A rather long piece, the full article is here: http://rwor.org/bob_avakian/advancingworld...drevolution.htm

Advancing the World Revolutionary Movement: Questions of Strategic Orientation
by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA

This is the text of a talk given shortly after Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will. It was first published in Revolution magazine in Spring, 1984.

This presentation on advancing the world revolutionary movement could also be titled “Breaking With Old Ideas.” First of all and essentially the idea that has to be broken with, which unfortunately has had a lot of currency in the international communist movement, is the idea that internationalism is something that is extended from the proletariat (or the people) of one nation to others, to the workers (or peoples) of other countries. This would correspond to a kind of literal rendering of “inter-national,” and in fact during the period when we opened the pages of our paper to discussion and struggle over the drafts of the New Programme and the New Constitution of our party1, as part of the process of coming up with the final version of those documents, we printed a letter from someone who argued that we should junk the term “internationalism” and call it “world revolutionism” or something like that, because the writer didn’t like even the implication of “one nation to another” that could be drawn by making a literal rendering of “inter-nationalism.” Well, that writer’s suggestion is a bit of a mechanical way of trying to deal with a problem; proletarian internationalism and whether or not you really uphold it has come to stand for something, in fact it is a basic dividing line, and the term is fine in that sense. But there is a point that was being gotten at, even if not quite correctly, in that letter—that is, the criticism of this view that internationalism is something extended from the workers or the people of one nation to those of other nations. Such a view actually reduces internationalism to something secondary and subordinate, however important it may be said to be.

Much has been presented by our party on how the world arena is decisive and on the question of how to correctly view the internal and external factors in this era of imperialism—on the relationship between the process of revolution in a particular country and the process of the advance from the bourgeois epoch to the epoch of communism on a world scale and how the contradiction and struggle within particular countries is integrated into that overall process and determined primarily by its motion and development. Keeping that in mind we can see even more clearly what the material basis and the philosophical basis is for a correct understanding of proletarian internationalism. Certainly it is not mere window dressing, but beyond that it cannot be treated as something secondary or subordinate or something extended from the proletariat of one nation to others. It really has to be the foundation and starting point for the proletariat in all countries: the proletariat in advancing the struggle can only advance it by approaching it, and seeking to advance it, on a world level first of all. This doesn’t mean of course that you try to make revolution irrespective of the conditions in different parts of the world or the conditions within particular countries, but it means that even in approaching that you proceed from the point of view of the world arena as most decisive and the overall interests of the world proletariat as paramount. And that is not merely a good idea. It has a very material foundation, which has been laid by the system of imperialism.2

Now here I’ll just mention something that I have been wanting to investigate. Maybe others know more about it. It is something that I think should be looked into. As I understand it, there was a struggle or a disagreement (however it should be described) between Lenin and James Connolly, who was one of the leading revolutionary Irish figures, one of the revolutionary leaders at the time of the Easter Uprising in Ireland during World War 1. To summarize the difference very briefly, Connolly more or less viewed internationalism as the unity extended from a people to other peoples, whereas Lenin insisted, and correctly, that proletarians do not have a nation, in the ideological sense. That doesn’t mean literally and materially that they don’t live in a particular nation at a given time. But ideologically they are not representatives of a nation, and do not have a nation in that sense. They are representatives of the international proletariat.

This was also sharply focused on in one of Lenin’s polemics against the bourgeois nationalists, so-called socialists from the Jewish Bund inside the Russian social-democratic movement. Lenin quoted one of them saying, well, according to the Bolsheviks, when asked what his nationality is, a worker should say, “I’m a social-democrat.” Lenin went on after quoting him, saying this is the acme of our opportunist’s wit, that he thinks this is an exposure of the Bolsheviks. In other words, Lenin was saying right on, that is what you should say, that should be your orientation. And more than that, it is the acme of your wit, and self-exposure, if you attack that as some sort of a deviation on the part of the Bolsheviks.3 That didn’t mean of course that Lenin denied or negated the existence of nations, the national question and the right of self-determination. Quite the contrary—but what he insisted on was with all that, proletarians are internationalists. In an ideological sense and in terms of their fundamental point of departure, they are not representatives of this or that nation. And Connolly’s viewpoint, as opposed to that, was that you should be internationalist but if for example you were Irish, you represented the Irish people and on that basis you were for unity with all the other oppressed people and the workers of all other nations. These are two sharply opposed viewpoints. And unfortunately I would have to say, to put it a little provocatively, that since the time of Lenin’s death, Connolly’s viewpoint (if you want to describe it that way) and not Lenin’s, has prevailed increasingly in the international communist movement. 4

