Monkey Riding Dragon
14th August 2010, 19:20
NOTE: What follows is my attempt at initiating a far-reaching discussion on one aspect of many contained in the new communist theory I've developed over the course of the summer (which is briefly summed up here in my recent re-introduction (http://www.revleft.com/vb/re-intro-t140119/index.html)). I aim for this to be the first of many such discussions we'll have, each covering an individual point of my theory until the entire scope and depth of it has been thoroughly debated out. I wanted to start out on this point because I've got a lot of material to write on it. I'd like as much input on the proposal I'll provide below as possible. Namely and especially: Do you agree with it and why or why not?
Proposal: Socialist countries should have no diplomatic relationship to enemy nations.
“If they [the Chinese] acted the way they talked during the Cultural Revolution, then it [rapprochement with the U.S.] was not doable.” --Henry Kissinger
I want to start my look at this topic out through example by pointing out perspectives of the (relevant) enemy vis-a-vis China’s early ‘70s rapprochement with the United States. The links below are to an episode of the program American Experience entitled Nixon’s China Game. This episode, which is cast from the viewpoint of the Nixon Administration and of the Chinese rightists who supported rapprochement with the U.S. (many of whom apparently retain a prestigious social status in today’s capitalist China), reveals some important points that it seems to me many communists have either missed in part or altogether or at least have not fully recognized the relevance of up to the present day vis-a-vis this topic of trading with the enemy. It takes the viewer on a sort of retrospective guided tour of the events leading up to and transpiring throughout the Nixon visit to China, concluding by summing what what’s viewed as the fruits of the rapprochement thereby achieved, both the short-term and the long-term. Please watch the episode in full before reading further, bearing in mind that I side completely with the demonized communist “hardliners” (as they’re described).
Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUVuNHWAcKQ)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gztNxvWvCg&feature=related)
Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUMk181xVw4&feature=related)
Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yW3CAX0RJo&feature=related)
Part 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ1wW3Rpcig&feature=related)
Part 6 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNe2uPhIE-A&feature=related)
We don’t really even have to get past the 4-minute mark on Part 1 to discover a fundamental problem with this whole rapprochement scheme: its place of origin, the White House, from which nothing good can come. But if for some reason this by itself is not a good enough argument for the reader, proceed to finish this commentary on the episode.
As a further clue of this whole scheme’s character, in examining the process of by which the normalization of relations was achieved, one notices there was scarcely anything human about any of it. Pretty much the entire affair was characterized by top secret bureaucratic maneuverings by high-level government officials and by persistent posturing in various forms. At times one wonders whether these Chinese reactionaries could possibly glue their lips any more tightly to the asses of these visiting butchers who were having thousands of Vietnamese people slaughtered daily and repressing popular dissent at home through spying, through infiltration, and at times even with military force. The only authentic human experiences relayed of the China tours are the giant revolutionary posters the Shanghai masses had put up during the Cultural Revolution and Jiang Qing’s beautiful revolutionary ballet about a peasant community that rises up and overthrows an oppressive landlord. My point here is that this project had nothing to do with the Chinese masses, who are consistently portrayed as fanatical lunatics via camera tricks and background music.
