Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Against the National Nihilism of the “RCP,USA”

The Other Side of the Maoist Coin – Negating the Struggle Against the Imperialist Domination of a Capitalist Country


First Published: Special Supplement, The Workers’ Advocate Vol. 10, No. 6, August 25, 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Thus Chinese revisionism has negated the proletarian socialist revolution in the imperialist countries of Western Europe. Japan and Canada under the pretext of the need to oppose the domination of these countries by foreign imperialism. This negation of the socialist revolution is a striking manifestation of Chinese revisionism’s inability to combine or to correctly define the relation between the anti-imperialist struggle and the proletarian socialist revolution. But Chinese revisionism is eclectic and goes from one extreme to the other. There are also those of its followers who deny the struggle against the foreign imperialist domination of a capitalist country as allegedly a violation of the socialist revolution. This position may on the surface seem to be the opposite of the Maoist negation of the socialist revolution, but in reality it is only the flip side of the same position. The two extremes meet. They are both based on the Maoist theses completely detaching the socialist revolution and any democratic or anti-imperialist tasks. Furthermore, both positions end up justifying U.S. imperialist world domination. The “three worlders” who advocate “directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism” openly call for the “second world” to support U.S. imperialism against Soviet social-imperialism. Meanwhile the other side of the Maoist coin denounces the struggle of the proletariat and toiling masses of these “second world” countries against U.S. imperialism as allegedly “social-chauvinism.”

The “RCP,USA” is one such Maoist grouping that gives this flip position of Chinese revisionism.

The “RCP,USA” has attempted to strike a pose as opponents of a few of the more blatant and discredited theses of Chinese revisionism, such as “directing the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism.” But at the same time the “RCP,USA” has been and remains “three worldist” through and through. To this day the “RCP,USA” declares its solidarity with “Mao’s three worlds tactic” as allegedly in contradistinction to “Deng Xiaoping’s three worlds strategy.” Moreover, presently Bob Avakian and the other theoretical hacks of the “RCP,USA” have taken upon themselves to elaborate all “the immortal contributions” of Mao Zedong Thought, including all the Chinese revisionist theories belittling the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat and negating the Marxist-Leninist conception of the role of the proletarian party.

Thus the “RCP,USA” has found itself caught in a contradiction. On the one hand they are trying to look revolutionary and appear as opponents of the Klonskyite “directors of the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism” and the present-day Chinese ultra-revisionist rulers; while on the other hand they are fighting to maintain the entire corrupt and anti-Marxist-Leninist outlook of Mao Zedong Thought and Chinese revisionism. This contradiction has led the “RCP,USA” into anarchist actions and trotskyite phrasemongering in order to try to put a revolutionary coloring on its “three worlds-ism.”

Maoism Vacillates from One Anti-Marxist Extreme to the Other

For example, today with its petty-bourgeois anarchist activities, the “RCP,USA” has given yet another vivid expression of the Maoist scepticism towards the revolutionary potential of the working class. The “RCP,USA” holds to the basic view of Mao Zedong Thought that the working class is not revolutionary and the working class movement is nothing but reformism and economism. Hence the “RCP, USA” goes from one extreme to another, combining reformist work in the working class movement with anarchist activities. The “RCP,USA” needs these anarchist activities to preserve its “revolutionary” credentials because the “RCP,USA” is incapable of giving up reformism and economism in its approach to the working class movement. Anarchism proves once again to be the cry of despair of the reformist petty bourgeois.

The same thing applies to the question of the struggle against U.S. imperialism. For years the “RCP,USA” openly negated the proletarian socialist revolution in the U.S. with its “united front against imperialism strategy.” The predecessor of the “RCP,USA,” the “Revolutionary Union,” was based on primeval “three worlds-ism.” For example, the RU always proudly claimed to be the original authors of the “united front against imperialism strategy.” Moreover, as an important element of this strategy, the RU held the position as late as 1974 that the main contradiction in the U.S. was not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but between U.S. imperialism and the “third world peoples” (oppressed nationalities) inside the U.S. To this day, although the “RCP,USA” pays lip service to the socialist revolution, it still preserves a suitably adapted version of the “united front against imperialism strategy,” just as it also upholds “Mao’s three worlds tactic.” Therefore, in order to have something to say against the Klonskyite “three worlders,” it has taken to the trotskyite position of denouncing all struggle against foreign imperialist domination of “second world” countries as “social-chauvinism.”

