Three worlds theory

[red cat]

This thread is for Maoists and Hoxhaists only.
What is your stand on the three worlds theory ?
Please ignore trolls.

[Ismail]

Most Maoists themselves agree with Hoxhaists that the Three Worlds Theory was revisionist. It essentially stipulated that the United States was a lesser danger than the Soviet Union; attempting to justify an alliance with the US, and ignored the class character of third-world states in favor of them simply being in the third world. (Hence why China basically became semi-allied with Chile under Pinochet and Zaire)

The Hoxhaist perspective, of course, can be found in Hoxha's 1978 book Imperialism and the Revolution: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm
As for a Lin Biaoist perspective: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/answering-mims-study-questions-on-three-worlds-theory/

TWT also focuses on things like "technology" deciding third-world status or not, as opposed to imperialism, neo-colonialism, labor aristocracy, etc.

[Lenin II]

The Three Worlds Theory was a revisionist and reactionary theory by Mao Tsetung that negated the class character of any nation based on which metaphysical "world" it belonged to, rather than what class ruled it.

A revisionist theory by a revisionist Marxist. Comrade Stalin was very accurate in giving an accessment of the Chinese Communist Party:

“The CCP sometimes babbles about the hegemony of the proletariat. But the most intolerable thing about this babbling is that the CCP does not have a clue (literally, not a clue) about hegemony—it kills the initiative of the working masses, [and] undermines the "unauthorized" actions of the peasant masses...“
Lars T. Lih, et al., eds., Stalin's Letters to Molotov (Yale University Press, 1995), p. 141.

[BobKKKindle$]

A revisionist theory by a revisionist Marxist. Comrade Stalin was very accurate in giving an accessment of the Chinese Communist Party:Ironically, it was Stalin's preferred Comintern policy that resulted in the CPC being transformed into such an incompetent grouping. Stalin persistently argued that the CPC should enter into an alliance with the KMT on a subordinate basis, with CPC members joining the KMT as individuals, instead of seeking a tactical alliance between the KMT and the CPC as organizations. The deputy of the Comintern who was sent to China in 1921, Sneevliet, argued that the KMT was not an organization reflecting the interests of any particular class but embodied the interests of several classes, including the working class, as well as overseas Chinese capitalists, and the bourgeois intellectuals, with the Executive Committee of the International describing the KMT as a "national revolutionary group", and asserting that China's revolution would be based on the peasantry, and limited to a narrow set of democratic demands. From 1924 onwards, by which point bureaucratic degeneration in the USSR had advanced, the KMT recieved extensive military support from the USSR, with Borodin, also sent by the Comintern, transforming the party from a small collection of civilian politicians into an effective military machine. The CPC sought to break from the KMT in 1924 after a strike wave, during which the party was instructed to avoid "excesses" so as to prevent Chinese capitalists from openly siding with the imperialist powers, as they were liable to do if the movement had been allowed to develop beyond its initial nationalist goals; in spite of the CPC's opposition they were forced to continue their alliance, which culminated in the massacres of 1927, when, after entering Shanghai, Chiang Kai-Shek declared martial law, and executed 5,000 communists and trade unionists, many of them publicly executed on street corners. Across the whole of China, party membership fell from 57,900 to 10,000 between 1926 and 1927, and between April and December 1927, some 38,000 militants were killed, and 32,000 imprisoned. Despite this tragic defeat, which was made possible by the imposition of the Comintern's strategy by the KMT - a strategy that was always oppossed by Chinese Trotskyists, such as Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao, and others - the CPC was once again in the same subordinate position after 1935, cooperating with the KMT as part of a "united front" against Japan. The bloody and tragic history of the Chinese working class in the 1920s and 1930s shows us that communists must always retain their political independence and never subject themselves to the control of a hostile entity, even when cooperation with broader class forces is desirable for strategic reasons. Stalin and his Chinese supporters were responsible for the events of 1927, and the CPC was never again able to accumulate significant working-class support after that date, vindicating Trotsky's analysis of the Chinese situation.

Also, in the interests of encouraging historical discussion of the Chinese Revolution, moved to history.

[Ismail]

Ironically, it was Stalin's preferred Comintern policy that resulted in the CPC being transformed into such an incompetent grouping....This is why Mao disliked the Comintern. Many Communists (not just in China, but in France, etc.) took the Comintern's word as gospel because they treated it as a place where theoretical Communist geniuses who had advanced knowledge of every country in the world resided, and of course the Comintern would condemn parties that were not following its policies for obvious reasons. As was noted (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_36.htm) by Mao in 1943:

Since the Communist International has rendered such great services to China and to various other countries, why should it be necessary to proclaim its dissolution? To this question Comrade Mao Tse-tung replied: 'It is a principle of Marxism-Leninism that the forms of revolutionary organizations must be adapted to the necessities of the revolutionary struggle. If a form of organization is no longer adapted to the necessities of the struggle, then this form of organization must be abolished.' Comrade Mao Tse-tung pointed out that at present the form of revolutionary organization known as the Communist International is no longer adapted to the necessities of the struggle. To continue this organizational form would, on the contrary, hinder the development of the revolutionary struggle in each country. What is needed now is the strengthening of the national Communist Partyof each country, and we no longer need this international leading centre. There are three main reasons for this.

(1) The internal situation in each country and the relations between the different countries are more complicated than they have been in the past and are changing more rapidly. It is no longer possible for a unified international organization to adapt itself to these extremely complicated and rapidly changing circumstances. Correct leadership must grow out of a detailed analysis of these conditions, and this makes it even more necessary for the Communist Party of each country to undertake this itself. The Communist International, which is far removed from the concrete struggle in each country, was adapted to the relatively simple condition of the past, when changes took place rather slowly, but not it is no longer a suitable instrument. (2) .... The anti-fascist states are of all kinds: socialist, capitalist, colonial, semi-colonial. Among the fascist states and their vassals there are also great differences; in addition, there are also the neutral countries, which find themselves in varying circumstances. For some time it has been felt that a centralized organization of an international character was not very appropriate for organizing rapidly and efficiently the anti-fascists of all these states, and this has become particularly obvious recently. (3) The leading cadres of the Communist Parties of the various countries have already grown up and attained political maturity. Comrade Mao Tse-tung explained this point by using the example of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party has been through three revolutionary movements. These revolutionary movements have been continuous and uninterrupted and extraordinarily complex, even more complex than the Russian Revolution. In the course of these revolutionary movements, the Chinese Communist Party has already acquired its own excellent cadres endowed with rich personal experience. Since the Seventh World Congress of' the Communist International in 1935 the Communist International has not intervened in the internal affairs of the Chinese Communist Party. And yet, the Chinese Communist Party has done its work very well, throughout the whole Anti-Japanese War of National Liberation…
I think leftists treat communism as a religion with its own saints, holy scriptures and Index Librorum Prohibitorum.It's a simple matter of identifying revisionism. Bernstein and Kautsky were revisionists, fo example. The Three Worlds Theory was, if not intentionally revisionist, then certainly a policy that led to it. It has nothing to do with dogmatism or "Stalinism" or whatever label you want to put on it.

