January 4, 2022
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Uphold the red flag of the Communist International and of its 7th
Congress
Problems of the evaluation of the 7th Congress of the Communist
International – Comintern
(February 2020)
I – Introduction
The general crisis of imperialism greatly aggravates,
sharpening the fundamental contradictions, principally the one that opposes the
oppressed nations to imperialism, inciting the wide popular masses to rebel
against exploitation, oppression, national subjugation and the imperialist wars
of aggression. Among the upheaval of the masses, the armed struggles of
national liberation and especially the heroic persistence of the People‘s Wars
in Peru, India, Philippines and Turkey are highlighted. Furthermore, as a
consequence of the aggravation of the contradiction between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries, the growth and radicalization of
the protests of the deepest parts of the proletariat against the brutal
“policies of austerity” applied by their governments and increasingly against
these same governments of the imperialist bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the
inter-imperialist contradictions intensify in the struggle for a new partition
of the world, through relations of collusion and contend. Within them, the USA,
as the only sole hegemonic superpower, the enemy number one of the peoples of
the world, has its hegemony questioned by the rivalry with the atomic
superpower Russia and other powers like China, etc. From which Germany
struggles to establish its hegemony in Europe and the contradictions that
oppose other imperialist powers with each of the before-mentioned powers. All
these events characterize the world situation as a growing revolutionary
situation in uneven development; within which the constitution and
reconstitution of militarized Communist Parties are taking place to unleash new
people’s wars as part of the struggle to impose maoism as the only sole command
and guide of the World Proletarian Revolution.
In this historical context and as a product of such
sharpening of the class struggle in the world and the elevation of the two line
struggle in the International Communist Movement (ICM), whose process of
dispersion has been reverted (fundamentally) with the advances of the
reunification through the growing unity of its left, we are marching towards
the realization of the First Unified Maoist International Conference (UMIC). A
Conference which will give birth to the New International Organization of the
Proletariat (NIOP), which will mean a new step forward in the struggle for the
reconstitution of the Communist International under the command and guide of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This event has such important meaning after decades of
dispersion, when treating the most burning problems of the current class
struggle and ICM, which assumes to itself, as indispensable task, taking the
position that fully and decidedly demarcates with revisionism, trotskism and
all opportunism regarding fundamental problems of the historic experience of
the struggle of international proletariat, the proletarian revolution in
general and the ICM in particular.
Among those undoubtedly stands out, due to its
grandiosity and transcendence, the 7th Congress of
the Communist International (Comintern), celebrated in the midst of 1935, which
confronted fundamental problems of the epoch and and crucial for the ICM in
this particular situation of ascension of fascism and a new unbridled
imperialist race for a new partition of the world, a new world war and a
serious threat for the Soviet Union and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a
situation of gigantic challenge for the World Proletarian Revolution (WPR)].
The 7th Congress in which the
magi perverse sterial role of the leadership (Great Leadership) of comrade
Stalin was condensed and portrayed.
In the last decades, the 7th Congress of the Communist International and the
great figure of comrade Stalin were cast to the shadows due to the action and
mystifier and arrogant influence of the revisionist ideas, criteria and
positions within the ICM, as a repercussion of the ideological dynamic of the
general counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism, the reaction and
revisionism.
The correct and just assessment of the Communist
International and specially its 7th Congress, of
the role of comrade Stalin and comrade Dimitrov, is not a secondary problem for
the ICM. Under these glorious red banners, iron legions of communists and
popular masses of the whole world rose up in arms through of the war of
resistance to fight against fascism, for the defense of the URSS, the
dictatorship of the proletariat and of the World Proletarian Revolution. This
great epic of humanity, for which dozens of million masses have struggled in
the whole world, is part of our soul and heart and therefore is a matter of
life and death that separates Marxism from revisionism.
