desperation, the OL has resorted to the bourgeois trick of sophistry in order to claim that their line of directing the “main blow” against the U. S.S.R. is not a social-chauvinist line, but is, instead, a Leninist line conforming with the strategic rules of Leninism formulated by Comrade Stalin, the glorious leader and teacher of the international proletariat, in his article “The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists”. But the efforts of the October League leaders to turn Comrade Stalin into an ordinary OL social-chauvinist will not go down with the Marxist-Leninists in the United States. We will continue to denounce the OL’s social-chauvinist line and intensify the struggle against revisionism and all opportunism. As we pointed out in the September 1, 1976 Workers’ Advocate, in our article “Mao Tsetung Thought or Social-Chauvinism: A Comment on the October Leagues’s ’Call for Unity of Marxist-Leninists’”:
No matter how much it wriggles, the October League cannot escape from the fact that its basic line of directing the ’main blow’ of the U. S. proletariat at the U.S.S.R. is a social-chauvinist line of class betrayal. It serves the same objective as the war preparations of the U.S. imperialists, particularly the Democratic Party headed by Carter, who are employing deception to gain the ’confidence’ of the workers so that they will give up revolution in the U.S. and kill their fellow workers for the profits of the U. S. imperialist bourgeoisie...
In direct opposition to the OL’s social-chauvinism:
The COUSML practices complete opposition to, and resolute struggle against, ’our own’ bourgeoisie. We stand for launching revolutionary struggles against the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie and for supporting all revolutionary struggles against it, so as to oppose its war preparations and, in the case of an imperialist war, to utilize the bourgeoisie’s wartime predicament to intensify preparations to launch a civil war to overthrow it completely. This is the only communist line.
Let us see how the October League makes its newest attempt to justify its social-chauvinist, great-power national chauvinist line.
To extricate themselves from the quicksand they have gotten into with their line of directing the “main blow” at the Soviet Union, the leaders of the October League have found a few quotes from Stalin which at first glance seem to justify the OL’s social-chauvinism. Klonsky and company write in their article that:
Stalin warns against confusing the main danger (the direction of the main blow) with the main enemy (the strategic objective of the revolutionary struggle itself). ’Many people’, he pointed out, ’did not understand this specific feature of Bolshevik strategy and accused the Bolsheviks of excessive “Cadetophobia” when they directed their main blow against the liberal Cadet Party.
One can almost hear the leaders of the OL sigh with relief. “We have been unjustly accused of being social-chauvinists who think the main enemy is the Soviet Union”, they seem to say. “But now! What a relief! We have found a quotation from Stalin where he distinguishes between the ’objective’ of the revolutionary struggle and the ’direction of the main blow’ ”. No matter that OL’s use of “main blow” has nothing in common with Comrade Stalin’s use of “main blow”! No matter that Stalin’s articles on strategy and tactics in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution directly contradict the OL’s social-chauvinism. No matter that the OL has never before distinguished between the object of the ”main blow” and the ”objective” of the revolutionary struggle (and still doesn’t, as will be seen below when we examine the OL’s “justifications” for considering the Soviet Union the object of the “main blow”). Now the OL has been saved! Now the OL can replace dialectics with sophistry under the banner of being “loyal” to Comrade Stalin! But, as we shall see, it is no small task, in fact it is impossible, to convert Stalin, the great Marxist-Leninist, into a social-chauvinist flunkey of Uncle Sam. In its article, the OL states:
In an article on ’The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists’ he (Stalin) pointed out that determining the direction of the main blow is the ’fundamental strategic rule of Leninism’. (Collected Works, Vol. 6, p.401)
In order to understand where to aim the main blow, says Stalin, it is necessary to recognize three things: ’1) the compromising parties are the most dangerous social support of the enemies of the revolution; 2) it is impossible to overthrow the enemy.. .unless these parties are isolated; 3) the main weapons in the period of preparation for the revolution must be directed towards isolating these parties, towards winning the broad masses of the working people away from them.’ (Ibid., p. 402)
We will add, for the purpose of clarity, that the quotation in Stalin’s article continues as follows:
... Bolshevik strategy... called for the isolation of the compromising party in order to facilitate, to hasten the victory over the principal enemy.
