First Published: February 15, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The current situation in Angola is civil war and foreign intervention. The courageous struggle of the Angolan people to liberate their nation has been twisted into a fratricidal struggle for political domination. This political contention has been produced by the struggle between the two superpowers for control not only of Angola, but of all of Africa, and for the economic redivision of the world. The current situation in Angola, and the history of these recent developments, are important for us to understand in order to mobilize the progesslve People of the U.S. against the grave danger of imperialist war by the two superpowers. Angola is clear example of the international contention between the declining United States imperialism and the rising Soviet social imperialism. All progressive and revolutionary people should pay close attention to the current world situation, the rising danger of imperialist war which goes hand in hand with domestic fascism, and get prepared.
The modern history of Africa, and the entire world is, on the one hand, a bloody record of the criminal acts of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism for aggression and exploitation. On the other hand, it is also a history of the heroic struggle of the worlds’ revolutionary people and the oppressed colonial people against oppression. In this long struggle, imperialism has changed from a strong force to a weak force; it is the people of the world which have decided the course of history, not the Imperialist rulers. Weak nations can defeat strong nations. As the Chinese have pointed out, countries want independence, nations want liberation and the people want revolution—this is an irresistable historical tide. The modern history of Angola is an important chapter in the revolutionary tide of the worlds’ people.
By the fifteenth century the Angolan peoples were already organized into a number of interdependent states. In 1469 Portuguese navigators, seeking new trade routes and loot for the European market discovered the Cape Verde Islands. In 1482 they reached the mouth of the Congo River, the region today called Cabinda. Here they installed garrisons and trading stations. Between distant Europe and the highly systematized Angolan kingdoms, extensive trade began. The Portuguese had much of their direct confrontation with the most western of these states, the Loango, the Bakongo, the Ndongo, and the Ovimbunda. The most dominant of these states was the Bakongo. It was the Bakongo state which bore the brunt of Portuguese diplomatic deceptions. Within a few decades, the Angolan coast was bristling with impregnable forts, the ports had become vast prisons, and the social infra-structure of the Angolan states was being destroyed by the invaders.
The Portuguese first gained hold of the Bakongo areas as a base. They interrupted the process of royal succession which up to then had insured participation in government by a fairly large group of eligible office holders. In1540, a royal succession was legitimated which guaranteed the continued domination of Portugal. Portugal enforced a monopoly of trade which broke down the economic cohesion of the Bakongo.[1]
Using Bakongo lands as a base area, the Portguese penetrated into other sections of Angola In search of loot and slaves. But the conquest of Angola was not easy. From the earliest days resistance and rebellion were the Angolan peoples’ response to foreign conquest. In 1590, the forces of the Ndongo routed the Portuguese expeditionary forces. The Angolan people learned the methods of Portuguese diplomatic trickery and became skilled in turning this weapon against the oppressor. In 1621, Jinga, the sister of the king of the Ndonqo, led a delegation to Luanda to sign a treaty and to be baptized. Using the opportunity of Portuguese unpreparedness, Jinga launched a bitter war of resistance to Portuguese colonialism which disrupted the slave trade and freed her people from Portuguese domination until 1636.[2]
The Angolan people learned to use the contention between rival colonial power’s such as that between the Dutch and the ”Portuguese to play both off against each other and to preserve self-rule.
Following the suppression of the Bakongo in 1665 and of the Ndongo in 1680, the slave trade expanded and flourished throughout Angola. It is generally agreed that Angola, of all African countries, suffered the most from this vicious trade. Virtually the entire Black population of Brazil and other countries in the Western Hemisphere has its origin in the brutal enslavement of the Angolan people. Some six million Angolans were taken as slaves from Africa. It is appropriate that the peoples of Angola and Black people in the United States have felt such close affinity in struggle against national oppression.
In the eighteenth century, opposition to slaving developed around the counter goal of exploiting the resources of the colony. When the slave trade had outlived its economic usefulness, and was abolished in the late 18th century, over 3,500,000 slaves had been exported to Brazil alone, and most of Angola’s western coast had been depopulated.