Similarly for years the “RCP,USA” and its predecessors supported cultural nationalism as allegedly a stage in the development of revolutionary consciousness. This was part of their anti-Marxist-Leninist Maoist stand of negating the tight against revisionism and opportunism. They utilized their sophistry in defense of cultural nationalism to justify allying with the shabbiest characters. Indeed, to this day they still justify Mao’s deviations on this question. At the same time, they have gone to the other anti-Marxist-Leninist extreme of denouncing as violations of internationalism all the revolutionary-traditions of a people and all national culture, without distinguishing between the progressive and reactionary. They identify it with bourgeois nationalism and cultural nationalism and with the flag of the bourgeoisie. They then proceed to rave hysterically against the flag. What a repulsive display of sophistry!

Thus the “RCP,USA” has stepped forward as utter great-power chauvinists in defense of U.S. imperialist world hegemony. No matter how many U.3. flags the “RCP,USA” burns, its condemnation of the struggle of the West European, Japanese and Canadian proletariat against U.S. imperialism brands it indelibly as an American superpower chauvinist. The “RCP,USA” is internationalist only in its posturing, while it is chauvinist to the core in its attitude to the struggle of the world proletariat and toiling masses against U.S. imperialist world domination. Hence the two extremes meet, the two forms of Mao Zedong Thought and “three worldsism,” Mr. Klonsky’s and Mr. Avakian’s, in a common orgy of disgusting national chauvinism.

The American Superpower Chauvinists of the “RCP,USA” Raise the Trotskyite Banner of National Nihilism

On the basis of their trotskyite negation of the struggle against U.S. imperialism, the “RCP,USA” has declared its discovery of “the roots of revisionism and decay that have damaged all and destroyed some of the international communist movement over the past 50 years.” So how is this evil force expressed today? By “the call to revolutionaries in the imperialist countries to ’pick up the national flag’... from Enver Hoxha of Albania.” (“On the Question of So-Called ’National Nihilism’: You Can’t Beat Your Enemy While Raising His Flag,” Revolutionary Worker, August 1, 1980, p. 20, col. 1) In fact the “RCP,USA” finds the very fountainhead of modern revisionism in the struggle of the working class of the capitalist countries against subjugation by U.S. imperialism, and before that in the struggle for liberation against the German Nazi hordes.

Over the last three years the “RCP,USA” has written a number of treatises on this theme against the MLP,USA and its predecessor, the COUSML, as well as against the Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha and against all the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties. Furthermore, these dregs of Chinese revisionism reserve their main venom to slander the glorious work of the Comintern and in particular the line of its Seventh World Congress which guided the proletariat and people in the earthshaking struggle against world fascism. They denounce the struggle against fascism oriented by the Seventh World Congress, a struggle which led to some of the greatest victories of socialism and to the setting up of socialist states in a number of countries. But, for the “RCP,USA,” any struggle on democratic issues is suspect, and the more so as the antifascist struggle led to progressive anti-fascist national liberation wars in capitalist countries.

The “RCP,USA” also reserves special contempt for J.V. Stalin who led the great anti-fascist struggle. As well, they sneer in particular at his appeal to the world’s communists at the 19th Congress of the CPSU in 1952. For here Stalin set forward once again the tasks of fighting against fascization and against U.S. imperialist hegemony. Stalin declared:

...the bourgeoisie itself– the major enemy of the liberation movement – has become more reactionary, has lost contact with the people, and thus has weakened itself...

Formerly, the bourgeoisie presumed to play the liberal, defending bourgeois-democratic freedoms, and thereby gained some popularity for itself among the people. Now not a trace of this liberalism remains.

... The banner of bourgeois-democratic freedoms has been thrown overboard. In my opinion, it has fallen upon you, representatives of Communist and democratic parties, to pick up this banner and carry it forward if you wish to gather around yourselves the majority of the people. There is no one else to raise it.

Formerly, the bourgeoisie was considered the leader of nations; it maintained the rights and independence of nations, putting them ’before all else. ’ Now not a trace of this national principle remains. Now the bourgeoisie will sell the rights and independence of their nations for dollars. The banner of national independence and national sovereignty has been thrown overboard. There is no doubt that it has fallen upon you, representatives of Communist and democratic parties, to pick it up and carry it forward, if you wish to be patriots of your countries, if you wish to become the leaders of nations. There is no one else to raise it.