As Lenin noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/00b.htm) in 1914:

Revisionism—revision of Marxism—is today one of the chief manifestations, if not the chief, of bourgeois influence on the proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers. That is why Eduard Bernstein, the opportunist leader, has won such world-wide notoriety.

[BobKKKindle$]

I think leftists treat communism as a religion with its own saints, holy scriptures and Index Librorum ProhibitorumIndeed, but what many Maoists don't seem to grasp with regard to theories like "New Democracy" and "Three Worlds" is that these sets of ideas were not genuine theoretical innovations, but attempts to justify policies that were already underway before those ideas had been articulated. "New Democracy" was the theoretical culmination of the conciliatory policy towards the bourgeoisie and the landlords that had been pursued almost immediately after the CPC was founded in 1921, whereas "Three Worlds" was developed to rationalize the PRC's foreign policy, which had involved the PRC seeking to gain legitimacy in the eyes of as many countries as possible, regardless of whether those countries were progressive or reactionary. For example, in 1973, when Franco’s (as in the dictator of fascist Spain - not even a "third world country" by any standard. Spain is of course just one example of the nature of the PRC's foreign policy, albeit a particularly stark one) Prime Minister, Admiral Carrero Blanco, was assassinated, the PRC dispatched its own Prime Minister to the Spanish chargé d’affaires in Beijing, in order to offer condolences, with this event being extensively publicized throughout China. When Franco himself died, the Chinese press reported that Zhu De, Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and widely regarded as founder of the PLA, "mourns the death of Spanish Chief of State Franco", and it was also announced that, in addition to Zhu, wreaths had also been sent by Zhou Enlai, and China's foreign minister, Qiao Guanhua. On the following day, Zhu sent the official congratulations of the PRC to newly-crowned King Juan Carlos, whom Franco had designated his successor. None of these developments would be surprising if they were carried out by any other state but in the case of China they demonstrate that China's commitment to revolution and anti-imperialism was rhetorical at best, especially when we consider that, at this time, Spain was still a colonial power, due to its domination of Western Sahara, then known as Spanish Sahara.

Source for the above: NCNA Beijing, 22 December 1973, and 21, 22 and 23 November 1975

[Dimentio]

I think leftists treat communism as a religion with its own saints, holy scriptures and Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Not all leftists though. But in the vanguard parties, this tendency becomes more and more evident the more into the authoritarian fold the organisation is standing.

[BobKKKindle$]

This is why Mao disliked the Comintern.Mao probably did dislike the Comintern. On more than one occasion he argued that only Chinese revolutionaries had the knowledge and experience to understand the situation in China*, and other revolutionaries like Zhang were arguing the same thing, even when they, unlike Mao, rejected partisan warfare as a viable revolutionary strategy, and sought to return to the cities after the White Terror in 1927. However, the fact of the matter is that Mao was always willing to follow the order of the Comintern. He was, for example, promoted with the backing of the left of the KMT to take charge of the Propaganda Department, which gave him control of the KMT's weekly journal, and then, in 1926, he was promoted again to the Peasant Movement Committee, which made him responsible for the KMT's policy on land reform, and relations with the peasantry - a position he used to argue in favour of a moderate approach, limited to rent deductions, which he continued when he came a leader of the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet in 1931. As early ad 1923, he was a member of the KMT's Shanghai Executive Bureau. On this basis, Fenby (Fenby, Penguin, 2008) asserts that "their future leader [i.e. Mao] was happy to collaborate". As Mao's control of the party increased so did the general willingness of the CPC to submit to the Comintern, and so, whereas Wang Ming (Chinese delegate to the Comintern) condemned the KMT in strong terms in 1933, as a "government of national betrayal", by 1935 (when the Soviet Union had reversed its earlier position of refusing diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-Shek and was calling on the CPC to enter into a united front against Japanese imperialism) the exact same delegate had reversed his rhetoric and condemned the notion that the CPC should challenge the KMT, or that the party was planning to challenge the KMT, as "an absolutely false and unfounded legend". The CPC briefly reacted to the Comintern's change of direction with what Harris (Harris, Quartet Books, 1978) describes as a "rebellion", as, when Chiang Kai-Shek was captured by two generals and taken to X'ian in December 1936, Mao sent his congratulations to the generals, and, according to Harris, also resented the Comintern's demand that he not use slogans and policies (such as the confiscation of land) that were liable to threaten the KMT's social base. However, Mao later sent Zhou Enlai to secure Chiang Kai-Shek's release at the Comintern's request, and at the start of the following year, agreed to embrace the ideology of the KMT (i.e. Sun Yat-Sen's Three Principles) and end support for agrarian reform. All of this demonstrates that Mao either never disagreed with the Comintern to start with or wasn't able to challenge the same body.

*For example, from 'Talk of 30 January 1962', also printed in Peking Review 27 (1978): "It is we Chinese who have achieved understanding of the objective world of China, not the comrades concerned with Chinese questions in the Communist International. These comrades of the Communist International simply do not understand...Chinese society, the Chinese nation, or the Chinese revolution."

I would be interested to hear your view on why the Comintern played such a reactionary role in relation to other revolutionaries, if you believe that this was the case. The Comintern's support for popular-frontism after the Third Period clearly wasn't limited to China, as we can see from the experiences of the PCF.

[Ismail]

I would be interested to hear your view on why the Comintern played such a reactionary role in relation to other revolutionaries, if you believe that this was the case. The Comintern's support for popular-frontism after the Third Period clearly wasn't limited to China, as we can see from the experiences of the PCF.I think this does a good job of discussing the Popular Front in France and why the PCF was so submissive to it, and the Comintern's role in said submissiveness: http://web.archive.org/web/20020918070908/www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/CommunistLeague/PopularFrontFranceSpain_Final.htm

Bland's thesis on the Comintern was that it was led by people who were generally rightists (most controversially he believed that Dimitrov was a rightist, but another important Cominternist, Kuusinen, later on became a "liberal" within the CPSU post-Stalin, apparently even advocating something similar to a proto-Perestroika) Ergo, when he had the opportunity, Stalin used the replacement of the Comintern with the Cominform to staff it with people he trusted and were more ideologically in line with him such as Zhdanov.