Getting more directly to the point though, what were the tangible fruits of rapprochement? Here’s is where the perspective of the American ruling class generally comes into play. Regarding that, the Nixon Administration itself and the makers of this program are able to make connections that we communists seem to have, for the most part, missed. They’re able to see the logical consistency between the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China in 1972 and the promotion of the slogan “To get rich is glorious!” by the Chinese government in the 1980s...as well as the logical inconsistency between the objectives of the Cultural Revolution and the objective of re-establishing ties to the U.S. (See the quote by Henry Kissinger I provided just under the heading for example.) Nixon remarks: “...the Russian game made the Chinese game work; the Chinese game made the Russian game work”. Absorb the logic concentrated in that statement. What Nixon is saying there is these two rapprochement “games” mutually reinforced one-another: the more each power fell into the U.S. orbit, the more the other would tend to as well, ensuring increasing degrees of American dominance of the globe. Thereby we see indeed the logical consistency between the initial normalization of relations in ‘72 and the later, more overtly neo-liberal ties that were developed. The makers of this program indeed go as far as to offer the ‘72 rapprochement between the U.S. and China as the “pivotal move” most responsible for securing America’s victory in the Cold War. Here we can see a hitherto unrecognized application of the dynamic Sunsara Taylor has described: the only way two diametrically opposed forces can achieve “common ground” is if one side capitulates to the other. What “common ground” is there between capitalist imperialism on the one hand and communism on the other? None! China began capitulating to the U.S., establishing a vicious cycle that would ultimately secure for the U.S. both victory in the Cold War and, for the time anyway, renewed dominance over China. In other words, China’s thereby became another Yugoslavia story.
The main point I’m trying to make here in connection to this subject of the ‘72 restoration of relations between the U.S. and China is that this marked the end of China’s non-alignment in the Cold War. From the end of the 1950s, starting with the Great Leap Forward, China had exited the Cold War. The revolutionary leaders consequently now came under immense and continual pressure, mainly from revisionist leaders in the party and the state, to re-enter on one side or the other. The most radical period in China’s history...the one that inspired people all over the world to lift their heads, challenge the old authorities, and investigate communism more deeply...was the non-aligned period. It was this period wherein both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution took place. The achievement of rapprochement was symptomatic of the end of the revolutionary upsurge in China and the decision to settle in and pick a side in the Cold War. Picking an imperialist superpower to side with in the Cold War was not principally different than us as American communists picking a section of the American ruling class to support against the other.
The inspiration by the decision to immediately reconstitute the party in on April 1, 1969 was doubtless the border clashes with the Soviet Union that took place the preceding month. (See how establishing a timeline of events helps clarify key points?) Shortly after the party was reconstituted, the Red Guards were disbanded altogether. Even before the reconstitution of the party, Mao assigned people like Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping to come up with a new foreign policy for China. Eventually they recommended a “Hitler like” alliance between China and the United States. Subsequently, the Chinese leaders rationalized the new, pro-U.S. foreign policy (which included things like supporting the U.S.-backed Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile, for example) with a new “theory of three worlds”.
So what was this new “theory of three worlds”, you ask?
Mao’s definition: “The U.S. and the Soviet Union have a lot of atomic bombs, and they are richer [than the second world]. Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada, of the second world, do not possess so many atomic bombs and are not so rich as the First World, but richer than the third world.” Alternately: "In my view, the United States and the Soviet Union belong to the first world. The in-between Japan, Europe and Canada belong to the second world. The third world is very populous. Except Japan, Asia belongs to the third world. So does the whole of Africa and Latin America."
Deng’s definition: “The United States 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.”
No scientific criteria is used here. The sole distinction between the first and second worlds in the above definitions is the degree of military might and wealth particular imperialist countries possess at a given time. Likewise, the definition of the third world encompasses even revolutionary China, we’ll note, as if there were no principle distinction between a socialist country and, say, apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, no room for any complex middle between imperialism and third world status is provided. The criteria for classification is wholly arbitrary. That’s because it was simply dreamt up to justify the pro-U.S. line China had taken up after the fact. (The theory makes its initial appearances after 1971.) For all of Enver Hoxha’s major errors in respect to summing Maoist China and its history in the late ‘70s, one thing he stated about the practical application of three worlds theory was pretty close to correct, which was in this vein: the Chinese revisionists aimed to pit the third world, the second world, and half of the first world, against the Soviet Union, and that was their practical application of the theory.