Thus stands the matter in the present time. Certainly all these circumstances must lighten the work of Communist and democratic parties that have not yet come to power. It follows that these are all reasons to count on success and victory for our fraternal parties in countries still under the rule of capital.

These words of Stalin’s ring as true today as when he said them. U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, with the active collaboration of the world bourgeoisie, is striving to place the proletariat and working masses of the entire capitalist-revisionist world under their dictate and oppression. Hence the banners of struggle against fascism and fascization, against imperialist domination, and in particular against the world empires of the superpowers have become important banners in the struggle of the world’s Marxist-Leninist communists for the overthrow of the rule of capital.

Against this Marxist-Leninist line the American superpower chauvinists of the “RCP,USA” have openly unfurled the trotskyite banner of national nihilism. But according to the Marxist outlook, the oppression of a nation, whether or not it is capitalistically developed, means in the first place the oppression of the working class and the working masses, the further destruction of their livelihood, the suppression of their culture, the further limitation of their political rights and freedoms, and so on. This is true in the capitalist countries as in other countries. Further, as the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern pointed out, for the communists to fail to take into account the revolutionary and progressive traditions of the working class and people of a given country and instead to mock at all national sentiments, means to fall into the positions of national nihilism. The Seventh World Congress pointed out that the communists must be free of both bourgeois nationalism and national nihilism. Of course, it is one thing for a revolutionary to fall into a certain national nihilism toward his own country through inexperience or a mechanical approach to the struggle against bourgeois nationalism. But one must speak far more harshly, 1,000 times more harshly, against those who negate the anti-imperialist struggles of all other countries, as the “RCP,USA” does with respect to the large number of countries under the jackboot of their own U.S. imperialists. Such creatures are not communists but chauvinists or “socialist” jingoes of one sort or another.

Marx and Lenin Against National Nihilism

The “RCP,USA,” following the tactical line of the international trend of Chinese revisionism, directs its attack on Stalin, Enver Hoxha and the Comintern. But in fact, with its banner of national nihilism it is coming out in utter opposition to Marxism-Leninism as a whole. The entire life and work of Marx, Engels and Lenin testifies against the national nihilism of the “RCP,USA.” A thick book could be written on this, but here we restrict ourselves to the briefest of comments.

It is well known that in 1914 Lenin wrote his celebrated article “On the National Pride of the Great Russians” (Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 102-06). Here Lenin was writing at the outbreak of World War I, at the time of an immense wave of chauvinism among the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie and during the intense fight against social-chauvinism. Yet Lenin went out of his way to oppose national nihilism. Lenin also pointed out in this article how “unseemly” such national nihilism and disregard of national questions is for the communists of a country which oppresses other countries. Thus Lenin’s article punctures “RCP,USA’s” fraud that national nihilism is necessary in the struggle against social-chauvinism, and in fact points to the chauvinist nature of demanding that the world take up national nihilism and cease its struggle against the imperialists of one’s own country.

Lenin also vigorously and repeatedly denounced the “imperialist economists” who negated the struggle on the questions of democracy as allegedly being opportunist or revisionist or social-chauvinist in the era of imperialism. For in World War I too, there were those who sought the roots of social-chauvinism and opportunism in the question of the struggle against national oppression or on other questions of democracy. Lenin, however, stated:

Capitalism and imperialism can be overthrown only by economic revolution. They cannot be overthrown by democratic transformations, even the most ’ideal.’ But a proletariat not schooled in the struggle for democracy is incapable of performing an economic revolution.” (“Reply to P. Kievsky (Y. Pyatakov),” Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 25)

Imperialist war may be said to be a triple negation of democracy... but the awakening and growth of socialist revolt against imperialism are indissolubly linked with the growth of democratic resistance and unrest.”(Ibid., emphasis as in the original)

Lenin made short work of the “leftist” pretensions of those who negated the democratic questions and called them “imperialist economists.” He described their theory as “a caricature of Marxism.”