Check this out: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/compass/compass/com11701.html

[Lenin II]

I think leftists treat communism as a religion with its own saints, holy scriptures and Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

This is nothing more than a troll post and an old, annoying anti-communist straw man. If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion, do not post.


Anyway, if revisionists wish to swallow whole the reactionary deviations of ALL people who call themselves "socialist," that is their business, but I will not be dragged along into the abyss with them.

[BobKKKindle$]

Bland's thesis on the Comintern was that it was led by people who were generally rightists I wonder how Bland deals with the fact that on the Chinese question Stalin was basically in line with the mainstream of the Comintern (the policy being that the CPC should insert itself into the KMT, becoming subordinate to that organization, and limit its goals to bourgeois-democratic) which faithfully carried out his views throughout the 1920s, and especially from the mid-1920s onwards, giving some indication of the extent to which the Comintern had been transformed from an independent body into an appendage of the bureaucracy, despite the government's persistent claims, made when foreign governments complained about the activity of revolutionaries in their own countries, that the Comintern was in fact an independent organization, whose policies were beyond the control of the state. When Joffe called on the Soviet government to offer "utmost support" to the KMT in January 1923 (he had originally been sent to China along with Maring and other individuals who had experience in foreign affairs to locate allies for the Bolsheviks, and later became the main Soviet diplomatic official in China) the Politburo decided to approve his request, with Stalin voting in favour. The Politburo later decided to allow the KMT to become part of the Comintern as a consultative member, with Chiang Kai-Shek being given an honorary place on the ECCI at the same time, and for both of these decisions there was only one dissenting vote - from a revolutionary by the name of Leon Trotsky. Stalin's statements on China and his reactions to subsequent events given an even clearer indication of Stalin's agreement with Comintern policy. In his theses (Questions of the Chinese Revolution, (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/QCR27.html#s4) April 21 1927) Stalin correctly describes the line of the Comintern during the "first stage" of the Chinese revolution as "to keep the Communist Party within the Kuomintang" and then, even though his theses were published at the 8th Plenum of the ECCI, i.e. after the massacre of April 12, to which Stalin actually refers, he asserts that "[subsequent events] indicate that the line adopted was the only correct one". He then goes on to call on the CPC to ally itself with the centre-left faction of the KMT government based in Wuhan, termed the "revolutionary Kuomintang", which, despite being comprised of civilians, unlike the military centre in Nanjing, had expelled the CPC by July of the same year, with the remaining militants either going underground or fleeing to the countryside. The major theme that runs throughout Stalin's writings on China (as well as Mao's writings on New Democracy) is the notion that China would first have to undergo a democratic revolution under the leadership of the "national" faction of the ruling class before it would become possible or desirable for the working class to challenge the bourgeoisie and feudal elites, such that Stalin was basically arguing in favour of a Menshevik strategy, which takes a stageist interpretation of historical materialism as its premise. It is also significant that, when the CPC suffered the first major attack from the KMT leadership in March 1926, which involved the trade union movement in Canton being eliminated, as well as the CPC being made to hand over its membership list, and remove all militants heading KMT departments, the party initially proposed that the time was right to break its alliance with the KMT, and yet Stalin [I]personally intervened to prevent this, condemning the plan as "ultra-leftism". All of the above demonstrates that the flawed strategy that was imposed on China by the Comintern was also Stalin's strategy, which indicates either that the Comintern and Stalin simply happened to be in agreement on a particular issue, or, more likely, that the Comintern was under the bureaucracy's control, and no longer possessed any degree of independence, or adherence to Marxism.

[Ismail]

How about not swallowing the "reactionary deviations" of anyone, no matter what they call themselves.We don't?


These kinds of discussions echo debates amongst Star Trek geeks over whether Captain Kirk or Captain Picard was superior.Mao was an opportunist who moved to the right and whose Cultural Revolution liquidated the CCP and allowed capitalists like Deng Xiaoping to take power and move China onto a state-capitalist path. Maoism is flawed and should not be followed, and has been utilized by "communists" like Bob Avakian and Prachanda to suit their own pseudo-socialism. By fighting revisionism we are fighting capitalism.

Furthermore, one could go the whole way like Hoxha did and say that Mao wasn't even a Communist, but a progressive bourgeoisie.

That's a bit more serious than Star Trek debates. Debates over TV shows generally do not lead to frictions over actual policies, see, for example, the MAP-ML in Nicaragua (which was against the Sandinistas):

Popular Action Movement - Marxist-Leninist (Spanish: Movimiento Acción Popular - Marxista-Leninista) is a communist party in Nicaragua that surged out of a split from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the early 1970s. Since 1985 it is officially named the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (Partido Marxista-Leninista de Nicaragua), but the original name MAP-ML is far more known and has been used when participating in elections.

One of the founders of MAP-ML, Marvin Ortega, had belonged to the national leadership of FSLN. MAP-ML built up a militant trade union activism and in 1978 it launched its own armed militias, Milicias Populares Antisomocistas (MILPAS). In the struggle against the Somoza regime, MILPAS forces fought under the command of the FSLN. When Albania broke with the People's Republic of China, MAP-ML followed Albania.

When the Revolution succeeded in 1979, MAP-ML started a series of occupations of lands and industries owned by large capitalists. In order to appease bourgeois allies, FSLN suppressed the occupations and jailed a series of MAP-ML leaders. During the Sandinista government, MAP-ML suffered repression at several points. Its newspaper, El Pueblo (The People), was closed by the government. Its labour wing, Frente Obrero (Workers Front), was also suppressed. However, whilst MAP-ML suffered repression in Nicaragua the Albanian government started to build relations with the FSLN government. This caused division in the pro-Albanian camp, and several M-L groups (such as Communist Party in Sweden, Communist Workers Party of France, Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist), Marxist-Leninist Party, USA, etc.) continued to support MAP-ML.

MAP-ML was generally critical against the mixed economy during the FSLN government. MAP-ML was the only party that voted against the Sandinista constitution in the National Assembly. In 1984 MAP-ML was one of seven parties that contested the general elections. The party got 2.1% of the votes in the parliamentary election and two seats in the national assembly. In the presidential election the MAP-ML candidate was Isidro Téllez Toruño, the leader of MAP-ML, and vice-presidential candidate was Juan Alberto Henríquez. Isidro and Henríquez got 11 352 votes (1%). An electoral slogan of MAP-ML was "¡Ni un voto a la burguesía! ¡Balas para el imperialismo!" (Not one vote for the bourgeoisie! Bullets against imperialism!).

In 1985 the MAP-ML conference decided to officially change its name to Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (Partido Marxista-Leninista de Nicaragua). MAP-ML opposed the Contadora Peace Process, which it saw as an United States-imperialist plot.