Against the policy of the Unified Anti-Fascist Front,
the Nazi Germany promoted the so-called pact “Anti-Comintern”: “At the National-Socialist Congress in Nuremberg,
Hitler, Goebbels and Rosenberg opened a particular furious cannonade against
the danger of the People’s Front, which is menacing the fascist dictatorship,
and against democracy in general. While directing the most vehement outbursts
against the already existing People’s Front in France and Spain, they at the
same time thus expresses their alarm and fear of the People’s Front movement
which is taking shape in Germany itself.” (Dimitrov, The People’s
Front, The Struggle against Fascism and War, 1938).
In this sense, it’s necessary to highlight that in an
intern evaluation of the Yankee-CIA of 1947, in which is recognized that: “During the twenty-four years of its official
existence the Third (Communist) International played a key role in the
world-wide organization and development of the revolutionary Marxist
movement. As the first global political machine in history, it coordinated the
efforts of groups of determined and fanatical agitators and revolutionaries in
almost every nation and colonized area of the world. To no small
degree the enormous growth of world communism in our generation has been due to
its integrating and compulsive force.”
Chairman Gonzalo pointed out the necessity of making
an evaluation of the 7th Congress of
the Communist International, affirming that such an evaluation could only be
carried out correctly taking this congress, the role of comrade Stalin in the
direction of the the Great Patriotic War and the Global Antifascist Front as a
whole. He pointed out precisely the Marxist criteria to do it: “It is an urgent task for Communists, and for our
Party, to make an evaluation on the Communist
International, especially its IV Congress,connected
to the World War and the role of Comrade Stalin.” (PCP, International
Line)
When the PCP presented this problem, it was leading a
hard two-line struggle inside and outside of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM), in order for the ICM to recognize and assume Maoism as the
third, new and superior stage of Marxism. Situation in which the PCP could not
open other fronts in the two-line struggle. Inside the RIM, the PCP faced,
above all, the revisionist positions of Avakian, who had already began with his
foulmouthed attacks against comrade Stalin. Let’s take a look at this:
“Especially after the
crushing defeat of the communists in Germany with the rise of the fascist form
of dictatorship (1933), heavy defensive and defeatist tendencies grew in the
leadership of the Soviet Union and the Comintern. Together with the growing danger
of world war, especially of attack on the Soviet Union, openly rightist
deviations, of a fundamental nature, became predominant—the promotion of
nationalism, reformism and bourgeois democracy, the subordination of everything
to the defense of the Soviet Union, etc., in a qualitatively greater way than
before … all this was concentrated in the Dimitroff Report to the Seventh World
Congress of the Comintern (1935) and the implementation and further development
of this line—which, as we know, involved, among other things, as one of its key
ingredients, the basic repudiation of the Leninist position on „defense of the
fatherland.‟ This whole line was in its essence erroneous… the wrong line
promoted under the leadership of Stalin had more than a little to do with the
eventual triumph of counter-revolution. And just as certainly, the Spanish
Civil War is a clear mile marker on a revisionist course embarked on by many
Comintern parties and leaders.” (The Line
of the Comintern on the Spanish Civil War. Revolutionary Communist Party USA
1980)
Today, after more than 35 years since the beginning of
the “Campaign for Maoism” by the Communist Party of Peru in 1982, the majority
of Communist parties and organizations of the international proletariat have
rejected the revisionism and have assumed Maoism and are struggling decidedly
for its application to the concrete reality in their countries. At the same
time, a growing number of parties and organizations of the ICM have advanced in
assuming and comprehending the “contributions of universal validity of Chairman
Gonzalo”. On this ideological basis and in the midst and through the storms of
the class struggle, the militarized Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist parties
are being constituted or reconstituted, developing and preparing more People‘s
Wars in the whole world.
As we have pointed out we are in an auspicious advance
that shows that we “have broken the ice” and that the ICM is entering in a new
phase of its development. This advance takes us to the necessity of deepening
our comprehension of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism at each of its stages and as a
unity to elevate our application of Maoism, embodying it to keep the course.