But here we find one of the ideological foundations of the Maoism and opportunism of the “RCP,USA.” It has no relation to Marxism-Leninism at all but dredges up all the discredited theses of the imperialist economists, of Bukharin, Radek, Pyatakov and so forth. Bukharin himself went on from this allegedly “leftist” theory to become a major ideologue of right opportunism, of the interests of the kulak and of the theory of the capitalists merging peacefully into socialism. Indeed, Bukharinism is one of the components that make up Mao Zedong Thought /It is the banner of Bukharin that the “RCP,USA” is raising. While it is not an accident that Bukharin also went on to ally with the trotskyites and form part of the Axis fifth column inside Soviet Russia. Other imperialist economists, such as Radek and Pyatakov, also wound up as trotskyites. Trotskyism and Bukharinism – there one finds one of the inspirations for Mr. Avakian’s theoretical atrocities and national nihilism.

The whole life and work of Marx and Engels testifies against the national nihilists. But the opportunists think they have caught Marx and Engels in a contradiction. They shout: does not the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” of Marx and Engels say that “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got”?

Of course it does. This statement is one of the foundations of communism and the proletarian outlook. It, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with national nihilism. Marx and Engels immediately go on to say in the very next sentence: “Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.” Marx and Engels have penetrated to the essence of the question. The “RCP,USA” cannot distinguish between bourgeois nationalism and the progressive sentiments of the proletariat. The “RCP,USA” is mired in imperialist chauvinism and hence cannot even conceive of opposition to bourgeois nationalism as anything but national nihilism nor that national nihilism is just the flip side of bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism. Marx and Engels ridiculed the national nihilists of their day.

Thus the national nihilism of the “RCP,USA” is an utter negation of Marxism-Leninism. The work of Stalin, the Comintern, and that of Enver Hoxha is but the loyal continuation of the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin. In denouncing the struggle against fascism and the anti-imperialist struggle in the capitalist countries, the “RCP,USA” is once again demonstrating that there is nothing in common between Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism.

The “RCP,USA” Replaces the Internationalism of the Proletariat with the Cosmopolitanism of the U.S. Imperialist Big Bourgeoisie

In fact, the “RCP,USA,” in madly scribbling against the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in general and in favor of national nihilism in particular, is echoing the trotskyites and taking up the stand of the imperialists themselves towards the cultures, revolutionary traditions and national sentiments of the world’s peoples. The “RCP,USA,” which lives in an oppressor country, is looking down its nose at the oppressed nationalities. It is trumpeting the present-day cosmopolitanism which the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists use to whitewash their domination of oppressed nations and to attack the cultures and progressive values of the oppressed peoples. Hence when the “RCP,USA” demands that all the world’s peoples adopt positions of national nihilism, it means that the “RCP,USA” has abandoned the struggle of the proletariat and working masses against capitalism and the oppression of imperialism. It means to betray the struggle against world imperialism, which is a complete system of the enslavement and oppression of nations. It means (whether under the conditions when the Nazi and other fascist hordes were unleashing war to put the entire world under fascist slavery or under the present conditions, when U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism are trying to accomplish what Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini failed to do) to prettify the fascist and imperialist jackboot.

Mr. Avakian, turning things on their head, insists that it is the struggle against such things as the U.S. imperialist domination of various capitalist and imperialist countries that is social-chauvinism. He writes: “Basically my point is that there is no such thing as so-called ’national nihilism’.... This theory for combatting national nihilism to me is a theory of social-chauvinism.” (Quoted in Revolutionary Worker, Aug. 1,1980, p. 20, col. 3-4) This is the ideological basis upon which “RCP,USA” opposes the struggle against U.S. imperialist domination of capitalist countries. Thus, the “RCP,USA” insists that it is “social-chauvinism” to combat foreign imperialist domination because it allegedly means lining up the working class behind its “own” bourgeoisie against the workers of other nations. Hence, the Marxist-Leninist communists and the revolutionary proletariat are forbidden to concern themselves with such “trifles” as fighting the subjugation and oppression of nations. Nay more, to do so allegedly means going over to the class enemy and social-chauvinism.