The compromising parties stand between imperialism and the masses and attempt to strike a deal between the two to prevent revolution. In order to facilitate revolution against the main enemy, Stalin teaches, one must strike the main blow at these compromising parties and wipe out their influence among the masses. The OL claims to be an adherent of this strategic principle and is now declaring that this principle justifies striking the main blow at the Soviet Union.
But let us see how the October League “justifies” calling the Soviet Union the compromising party between the masses and imperialism and “justifies” striking the main blow at it. In the present article, Klonsky and company give their reasons as follows:
While opposing both superpowers as the main enemies, the main blow internationally must be directed at the Soviet social-imperialists. Soviet social-imperialism today is the greatest danger because in addition to being one of the main enemies it is also the main prop of imperialism. As long as the Soviet revisionists are able to portray the USSR as a ’socialist’ country and the ’natural ally’ of the world’s people, the defeat of imperialism is impossible.
In the case of the USSR, the ideological danger posed by modern revisionism has been augmented greatly by the fact that the social-imperialists are the more aggressive of the two superpowers.
So there you have it. Soviet social-imperialism is the “compromising party” between the masses and imperialism because it is one of the two “main enemies” of the world’s peoples, one of the two imperialist superpowers! In addition to this, it is “more aggressive” than U.S. imperialism! Thus the cat is out of the bag. The OL’s use of “main blow” is completely different from Comrade Stalin’s. Unlike Comrade Stalin, the OL social-chauvinists do not distinguish between the object of the “main blow” and the principal enemy, the “objective” of the revolutionary struggle. This demonstrates that the OL’s “use” of this quotation from Stalin is merely a smokescreen to hide its social-chauvinist line of allying with U.S. imperialism to direct the “main blow” at its rival superpower, which is “more aggressive”, etc. It is sophistry to use the fact that Moscow is the headquarters of the main trend of international opportunism, Khrushchovite modern revisionism, to sneak in the social-chauvinist conception of the proletariat of the American superpower striking its main blow at the rival of its “own” bourgeoisie, the other superpower, the Soviet state. A peculiar “compromising party” this Soviet Union which is “more aggressive” than the enemy with which it is supposedly striking a compromise! Isn’t this making an utter mockery of Comrade Stalin’s strategic rule and falsely trying to use it in the service of social-chauvinism? Not only that, but isn’t it criminally minimizing the danger of the Soviet Union to the world’s peoples to describe it as a “compromising party” between the masses and imperialism? Isn’t there a world of difference between a compromising party and an imperialist superpower armed to the teeth which constitutes one of the two main enemies of the peoples? Only someone who wants to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat, defend imperialism and hide his own opportunism could describe the Soviet Union as the main compromising party between imperialism and the masses. No, Mr. Klonsky and company, sophistry cannot save you! Neither Comrade Stalin, nor the American Marxist-Leninists and the U.S. proletariat, can be mobilized under your tattered red, white and blue banner!
The logic used in the OL’s present article to “justify” directing the “main blow” at the Soviet Union is the same logic it used in its earlier articles and interviews quoted by us in our September 1 polemic to show the social-chauvinist nature of this line. In an interview published in The Call, May 31, 1976, Mike Klonsky rationalized this line by saying that the Soviet Union is “the most dangerous” and “the main source of a new world war”. The “Hinton’s Folly” article in the August 2, 1976, Call was even more explicit:
The USSR is the main source of war. It is a superpower on the rise, while the U.S. is on the decline. It now possesses the largest military fortress, especially in Europe, which is the focus of the rivalry, and is expanding its military strength at the greatest pace. It disguises and hides its imperialist actions under the signboard of socialism. In order to expose the Soviet Union and strengthen vigilance against it, we must deal it the main blow.