It was slavery’s role in the development of capitalism that has been a strong force in moulding the character of the national liberation movements. The trade in Black lives was the cornerstone in capitalism’s primitive accumulation. In Volume I of CAPITAL; in the chapter, “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist,” Marx clearly pointed out that Britain’s primitive accumulation was based on the slave-trade; that it was the slave-trade that furnished Britain with sufficient capital to launch itself upon the road of industrial development.
This enslavement of Black Africans provided the capital base for the industrialization of both Europe and the United States; in Europe through the trade in slaves and in the United States through their exploitation and oppression in the Black Belt South. This industrialization in turn gave rise to the enslavement of whole nations by monopoly capitalism, imperialism. But as capitalism has generated its own gravedigger–the working class, so imperialism has generated its gravediggers, the industrial working class united with the oppressed nations and colonies. Imperialism has united the national and colonial struggles and has welded these to the overall struggle of the working class for the defeat of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the establishment of socialism.
After the abolition of slavery, contract labor became common and the misery of the workers was severe. Workers formed themselves into bands to resist and evade this oppression. In spite of severely weakened conditions, the Angolan people continued to write new chapters in the proud history of their struggle for liberation.
In 1878, using the contradiction between the Portuguese and their British overlords, the titular king of the Bakongo, Pedro the 5th, introduced British Protestantism to the Bakongo. This was an expression of resistance to the Catholic Portuguese colonial administration when other avenues were closed by savage repression. The beginning of the twentieth century was greeted by uprisings among the Ovimbunda people, the Cuanhama and the Bakongo.
The first Imperialist World War and the victory of the Socialist Revolution had a great impact on the development of the colonial movements. In Angola, the press-ganging of Angolans into the colonial army had the effect of heightening the Angolan peoples’ national consciousness. In the North, the Bakongo people waged a fierce struggle led by the Protestant king, Don Manuel Kidutu, which was bloodily suppressed. Thousands fled into the Belgian Congo seeking refuge from Portuguese oppression. In 1913, the Liga Angolana was formed. This organization was based in the mestizo, urban petty bourgeoisie, and advocated economic and social advancement within the limits of Portuguese colonialism. This organization and its successors were the chronological and ideological contemporaries of the N.A.A.C.P. in the United States.[3] They were spurred on by Pan-Africanists such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois. Around the world, successful socialist revolution had an important impact on the consciousness of many African revolutionaries. With these examples, the various nations of Africa embarked upon the road of national liberation. In Angola, there was a flowering of national and cultural movements, such as the Grenio Africano, the Liga Nacional Africana, in 1929; the Sociedad Cultural de Angola in 1943.
The Movimento Popular de Libertagao de Angola was founded in 1956 as a front of several organizations. Its first general secretary was Viriato da Cruz, mestizo poet and a founder of the Communist Party of Angola. The social base of the MPLA was among the radical petty bourgeois urban mestizo population of Luanda, Catete and Malange.[4] In its early days, the MPLA was hard-pressed by the repression of the Portuguese secret police, the P.I.D.E., and could not build a strong base in the ubran working class or the peasantry. As a result of the the wave of arrests that occured in 1960 (in which Agostinho Neto was arrested) the MPLA attempted, on February 4, 1961, to free imprisoned MPLA cadre in Luanda. The attempt was a failure and the MPLA was all but wiped out inside Angola. Between 1961 and 1964 when MPLA’s Cabinda front was opened, from the neighboring Congo (BrazzeviIle), the MPLA had no military activity in Angola. During this time the MPLA attempted to gather support for an eventual return to Angola. It attended the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization in Bandung in 1961, and with other anti-Portuguese movements from the Conference of National Organizations of Portuguese Colonies (CONCOP) the same year.