A correct understanding of the shape of the world uses scientific criteria, and namely is based on the relationship between the nations of the world. In 1965, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao analyzed the globe based on this type of criteria: The first world is the world of oppressor and exploiter nations (a.k.a. the imperialist countries). The third world is the world of oppressed and exploited nations. The second world is the complex middle between these two poles. I would argue that this analysis is correct. Now I’m not saying that we should be “third worldist”. A “third worldist” supports the third world national bourgeoisie in power and generally contends that revolution is impossible in imperialist countries. Or, in other words, for the most part the “third worldist” effectively supports continuation of the status quo. Their position is based on the arbitrary notion that third world countries (that is, again, oppressed and exploited countries) are “proletarian nations”. This is incorrect. No nation-state is proletarian that has not undergone a proletarian revolution. A socialist country fits into none of these proverbial worlds. Socialism is its own dynamic. The central tasks of the socialist nation are to rupture with oppression and exploitation and to advance that cause worldwide, not to oppress and exploit or to be oppressed and exploited. Hence we communists should be, if you will, “new worldists”.
As one last point on the topic of China’s normalization of relations with the U.S. in the early 1970s (in order to beat the subject to death), the international consequences of this decision should also be considered. I namely speak of North Vietnam and how their line was affected. There were two main distinctive lines that were battling it out behind the scenes in North Vietnam at the time: the Maoist line of Truongh Chinh on the one hand and the pro-Soviet line of Le Duan on the other. Largely it was Truongh Chinh’s position that had been in command up to this point. The North Vietnamese leadership by and large, however, reacted with shock when China announced the Nixon visit in 1971. There is little doubt that this development, coupled with the military success of Vo Nguyen Giap’s conventional warfare approach during the brief American invasion of Laos that same year, was what pushed Le Duan’s position to the fore that December. From that point on, the Vietnam War was no longer a people’s war with the masses of Vietnam up against the United States and its puppet government in the South, but a conventional war between North Vietnam and the U.S. and South Vietnam. In other words, China’s rapprochement decision doubtless was in large part responsible for the turn to revisionism in North Vietnam.
Here’s my broader point: Everything I’ve pointed out here in connection to this issue of China’s re-alignment with the U.S. can also be applied to every historical example of a socialist country that establishes or maintains diplomatic ties to capitalist countries. Another excellent historical example would be the Soviet Union. The USSR established normal diplomatic relations with the U.S., for example, in 1933, and began warming up to ‘democratic’ imperialists more broadly during this same time frame as well in reaction to the rise of the Nazis to power early in ‘33. After the French Communists formed the Front Populaire in 1934 in response to attempts by domestic fascists to seize power in February of that year, the Comintern under Stalin subsequently endorsed the reactionary “united front against fascism” policy from August of 1935, marking the USSR’s turn to revisionism. We can thus see how, in this case as well, rapprochement with an imperialist camp was a logical process of capitulation, not a series of unrelated events. And, as in China, the global ideological effect was to drag most of the communist movement down the revisionist road and subordinate it to the national interests of the country in question.