In the 1990 presidential election, the MAP-ML candidates (Isidro Téllez for president, Carlos Cuadra for vice-president) got 8 135 votes (0,6%). MAP-ML lost its parliamentary representation that year. MAP-ML lost their registration after the 1996 elections. In the 2001 presidential elections, PMLN supported FSLN candidate Daniel Ortega.Or Shola-y-Jaweid, which fought the Soviets in Afghanistan:

Shola-y-Jaweid (meaning Eternal Flame, also known as Sholay-e-Jaweid) was a Maoist then Hoxhaist political party founded around 1964 in the Kingdom of Afghanistan. Its strategy was populist, gaining support from students, Shia Muslims, professionals, and the Hazara. It grew significantly in popularity throughout the late 1960's and into the 1970's, possibly eclipsing that of the Parcham and Khalq factions of the pro-Soviet People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan up until the factions' reconciliation in 1977. It was made illegal in 1969 after criticizing the monarchy.

After the fall of the Kingdom in 1973 it continued to be condemned by the Republican government as a Pakistani-backed group hostile to the Pashtuns. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Sino-Albanian Split changed its pro-Chinese stance in favor of a pro-Albanian one in 1978, condemning Mao's Three Worlds Theory as revisionist. It ceased to exist soon after owing to struggles between it and the pro-Soviet government.

[BobKKKindle$]

Maoism is flawed and should not be followedThe post-1927 activity of the CPC indicates that the main principle of Maoism as far as revolutionary strategy is concerned is that a proletarian revolution can be carried out through prolonged guerrilla struggle in the countryside, drawing on the peasantry and rural intelligentsia, without the working class needing to create its own institutions of proletarian rule, or even seize control of the means of production, for the revolution to be proletarian in its class orientation, as long as the party embodies the interests of the proletariat. We can agree that this is flawed insofar as it neglects Marx's dictum that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself, and cannot be delivered by a military organization that seeks to act on behalf of the proletariat. However, simply saying "Maoism is flawed" fails to acknowledge that, as a political orientation, Maoism was the product of a series of historical events, i.e. the expulsion of the CPC from China's cities, and so a criticism of Mao's praxis must involve an attempt to understand what led to the events of 1927. It is not the case, as Stalin argued prior to 1927, that China was not "ready" for Soviets. Soviets had already emerged, as early as 1925, when, in response to the suppression of a strike wave in Shanghai, which initially targeted only foreign capital but eventually spread to Chinese enterprises as well, threatening the interests of national capitalists, the General Federation of Labour, created earlier in 1925, called a protest strike over the deaths in Shanghai. This resulted in 50,000 workers in Hong Kong going on strike, and calling a boycott against British and Hong Kong-produced goods - although the workers who were involved in the strike re-located to Canton after facing further repression in the British colony. The strike eventually led to the creation of a committee of thirteen leaders, responsible to a delegate conference of 800, in a ratio of one delegate to fifty strikers, meeting twice a week, on the basis of instant recall, with the committee being responsible for the provision of housing and entertainment for the striking workers, and, after April the following year, the functioning of a college, comprising eight schools for adult workers and eight primary schools for their children, as well as the construction of a road from Canton to Whampoa. What really made this institution a Soviet, i.e. a threat to state power, was the fact that it maintained a force of several thousand uniformed and armed pickets and set up courts to deal with those breaking the regulations, and sent delegates to nearby villages to spread the boycott and initiate agrarian reform. All of this demonstrates that, even though the CPC had subordinated itself to the KMT for some time by 1925, the Chinese working class was capable of challenging not only the economic and political structures of feudalism but capitalism itself, vindicating Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and undermining Stalin's belief that the Chinese Revolution would proceed by stages. However, the fact remains that the CPC did not break from the KMT, but was butchered, and forced into the countryside as a result of the events of 1927. I think my previous post demonstrates that this was the result of the Comintern's policy, and that this policy was consistent with Stalin's views. So, if you reject Maoism, and yet regard Stalin as a genuine revolutionary, how do you deal with the fact that Maoism arose from the consequences of Stalin's views, as applied to China?

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Being a Maoist, I have to say I mostly disagree with the Three Worlds Theory.
Although I understand Mao's reasons to separate First, Second ad Third world countries like this, this is not relevant at all to the struggle of he Proletariat for Socialism and freedom. The only thing that really matters is the politics of nations, and the amount of power the Proletariat holds in those nations.
It is clear that the Three Worlds Theory has oftn been used as a tool for reactionary inflitrants within the Communist movement, such as the traitor Deng Xiaoping, wh abused the TWT for his alliance with right-wing regimes uch as Pinochet's.
That's why I believe Communists in the present must be on their guard for he Third World Theory.

[BobKKKindle$]

This might be credible if the PRC hadn't already associated itself with other right-wing regimes before it became of the leading supporters of Pinochet's government - which, by the way, didn't have anything to do with Deng, because the overthrow of Allende took place in 1973, when Mao was still fit to make political decisions and ensure that they were carried out, and Zhou Enlai was still in control of foreign policy, as part of his role as Premier. I already covered several cases of China's foreign policy in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1548408&postcount=25) post as well as one of my earlier posts in this thread, but a further example that also comes from the early 1970s, and hence can't be associated with Deng or any other so-called "capitalist roader", is China's relationship with Persia. Zhou Enlai received Princess Ashraf Pahlevi, sister to the Shah, on an official visit to Beijing in April 1971, and during the same visit the Princess was received by Mao himself, and even allowed to accompany Mao on the leadership rostrum for that year's May Day celebrations. In August of the same year the two countries exchanged diplomatic representatives, and the Persian government was praised in the Chinese press, to the extent that a NCNA statement taken from that month announced that the "Chinese Government and people congratulate them sincerely and applaud their efforts to achieve new victories in their march forward". We should remember that the Persian government was a key ally of the United States in the Middle East and a pillar of CENTO, designed to threaten the Soviet Union's southern border, and that, during the course of the first royal visit, the regime's secret police, the SAVAK, were carrying out an attack on the opposition, which led to thirteen urban guerrillas being summarily executed for seeking to overthrow the government. This was also a government which enabled foreign corporations such as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to exploit the country's national resources, and squandered taxation revenue on the purchase of arms from US arms companies, such that, in the 1970s, the illiteracy rate was 50%, even higher for women, and the child mortality rates were amongst the worst in the Middle East, despite Persia's natural resources. Persian leftists were fighting to defend themselves against this regime's attacks and so how can you justify the PRC's, indeed, [I]Mao's willingness to cultivate relations?