To continue to be provocative, I would say that this was more or less the viewpoint of Mao: while he fought for proletarian internationalism, and overall you would have to certainly say that he was a proletarian internationalist, his viewpoint on what proletarian internationalism is, the viewpoint that comes through in his writings and speeches, is the viewpoint that we represent the Chinese nation and on that basis we are for unity with the proletariat and all the other oppressed peoples throughout the world. This differs from the viewpoint that Lenin fought for—that whether in an oppressed nation or in an oppressor nation, from an ideological standpoint communists do not represent nations.5 This deviation certainly did not begin with Mao. Rather I would put it the other way around. This is something that Mao didn’t break with—a rupture that Mao did not make with what had become overwhelmingly the prevailing view in the international communist movement. In Conquer the World I referred to a law that was passed in the Soviet Union in 1934 which made for stiffer penalties, including the death penalty, for actions betraying the Soviet Union; and in the preamble to that law, it is said that defense of the fatherland is the highest duty of a communist. Now I don’t think that has anything in common with Lenin’s viewpoint, with Leninism on the question of the fatherland, with internationalism and so on. Lenin repeatedly insisted, particularly with regard to the imperialist countries—and that is where this sort of line takes the most harmful form—Lenin insisted that in those countries the fatherland is a dead issue, because the national question and the national liberation struggle is a dead issue in the advanced capitalist countries. He was also careful to say that phenomena in the world are not “pure” or absolute, and even in speaking of Europe, for example, he cited the Irish question precisely as an example of where there was still a national question in Western Europe. But taking not the exception but the rule, in other words the main aspect of the situation and not secondary aspects in opposition to the essence, he said that in Western Europe (and in the U.S. where there is also the national question, particularly for Black people as well as for others) on the whole the national question is over and done with. Therefore the question of the fatherland, of the defense of the fatherland and so on, was not the point on the historical agenda in these countries.

But even for those countries where it is on the agenda, and where politically it is necessary to not only wage but to strive to lead the struggle for national liberation, there is still the question of orientation and point of departure, whether or not your orientation and point of departure is that you are a representative of the nation or the representative of the international proletariat. To extend this a little bit, or to put it in somewhat geometric terms, I would say that you are better off as a communist going more horizontally than vertically. By that I mean you’re better off seeking your links and your identification with the proletarians and the oppressed masses all over the world in the contemporary era than you are seeking your roots and identification going back decades, or even hundreds or thousands of years, within your own nation. That is not to say that you should ignore the concrete conditions or the history and historical development of the nation that you are objectively a part of. But in terms of what your orientation is, your identification should be with the international proletariat of the contemporary era, and your emphasis should be on the fact that this is a radically different era, and that the proletarian revolution is a radically different revolution than all previous ones—or to paraphrase Marx and Engels, this revolution represents a radical rupture, both materially and ideologically, with anything previous.