Throughout the years, some parties have always
published articles in defense of comrade Dimitrov, but it was especially in the
last year that several declarations, documents and articles were published for
the celebration the Centenary of the Communist International and the 70 years
of the death of comrade Dimitrov. In these pronouncements, parties and
organizations of different countries highlighted the great role played by
comrade Dimitrov and the legacy of the 7th Congress of
the Communist International for the World Proletarian Revolution. This is an
important step forward and an important signal of advance.
On the other hand, among some Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
parties and organizations that rejected revisionism and took position for
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism still confusion, limitations and erroneous positions of
various orders regarding the evaluation of the 7th Congress of
the Communist International persist. Among these positions, we distinguish
those that are due to limitations that are part of the development, from those
that are manifestations of serious ideological and political deviations, manifested
in the form of a subjective and mechanistic idealism. Even though both could
reach similar conclusions, the first are closer to Marxism than the latter, and
as the Chinese proverb said: “the prejudice (rightism) is farther from the
truth than ignorance”. These opinions represent the ballast of revisionism and
its survival within the ranks of the ICM, and if they are not corrected, they
will inevitably lead to part ways with the fundamental principles of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
The “demolishing criticism” to the 7th Congress have its origin in the saltimbanco [T.N – From Michaelis
Dictionary of Portuguese Language: saltimbanco: Italian origin, 1. Individual
that shows his habillities at public places, says jests, sell drugs, etc.; fair
charlatan. 2. Buffoon, trickster 3. individual of versatile opinions. 4.
Subject that easily changes political party, according to individual
convenience. 5. circus artist.] Trotsky. As a servant of imperialism, Trotsky
centered all his attacks against the United Front policy of the Communist
International and its 7th Congress,
which was labeled by him as the “Congress of liquidation of the Comintern”;
which had abandoned proletarian internationalism and replaced it with
patriotism and the struggle for socialist revolution was replaced with the
defense of the bourgeois regime:
“The Seventh Congress
of the Comintern, … will sooner or later go down in history as the liquidation
congress. … has liquidated Lenin’s teaching, making an abrupt about-face to
opportunism and patriotism …. replace revolutionary struggle against the
bourgeoisie by reformist and pacifist cooperation with the “left” bourgeois
parties and with all the “friends of peace” in general. In the question of war,
pacifism, and “civil war” there has thus been an almost 180-degree turn.” (Trotsky, The Congress of liquidation of the
Comintern, 23 of August 1935)
About Chairman Mao and the 7th Congress, Avakian had affirmed: “…only that the problem of Mao consists in him not
criticizing the erroneous ideas of the 7th Congress,
because inside himself he had nationalism”. And regarding
comrade Stalin, among other things, what does this mister say?
“Stalin … “reversed”
Leninism on a number of important questions. On internationalism, for
example—and this was strikingly so during the period immediately leading into
and during World War 2, when the interests of the Soviet Union as a state were,
on a rather nakedly nationalist basis, put ahead of the overall advance of the
world revolution … under Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union in the 1930s
and 1940s … there was
explicitly a
revising of the notion that the workers have no country and no basis and no
interest in supporting the imperialist “fatherland.” (Bob Avakian, Breakthroughs, The Historic
Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism. A Basic Summary.
2019)
These “lapidary” quotes of mister Avakian show that
there is no way to go against comrade Stalin without resurrecting Trotsky and
sinking in the quagmire of revisionism and opportunism.
These were the same arguments resurrected by
Trotskysm, by the revisionism of Tito and his followers, converging with the
anti-Stalin campaign of the imperialist reaction, that the Communist Party of
the USSR (Bolshevik and the Communist International, under the direction of
comrade Stalin, betrayed the world revolution in name of the defense of the
USSR.
A complete evaluation of the Communist International
can only be realized by the reconstituted Communist International under the
command and guide of marxism-leninism-maoism. However, for the communists to
draw lessons from the historical experiences of its successes and errors will
always be beneficial, given that they are correctly summed up according to
historic reality and context and not by tergiversation.