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

This might be credible if the PRC hadn't already associated itself with other right-wing regimes before it became of the leading supporters of Pinochet's government - which, by the way, didn't have anything to do with Deng, because the overthrow of Allende took place in 1973, when Mao was still fit to make political decisions and ensure that they were carried out, and Zhou Enlai was still in control of foreign policy, as part of his role as Premier. I already covered several cases of China's foreign policy in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1548408&postcount=25) post as well as one of my earlier posts in this thread, but a further example that also comes from the early 1970s, and hence can't be associated with Deng or any other so-called "capitalist roader", is China's relationship with Persia. Zhou Enlai received Princess Ashraf Pahlevi, sister to the Shah, on an official visit to Beijing in April 1971, and during the same visit the Princess was received by Mao himself, and even allowed to accompany Mao on the leadership rostrum for that year's May Day celebrations. In August of the same year the two countries exchanged diplomatic representatives, and the Persian government was praised in the Chinese press, to the extent that a NCNA statement taken from that month announced that the "Chinese Government and people congratulate them sincerely and applaud their efforts to achieve new victories in their march forward". We should remember that the Persian government was a key ally of the United States in the Middle East and a pillar of CENTO, designed to threaten the Soviet Union's southern border, and that, during the course of the first royal visit, the regime's secret police, the SAVAK, were carrying out an attack on the opposition, which led to thirteen urban guerrillas being summarily executed for seeking to overthrow the government. This was also a government which enabled foreign corporations such as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to exploit the country's national resources, and squandered taxation revenue on the purchase of arms from US arms companies, such that, in the 1970s, the illiteracy rate was 50%, even higher for women, and the child mortality rates were amongst the worst in the Middle East, despite Persia's natural resources. Persian leftists were fighting to defend themselves against this regime's attacks and so how can you justify the PRC's, indeed, [I]Mao's willingness to cultivate relations?

Simply maintaining relations with other nations does not say much about the domestic politics of a nation. Hugo Chávez for example has recieved Ahmedinejad in Venezuela and maintains relations with Iran, this doesn't sa anything about Chávez' domestic policies, he certainly is not an islamist. I think Persia was simply a powerful force in Central Asia, and the Chinese acknowledged that Persia had to be reckoned with.
As said before, I do not agree with he Three Worlds Theory, bu i understand the reasons why it was created.

[Lenin II]

I wonder how Bland deals with the fact that on the Chinese question Stalin was basically in line with the mainstream of the Comintern (the policy being that the CPC should insert itself into the KMT, becoming subordinate to that organization, and limit its goals to bourgeois-democratic) which faithfully carried out his views throughout the 1920s, and especially from the mid-1920s onwards, giving some indication of the extent to which the Comintern had been transformed from an independent body into an appendage of the bureaucracy, despite the government's persistent claims, made when foreign governments complained about the activity of revolutionaries in their own countries, that the Comintern was in fact an independent organization, whose policies were beyond the control of the state. When Joffe called on the Soviet government to offer "utmost support" to the KMT in January 1923 (he had originally been sent to China along with Maring and other individuals who had experience in foreign affairs to locate allies for the Bolsheviks, and later became the main Soviet diplomatic official in China) the Politburo decided to approve his request, with Stalin voting in favour.


The major theme that runs throughout Stalin's writings on China (as well as Mao's writings on New Democracy) is the notion that China would first have to undergo a democratic revolution under the leadership of the "national" faction of the ruling class before it would become possible or desirable for the working class to challenge the bourgeoisie and feudal elites, such that Stalin was basically arguing in favour of a Menshevik strategy, which takes a stageist interpretation of historical materialism as its premise. It is also significant that, when the CPC suffered the first major attack from the KMT leadership in March 1926, which involved the trade union movement in Canton being eliminated, as well as the CPC being made to hand over its membership list, and remove all militants heading KMT departments, the party initially proposed that the time was right to break its alliance with the KMT, and yet Stalin personally intervened to prevent this, condemning the plan as "ultra-leftism". All of the above demonstrates that the flawed strategy that was imposed on China by the Comintern was also Stalin's strategy, which indicates either that the Comintern and Stalin simply happened to be in agreement on a particular issue, or, more likely, that the Comintern was under the bureaucracy's control, and no longer possessed any degree of independence, or adherence to Marxism.

First of all, this entire post reeks of the Trotskyist way of skipping over stages, which is anti-Marxist. Only Trotsky was the one to say you can have socialism without capitalism, which liquidates historical materialism, not to mention Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin in general.

Like Lenin said, “If you are unable to adapt yourself, if you are not inclined to crawl on your belly in the mud, you are not a revolutionary but a chatterbox; and I propose this, not because I like it, but because we have no other road, because history has not been kind enough to bring the revolution to maturity everywhere simultaneously.” (Lenin, Political Report of the CC to the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B), March 7 1918, Collected Works, Vol 27).


Furthermore, on Trotsky’s theories, Lenin maintained:
“Trotsky's major mistake was that he ignored the bourgeois character of the revolution and had no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution." (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol . 15, p. 371.)

Lenin warned against this sort of behavior:
“But are we not in danger of falling into subjectivism, of wanting to arrive at the socialist revolution by 'skipping' the bourgeois-democratic revolution—which is not yet completed and has not yet exhausted the peasant movement? I might be incurring this danger if I said: 'No Tsar, but a workers' government.'” (V. I. Lenin, Letters on Tactics, Collected Works, Vol . 24, p. 48.)

If you must know how Stalin dealt with the Chinese revolution, he was very clear about the role of the CCP and KMT:

Stalin pointed out in May 1925 that the native bourgeoisie in colonial-type countries was,

“…splitting up into two parts, a revolutionary part (the national bourgeoisie -- Ed.) . . . and a compromising part (the comprador bourgeoisie -- Ed.) . . . of which the first is continuing the revolutionary struggle, whereas the second is entering into a bloc with imperialism". (Josef V. Stalin: 'The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East' (May 1925), in: 'Works, Volume 7; Moscow; 1954; p. 147).
In other words, the national bourgeoisie of a colonial-type country is a class objectively in favour of the national-democratic revolution, but objectively opposed to the socialist revolution.

"The Communist Party of each country must unfailingly avail itself of even the smallest opportunity of gaining a mass ally for the proletariat, even if a temporary, vacillating unstable and unreliable ally'".
(Josef V. Stalin: 'Notes on Contemporary Themes' (July 1927), in: 'Works', Volume
9; Moscow; 1954; p. 337).

“Temporary cooperation is permissible, and in certain circumstances even a temporary alliance, between the Communist Party and the national-revolutionary movement, provided that the latter is a genuine revolutionary movement, that it genuinely struggles against the ruling power, and that its representatives do not hamper the Communists in their work.”
(6th Congress, Communist International: Theses on the Revolutionary Movement
in Colonial and Semi-colonial Countries (September 1928), in: Jane Degras (Ed.): 'The Communist International: 1919-1943: Documents Volume 2; London; 1971; p. 542).