In 1962, Mario de Andrade, another founder of the MPLA, travelled through the United States seeking support for the MPLA.[5] Also in 1962, Agostinho Neto rejoined the leadership of the MPLA, having escaped from house arrest in Lisbon. By early 1963, inter-organizational differences over which road to take, armed struggle or negotiation, created a split in the leadership. Viriato da Cruz, a communist and advocate of armed struggle, was purged, along with his supporters, from leadership. Later that year, MPLA entered into a united front with the MDIA and Nto Bako, both pacifist organizations opposed to armed struggle and known to collaborate with the Portuguese colonial administration.[6] In July of 1963, the Organization of African Unity African Liberation Committee investigated the situation in Angola, found that the MPLA had no active military force and instructed the MPLA to join the FNLA, then the only military opposition to Portuguese colonialism.[7] Da Cruz testified at the 0.A.U.-African Liberation Committee investigation that the FNLA was the only organization engaged in armed struggle in Angola.
In 1964, the MPLA, backed by Chinese and Soviet military aid, opened a front in the enclave of Cabinda, using the Peoples Republic of the Congo as a base. The activity in Cabinda was considered a military failure[8] and in 1966, the MPLA opened another front in the east-central part of Angola, using Zambia as its base area. From here, the MPLA expanded its activities both against the Portuguese and against FNLA and UNITA, which was founded in 1966.
Because the MPLA was always the best armed of the three liberation fronts, its attacks on the smaller and poorly armed UNITA were initially successful in wiping UNITA out in central Angola but eventually UNITA was able to hold its own against both Portuguese and MPLA attacks. This was attributed to UNITA’s reliance on methods of protracted peoples’ warfare and its support among the peasant masses. The MPLA relied on conventional methods of war.
In November of 1974, along with the two other liberation movements, the MPLA arrived at an agreement on a cease-fire with the Portuguese. In January of 1975t the three movements signed the Mombasa Agreement and the Alvor Agreement with Portugal[9], by which all three pledged themselves to work for national reconstruction; in June, 1975, the three signed the Nakuru Agreement by which they pledged to work together peacefully in a coalition government.[10]
After the signing of the Alvor Agreement, armed confrontations began to occur in Luanda between the MPLA and FNLA, sparked by the influx of heavy Soviet military equipment for the MPLA. In July, civil war broke out between the MPLA and FNLA after the MPLA attempted to shoot down HoIden Roberto’s airplane and in August the UNITA entered the fighting after a similar incident involving Dr. Jonas Savimbi.
Since the cessation of hostilities between the liberation movements and Portugal, the Soviet Union has supplied the MPLA with many more arms to fight fellow Angolans than it ever supplied in the struggle against the Portuguese. It has supplied the MPLA with heavy equipment and trained personnel to operate it which it refused to give during the anti-Portuguese struggle.[11]
The Frente Nacional de Libertagao de Angola (FNLA) was founded out of “the union of the Uniao das Populacaes de Angola (UPA) led by HoIden Roberto and the Parti do Democratico Angolano (PDA). Originally a Bakongo tribalist group[12], the UPA had adopted Pan Africanism as its ideology as a result of the First All-African Peoples Conference, held in Ghana in 1958. There, such eminent Pan-Africanists as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, and other African and Black U.S. leaders convinced Ho I den Roberto of the need for national as opposed to tribal movements. From its early days, the UPA had had the support of U.S. Protestant missionary groups who were are of the “Protestant-Catholic” conflict in Angola.
The Congolese CiviI War had a strong effect on the UPA. Roberto, a close friend of Patrice Lumumba, was forced to flee the Congo after Joseph Kasavubu came to power.[13] 1961 marked the beginning of UPA armed resistance in Angola. In January 1961, a month before the unsuccessful MPLA attack in Luanda, a spontaneous insurrection occurred in northern Angola, among Bakongo tribesmen, led by Antonio Mariano. The rebellious peasants invoked the names of Patrice Lumumba, Jose Pinock, UPA leader, and Mariano. The uprising was brutally crushed. In March, while HoIden Roberto was speaking at the U.N., he announced the beginning of a revolutionary war of national liberation. In this first campaign, UPA suffered an estimated 20,000 casualties, having been savagely butchered by the Portuguese.[14] Over 150,000 Bakongo Angolans fled into the Congo. In WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, Roberto’s friend Frantz Fanon vividly and movingly described the heroic character of this uprising and cited Roberto as the leader of the Angolan people. With the overthrow of the Kasavubu regime in the Congo, the UPA was allowed to set up base areas in the Congo while maintaining active resistance in Angola.