Why raise this? Well, you know, it’s a problem. It has been a problem in the international communist movement. For example, here in France, I mean, when a Marxist-Leninist force emerges which clearly says “fuck the French Revolution of 1789 and that whole tradition, that’s the first thing that we want to have nothing more to do with, that’s in the past,” it will be a tremendous leap forward for the Marxist-Leninist movement in France. In my observations, one of the biggest millstones around the neck of any attempted Marxist-Leninist formation in France is that they all think that there is this great “left” tradition in France, and they go around wearing it—even those who may refer to it cynically on the one hand still believe it and follow in its path on the other. It is a big millstone. Because in fact that’s a bourgeois, at best a bourgeois “left,” tradition in the present era—it is still within the bounds of bourgeois democracy. As far as bourgeois revolutions go, the French Revolution was fine; it was the most thorough one, I suppose, that we know of. It was not totally accidental that the Bolsheviks, for example, borrowed certain analogies from this French Revolution, even sometimes took on pseudonyms from it, used analogies to the Jacobins and this and that. It was a very thoroughgoing revolution for its era. But that’s precisely the point. And I was reading, just this morning actually, an article where Lenin was polemicizing against Boris Souvarine, who was an opportunist leader of the socialists in France during World War 1. And it was so refreshing, especially after having been here for a while, even as an observer. Souvarine is attacking Lenin for his stand of revolutionary defeatism and throwing up all kinds of opportunist, Kautskyite-type arguments to obscure the issue and raising the history of France and of the French Revolution and the democratic and even revolutionary traditions of France—insisting that all this cannot possibly be compared to Germany and so on and so forth. And Lenin just bluntly says, look, this war has got nothing to do with the France of the end of the eighteenth century, this is imperialist France that’s waging this war. That epoch is over and done with. Let the dead bury their dead, as Marx said in another context. 6

So, you see, this is not just some sort of academic question, but right down to today this confusion of nationalism with internationalism—and specifically the stand of being a “communist inheritor” of the best traditions of the nation and the best representative of its true interests—continues to plague the international communist movement and Marxist-Leninists in a number of countries. Of course we shouldn’t one-sidedly negate the past or even one-sidedly cut ourselves off from the past, but there is a radical rupture involved. We are not the continuators of the previous revolutions of the previous eras. That is not what we communists are, that is not what the proletarian revolution is. In the U.S. we had one of the more grotesque (if not the most grotesque, at least one of the most grotesque) and internationally famous examples of this in the leadership of Earl Browder of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA), who coined the slogan “Communism is twentieth-century Americanism.” (laughter) And it’s easy to laugh at that because this is in fact extremely crude and grotesque. And to this day the CP in the U.S. has bookstores which bear the name “Jefferson Bookstore” and so on. Earl Browder is gone and the CPUSA is today worse than they were even then. But they’ve always done that, you know. Since the mid-’30s on. Since the time of the Dimitrov report.7 Those tendencies which already existed inside the CPUSA were given a tremendous boost and have been dominant ever since then without exception; when Earl Browder was in power and after he was thrown out by the Comintern and the leadership of the CPUSA, that line remained.

But it’s not just the CPUSA. I remember someone telling me they came to France right after World War 2, and Thorez, the head of the French CP at the time, gave a speech about why it was that they were the upholders of the traditions, the great revolutionary traditions, of the French nation and why they could still say “Vive la republique.” And then Thorez added, of course that doesn’t mean that the British comrades can say, “God save the Queen.” Well why not? It seems to me that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I mean if the French comrades can say “Vive la republique,” then I think it’s only fair that their comrades of the British Communist Party should be able to say, “God save the Queen.” After all, they’d said almost everything else anyway by that time. (laughter) The British CP was proud to boast that it had gotten there first when Khrushchev announced peaceful transition, that it already had that as a policy for a number of years before that.