Such co-operation, such an alliance, is temporary because the aim of the Marxist-Leninists is to win for the working class the leading role in the revolutionary process in order to carry this through, with the minimum possible interruption, to the socialist revolution. This leadership can only be won in struggle with the national bourgeoisie:

"The proletariat pushes aside the national bourgeoisie, consolidates its hegemony and assumes the lead of the vast masses of the working people in town and country, in order to overcome the resistance of the national bourgeoisie, secure the complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and then gradually convert it into a socialist revolution."
(Josef V. Stalin: 'Questions of the Chinese Revolution' (April 1927), in: 'Works', Volume 9; Moscow; 1954; p. 225).

Finally, in April 1927 Stalin pointed out rightfully:

"In the first period of the Chinese revolution, . . . the national bourgeoisie (not the compradors) sided with the revolution. . .Chiang Kai-shek's coup marks the desertion of the national bourgeoisie from the revolution".
(Josef V. Stalin: 'Questions of the Chinese Revolution' (April 1927), in: 'Works' Volume 9; Moscow; 1954; p. 226, 229).

Thus we can see that Stalin did NOT, in fact, support absorption of the CCP into the KMT after the 1927 coup. In fact it was Mao who attempted to win back the national bourgeoisie to the Communist cause, and even up until 1937 offered to put red areas under control of the KMT.
This is not, of course, to say that this was necessarily wrong on principle. In fact it would have been correct and pragmatic had the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution led to a socialist revolution, and Maoists had not muddled it with the state-capitalist “New Democracy” theory, which was never transitioned in China.


The post-1927 activity of the CPC indicates that the main principle of Maoism as far as revolutionary strategy is concerned is that a proletarian revolution can be carried out through prolonged guerrilla struggle in the countryside, drawing on the peasantry and rural intelligentsia, without the working class needing to create its own institutions of proletarian rule, or even seize control of the means of production, for the revolution to be proletarian in its class orientation, as long as the party embodies the interests of the proletariat.

I actually agree with this.


We can agree that this is flawed insofar as it neglects Marx's dictum that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself, and cannot be delivered by a military organization that seeks to act on behalf of the proletariat.

Here is where we part ways. Trotsky’s theory of “sunstitutionism” is anti-Leninist and cannot be otherwise.
“It is Trotsky who is in ‘ideological confusion’, because in this key question of the trade unions' role, from the standpoint of transition from capitalism to communism, he has lost sight of the fact that we have here a complex arrangement of cogwheels which cannot be a simple one; for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation. It cannot work without a number of "transmission belts" running from the vanguard to the mass of the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people.”
- Lenin, “The Trade Unions and Trotsky's Mistakes”


So, if you reject Maoism, and yet regard Stalin as a genuine revolutionary, how do you deal with the fact that Maoism arose from the consequences of Stalin's views, as applied to China?
I disagree with that formulation, since I view Stalin as non-revisionist and Mao and revisionist, to me they are not the same. Mao and Stalin’s policies were completely different.


It is clear that the Three Worlds Theory has oftn been used as a tool for reactionary inflitrants within the Communist movement, such as the traitor Deng Xiaoping, wh abused the TWT for his alliance with right-wing regimes uch as Pinochet's.
That's why I believe Communists in the present must be on their guard for he Third World Theory.
Except this theory was developed by Mao and promoted by Mao, and by the Chinese Communist Party under Mao’s leadership and afterwards. Saying it was merely the work of the Deng clique is simply false.


Simply maintaining relations with other nations does not say much about the domestic politics of a nation. Hugo Chávez for example has recieved Ahmedinejad in Venezuela and maintains relations with Iran, this doesn't sa anything about Chávez' domestic policies, he certainly is not an islamist. I think Persia was simply a powerful force in Central Asia, and the Chinese acknowledged that Persia had to be reckoned with.

Ahmedinejad is not in the least comparable to Pinochet, Mobutu, Franco, Sukarno or the Shah of Iran, just like supporting Pakistan against Bangladesh Independence war and supporting the UNITA in Angola and South Africa, is also not the same.
As well, it is not a question of merely “maintaining relations.” Stalin “maintained relations” with the US during World War II to fight against a common enemy, but unlike Mao, he never supported pro-US dictatorships internationally, and also unlike Mao, he only teamed up with the US to the mediocre level he did in face of a much greater threat—the Nazis, which were quite more threatening than Soviet social-imperialism.


As said before, I do not agree with he Three Worlds Theory, bu i understand the reasons why it was created.
The question is, how can you call the person who formed this theory and liquidated the revolution a “Marxist?” Maoism and Chinese revisionism opposed Leninism with the Three Worlds, which was tantamount to collaborating with US imperialism and denying the revolution in “First World” countries.

[Ismail]

Don't you see? It's like how the Jews reject the claim that Jesus was the Messiah, even though he was one of them!Was Kautsky (post-1909) "one of us"? Was Bernstein was "one of us"? Was Stalin "one of us" (in your view) too? (Considering you liked calling him, Hoxha, and generally anyone not from Cuba a "bureaucrat")

Speaking of this, what about your condemnation of Hoxhaists and Maoists as they gave their lives fighting against a foreign invader, the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan? That alone shows the obvious contradictions between Hoxhaism, Maoism, and post-Stalin Soviet "Marxism-Leninism."

I seriously can't tell if you're either this obtuse or trolling. Neither look particularly good.

[Ismail]

Was Joseph Smith Jr. a Christian after the Angel Moroni visited him?A significantly more reactionary one whose supporters established a theocratic state that beheaded people, yes.* Not exactly an improvement looking at things from an historical-materialist perspective.

Just like Khrushchev saying that proletarian dictatorship isn't necessary is also not an improvement, or Deng saying that there's "no fundamental contradiction between socialism and a market economy."** You can't exactly compare religious sects with ideologies, otherwise you'll pretty much be arguing that Communism is a religion.

Once again, how do you explain the obvious contradiction between those who saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as social-imperialism and those who saw it as a glorious event extending the gains of October to the Afghan people? Hell, contradictions similar to this still exist. The Iran issue is the most obvious.

* Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896, pp. 51-2.
** "There is no Fundamental Contradiction between Socialism and a Market Economy," October 23, 1985 in Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III

[BobKKKindle$]

Only Trotsky was the one to say you can have socialism without capitalism, which liquidates historical materialism, not to mention Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin in general.Trotsky never argued that you can have socialism without capitalism. He was aware that by the 1920s, China and indeed the entire world were already capitalist, and, being aware of the extent to which the world had been integrated into a single economic unit by the processes of imperialism, as well as the inability of ruling classes in underdeveloped countries to carry out a bourgeois-democratic revolution, argued that it would be possible for workers in underdeveloped countries to carry out a socialist revolution without having to undergo a prolonged period of capitalist development under a parliamentary regime, and that such a revolution could survive as long as it became international in its geographical scope. This is the basis of the theory of permanent revolution. Trotsky's thesis was vindicated by the events of 1924/5. What later became known as the May 30th Movement began as a nationalist revolt as it was sparked by the murder of a millworker by a Japanese foreman in Shanghai, and, during the initial stages of the revolt, once 130,000 workers had come out on strike, and martial law had been declared in Shanghai, it gained the support of Chinese capital, as prominent businessmen and even warlords made donations to the strike fund and gave permission to their workers to join the protests, with the movement being organized by the Shanghai Workers’, Merchants’ and Students’ Federation, established by CPC and KMT members. At this point a broad cross-class alliance was still possible because the movement was still operating within a narrow set of nationalist-democratic goals. However, the Chinese capitalists withdrew their support once it became clear that workers who had been employed by Japanese enterprises were sharing their experiences with workers who had been employed by Chinese capital, and the latter were discovering that their conditions were often worse, despite the supposed patriotism of their employers. At this point (June/July 1924) the alliance began to break down, as the merchants withdrew from the Federation, employers created private armies to protect their enterprises, Chinese and foreign capitalists declared a common front against "anarchy", and, in September, the military banned all trade-union activity, including the General Labour Union under CPC militant Li Lisan. After Chinese capital had rejected the alliance, events in Hong Kong accelerated, culminating in the Canton Soviet, as described in my previous post. The lesson to be drawn from these events is that the Chinese bourgeoisie, even its "national" section, was incapable of carrying out the task of national reunification and other bourgeois demands because the movement which developed in response to imperialism was so strong and energetic that it inevitably posed a challenge not only to imperialism but also the interests of Chinese capital, at which point Chinese capitalists sided with the foreign powers, ranging themselves against the working class. The subsequent events in Canton indicate that despite Stalin's wishes to divide the revolution into bourgeois and socialist stages, Chinese workers were already able to pose a threat to capitalism, by establishing workers power at a local level, and using force to defend their gains. This vindicates Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which emphasizes the weakness of the bourgeoisie in underdeveloped countries, and upholds the proletariat's willingness to pursue revolutionary transformation, passing from democratic to socialist tasks without interruption.


Furthermore, on Trotsky’s theories, Lenin maintained:
“Trotsky's major mistake was that he ignored the bourgeois character of the revolution and had no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution." (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol . 15, p. 371.)Firstly, I'm not interested in seeing who can find the most Lenin quotes to support their ideas. What vindicates theories is the course of historical events, so I expect you to respond to my analysis of the May 30th Movement. On this specific quote, however, students of Lenin are aware that, like all good revolutionaries, Lenin's views changed during the course of his life. Up to 1917, Lenin had basically the same view as the Mensheviks on the tasks of the Russian Revolution, as he argued that the revolution would limit itself to bourgeois-democratic tasks, and that, after a lengthy period of capitalist development, Russia would only then become ready for a socialist revolution, at which point it would be possible for the revolutionary party to overthrow the bourgeois state. The only way that Lenin's differed from the Mensheviks is that he recognized that the bourgeoisie would not be able to carry out this democratic revolution, due to its reliance on imperialism and feudal elites, and so Lenin argued that the proletariat, allying itself with the peasantry, would sweep aside the Tsarist state, but then hand over power to the bourgeoisie, constituting itself as a revolutionary opposition. It was only during the course of 1917 that Lenin was won round to Trotsky's view, which holds that, not only is the proletariat the only class capable of carrying out bourgeois-democratic tasks, but, having carried out these tasks, the proletariat will be forced to carry the revolution forward, transforming it into a socialist revolution, in order to defend its democratic gains, due to the reaction from the bourgeoisie. This view was vindicated by the events of 1905, as the bourgeoisie, being frightened by the mass democratic movement, took the side of the Tsarist state, and was also unwilling to grant the eight-hour day as a democratic demand, deciding instead to declare a lockout, which forced the proletariat to occupy the factories in order to assert their demands, and create the first Soviets, thereby carrying the revolution far beyond its initial goals.


Stalin pointed out in May 1925 that the native bourgeoisie in colonial-type countries was..Stalin's view has already been dealt with in this thread. It amounted to the CPC subordinating itself to the KMT, and continuing the alliance, even when the KMT had begun to attack the CPC in various ways, such as removing CPC members from leadership positions in KMT departments, making the CPC hand over its membership list, and so on - these attacks beginning several years before the events of 1927, as my posts in this thread have shown. The distinction that you and Stalin draw between the "national" and "compardor" factions of the bourgeoisie is not supported by empirical fact as the whole of the Chinese bourgeoisie showed itself unwilling to support any movement that had the ability to threaten its own interests, which included movements directed against imperialism, the May 30th Movement being the most obvious example of this tendency. The Comintern demonstrated its arrogance and interference in the affairs of foreign communists by the fact that CPC members were already supporting withdrawal from their alliance with the KMT before 1927, and yet were forced to continue the alliance, and accept all the attacks launched by the KMT, because Stalin and his allies believed that their knowledge of the Chinese situation was better than that of Chinese communists like Chen Duxiu, who were actually living and fighting in China, instead of imposing decisions from Moscow. It was this alliance, and especially the fact that it was an alliance based on the CPC giving up its political independence and subordinating itself to a bourgeois organization, e.g. by ordering its members to join the KMT on an individual basis instead of seeking an alliance between the CPC and KMT as organizations, obligating themselves not to criticize the ideology of Sun Yat-sen, that allowed the KMT to carry out its brutal attack in 1927, using weapons provided by the Comintern, which destroyed the CPC as a political force in China's cities.