The correct and justified evaluation can only be
ralized based on proletarian internationalism, in the interest of the World
Proletarian Revolution as a whole and not from a point of view of “my” country,
just as Lenin taught us: “I must argue, not
from the point of view of ’my’ country (for that is the argument of a wretched,
stupid, petty—bourgeois nationalist who does not realize that he is
only a plaything in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie), but from the
point of view of my share in the preparation, in the propaganda, and in the
acceleration of the world proletarian revolution… That is what internationalism
means, and that is the duty of the internationalist”. (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade
Kautsky)
Each new development of Marxism allows us and demands
us to have a broader and deeper comprehension of the prior stages. What does
Avakian preaches with his “New Synthesis”, affirming that it takes Maoism as
starting point, if not making a revision of all the prior stages? He declares:
“Since the time of
Marx up through Mao, communism has been mainly scientific in its method and
approach. But there have been elements in it that have run counter to that
scientific method and approach, and the new synthesis is taking what is
positive, is building the essential parts that were positive, but is also
rejecting, casting off or recasting in a more correct light some of the things
from the earlier times in the development of communism that were not thoroughly
scientific.” (Avakian, The New
Communism)
Chairman Gonzalo defined Avakian, with the precision
that is characteristic of him, as someone who “every day reads only seeking to find the
error”. This is an exact synthesis of the Avakian method that keeps
causing damage in the ICM. Marxism is completely opposed to the bourgeois
rationalism of Avakian. To separate the development from our ideology from its
material basis, from class struggle, is an attempt to negate the class
character of truth.
Chairman Gonzalo taught us that when studying a
document we must correctly see its context and know what each document means,
what is its political meaning. It’s not about “finding the error”, as Avakian
proposes. This is why to study and understand the Rectification Movement put
forward by the Communist Party of China in 1941 is of utmost importance. This
profound rectification movement was a condition for the correct integration of
the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice in the Chinese
Revolution, basis on which Mao Tsetung Thought was being forged. Chairman Mao
defined the necessity of studying a problem in its diverse domains, the study
of the political, military, economic and cultural situation on a national and
international levels; the study of the history of the country at least its last
hundred years; the study of the international experiences of Marxism, taking it
as a contradiction; and not having unilateral points of view, combating the
subjectivist method, which consists of not seeking the truth in the facts. He
summarized that there are two ways of partial knowledge: the one that is
acquired systematized in the books and the one that is, mainly, of sensible
degree. That means, when analyzing the process of the International Communist
Movement in general and of Marxism in particular, we need to approach it as a
whole and not by isolated parts.
Chairman Gonzalo warned us about the necessity of
taking Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a unity, as a whole:We,
comrades, I believe we are taking the root in place of the leaves, we
grasp a nail – from the little finger – we want to define men. Would
it be correct? If one grasp the nail of the little finger and say what men are:
a calcified crust, these is man. Would it be? It is not, comrades,
because we have to consider it as a unity.””.
(Chairman Gonzalo, First Congress).