Precious little here about the Soviet Union as a “compromising party”! Thus it is obvious that in calling for directing the “main blow” at the Soviet Union the OL has never had in mind the ideological exposure of the compromising party between the masses and imperialism, but has always intended – and still does – an out-and-out call to unite with U. S. imperialism against its main rival. All the reasons given by the OL for choosing the Soviet Union as the object of the “main blow” amount to saying that it is the main enemy, the principal enemy of the world’s people. As a matter of fact, by OL’s logic it would make more sense to call the U.S. imperialists the “compromising party” since they are always accusing it of appeasing the Soviet Union! This is how little the OL’s conception of the “main blow” has to do with that of Comrade Stalin.
The line of directing the “main blow” at Soviet social-imperialism is a line of class capitulation to the imperialist bourgeoisie, to the world system of imperialism, and to U.S. imperialism in particular. The COUSML has repeatedly and consistently opposed relying on or allying with one superpower to oppose the other. This is a fundamental question of class stand – either one stands on the side of the proletariat and oppressed nations and peoples and promotes revolutionary struggle against imperialism and all reaction, or one stands on the side of imperialism and reaction and promotes fighting for their interests.
In this case the OL advocates fighting for U.S. imperialism against its Soviet rivals. We are opposed to those who capitulate to U.S. imperialism on the grounds that one must direct the “main blow” against Soviet social-imperialism, and we are equally opposed to those who capitulate to Soviet social-imperialism under the hoax that it is still a “socialist country” and “U.S. imperialism is the main enemy”. We reject the “anti-social-imperialist” front promoted by U.S. imperialism and the monopoly bourgeoisie of the world, which the OL has joined, and we just as resolutely reject the “anti-imperialist” front preached by the Soviet revisionists directed at U.S. imperialism. The two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, are the biggest and most dangerous aggressive imperialist powers in history. Separately or together, they represent, in the same degree and to the same extent, the main enemy of socialism and the freedom and independence of nations, the greatest force defending oppressive and exploiting systems, and the direct threat of a third world war. We must never rely on one imperialism to “fight” the other. The line of the October League to direct “the main blow” at the Soviet Union leads the U. S. proletariat inevitably into supporting the war preparations of the U. S. imperialists against the Soviet New Tsars and thus into becoming pawns of U. S. imperialism in its struggle for world domination, liquidating the proletarian revolution in the U.S. altogether. The genuine Marxist-Leninists in the United States are unalterably opposed to such a line.
The line of the October League implies that the main division in the world, the main contradiction, is between the bourgeoisies of the two superpowers, and everyone must line up on one side or the other. This is a line of outright class capitulation. In fact, the main division in the world is not between the two superpowers, despite the fact that their rivalry is rapidly leading towards a new world war. Instead, the main division in the world is between the forces of imperialism and slavery, led by the two superpowers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the forces of socialism and freedom, consisting of the socialist countries, the world proletarian movement and the liberation movements of the oppressed nations. The struggle is between the world system of imperialism and the world proletarian socialist revolution. By lining up with U. S. imperialism in its scramble for world domination, the October League has placed itself on the side of imperialism, against the world revolution.
Let us see how Comrade Stalin describes the two forces in combat in the world in this era of world revolution, and let us note how he describes the actual compromising parties. In Foundations of Leninism Stalin develops in detail his analysis of the Leninist rules of strategy and tactics. We advise all revolutionaries to read it themselves to see the absurdity of OL’s views. In this well-known work, Stalin describes the strategy of the world proletarian revolution as follows:
Third Stage. Began after the October Revolution. Objective: to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country, using it as a base for the defeat of imperialism in all countries. The revolution spreads beyond the confines of one country; the epoch of world revolution has begun. The main forces of the revolution: the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country, the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all countries. Main reserves: the semi-proletarian and small-peasant masses in the developed countries, the liberation movement in the colonies and dependent countries. Direction of the main blow: isolation of the petty-bourgeois democrats, isolation of the parties of the Second International, which constitute the main support of the policy of compromise with imperialism. Plan for the disposition of forces: alliance of the proletarian revolution with the liberation movement in the colonies and the dependent countries.