In 1962, the UPA merged with the PDA to form the FNLA. The FNLA established the Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (GRAE). Jonas Savimbi, a native of southern Angola, was chosen foreign minister. Savimbi had come to the FNLA at the encouragement of Tom Mboya, the famous Kenyan leader. In 19-63, the O.A.U.-A.L.C. recognized the FNLA as the only active liberation movement in Angola. In the next year, 1964, three setbacks befell FNLA. The first was the reduction in funds from the O.A.U. because of MPLA’s initiation of the Cabinda front. The second was the resignation of Dr. Jonas Savimbi and his comrades. Savimbi charged FNLA leadership with emigre mentality, corruption and tribalism. The third setback was the harassment of FNLA/GRAE from the Moise Tshombe administration in the Congo. In 1965, Joseph Mobutu overthrew Tshombe and ended the harassment of FNLA. Since 1965, FNLA has concentrated its activities in holding the northern provinces of Angola and has thereby retained a distinctly Bakongo character, this in spite of the defection to FNLA of Daniel Chipenda, former MPLA field commander.
The FNLA leadership is the bourgeois and petty bourgeois based in the Angolan emigre community of Zaire. Politically, it is closely tied to the interests of the Mobutu leadership in Zaire. The FNLA has received funds from virtually every source including the CIA, the OAU, Tunisia, Algeria, Peoples’ China, and the World Council of Churches. Since the start of the Civil War, it has relied on the U.S., Zaire, and South Africa mainly. It gets no aid from China, since the Nakuru Agreement.
UNITA (The Union for the Total Independence of Angola) was founded in 1966, inside Angola in the heat of armed struggle. It is the only one of the three movements which was founded inside Angola and which grew out of armed struggle. It is also the first of the three organizations to establish its headquarters inside Angola. Its general secretary is Dr. Jonas Savimbi, of Protestant Ovimbunda background. He is a professor of political science, graduated from the Lausanne who served for a brief period as foreign minister in the FNLA/GRAE administration.[15]
The social base of UNITA is in the peasantry of Angola which makes up 98% of the Angolan people. UNITA is based on three methods of work:
1. Collective leadership;
2. Democratic centralism;
3. Criticism and self-criticism.[16]
The principles of UNITA’s philosophy adopted in its constitution call for
a. self reliance;
b. waging people’s war;
c. learn the science of war by waging war;
d. to apply revolutionary ideology;
e. to affirm the need for a democratic front of all the nation’s liberation movements.[17]
The UNITA’s self-reliance was confirmed by reporters from the “Zambia Times” who, in 1969, traveled with UNITA 500 miles into Angola. Articles published in September 1969 in the “Zambia Times” confirmed that the majority of UNITA’s arms were captured from the Portuguese. It was on this basis that the charge of NATO support for Portuguese colonialism was documented, since the captured weapons were NATO issue. UNITA has also relied upon its fraternal relations with the Southwest African Peoples’ Organization (SWAPO). UNITA bases have been used as staging areas for SWAPO’s attacks against the fascist apartheid regime that illegally controls Namibia.[18]
UNITA has consistently attempted to unite the liberation struggle. Its constitution includes an affirmation that a democratic front of all liberation movements is essential. The UNITA has consistently documented its successes against the Portuguese. During the period up to the beginning of the civil war, UNITA refrained from open denunciations of the other liberation movements.