The evaluation of the Communist International,
especially of its 7th Congress,
cannot be separated from the evaluation of the role of comrade Stalin. At the
end of the 1920 and 1930 years, comrade Stalin had to give great attention to
the heating two-line struggle, which was developing itself within the Communist
Party (Bolshevik) of the USSR through which the great challenge of building
Socialism for the first time in history and the preparation of the USSR facing
the imminent imperialist aggression. It is false what pseudo-historians and
other detractors affirm, that Stalin left the direction of the Communist
International aside. The direction of the Communist International and the
problems of the International Communist Movement were under growing attention
and direction of comrade Stalin, in his condition of acknowledged Great Leader
of the world revolution. To separate the role of comrade Stalin from the 7th Congress, from the problems of the Second World
War and the Great Chinese Revolution is to negate his acknowledged condition of
Great Leader of the World Revolution. Then we ask: after all, the great and
glorious triumph over Nazi-Fascism was it or was it not due to the direction of
comrade Stalin? And if we agree with the reality that yes, it was due to the
magisterial direction of the great general Stalin, with which line was such a
glorious triumph achieved? Isn’t it clear that it was with the line of the 7th Congress or was it despite of it? Not having
this clear is, in summary, to oppose Stalin against Chairman Mao and to
fracture Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
No matter how clear this might be, we have to go to
the bottom of the matter, go back to the facts, the quotes, the transcriptions
and registries of the two-line struggle which engaged so much comrade Stalin at
the leadership of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of USSR, of the Communist
International, in the internal struggle presided by Chairman Mao in the Communist
Party of China and the struggle in different Communist Parties in the decades
of 1920 and 1930.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism can only be understood as a
unity in a dialectical process of development. In this process, each new great
leap of quality in Marxism is composed of small and medium leaps, which
synthesize it and elevate it, concentrating the solution of the fundamental
problems of the World Proletarian Revolution a whole historical period, as
Chairman Gonzalo explained: “What lies behind
this regarding the titans of thought and action that is linked to ‘three bright
beacons stand out: Marx, Lenin, Chairman Mao Tsetung’, comrades, a chain of
mountains does not have only three summits, there are also small summits,
medium summits, but there are also very high summits… ‘and how does our
ideology will develop itself being a dialectical process? Through great leaps;
this is why the document says through great leaps and three great ones, of
course! Three great qualitative leaps: Marx, Lenin, Chairman Mao Tsetung.
However, these three great qualitative leaps could not be understood without
other big, medium and even small leaps and with these incessant leaps that, due
to their such elementary magnitude, we do not consider”. (Chairman Gonzalo First Congress)
The development of Marxism is product of the
development of the class struggle of the international proletariat and the
two-line struggle in the proletarian vanguard (ICM) in defense of the
proletarian red line and against the bourgeois line and the other non-proletarian
lines. Only the class struggle, whose center is the politics to conquer and
defend the power of the class, can generate our ideology and in the same class
struggle develop it through the two-line struggle. As such, it’s necessary to
see and understand the context in which Maoism develops itself . And this was
of the most complex convergence of contradictions and the grueling class
struggle in the center of the world revolution that had already been Germany,
France, Russia and that had moved to China.
“When it comes to
CONTEXT in which Chairman Mao Tsetung developed and Maoism was forged,
internationally on the basis of imperialism, world wars, International
Proletarian Movement, national liberation movement, struggle between Marxism
and revisionism and restoration of Capitalism in the USSR, three great
historical milestones stand out in the current century, the 20th century. First, the October Revolution, 1917,
which opens the era of Proletarian World Revolution; second, the Chinese
Revolution, 1949, changing the correlation of forces in favor of Socialism; and
third, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, started in 1966, as the
continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat to
keep the path towards Communism. It is enoughto point out that
Chairman Mao directed two of these glorious historical happenings. And in
China, where as the center of world revolution Maoism was concreted.” (Chairman Gonzalo, First Congress, CPP)
For this reason the Communist Party of China always
maintained that the problem of how to justly and correctly appraise and focus
the role and direction of comrade Stalin is the one of “how
to sum up the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat and
of the international communist movement since Lenin’s death.” (CPCh China,
On The Question Of Stalin).
After the death of Lenin, comrade Stalin had to face a
complex situation represented by the hard internal struggle in the Communist
Party (Bolchevik) of the USSR that lasted almost 14 years. A struggle that
affected particularly the direction of the Communist International, the defeat
of the revolutions in Germany, Hungary, Italy, etc. and the emergence of the
new phenomena, fascism, while facing the new problems that represented the construction
of socialism and having to confront the feverish preparation for an imperialist
aggression war against the USSR. Chairman Mao summarized the fundamental
contributions of comrade Stalin as follows:
“Stalin led the CPSU
and the Soviet people in upholding the line of socialist industrialization and
agricultural
collectivization and in achieving great successes in socialist transformation
and socialist construction.