Note that Comrade Stalin is clearly speaking of the world system of imperialism and not of some individual imperialist countries. Modern revisionism and other forms of opportunism have emerged to join the ranks of the compromising parties since Stalin’s article was written in 1924. But Stalin’s warning against opportunism remains in force. Thus Stalin clearly points out that it is opportunism in all countries, international opportunism, which plays the role of the compromising party attempting to strike a deal with imperialism. In no way can a major imperialist power be ascribed this role, as the October League has done, without capitulating to the world system of imperialism and lining up with its forces against the forces of the world proletarian socialist revolution, clearly described here by Stalin as socialism, the world proletariat and the liberation movement of the oppressed nations.
No, Mr. Klonsky, your sophistry will not go down with the U.S. Marxist-Leninists. By calling for the “main blow” to be struck at the Soviet Union and not at the real compromising parties internationally – international revisionism and opportunism of all stripes – you prove conclusively that the OL is not using the term “main blow” in the sense that Stalin used it, neither in its earlier articles and interviews nor in its latest, more sophisticated diatribe against Marxism-Leninism. Instead, the OL is simply calling – as before – on the workers and oppressed people of the imperialist United States to direct their struggle not at their “own” bourgeoisie, not to bring about its revolutionary overthrow, but at another imperialist power. But we Marxist-Leninists also have access to the works of Comrade Stalin, to the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, we are in contact with the masses and are able to accumulate the objective facts of the international situation. No amount of sophistry, no amount of dragging Comrade Stalin’s name in the mud, can hide the fact that the OL’s line is a straight-forward social-chauvinist line, socialist only in words, chauvinist in deeds, a line of kissing the feet of Uncle Sam while hurling a few impotent curses at the New Tsars of the Kremlin.
In their article, the OL leaders complain that some “opportunists” have failed to recognize the subtlety of their position. “These people”, they cry, ”have accused the OL and other Marxist-Leninists of neglecting the struggle against U.S. imperialism and concentrating ’too much fire on Soviet social-imperialism’”. This remark exposes the bourgeois thinking which underlies the OL’s entire social-chauvinist line.
The fact that the OL accuses the Marxist-Leninists of being opposed to “concentrating ’too much fire’ on Soviet social-imperialism” shows that the OL is so saturated with socialchauvinism that it cannot imagine any alternative but that those who oppose directing the “main blow” at Soviet social-imperialism must be agents of the Soviet New Tsars. This is because for the social-chauvinist and thoroughly bourgeois leaders of the OL, the main division in the world is between “them”, the foreign bourgeoisie of the Soviet Union, and “us”, the when-all-is-said-and-done, supposedly peaceful and democratic domestic bourgeoisie of the U. S. If you don’t want to ally with “us” against “them”, then in the eyes of the OL you must be apologists for “them”. Thus the OL leaders deny the class struggle and proletarian revolution and become pawns in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie in its scramble for world domination.
The two superpowers are viciously struggling with each other and their dogfight is leading the world towards a new and terrible world war. But this does not mean that the main division in the world is between the two. At the same time as they contend with each other, which is a contradiction in the enemy camp as far as the world revolution is concerned, the superpowers also collude with each other to suppress the world’s people as well as doing so individually. This is a class contradiction, a contradiction between the world’s peoples and their two main enemies. The world system of imperialism is confronting the world proletarian socialist revolution and is being consumed in the fires of this revolution.
The COUSML has never accused the October League of “concentrating ’too much fire’ ” at any reactionary, Soviet social-imperialism included. Such an accusation can only come out of the mouths of social-chauvinists of a rival type to the OL. On the contrary, we have consistently pointed out that the OL’s social-chauvinist line of directing the “main blow” at the Soviet New Tsars is their excuse for capitulating to the world system of imperialism. We hold that those who, like the October League, have capitulated to one superpower or the other, have thereby capitulated to the world system of imperialism and are incapable of resolutely opposing any imperialism or any reactionary at all. Having capitulated to U.S. imperialism, the OL cannot possibly “concentrate ’too much fire on Soviet social-imperialism’”; it can only “concentrate ’too much fire’” at the forces of socialism and freedom!