In terms of its ideology, UNITA has sought to know its people, their history, and their concrete conditions within the country, and apply the scientific principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to those concrete conditions. It has gone through a long and protracted struggle in attempt to do this. UNITA credits its success in applying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as the key to its ability to withstand all attempts to crush it. Of the three liberation movements, UNITA is the only one that explicitly refers to the building of socialism in Angola in its program.[19]
Since the beginning of the civil war, UNITA has been calling for an end to the fighting and the establishment of a government of national unity, as well as an end to outside interference. UNITA has been forced to struggle on two fronts; in the north against Cuban and Katangese mercenaries. The Katangese troops are the same troops used by Moise Tshombe to murder Lumumba in the early 1960’s. On the southern front, UNITA was the first movement to denounce the South African fascist invaders as early as August 1975. UNITA, along with the MPLA forces, were repulsed by the invaders. The Soviet-sponsored propaganda about collaboration between UNITA and South African forces is a Soviet fabrication to cover Soviet Social-Imperialism’s destructive role in Angola.
The history of imperialist involvement in Africa has been not only a history of imperialist oppression, but more importantly, a history of anti-imperialist resistance and victory over the forces of imperialism. Imperialism has plundered Africa and created a political, economic and cultural superstructure to sustain imperialist oppression. But, as imperiaIism has drawn the peoples of Africa into its oppressive system, it has laid the basis for a common resistance by the oppressed peoples of its colonies. Common oppression “has bred common resistance. The peoples of Africa have taken their destiny into their own hands and it is our duty to support their just struggle. With the formation of bodies like the Organization of African Unity and its African Liberation Support Committee, in 1960, the African peoples have demonstrated their resolve to liberate all Africa from outside domination. This struggle for national liberation in Africa together with the struggles of the peoples of Asia and Latin America, are the storm-centers of revolutionary activity today.
Previous to World War II, the Portuguese colonialists were supported mainly by British imperialism. Portugal’s existence was parasitic on the existence of its African colonies and functioned as a middleman for other European states, primarily Great Britain. After World War II, with the decline of Europe and the consolidation of United States Imperialism’s leading role in the Imperialist market, United States Imperialism increasingly replaced Great Britain and other European countries as the principle exploiter of Angola’s wealth. By 1973, United States Imperialism had become the single largest exploiter of Angola’s raw materials, with Portugal and Canada coming in second and third.[20] In the early 1960’s, oil was discovered in the enclave of Cabinda, and Gulf Oil Company has obtained sole rights to exploit these resources.
Politically, U.S. imperialism has been the main prop for the thoroughly reactionary Portuguese regime. Financial interests in the U.S., in hopes of winning concessions, have supplied funds to some of the organizations. The FNLA has received funds not only from the CIA, but also from important monopoly capitalists. Gulf Oil Company has supplied funds to the MPLA, in an effort to win concessions from that organization.
From 1954 to 1974, the Soviet Union exported over three billion U.S. dollars worth of capital to the African countries, of which the largest part was invested in oil-rich northern and western Africa. Soviet “aid” in geological survey and mineral exploration accounts for 12% of its total aid to Africa. “Joint Stock Enterprises” are one of the major tools by which the Soviet Union plunders African raw materials at low prices, exploits cheap labor, exports capital and commodities.
The value of Soviet manufactured exports to Africa in 1974 was over seven times, and machinery equipment, over ten times the figure of I960. It is estimated that African countries sustained a loss between 1955 to 1974 of nearly 2.4 billion dollars as a result of unfair Soviet trading practices. In 1974, African countries had to export 4.2 tons of coffee in exchange for a Soviet metal-cutting lathe instead of 1.8 tons in 1955.[21]
With the full restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the need for imperialist expansion has resulted in the gross distortion of the Soviet economy. The percentage of military outlay in the national income has jumped from 13% in I960 to 19.6% in 1974. Prewar Nazi Germany registered only 19% by comparison and the U.S. percentage at the time of the Vietnam War was 10% by comparison. By 1974, the arms buildup accounted for about 35$ of overall Soviet expenditure.[22] The cancerous militarization of the Soviet national economy has spurred a desperate search for even cheaper sources of raw materials and agricultural goods to prop up the lop-sided Soviet economy. The rapacious search for more victims of Soviet “international division of labor” (such as Czechoslovakia and India) to supply the Soviet Union with needed goods, has prompted Soviet Social-Imperialists to use the signboard of “socialism” to make inroads into Africa.