Stalin led the
CPSU, the Soviet people, and the Soviet army in an arduous and bitter struggle
to the great victory of the anti-fascist war.
Stalin defended and
developed Marxism-Leninism in the fight against various kinds of opportunism,
against the enemies of Leninism, the Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites,
and other bourgeois agents.
Stalin made an
indelible contribution to the international communist movement in a number of
theoretical writings which are immortal Marxist-Leninist works.
Stalin led the
Soviet Party and Government in pursuing a foreign policy which on the whole was
in
keeping with
proletarian internationalism and in greatly assisting the revolutionary
struggles of all
peoples, including
the Chinese people.
Stalin stood in the
forefront of the tide of history guiding the struggle, and was an
irreconcilable enemy of the imperialists and all reactionaries.
Stalin’s activities were intimately bound up with the
struggles of the great CPSU and the great Soviet people and inseparable from
the revolutionary struggles of the people of the whole world”.
Thus Chairman Mao put forward the criteria on the
evaluation of the role of comrade Stalin is inseparable from the evaluation of
theory and praxis of the World Proletarian Revolution since the death of Lenin.
Regarding the errors of comrade Stalin, our party takes position for the
established by Chairman Mao that Stalin was 70% right and 30% wrong and that
Stalin was “a great Marxist”:
“In his way of
thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into
metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was
sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as
well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he
confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature,
contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the
people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the
work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many
counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the
same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937
and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries.
In the matter of Party and government organization, he did not fully apply
proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling
relations with fraternal Parties and countries, he made some mistakes. He also
gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These
mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist
movement”. (CPCh China, On The Question Of
Stalin, 1963)
Chairman Mao maintained that the ‘question of Stalin’
had repercussions in all the social classes and that a hundred years would be
necessary to achieve a definitive conclusion about the topic, but he emphasized
that within the international working class and the revolutionary peoples, his
memory was more and more venerated.
Besides, when making the evaluation of the role of
comrade Stalin‘s direction in the Communist International on each country, an
investigation must be made on the mistakes that corresponded to the adopted
line and instructions and the ones committed by the sinister role played by
opportunist elements, such as Wang Ming, who later degenerated in putrid
revisionists. Sufficient is to see that only after the Rectification Movement
of 1942, when the opportunist lines of “left” and right were defeated, is that
a great number of works by comrade Stalin on China were systematically edited
by the Communist Party of China, and the book “Lenin and Stalin on the problems
of China” became one of the twelve necessary works for the formation of cadres.
Chairman Mao himself established that “we Chinese should bear the responsibility. In its
struggle against “Left” and Right opportunism, therefore, our Party criticized
only its own erring comrades and never put the blame on Stalin.” The
Communist Party of China itself declared that regarding some bad advice from
comrade Stalin, it sufficed for the Chinese communists to resist a bit to
Stalin “…When Stalin did something wrong, he
was capable of criticizing himself. For instance, he had given some bad counsel
with regard to the Chinese revolution. After the victory of the Chinese
revolution, he admitted his mistake”. (Commentary
of the CPCh China, On The Question Of Stalin)
Regarding the relationship with comrade Stalin, Chu
En-Lai declared that when he made mistakes: “When
we held our ground, he could still accept our views and implicitly acknowledge
his mistakes.” (The Communist Party of
China and the International, 1960)
Chairman Gonzalo underlined that “Comrade Stalin has been a great Marxist-Leninist. Did
he make mistakes? Yes, but he never sold the revolution, he may have
been wrong, he may not have comprehended; as the Chairman has taught us,
his mistake started from an insufficient comprehension of dialectics, there
was metaphysics in himself, thisis where the problem of comrade
Stalin derives from; but no one can deny his enormous role nor take away his
condition of Great Leader of the International Proletariat in
decades, confronting for the very first time the construction of socialism,
without precedents, nor the great effort that he led in the Second World War.