Let us see how the OL goes about “concentrating” this deadly barrage of firepower at Soviet social-imperialism.
One prominent case is the OL’s lengthy romance with the Guardian. We would like to ask the social-chauvinists of the October League: were you “concentrating too much fire” on Soviet social-imperialism when you danced a loving waltz for years with this notorious revisionist rag? The Guardian is a rotten, anti-communist paper with a long-standing history of Khrushchovite revisionism, of apologizing for Soviet social-imperialism, and of capitulating to the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie. The Guardian did its best to prevent the youth and student movement of the 60’s from turning to Mao Tsetung Thought. At the behest of Soviet revisionism, the Guardian promoted Castroism as the militant-sounding front for selling out to the Soviet New Tsars and as the alternative to Mao Tsetung Thought. When, despite the best efforts of the Guardian, Mao Tsetung Thought was winning victory after victory among the activists coming from the revolutionary mass movements, the Guardian suddenly turned “Marxist-Leninist” in the early 1970’s in order to oppose Marxism-Leninism “from within”, so to speak. And in this treacherous and foul work it was supported by the October League and other neo-revisionists who formed unprincipled alliances with it as part of their plan to oppose the followers of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as “ultra-left”. Who can forget the disgusting spectacle of the October League parading around at the Guardian party-building forum in 1973 and lavishing kisses and caresses on the notorious ultra-rightist Irwin Silber while slandering the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) (a predecessor of the COUSML) and other communists as “ultra-left” and “CIA agents” and physically preventing them from speaking? And when the OL finally fell out with the Guardian, did it do a service to the whole movement for once and at least expose the long-standing reactionary history of the Guardian? Not in the least! How did the OL explain its break with the Guardian? Klonsky and company piously lifted their eyes to heaven and sighed that the Guardian “covers up the real nature of Soviet social-imperialism”. Charming, isn’t it? It took the OL until 1975 to notice that the Guardian is an apologist for the New Tsars! The OL actually allied with these pro-Soviet apologists until then. And now the OL has the gall to suggest the Marxist-Leninists accuse it of fighting too hard against the New Tsars!!
Or let us take the example of Angola. Now that the Soviet social-imperialists, with the collusion of the U.S. imperialists, have sent over 15,000 Cuban puppet troops to invade and occupy Angola, does the OL come out boldly to support the Second Anti-Colonial War of the Angolan people? No! In all of the reams of copy it has written on the question, only a few lines mention the revolutionary people’s war against the Soviet-Cuban invaders led by UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). The OL has never pointed out the world-wide importance of this struggle, which is the first national liberation war against the Soviet superpower. Closely connected to this is the fact that the OL has never exposed the support U. S. imperialism is giving to the MPLA government of national betrayal in Luanda, whose power rests on Soviet-Cuban bayonets. In fact, it was only the Soviet-Cuban invasion which let U.S. imperialism keep its claws on Angola. The Soviet-Cuban invasion in July 1975 provided the perfect pretext for U.S. imperialism to send in the troops of its satellite, racist South Africa, in October. Further, the Soviet-Cuban invasion allowed the U.S. monopolies to hold onto their lucrative investments in Angola. These oil fields, etc., would have been seized by the Angolan people if a genuinely independent government of national unity had been formed, as UNITA advocated, after the U. S.-backed Portuguese colonialists had been kicked out in 1975. Today the U.S. imperialist Gulf Oil Company is a main source of revenue for the Luanda regime and still reaps superprofits for the Mellon financiers from its oil fields in Angola. Also, the Luanda regime has signed an agreement with the U. S.-dominated racist South African regime to protect South African (thus U.S.) economic interests in Angola – the Cunene Dam, etc. By this agreement, the MPLA-Luanda regime also betrayed SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization) by promising South Africa, which dominates Namibia with U.S. backing, that it will deny the SWAPO guerrillas the right to operate from Angolan bases. (However, since SWAPO has always operated from UNITA bases in southern Angola, it is not in the power of the Luanda regime to decree an end to SWAPO’s armed struggle.) By refusing to expose U. S. support for the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA regime in Luanda against UNITA and the Angolan people, the OL fails to oppose the widespread slander by imperialism and opportunism that the Angolan people’s struggle is simply a tool of U. S. imperialism in its rivalry with Russia for the domination of Angola and Africa. The OL thus fails to show that UNITA and the Angolan people are fighting for the total independence of Angola. If this is not shown, then progressive people in the U. S. will still be fooled by the lies and slanders of the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Daily World and the Guardian and will not support the Angolan people. The OL thus hides the fact that the two superpowers collude with each other against the peoples who are fighting for liberation when they are threatened with the complete loss of their prized possessions. In this case, this collusion is a fact which all opportunists want to hide in order to protect U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism and slander UNITA, the most resolute fighter in Angola against all imperialism. Here, again, the OL capitulates to imperialism in general, and this time to Soviet social-imperialism in particular. Can this be called proletarian internationalist support for the oppressed Angolan people? And is this “concentrating ’too much fire on Soviet social-imperialism’?