Politically, Soviet Social-Imperialism has high-handedly “ordained” some liberation movements as “genuine” and condemned others as “fake” in an effort to split these movements. Wherever it has been able to, it has split the liberation movements, supplying funds to some and attacking the rest in the hope of making the movements it supports into puppets. Wherever it has not succeeded in splitting the movements, it has limited its support or attempted to undermine the leadership. It has turned the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization into a tool for bullying the liberation movements into support for its activities and used the organization to disrupt the Organization of African Unity.
Clearly, Soviet Social-Imperialism’s goal in Angola is to enslave it to the “international division of labor”, turn it into another one-crop satellite economy like Cuba and use it as a staging area for military contention with U.S. imperialism in the south Atlantic.
U.S. imperialism is a declining superpower. The decline of U.S. economic, political, and military domination in Africa is a good thing for the people of Africa and for Angola in particular–but its replacement by another superpower, a rising social-fascist imperialism, must be opposed. During the war of national liberation against Portuguese colonialism, Soviet Social-Imperial ism refused to supply sophisticated heavy equipment to any of the liberation groups. Today, in order to promote disunity and gain a foothold in Angola, the U.S.S.R. has stepped in to supply not only the heavy sophisticated weaponry but the foreign personnel to slaughter Angolan people. Fearing the domestic and foreign reaction to the use of Soviet troops, the U.S.S.R. has substituted puppet Cuban and Katangan mercenaries to act as cannon-fodder.
The policy of the Peoples Republic of China has been and continues to be a consistent policy of aid to the newly liberated nations and national liberation movements based on the principles of proletarian internationalism. China has consistently supported the struggle of African countries to obtain and maintain both political and economic independence. While Soviet SociaI-ImperiaIism’s aid has aimed at turning the emerging nations of Africa into neo-colonies through its “international division of labor” and “limited sovereignty” for countries under its economic control, Chinese aid has promoted the economic and political self-reliance of the emerging African nations.
The completion of the Tan-Zam Railway from Zambia through Tanzania is a clear example of proletarian internationalism. Zambia, a land-locked country whose only previous rail way routes crossed through the two hostile white settler regimes of Portuguese AngoIa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was prevented from exercising its political right to aid the African liberation movements. The white colonialist regimes held Zambia’s life, its copper trade, in an economic strangle-hold. China provided not only the technical and economic assistance in building the Tan-Zam Railway, but also provided Tanzania and Zambia with the tools and technological know-how to maintain the railway without the need for reliance on foreign aid. Chinese doctors provided free medical and health care throughout the entire project, also.
China has consistently provided aid to all liberation movements who strive to free their countries through armed struggle, making no political demands of any liberation organization other than to struggle against imperialism. Unlike Soviet Social-Imperialism, the Peoples Republic of China has left the internal contradictions of African nations for them to solve.
In Angola, the Peoples Republic of China consistently offered aid to all the liberation movements during the anti-imperialist war of national liberation. After the end of the national liberation war3 the Peoples Republic of China withdrew aid to all three liberation movements. It thereby recognized the responsibility and right of the Angolan people to solve their national contradictions among themselves.
The correct stand for progressive and revolutionary people of the U.S., an imperialist superpower, is to oppose both U.S. and Soviet superpower aggression and interference in the internal affairs of other nations, and uphold the right of self-determination for all oppressed nations–whether in Africa or in the Black Belt South.
The people of the United States must be mobilized to understand the growing threat of war between the two superpowers, and the fact that imperialist war abroad means fascist rule at home; they go hand in hand. The Soviet Union, in its quest for world hegemony, is the greatest threat of a new world war – a war which will certainly involve the United States. Europe is the primary focus of the contention between the two superpowers, and that is where the bulk of U.S. and Soviet military hardware is concentrated. As the Chinese have stated, while we must guard against the wolf entering in the front door (U.S.), we must guard against the tiger (U.S.S.R.) coming in the back.