Of course, this “brilliant thought” emanating from the champions of Mao Zedong Thought is hardly new or original. For example, as it is well known, in the late 1960’s the Progressive Labor Party also raised the trotskyite banner of national nihilism under the hoax of a struggle against modern revisionism. The PLP declared that “all nationalism is reactionary” and then proceeded to condemn both the glorious national liberation war of the Vietnamese people and the heroic struggle of the black people in the U.S. against racial discrimination and national oppression as supposedly manifestations of “reactionary nationalism.” It is a striking fact that the “RCP,USA” is marching down this same neo-trotskyite path as their PLP forebears.

With their national nihilist ravings the “RCP,USA” replaces the internationalism of the proletariat with the cosmopolitanism of the U.S. imperialist big bourgeoisie. Following this ultra-imperialist outlook, the “RCP,USA” declares that it is opposed to “making a fetish out of what is ultimately a bourgeois thing, the nation, instead of pushing things forward, through stages, to the ultimate goal of communism, which means the elimination of classes on a world scale and the merging of all nations.” (Ibid., p. 21, col. 3) What fine “internationalist” phrases to cover the stench of thoroughly chauvinist and imperialist garbage!

Indeed, from the perspective of a U.S. great-power chauvinist, why should the working masses who are subject to U.S. imperialist hegemony “make a fetish” out of fighting the ruthless plunder, exploitation and oppression of the U.S. multinational corporations? Why should the working masses be concerned or “make a fetish” out of being trampled upon by vast U.S. military bases or out of the fact that their youth are being mobilized as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialist wars of aggression? Or why should the working masses “make a fetish” out of the decimation of their culture when they can enjoy all the wonders of U.S. imperialist “culture” such as the straightforward fascist and national nihilist “punk rock” which the “RCP,USA” and other decadent elements find so entrancing? The working class must never concern itself with such “bourgeois things.” After all, to fight as the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists advocate, against the U.S. multinationals, NATO, the CIA, “punk rock” and the other blessings of U.S. imperialism is only to create obstacles to “pushing things forward, through stages, to the ultimate goal of...the merging of nations”! The “merging of nations” through the subordination of the entire world to U.S. imperialism – such is the essence of the “RCP,USA’s” American superpower chauvinist and national nihilist ravings.

Marxism-Leninism, on the other hand, has a very different perspective on the question of the “merging of nations.” The breaking down of national barriers can only be realized with the establishment of fraternal equality among nations. It cannot be realized under the slavery of German Nazism nor under U.S. imperialist domination and oppression. Rather the “merging of nations” will be realized through the uncompromising struggle of the proletariat and the working masses against national oppression in all its forms and through the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism and the establishment of socialism, without which any talk of genuine equality among nations is a fraud. Under socialism too, the nationalities will persist and indeed even flourish on the basis of fraternal equality. This has been borne out by the experience of the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin. It is the modern Soviet revisionists who have brutally introduced Russification, the national nihilist cosmopolitanism and the savage suppression and trampling on the national sentiments of the people as allegedly a step towards the single socialist people.

Social-Democratic Schematism of Mao Zedong Thought

Thus, on the one hand, there are those Chinese revisionist sects who have thrown the proletarian revolution and socialism overboard and advocate an alliance with the internal bourgeoisie under the pretext that the main struggle of the proletariat of the imperialist countries of the “second world” is for the national interests and against the two superpowers. On the other hand, there are those Chinese revisionist sects which defend the U.S. imperialists’ exploitation and oppression of the working masses under the trotskyite demagogy that it is “social-chauvinism” for the proletariat to take up the struggle against this oppression as one of its banners in the socialist revolution. Whereas these two positions may appear on the surface to be opposites and mutually exclusive, in reality they are the same. Both are class collaborationist and capitulationist towards U.S. imperialist hegemony. To advocate class collaboration means necessarily to defend imperialist subjugation as well. Likewise, to condemn the struggle against imperialist oppression means to turn any talk of the class struggle and socialism into meaningless and impotent phrases, harmless to the bourgeois-imperialist order.

These complementary opportunist positions stem from the same anti-Marxist ideological roots. That is, they both flow from the social-democratic and revisionist dogmas of Mao Zedong Thought. In particular these positions are based on Mao’s social-democratic schematism which creates an artificial Great Wall between the bourgeois democratic and the socialist revolution and which divides with a gaping chasm the democratic or anti-imperialist and the socialist tasks of the revolution.