But to return to the French CP and this whole viewpoint of being a part of the great tradition of the nation: at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris there’s a whole corner that’s been bought by the CP. Unfortunately it rings the Wall of the Communards, which the CP has sort of appropriated—it has bought up all the land in the cemetery right around the Wall of the Communards (the wall where the last defenders of the Commune were slaughtered). Well there are these disgusting monuments on different graves, for example the monuments to two soldiers who died as part of a French regiment in the Spanish Civil War—their graves are side by side and the CP has erected gravestones with the inscriptions, “here’s the one who believed in God, here’s the one who didn’t.” The only thing is you’re not sure which one is the CP member. But, one of them was a CP member and one of them wasn’t, one of them believed in God and one didn’t, and they are lying side by side because they fought shoulder to shoulder in the Spanish Civil War. Well, it’s not that everybody who fought in the Spanish Civil War should have been an atheist or a communist. But the CP is going out of its way to make a point out of this, and if you see it in its context here, it’s all part of “they died so that France can live.” And over the graves of open CP members—even Central Committee members of the French Communist Party—are monuments with slogans about how they died for the French nation, for the glory of France, and so on. It’s all part of a piece there, it’s the great continuing tradition of the great French nation and its republic—this is what’s being upheld. Now these are perhaps some of the more crude and grotesque expressions of this: so-and-so member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the French CP, who fought to preserve the independence of France during World War 2 and peace and liberty—you have to go read it to see how thoroughly revisionist it is. Unfortunately, this didn’t begin with George Marchais (the current head of the French CP) and won’t end with him. Similarly in the U.S. this sort of thing did not begin and end with Earl Browder, but was a consistent thread going back to the mid-’30s, and after Browder was gotten rid of it remained a consistent thread. Even if it wasn’t always quite so crudely expressed as in the slogan, “Communism is twentieth-century Americanism,” that has been the line.

I remember one time being interviewed by a reporter who considered himself to be, and I guess in a certain way was, sympathetic. He had obviously been around the CP, and he kept feeding me what he thought were fat lines like, “your party, it is sort of an American party, sort of rooted in the soil of America, isn’t it?” And I’d say, “no.” Well, it went on like this, back and forth, and finally he just got explicit and said, “Well, listen, what I’m trying to get at is that you are an American phenomenon. That’s what I’m trying to get you to say.” And I replied, “I know that, and that’s what I’m not going to say.” But remember this guy was more or less sympathetic. He’d been around the old CP and he thought this was helpful. He thought these were big, fat lobs (as in baseball), he thought he was pitching you these nice fat pitches, so you could, WHISH!!, get some good hits. But it wasn’t what we wanted to say. From his experience, that’s what he thought we would want to say, because he’d been around the old CP and that’s what they do want to say, and that’s what they do say. That’s what they have said for nearly fifty years. And when they said “Communism is twentieth-century Americanism,” unfortunately as a self-description it was true. What they were presenting as communism was twentieth-century Americanism, i.e., imperialism. That’s what they had become an appendage of and apologist for. The worst expressions of this are going to naturally be in the imperialist countries, whose role in relation to the national question is to be the oppressors of other nations.

Naturally the attempt to be patriotic, to be the best upholders of the nation and so on, is going to take its most grotesque and harmful form in these imperialist countries. But, as an ideological stand, as a point of departure, it’s still not correct for communists of any nation, even if in some ways it is not as harmful in those countries where the national question is on the agenda as opposed to those advanced and capitalist countries where it is not on the agenda. Still, in the oppressed nations, over time and particularly if the revolution does succeed in advancing beyond the first stage and into the socialist stage—beyond national liberation and the new-democratic stage of revolution to the stage of socialism—this kind of outlook will more and more come into contradiction with the need to further advance the revolution and will place limitations on the ability of those leading it to guide the revolution forward in unity with the overall struggle of the international proletariat—to advance it as part of, and a subordinate part of, the world revolutionary movement. It’s one thing to say that we have to practice internationalism. But merely the desire to uphold and apply proletarian internationalism is not enough to actually do so. It is necessary, again, to understand from a materialist and a dialectical standpoint, both the material and philosophical basis for why things have to be approached first of all and as a point of departure from the world arena; and as an ideological reflection of that, why communists are, in terms of their basic stand and point of departure, representatives of the international proletariat and not representatives of any nation or even of the workers of that particular nation (which is also another variant of how this nationalist deviation can express itself). It can express itself as, we are the representatives of the American or British or French or Chinese or Egyptian workers, what have you—you can just fill in the blank. But even if it’s given a “class content” in this way, it is still a nationalist deviation.