Angola is important to both superpowers as a potential military staging area in the south Atlantic against Europe, and as a base for aggression and interference throughout Africa.
Progressive and revolutionary people must launch a campaign of propaganda and agitation against the two superpowers and must not get caught in the Soviet revisionists’ (or CPUSA’s) web of deceptions about the current situation in Angola.
Those that support only one of the three national liberation movements in Angola, or call for a military victory of one movement over the other are objectively undermining the genuine nation al liberation movement of the Angolan people, and misleading the people of the U.S. about the real situation in Africa, and the role of the Soviet Union around the world. Whether they realize it or not, those that support just the MPLA rather than calling for both the superpowers to get out and let the Angolan people decide themselves who should govern, are lending their support not to the people of Angola, but to Soviet Social-Imperialism and to Trotskyism – the two most counter revolutionary outlooks in the world.
Those that support the MPLA because it receives support from the Soviet Union, thinking it a socialist country, are sadly mistaken. The U.S.S.R. since the mid I950’s has set out on the road of reversing the Great October Russian Revolution, fully establishing capitalism and the dictatorship of a new bourgeoisie over the workers and national minorities. The U.S.S.R. today is a prison house of nations once again, a fascist state complete with feared secret police, unemployment, prostitution, hunger, and uprisings in many areas, such as Tbilisi, Novosibirsk, Tallin, Kiev, and Dnieprodzerzhinsk. The U.S.S.R. has sought world domination and hegemony since the mid I950’s, invading Czechoslovakia, trying in vain to intimidate smaller countries such as Albania and Romania, and enslaving Eastern Europe.
The revolutionary people of the world will never forget the disgusting attempts by the Soviet Social-Imperialists to undermine the revolutionary struggle in Cambodia, because the Cambodians refused to play the Soviet puppet role. The ruling circle of the U.S.S.R. has completely abandoned the revolutionary heritage of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.
Those that support Soviet intervention in Angola, or anywhere, such as the so-called Communist Party of the U.S.A., which, in fact, is nothing but a clown who dances to the tune played by the Brezhnev gang; those that support the use of Cuban mercenaries in Africa, might just as well support Mussolini or Hitler.
Angola is not another Vietnam, and it is not like Vietnam, contrary to what some misguided people might think. To hold this view is to insult both the Angolan people and the historic struggle of the Vietnamese people for national liberation. The conditions in each country are different, and must be considered as such.
There is one other explanation offered by those who support a “military victory of the MPLA”, and that is that the MPLA is “Marxist”, while the other two movements are “nationalist”. This is a corrupt counter revolutionary line. Progressive and revolutionary people should support all national liberation movements that objectively struggle against imperialism. A national liberation movement could even have a monarchist character*, and if it objectively struggles to undermine imperialism, we may be obliged to support it.
Trotsky, a traitor to the Russian Revolution, promoted the view that revolutionaries only support groups which are “Marxist”. Because of this reasoning, the Trotskyists did not support the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Now these opportunists think they can pick and choose and determine for the Angolan people who is “revolutionary” and who is not.
During the national liberation war in Angola, all three groups contributed to the defeat of Portuguese colonialism. The differences between them reflect the differences in development of the Angolan nation. Foreign interference cannot resolve those differences, not even through military victory. Only the people of Angola can do that.
The arrogance and chauvinism of those that think they can interfere in the internal affairs of the Angolan people reflects the outlook of a superpower, not the interests of the masses of people of the U.S., which is to uphold and support the right of all nations to self-determination.
The treachery of both those that support the Soviet Social-Imperialist intervention of the U.S.S.R., or hold the chauvinist Trotskyist view of support for just the “Marxist” groups, must be exposed and opposed. This is part and parcel of preparing the people of the U.S. to rise up and throw off the exploiting bourgeois class in this country. The people of Angola and of the U.S. have a long history of resistance to oppression; this is a reflection of the very favorable conditions in the world today for revolution. But the factors for both war and revolution are increasing. Though we must prepare for war, the day will certainly come when the working and exploited people of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. will rise up and throw off their oppressors, together with the people of the second and third worlds.