Thus the OL leaders’ complaint of being accused of “concentrating ’too much fire on Soviet social-imperialism’” not only reveals their bourgeois class stand and thinking, which has led them into social-chauvinism, but is also quite laughable.
In their present article the OL sophists claim (which they did not do before) that the American Marxist-Leninists and proletariat have not one, but two “main blows” to strike. They claim that they are only calling for the aiming of the “main blow” of the U. S. proletariat at Russia in the international sphere, while at home the “main blow” would be domestic. Once again, sophistry is the last refuge of scoundrels. This new “main blow” is obviously concocted to “prove” that the OL is not calling on the American workers to direct their fire at a foreign bourgeoisie, thus “clearing” the OL of social-chauvinism. Now the OL only holds that the American workers should strike their “main blow” at the Soviet Union in the international sphere (for that matter, how could they do so anywhere else?). This, of course, means that they should only participate in Carter’s war preparations “internationally”, should only participate in imperialist war “internationally”, etc., etc. Very enlightening and every bit as social-chauvinist as before.
The OL makes much of its claim that the “main blow” at home is to be struck at the “reformists and revisionists”. These, they say, are “the main props of imperialism, advocating compromise with the system rather than all-out struggle against it”. In their eagerness to find a mask to pull over their social-chauvinism on the question of the “main blow”, the OL leaders have fallen all over themselves. Comrade Lenin, in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, pointed out that the labor aristocracy was “the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie”. Today in the U.S. the revisionists and reformists, of which the OL speaks, are the political representatives of this “stratum of bourgeoisified workers” who are bribed from the superprofits brought in from the exploitation of the colonies and semi-colonies. This stratum is the main social prop of imperialism, but not its main military prop. And obviously imperialism’s “main prop”, to use OL’s phrase, is the armed bourgeois state machine. Is n’t it interesting that in its haste to “clear” itself of social-chauvinism by finding a domestic “main blow”, the OL leaders would “forget” the bourgeois state itself! This reveals that here, as in the “international” sphere, the OL leaders fail to distinguish between the object of the “main blow”, which is the compromising parties, in this case the opportunists, and the objective of the revolutionary struggle itself, the bourgeois state. Thus, again, the OL leaders are not using Comrade Stalin’s strategic rule in the sense in which it was intended. Instead, they are simply sowing confusion to divert attention from the fact that on the burning question of class stand in relation to the two superpowers the October League stands squarely on the side of social-chauvinism and imperialism. (Similarly, when, in the passage quoted above, the OL “justified” striking the main blow at Russia because it was the “main prop” of imperialism, it also let the U.S. imperialist state machine off the hook. But this is just another “oversight”...)