Thus we can see that Stalin did NOT, in fact, support absorption of the CCP into the KMT after the 1927 coup.I never suggested that this was Stalin's policy - the idea that the CPC would want to resume an alliance with the KMT, or that the KMT would accept such an alliance, after having its (i.e. the CPC's) leading members butchered is absurd. The issue here is that the events of 1927 did not just suddenly occur but were made possible by the strategy that had been pursued by the CPC throughout the whole of the 1920s, and that this strategy was supported for the duration of this period by Stalin, and impoed on the CPC by the Comintern. Stalin's first policy after the 1927 coup was to call on the CPC to ally itself with the Wuhan KMT government, and yet this strategy resulted in basically the same result as the earlier strategy, except on a smaller scale, as the CPC suffered further attacks, this time from the "left-wing" of the KMT, after a short time in Wuhan. The policy then swung wildly to the left as the Comintern decided that 1927 had not been a defeat, and that China was on the verge of proletarian revolution, such that the CPC should ready itself for an armed insurrection. This led the CPC to reject participation in existing trade unions (against the policy agreed by the Comintern in 1921, where it was decided that, after a major defeat, communists should try to take up the limited material interests of workers through established trade unions, no matter how corrupt their leadership, to build a defensive “united front” of all workers in order to restore their confidence in their capacity for collective action, and so on) and to call for every strike to be transformed into a mass strike and the overthrow of the Chinese state. As a result, the working class, which had already suffered the execution of its leading militants in 1927, as well as wage cuts and price rises shortly after the coup, was terrified by the ultra-leftism of the CPC, as it portrayed every defensive strike as a direct provocation to the state, and the party further diminished in size in China's cites. The ultra-leftist strategy also manifested itself in a series of attempts to stage uprisings, the most significant of these being the Canton Commune. A new Comintern emissary, Heinz Neumann, was sent to Canton where he attempted to stage a coup and organize a commune in early December of 1927. The CCP still had a serious underground force in the city, and so five thousand communists, mostly local workers, took part in the rising, but because there had been no political preparation or involvement of the mass of the working class, the CPC was isolated, and as a result the commune was eliminated within two days of being established, with the participants being executed or otherwise persecuted. This demonstrates that after artificially restraining class struggle for most of the 1920s, the CPC attempted to challenge capitalism shortly after a major defeat for the Chinese working class, with concern for the level of class struggle and consciousness of the working class. Trotsky goes further in his criticism of this body by pointing to the fact that it consisted of only 12 members, all of whom were appointed by the Comintern, not elected, and that most workers in Canton didn't know anything about the body until the uprising was well under way, and on this basis he describes the uprising as a coup, not the establishment of Soviet power, its failure signifying the end of the CPC's working-class support base. The same can be said of other risings that were organized by the CPC after 1927, such as the Nanchang insurrection and the Autumn Harvest uprising, all of which were crushed, being adventurist attempts (once again imposed by Stalin and the Comintern) to establish power, during a period when the CPC should have been trying to retain its base amongst the working class.

Such is the sorry tale of Stalin's policy in China - beginning with subordination to bourgeois forces, ending with ultra-leftism. You may reject Maoism but the fact of the matter, as I noted above, is that Maoism was a product of the traumatic experiences of the CPC and the Chinese working class in the 1920s, and it was Stalin's policy that was responsible for those experiences.

[BobKKKindle$]

Simply maintaining relations with other nations does not say much about the domestic politics of a nationThere is a difference between "simply maintaining relations" and openly giving legitimacy and support to a reactionary government, as the latter indicates that the country giving support is not under the dictatorship of the proletariat, but is, like the countries it is giving support to, a bourgeois regime, part of the imperialist world-system, objectively oppossed to socialist revolution. Or, as Trotsky observed, foreign policy is everywhere an extension of domestic policy, because it is controlled by the same ruling class, and is used to pursue the same historic goals. The link between domestic and foreign policy is especially important for revolutionary states, as, if these states do not help revolutionaries in other countries overthrow capitalism, if they become isolated after having failed to take advantage of a revolutionary wave to extend revolution to the imperialist core, they will face an ideological and military reaction from the imperialist countries, threatening the revolutionary gains. This is why the Bolsheviks used foreign policy as a way of encouraging international revolution, by exposing the treaties that had been arranged between the Tsarist state and France to divide Germany's colonies between them after the war had ended, by rejecting responsibility for the debts of the Tsarist state, by seeking to establish a bridge between Germany and Soviet Russia during the war with Poland in 1920, and, of course, by creating the Comintern to coordinate the activities of revolutionaries around the world, as well as a range of other strategies, all of which were guided by a single mission - to spread revolution. The PRC, of course, has never had a revolutionary foreign policy, because it has never been a workers state.

[Ismail]

Some people understand things correctly while others don't. Some people who are often correct make mistakes, and others who are rarely correct are sometimes right.

The class struggle isn't another Inquisition.These are on a bit grander of a scale considering that virtually every Maoist (and Hoxhaist) group was calling for armed struggle in Afghanistan while the various pro-Soviet and some Trotskyist parties were praising the Soviets. As you yourself said, one side in this conflict has to be more correct than the other, and considering that the two main theses are quite different ("Defending ally and exporting gains of October" versus "Social-Imperialist invasion"), one can be said to hold revisionist viewpoints on the issue, just like "Communists" who supported particular superpowers in World War I. This isn't some minor issue though, it's an interpretation of imperialism and has pretty wide implications.


And from that you conclude that one or more people with a position that you feel is correct on a certain issue belong to your "revolutionary camp" for all time while those who hold another position are "revisionists?"No. There were some differences within the Hoxhaist camp, such as whether or not Hoxhaists should struggle against the Sandinistas in 1980's Nicaragua or not (the Albanian government advocated uniting against the Contras, the Hoxhaist party there, however, advocated remaining a distinct and anti-reformist party openly opposed to the Sandinistas) being a basic example.

The difference is that there's those honest debates and then there's revisionism. Someone holding a different view isn't revisionist, a revisionist is one who intentionally "revises" Marxism or Leninism to suit their anti-communist ends. For example, we can agree that Gorbachev was a revisionist. He kept on invoking Lenin's NEP to justify Perestroika even though that was obviously in a way Lenin would not have realized. And of course, later on, he condemned Communism and praised social-democracy. (See link (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm) in sig) We can agree that Bernstein was a revisionist, he basically said that revolution was no longer necessary, that many aspects of Marxism were outdated, and that it was possible to achieve socialism through reformism.

So for example, I know many Hoxhaists (myself included) who talk with Trots and Maoists on generally friendly terms. We don't scream "REVISIONIST!" at these people. We are less lenient about Dengists and other "market socialists," however, since we consider their ideology to be pseudo-socialist from the start and not just misguided. At the same time, of course, you also have liberals and other vacillating types who cannot really be called communists within the 3 groups I just mentioned, etc. Lenin II's roommate is a RCPUSA Maoist, and it isn't like they throw things at each other each time they develop eye contact. Furthermore some Trotskyist and Maoist groups are less annoying. For example, I'd say Tony Cliff was okay as far as Trotskyists go (he recognized state-capitalism), and Lin Biao was okay as far as Maoism went. This is the reverse for types like Shachtman or the Gang of Four or Deng though, whose followers we consider to be significantly more revisionist through their liberalism.