Lest you think though that I’m only really opposing ties to imperialist countries, allow me to point out another important example: the historical relationship between North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge. Namely, I’m speaking of the development in 1965 wherein Pol Pot travelled to North Vietnam to secure their support for a people’s war in Cambodia. They refused to provide this support on the grounds that Cambodian “Prince” Norodom Sihanouk was a nationalist and supportive of the people’s war in Vietnam in that he allowed the North Vietnamese revolutionaries to use the Ho Chi Minh Trail and allowed them to be supplied by China. In that position we see reflected, in fact, the position of far too many communists and would-be communists today vis-a-vis our comrades in the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). To draw out this comparison a bit more, the Khmer Rouge too was opposing a basically feudal and theocratic, nationalist third world regime and faced this kind of opposition from many of their comrades abroad. When they launched a people’s war in early 1968, it was in spite of North Vietnam’s opposition to them doing so, not with their support. It was as a result of embracing the Maoist concept of self-reliance in politics that the Khmer Rouge were able to go forward. Though after Sihanouk was overthrown the Vietnamese and Cambodian revolutionaries were able to find common ground on which to unite, this tension between them was really enduring and its effects spilled over into post-power-seizure Cambodia in the form of nationalism on the part of the Khmer Rouge, which, in some cases, took the form of systematic targeting of ethnic Vietnamese people within Cambodia’s borders for persecution. I think there was definitely a connection between these expressions of nationalism on each side of the border and would suggest that national chauvinism on one side reinforced nationalist prejudices on the other. My underlying point here is that even when we’re talking about a socialist state having a diplomatic relationship to a non-imperialist enemy state, it’s still reactionary. In this example, we see how for North Vietnam to maintain a warm relationship to “Prince” Sihanouk’s regime required them to refuse support to their comrades, who opposed the said regime, and that this was a factor that, logically speaking, likely reinforced certain nationalist and even yes racist prejudices leaders of the Khmer Rouge unfortunately retained against Vietnamese people generally, based on Cambodia’s history of being oppressed by Vietnam. And again, this isn’t just a historical lesson. We have this case of our Iranian comrades today and their position vis-a-vis an essentially similar regime to that of Sihanouk. We should support our comrades, not the states that repress them.
Nothing good has ever come out of socialist countries retaining or developing diplomatic relationships with enemy nations. That isn’t to say that it’s automatically revisionist to have such relationships, but that possessing and developing them is symptomatic of ideological drifting and settling in on one level or another. It’s an expression of nationalism in that it always ultimately requires you to sell out your comrades and their revolutionary aspirations; to subordinate your comrades abroad to your own national interest. In certain ways, it can be compared to the tactic of fielding or endorsing candidates for election to bourgeois parliaments. Like participating in bourgeois electoral politics, diplomacy between socialist and capitalist countries can only, at best, send the wrong message to the people of the world and cannot accomplish anything good. As I stated earlier, communists must be “new worldists”. Our revolution has no place in the world as it is and, as such, no socialist nation should seek to develop a working relationship to the current world order, but to the overthrow and replacement thereof. Furthermore in connection with that point, socialist nations have no place in the United Nations or any other body of enemy states. All the diplomacy of proletarian states should go toward advancing the cause of proletarian revolution throughout the world. To the extent that we fail on this principle, we will tend to delay the day when communism is established worldwide.
Proposal: Socialist countries should have no diplomatic relationship to enemy nations.
“If they [the Chinese] acted the way they talked during the Cultural Revolution, then it [rapprochement with the U.S.] was not doable.” --Henry Kissinger
I want to start my look at this topic out through example by pointing out perspectives of the (relevant) enemy vis-a-vis China’s early ‘70s rapprochement with the United States. The links below are to an episode of the program American Experience entitled Nixon’s China Game. This episode, which is cast from the viewpoint of the Nixon Administration and of the Chinese rightists who supported rapprochement with the U.S. (many of whom apparently retain a prestigious social status in today’s capitalist China), reveals some important points that it seems to me many communists have either missed in part or altogether or at least have not fully recognized the relevance of up to the present day vis-a-vis this topic of trading with the enemy. It takes the viewer on a sort of retrospective guided tour of the events leading up to and transpiring throughout the Nixon visit to China, concluding by summing what what’s viewed as the fruits of the rapprochement thereby achieved, both the short-term and the long-term. Please watch the episode in full before reading further, bearing in mind that I side completely with the demonized communist “hardliners” (as they’re described).
Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUVuNHWAcKQ)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gztNxvWvCg&feature=related)
Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUMk181xVw4&feature=related)
Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yW3CAX0RJo&feature=related)
Part 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ1wW3Rpcig&feature=related)
Part 6 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNe2uPhIE-A&feature=related)
We don’t really even have to get past the 4-minute mark on Part 1 to discover a fundamental problem with this whole rapprochement scheme: its place of origin, the White House, from which nothing good can come. But if for some reason this by itself is not a good enough argument for the reader, proceed to finish this commentary on the episode.