It was this artificial barrier created by Mao that blocked the uninterrupted transition of the Chinese bourgeois democratic, anti-imperialist revolution into a socialist revolution. As the “RCP,USA” and other “defenders of Mao” themselves explain it, since China carried out a bourgeois democratic revolution it was, for this reason, fine for the capitalist parties to maintain positions within the state power and for the bourgeois classes to not be expropriated even decades after the liberation of China. These things are trumpeted as necessary and natural consequences of the bourgeois democratic character of China’s liberation war. Furthermore, this is why on the question of the anti-imperialist and democratic revolutions of the oppressed peoples the Klonskyite “directors of the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism” of the “CPML,” together with the “RCP,USA” and all the “three worldist” lackeys of Chinese revisionism, hurl abuse at the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists for allegedly “denying two-stage revolution,” “combining two stages into one,” and so forth and so on. This is also one of the major slanders which the Maoists reserve for the Party of Labor of Albania, which is supposedly “trotskyist” and “ultra-left” on this question as demonstrated by the fact that the anti-imperialist national liberation war of the Albanian people was transformed without interruption into a socialist revolution.

Regarding the advanced capitalist-imperialist countries of the so-called “second world” the Maoists have constructed the same kind of anti-Marxist Great Wall. As cited previously, Mao defined that “capitalist countries...in their external relations, they are not oppressed by, but themselves oppress other nations.” (Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 219) Hence, either those capitalist countries which are oppressed by foreign imperialism are by definition no longer capitalist in character, or, by definition, the problem of foreign imperialist oppression is merely a figment of Stalin’s or Enver Hoxha’s imagination. In either case, the Marxist-Leninist perspective of the proletarian socialist revolution carrying through the anti-imperialist tasks of overthrowing U.S. imperialist oppression simply does not fit into the stereotyped formulas of Mao Zedong Thought. Hence within these imperialist states the national tasks in regard to the struggle against U.S. imperialist hegemony is detached from the socialist revolution. Either the struggle is reduced to national tasks and socialism is left by the wayside. Or the proletariat is prohibited from establishing its hegemony over the anti-imperialist struggle as a major link in the chain of the socialist revolution. Either way they both amount to the same strategy: submission to the bourgeoisie and surrender to world imperialism.

As we pointed out in our pamphlet Mao, Browder and Social-Democracy, on questions of the strategy of revolution the Chinese revisionists are social-democratic schematists; they “place the revolution into either ’purely bourgeois democratic stage’ or ’purely socialist stage’ compartments and then clamp down anti-Marxist-Leninist ’sacred laws’ onto each stage: (a) that the bourgeois democratic revolution must be divided by a wall from the socialist revolution and therefore cannot and must not carry out any socialist tasks, nor can such a revolution be uninterruptedly carried through to the socialist stage; and (b) that the revolution cannot be socialist in character if it is still faced with democratic tasks, or to express the same ’sacred law’ from the other side, the socialist revolution must be forbidden to carry out any tasks of a democratic or anti-imperialist nature. Such is the revisionist doctrinairism of Mao Zedong Thought.” (p. 40)

Chinese Revisionism Is But a Current of the One Modern Revisionist Stream

Chinese revisionism, which is anti-Marxist-Leninist through and through, has its particular forms and theses which are peculiar unto itself. But in its essence, in its basic guiding ideology and strategy, it is indistinguishable from the other modern revisionist currents. Among other things, this is demonstrated by the close solidarity being demonstrated between the Chinese revisionists and their followers and the so-called Eurocommunists, the Italian, Spanish and other modern revisionist parties of Europe. On the cardinal question of the stand towards imperialism, the bourgeoisie and the socialist revolution, the Chinese revisionists and the Euro-revisionists share a common counter-revolutionary and social-democratic platform.

On the attitude towards one’s “own” imperialism, just like the Chinese revisionists and their mouthpieces who whitewash the imperialist and neo-colonialist crimes of the “second world” imperialisms, the Euro-revisionists follow in the social-chauvinist footsteps of the heroes of the social- democratic Second International. For example, the French Communist Party did not wage a serious struggle in support of the Algerian war against French colonialism. This was a sign of something corrupt and unhealthy in the Party, of its vacillations and deviations towards submission to imperialism, and of its loss of revolutionary spirit. Later the Party degenerated into an utterly revisionist and social-imperialist party, that is, a Eurocommunist party. As such, it fully supports French neo-colonialism and is in brazen all-round national and social-chauvinist positions. The other Eurocommunist parties too abandoned any genuinely anti-imperialist positions long ago. They are enthusiasts of neo-colonialism and support both their own imperialism and world imperialism as a whole. They too have been in favor of “the unity of the second world and the third world” and have worked to realize this “unity” by extending the grip of European imperialism.