Limited sovereignty: The theory that no country has absolute sovereignty over its own affairs and that it must subordinate its interests to the contention/collusion of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The Soviet Social-Imperialists declare that they have the right to determine the destiny of another country “including the destiny of its sovereignty”.[23]
International division of labor: The theory that no developing country can “secure the estabIishment of an independent national economy”[24] without Soviet “co-operation”. The intent of this theory is to justify the maintenance of lop-sided one-crop economies in developing countries which are dependent on the U.S.S.R. for finished goods and which are reduced to the production of raw materials and agricultural goods. Cuba’s sugar economy is an example of this lop-sided one-crop economy model that the Soviet revisionists tout as the “international division of labor”.
Neo-colonialism: “The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from the outside.” REVOLUTIONARY PATH, Kwame Nkrumah, Panaf, 1973, p. 314.
Superpower: “A superpower is an imperialist country which everywhere subjects other countries to its aggression, interference, control, subversion, or plunder, and strives for world hegemony. If capitalism is restored in a big socialist country, it will inevitably become a superpower.” SPEECH BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE DELEGATION OF THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA, Teng Hsiao-Ping, at the Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly, FLP, 1974, p. 21.
Three Worlds: “Judging from the changes in international relations, the world today actually consists of three parts, or three worlds, that are both interconnected and in contradiction to one another. The U.S. and the Soviet Union make up the First World. The developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other regions make up the Third World. The developed countries between the two make up the Second World.” SPEECH BY TENG HSIAO-PING, op cit, pp. 2-3.
Social Imperialism: When the working class of a big socialist country is overthrown by a new bourgeoisie and capitalism is restored, this capitalist country preaches socialism in words, but practices imperialist aggression in deeds.
[1] Ronald Chilcote, PORTUGUESE AFRICA, Prentice Hall, 1967, pp. 61-74.
[2] D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds.) PORTUGUESE AFRICA, Praeger, 1969.
[3] J.A. Marcum, THE ANGOLAN REVOLUTION, MIT Press, 1969, pp. 21-22.
[4] Marcum, op cit, pp. 26-30.
[5] Marcum, op cit, p. 220.
[6] U.N. General Assembly, “Angola: Working Paper Prepared by the Secretariat”, U.N. 75-10539, 22 May 1975, para. 19.
[7] ESSAYS ON THE LIBERATION OF SOUTH AFRICA, Tanzania Publishing House.
[8] Gerard Chaliand, PROBLEMS OF ANGOLAN NATIONALISM, Les Temps Modernes, August, 1965.
[9] “Decolonization”, U.N. Dept. of Political Affairs, Trusteeship and Decolonization, Vol. II, No. 4, March 1975
[10] Peking Review, “Getting Prepared for Independence”, issue no. 27, 1975, p. 30.
[11] Peking Review. “Soviet Revisionists Stir Up Civil War in Angola”, issue no. 31, J975, p.8.
[12] Marcum, op cit, p. 63.
[13] Marcum, op cit, p. 96.
[14] J. Duffy, PORTUGAL IN AFRICA, Penguin, p. 216.
[15] Marcum, op cit, p. 245.
[16] “Documents of the Third Congress of UNITA, August 1973, UNITA Information Office, London.
[17] Ibid.
[18] “UNITA’s Official Position on the Current War in Angola”, UNITA Information Office, London.
[19] “Decolonization”, op cit, p. 55.
[20] U.N. General Assembly, “The Decolonization Policy of Portugal”, Working Paper Prepared for the Secretariat, 75-08558, 28 ApriI 1975.
[21] Hsinhua News Service, “Peoples Daily Denounces Soviet Neo-Colonialism in Africa”, Peking, January 20, 1976.
[22] Peking Review, issue no. 5, 1976.
[23] Krasnaya Ivezda (Soviet Social-Imperialist journal), February 14, 1969.
[24] L.I. Brezhnev speech at June 1969 Moscow Meeting.