As a further clue of this whole scheme’s character, in examining the process of by which the normalization of relations was achieved, one notices there was scarcely anything human about any of it. Pretty much the entire affair was characterized by top secret bureaucratic maneuverings by high-level government officials and by persistent posturing in various forms. At times one wonders whether these Chinese reactionaries could possibly glue their lips any more tightly to the asses of these visiting butchers who were having thousands of Vietnamese people slaughtered daily and repressing popular dissent at home through spying, through infiltration, and at times even with military force. The only authentic human experiences relayed of the China tours are the giant revolutionary posters the Shanghai masses had put up during the Cultural Revolution and Jiang Qing’s beautiful revolutionary ballet about a peasant community that rises up and overthrows an oppressive landlord. My point here is that this project had nothing to do with the Chinese masses, who are consistently portrayed as fanatical lunatics via camera tricks and background music.
Getting more directly to the point though, what were the tangible fruits of rapprochement? Here’s is where the perspective of the American ruling class generally comes into play. Regarding that, the Nixon Administration itself and the makers of this program are able to make connections that we communists seem to have, for the most part, missed. They’re able to see the logical consistency between the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China in 1972 and the promotion of the slogan “To get rich is glorious!” by the Chinese government in the 1980s...as well as the logical inconsistency between the objectives of the Cultural Revolution and the objective of re-establishing ties to the U.S. (See the quote by Henry Kissinger I provided just under the heading for example.) Nixon remarks: “...the Russian game made the Chinese game work; the Chinese game made the Russian game work”. Absorb the logic concentrated in that statement. What Nixon is saying there is these two rapprochement “games” mutually reinforced one-another: the more each power fell into the U.S. orbit, the more the other would tend to as well, ensuring increasing degrees of American dominance of the globe. Thereby we see indeed the logical consistency between the initial normalization of relations in ‘72 and the later, more overtly neo-liberal ties that were developed. The makers of this program indeed go as far as to offer the ‘72 rapprochement between the U.S. and China as the “pivotal move” most responsible for securing America’s victory in the Cold War. Here we can see a hitherto unrecognized application of the dynamic Sunsara Taylor has described: the only way two diametrically opposed forces can achieve “common ground” is if one side capitulates to the other. What “common ground” is there between capitalist imperialism on the one hand and communism on the other? None! China began capitulating to the U.S., establishing a vicious cycle that would ultimately secure for the U.S. both victory in the Cold War and, for the time anyway, renewed dominance over China. In other words, China’s thereby became another Yugoslavia story.
The main point I’m trying to make here in connection to this subject of the ‘72 restoration of relations between the U.S. and China is that this marked the end of China’s non-alignment in the Cold War. From the end of the 1950s, starting with the Great Leap Forward, China had exited the Cold War. The revolutionary leaders consequently now came under immense and continual pressure, mainly from revisionist leaders in the party and the state, to re-enter on one side or the other. The most radical period in China’s history...the one that inspired people all over the world to lift their heads, challenge the old authorities, and investigate communism more deeply...was the non-aligned period. It was this period wherein both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution took place. The achievement of rapprochement was symptomatic of the end of the revolutionary upsurge in China and the decision to settle in and pick a side in the Cold War. Picking an imperialist superpower to side with in the Cold War was not principally different than us as American communists picking a section of the American ruling class to support against the other.
The inspiration by the decision to immediately reconstitute the party in on April 1, 1969 was doubtless the border clashes with the Soviet Union that took place the preceding month. (See how establishing a timeline of events helps clarify key points?) Shortly after the party was reconstituted, the Red Guards were disbanded altogether. Even before the reconstitution of the party, Mao assigned people like Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping to come up with a new foreign policy for China. Eventually they recommended a “Hitler like” alliance between China and the United States. Subsequently, the Chinese leaders rationalized the new, pro-U.S. foreign policy (which included things like supporting the U.S.-backed Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile, for example) with a new “theory of three worlds”.