On this question Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out in regard to the Euro-revisionists, in his new work Eurocommunism Is Anti-Communism, that:

“Not being for the revolution in their own countries, they are not for the revolution in other countries, either. They do not want the weakening of their imperialist and neo-colonialist bourgeoisie, therefore they can never see the revolution in the oppressed countries as a direct aid for the overthrow of the capitalist system. …

“Taken as a whole in their stand towards the revolutionary liberation movements the Eurocommunists have embraced the ideology of non-alignment, which is extremely convenient for them in order to justify the subjugation of peoples to the domination of imperialist powers and to proclaim neo-colonialism as a way for the former colonial countries to emerge from poverty and develop.” (Proletarian Internationalism ed., p. 52) Thus it is clear that the whitewashing of neo-colonialism and imperialism is an objective which Chinese revisionism shares in common with the other revisionisms.

The Euro-revisionists have likewise completely abandoned the field of battle against U.S. imperialist domination. They favor and accept as the natural order of things NATO and all the other instruments of U.S. imperialist hegemony over Western Europe.

“The Eurocommunists do not want to see the existence of a major national problem, the question of American domination in Western Europe and the need for liberation from it. From the end of the Second World War down to this day, American imperialism has bound this part of Europe with all kinds of political, economic, military, cultural and other chains. Without breaking these chains you cannot have socialism....

“The Eurocommunists’ denial of the existence of a national problem in their countries, concretely, the need to fight the American domination and dictate and to strengthen the national independence and sovereignty, is further proof of their political and ideological degeneration and their betrayal of the cause of revolution.” (Enver Hoxha, Eurocommunism Is Anti-Communism, PI ed., p. 50)

On this question also the Chinese revisionists and the Euro-revisionists are in complete harmony. Both are in favor of the strengthening of NATO and U.S. imperialist hegemony in Europe in the name of “maintaining the balance of power” allegedly as a means of “preserving peace.” Whether from the angle of the “danger of the Soviet threat” or from the angle of the open championing of national nihilism, the followers of Chinese revisionism have also thrown overboard the major problem of the struggle of the West European peoples against U.S. imperialist domination.

As to the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and the socialist revolution, both the Euro-revisionists and the Chinese revisionists are against these things. The strengthening of the capitalist monopolies of Europe through the European Common Market is their common objective. The “socialism” advocated by the Euro-revisionists is no more “socialist” than the reforms of the capitalist system advocated by social-democracy. The Euro-revisionists each advocate their own “national road to socialism.” Each of these “socialisms” is to be realized through “structural reforms” and a series of minor adjustments in the status quo, reforms which all have the sole objective of rescuing from crisis and strengthening the man-eating capitalist system. But as for expropriating the bourgeoisie, destroying the capitalist- imperialist order to its foundations and building socialism as Marx and Lenin taught – this is something that the various Euro-revisionist “roads to socialism” do not have on the agenda.

The non-socialist so-called “socialism” as prescribed by Mao Zedong Thought is another close relative to the “Italian,” “French,” and the other revisionist “socialisms,” as well as to the “socialism” of their social-democratic brothers. Hence the common schemes for a pluralist society, the common protests that they do not have plans to expropriate the capitalist exploiters, except for maybe a small handful of families, and that only the “ultra-left,” the “dogmatists” and “provocateurs” would even talk of depriving the bourgeois classes of their wealth and power. The “socialism” of modern revisionism means the maintenance of the bourgeoisie and capitalism.

Thus Chinese revisionism and Eurocommunism have taken up the same positions in glorifying neo-colonialism, in negating the struggle against the U.S. imperialist domination of Western Europe, Japan and Canada, and in advocating class collaboration with the bourgeoisie and that the bourgeoisie will march with the proletariat into a pluralist “socialism.” This identity of views extends to other questions as well. Mao Zedong Thought and Eurocommunism meet on their common social-democratic platform.