Furthermore, just as the OL was unable to direct any real fire at Soviet social-imperialism in the international sphere, so at home it also fails to follow Comrade Stalin’s guidelines and direct any real fire at the compromising parties in the U. S. Despite the fact that the OL leaders regularly blurt out a few trite phrases against the revisionist “Communist” Party because it is “nothing but” an agent of the Soviet Union (Klonsky interview cited above), the OL does not in fact direct any fire at the line of the political representatives of the labor aristocracy. Instead, the OL actually supports their political line.
Take the social-democratic trade union misleaders, such as Woodcock and Sadlowski, who are real compromising elements, labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, social props of imperialism, trying to tie the proletariat hand and foot to the bourgeoisie’s program of increased exploitation and war preparations. In the OL’s eyes the line of the social-democratic trade union misleaders, which in large part is the line of the Democratic Party, is basically correct but simply not militant enough. For all OL’s present continual whining against individual trade union misleaders, with which it has replaced its earlier “full support” for Miller and Sadlowski (earlier OL had said “critical support is no support at all”), it still has never repudiated the political line of the aristocracy of labor, rather than simply attack bad individuals. For example, the OL wrote in The Call, May 24, 1976, that the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, that all-curing panacea of the liberals and social-democrats, was merely a “fraud”, “an effort to sidetrack the people’s anger”, having “no teeth in it”. The Workers’ Advocate pointed out in an article in its September 1 polemic against the OL that this bill is a fascist bill of attack on the working class, not a harmless “fraud” which is only lacking “teeth”. We wrote that the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill “would impose forced labor on welfare and unemployment compensation recipients at minimum wages, would prepare conditions for wage-price controls and would further fascize the trade union apparatus by bringing the labor bureaucrats into a ’national economic planning’ apparatus with the bourgeoisie and its state to ’coordinate’ production and wages, etc.” In fact, this bill already had plenty of fascist “teeth” in it, yet the OL called for more! This is a sharp exposure of its inability to direct any fire at the compromising parties; in fact, it reveals that the OL actually supports them in their efforts to assist the monopoly bourgeoisie in developing fascism in the U.S.
Other examples are readily available. Take the Watergate affair. At that time the OL called for full support for the ”liberal” bourgeois line of uniting all against Nixon, but they complained that “the liberal politicians and their ’left’ supporters ... stand paralyzed” (February 1974 Call) and will not take sufficiently militant action to defend the interests of the “liberal” bourgeoisie, get rid of Nixon and unite the bourgeoisie once again to fight against the proletariat. Or, finally, a more recent example. In its pre-election “exposure” of the “liberal” bourgeois Carter, in the Nov. 1 issue of The Call, the main thing the OL could find to criticize Carter for was that he did not stand for strong enough contention against Soviet social-imperialism for world hegemony! The two superpowers are furiously fighting each other for world domination, leading the world toward a new world war, and according to the October League the leader of the Democratic Party does not have a strong enough stand against the Soviet Union! That is, Carter is not chauvinist enough for the social-chauvinist worthies of the OL! This is how the OL “fights” against the social-democratic line of compromise – by calling for a bigger “main blow” to be struck against the Soviet Union...
* * *
Thus, despite its latest sophistry, the OL continues (in its own words) to “neglect the struggle against U.S. imperialism” by declaring that the “main blow” of the U. S. proletariat should be aimed at the Soviet Union. It continues to ally itself with the U. S. bourgeoisie and helps it mobilize the American workers and oppressed people against its superpower rival, thus capitulating to the imperialist bourgeoisie and the system of world imperialism. The OL social-chauvinists are still on their chauvinist course.
The world situation today is turbulent. The proletarian revolutionaries must not show the slightest fear at the war preparations of the superpowers, at the storms of class struggle emerging. A consistent class stand towards the imperialist bourgeoisie of the two superpowers is the fundamental question for all revolutionary forces today, a question which determines their strategy and tactics and which separates the revolutionary from the reactionary forces. Both when the superpowers contend against each other and when they collude with each other, both when they fight and when they collaborate, they do so for the purpose of exploiting and plundering the peoples. Thus one must never rely on one imperialism to “fight” another. This is a matter of class stand and class struggle.