So what was this new “theory of three worlds”, you ask?
Mao’s definition: “The U.S. and the Soviet Union have a lot of atomic bombs, and they are richer [than the second world]. Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada, of the second world, do not possess so many atomic bombs and are not so rich as the First World, but richer than the third world.” Alternately: "In my view, the United States and the Soviet Union belong to the first world. The in-between Japan, Europe and Canada belong to the second world. The third world is very populous. Except Japan, Asia belongs to the third world. So does the whole of Africa and Latin America."
Deng’s definition: “The United States 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.”
No scientific criteria is used here. The sole distinction between the first and second worlds in the above definitions is the degree of military might and wealth particular imperialist countries possess at a given time. Likewise, the definition of the third world encompasses even revolutionary China, we’ll note, as if there were no principle distinction between a socialist country and, say, apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, no room for any complex middle between imperialism and third world status is provided. The criteria for classification is wholly arbitrary. That’s because it was simply dreamt up to justify the pro-U.S. line China had taken up after the fact. (The theory makes its initial appearances after 1971.) For all of Enver Hoxha’s major errors in respect to summing Maoist China and its history in the late ‘70s, one thing he stated about the practical application of three worlds theory was pretty close to correct, which was in this vein: the Chinese revisionists aimed to pit the third world, the second world, and half of the first world, against the Soviet Union, and that was their practical application of the theory.
A correct understanding of the shape of the world uses scientific criteria, and namely is based on the relationship between the nations of the world. In 1965, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao analyzed the globe based on this type of criteria: The first world is the world of oppressor and exploiter nations (a.k.a. the imperialist countries). The third world is the world of oppressed and exploited nations. The second world is the complex middle between these two poles. I would argue that this analysis is correct. Now I’m not saying that we should be “third worldist”. A “third worldist” supports the third world national bourgeoisie in power and generally contends that revolution is impossible in imperialist countries. Or, in other words, for the most part the “third worldist” effectively supports continuation of the status quo. Their position is based on the arbitrary notion that third world countries (that is, again, oppressed and exploited countries) are “proletarian nations”. This is incorrect. No nation-state is proletarian that has not undergone a proletarian revolution. A socialist country fits into none of these proverbial worlds. Socialism is its own dynamic. The central tasks of the socialist nation are to rupture with oppression and exploitation and to advance that cause worldwide, not to oppress and exploit or to be oppressed and exploited. Hence we communists should be, if you will, “new worldists”.
As one last point on the topic of China’s normalization of relations with the U.S. in the early 1970s (in order to beat the subject to death), the international consequences of this decision should also be considered. I namely speak of North Vietnam and how their line was affected. There were two main distinctive lines that were battling it out behind the scenes in North Vietnam at the time: the Maoist line of Truongh Chinh on the one hand and the pro-Soviet line of Le Duan on the other. Largely it was Truongh Chinh’s position that had been in command up to this point. The North Vietnamese leadership by and large, however, reacted with shock when China announced the Nixon visit in 1971. There is little doubt that this development, coupled with the military success of Vo Nguyen Giap’s conventional warfare approach during the brief American invasion of Laos that same year, was what pushed Le Duan’s position to the fore that December. From that point on, the Vietnam War was no longer a people’s war with the masses of Vietnam up against the United States and its puppet government in the South, but a conventional war between North Vietnam and the U.S. and South Vietnam. In other words, China’s rapprochement decision doubtless was in large part responsible for the turn to revisionism in North Vietnam.
Here’s my broader point: Everything I’ve pointed out here in connection to this issue of China’s re-alignment with the U.S. can also be applied to every historical example of a socialist country that establishes or maintains diplomatic ties to capitalist countries. Another excellent historical example would be the Soviet Union. The USSR established normal diplomatic relations with the U.S., for example, in 1933, and began warming up to ‘democratic’ imperialists more broadly during this same time frame as well in reaction to the rise of the Nazis to power early in ‘33. After the French Communists formed the Front Populaire in 1934 in response to attempts by domestic fascists to seize power in February of that year, the Comintern under Stalin subsequently endorsed the reactionary “united front against fascism” policy from August of 1935, marking the USSR’s turn to revisionism. We can thus see how, in this case as well, rapprochement with an imperialist camp was a logical process of capitulation, not a series of unrelated events. And, as in China, the global ideological effect was to drag most of the communist movement down the revisionist road and subordinate it to the national interests of the country in question.
Lest you think though that I’m only really opposing ties to imperialist countries, allow me to point out another important example: the historical relationship between North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge. Namely, I’m speaking of the development in 1965 wherein Pol Pot travelled to North Vietnam to secure their support for a people’s war in Cambodia. They refused to provide this support on the grounds that Cambodian “Prince” Norodom Sihanouk was a nationalist and supportive of the people’s war in Vietnam in that he allowed the North Vietnamese revolutionaries to use the Ho Chi Minh Trail and allowed them to be supplied by China. In that position we see reflected, in fact, the position of far too many communists and would-be communists today vis-a-vis our comrades in the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). To draw out this comparison a bit more, the Khmer Rouge too was opposing a basically feudal and theocratic, nationalist third world regime and faced this kind of opposition from many of their comrades abroad. When they launched a people’s war in early 1968, it was in spite of North Vietnam’s opposition to them doing so, not with their support. It was as a result of embracing the Maoist concept of self-reliance in politics that the Khmer Rouge were able to go forward. Though after Sihanouk was overthrown the Vietnamese and Cambodian revolutionaries were able to find common ground on which to unite, this tension between them was really enduring and its effects spilled over into post-power-seizure Cambodia in the form of nationalism on the part of the Khmer Rouge, which, in some cases, took the form of systematic targeting of ethnic Vietnamese people within Cambodia’s borders for persecution. I think there was definitely a connection between these expressions of nationalism on each side of the border and would suggest that national chauvinism on one side reinforced nationalist prejudices on the other. My underlying point here is that even when we’re talking about a socialist state having a diplomatic relationship to a non-imperialist enemy state, it’s still reactionary. In this example, we see how for North Vietnam to maintain a warm relationship to “Prince” Sihanouk’s regime required them to refuse support to their comrades, who opposed the said regime, and that this was a factor that, logically speaking, likely reinforced certain nationalist and even yes racist prejudices leaders of the Khmer Rouge unfortunately retained against Vietnamese people generally, based on Cambodia’s history of being oppressed by Vietnam. And again, this isn’t just a historical lesson. We have this case of our Iranian comrades today and their position vis-a-vis an essentially similar regime to that of Sihanouk. We should support our comrades, not the states that repress them.
Nothing good has ever come out of socialist countries retaining or developing diplomatic relationships with enemy nations. That isn’t to say that it’s automatically revisionist to have such relationships, but that possessing and developing them is symptomatic of ideological drifting and settling in on one level or another. It’s an expression of nationalism in that it always ultimately requires you to sell out your comrades and their revolutionary aspirations; to subordinate your comrades abroad to your own national interest. In certain ways, it can be compared to the tactic of fielding or endorsing candidates for election to bourgeois parliaments. Like participating in bourgeois electoral politics, diplomacy between socialist and capitalist countries can only, at best, send the wrong message to the people of the world and cannot accomplish anything good. As I stated earlier, communists must be “new worldists”. Our revolution has no place in the world as it is and, as such, no socialist nation should seek to develop a working relationship to the current world order, but to the overthrow and replacement thereof. Furthermore in connection with that point, socialist nations have no place in the United Nations or any other body of enemy states. All the diplomacy of proletarian states should go toward advancing the cause of proletarian revolution throughout the world. To the extent that we fail on this principle, we will tend to delay the day when communism is established worldwide.