He made contributions. Of course he did! It can
not be denied to him. We have to know how to appreciate.
There we have then five. When adding the three, they are five; but it is
a pleiad, a considerable whole composed of great figures, of
titans of thought and action. There then it is comprised. Why
haven’t we enumerated them? That wayit’s clear that there are three
great figures: Marx, Lenin, Chairman Mao Tsetung. That is the reason. Can
you see it?”. (Chairman Gonzalo, First
Congress)
In his theoretical and practical work, comrade Stalin
defined Marxism-Leninism as a second stage of Marxism and added contributions
to Marxism-Leninism and its development, shaping them in the construction and defense
of socialism, in the dictatorship of the proletariat and the direction of the
International Communist Movement.
Starting from the creative application of
Marxism-Leninism, including the contributions of comrade Stalin to a new stage
of its development, and of all the experience of the International Communist
Movement, of the Great Socialist October Revolution (GSOR), of the defeats of
the German and Hungarian revolution and the development of the antifascist wars
with the World Antifascist Front, established by the 7th Congress of the Communist International,
Chairman Mao was able to give a just and correct solution to the problems of
the Chinese Revolution and the world revolution, elevating Marxism to a third,
new and higher stage. Maoism is thus, product of the international and national
class struggle and the arduous two-line struggle in the accumulated process of
the International Communist Movement and the world revolution, of which the
contributions of comrade Stalin are integrant parts of Maoism.
II – The 7th Congress of the Communist
International
The 7th Congress of
the Communist International was the first Congress to put forward the problem
of the United Front in a complete form, defeating the opportunist right and
“left” lines. In it, strategic and tactic problems of the world revolution that
were only developed completely by the Chinese Revolution and Maoism are put
forward. When studying the 7th Congress we
ought to consider, what are its tactical aspects, such as the possibility of
reaching a unity with Social Democracy, and what are the strategic problems
that it presents.
Chairman Gonzalo established with straightforward
clarity that the question of the United Front was presented by comrade Stalin
and the International, and that Chairman Mao developed it: “The problem of the front starts to develop when
the Communist International, when Lenin himself, starts to propose this
question…but I insist, Lenin dies on the 24th. The problem with the front will gaingreater dimension
in the struggle against fascism, there, that doesn’t mean that, for
example,the front hadn’t been proposed for the question in China by
Stalin. Of course he proposed it. Stalin was who proposed the
Chinese communists should integrate to the Kuomintang and have twopersonal
document (identificationcard of the Party and identification card of
the front). That is the reality. But it is the Chairman who establishes
the laws of the front, the six laws of the front. This is in “Introducing
[the magazine] ‘The Communist’”, as
you know well. (Chairman Gonzalo,
First Congress)
The policy of United Front of the 7th Congress of the Communist International
represented the culmination of the two-line struggle initiated by Lenin in the
Third Congress of the International against the opportunist positions disguised
as left, petty-bourgeois positions, which negated the necessity of preparation
of the Communist Parties and the role of the masses for the revolution.
Between 1917 and 1921, despite the great impulse
towards revolution, especially in Europe, it could not maintain itself, because
there were no mature Communist Parties to lead it. With the defeat of the
revolution in Hungary and Germany, the first wave of revolution was temporarily
thrown back.
The opportunist positions bearing the flag of the
so-called “offensive theory”, defended by the “left” opportunists of the
leadership of the Communist Party of Germany and supported by Zinoviev and
Bukarin, opposed themselves to the tactic of the Open Letter and the correct
line of Lenin on the United Front, which they qualified as a “step towards
opportunism”. The opportunists defended the theory that the Communist Party
should not win over the great majority of the working class, but only its
“social determining part” and that through offensive – insurrectionist,
adventurer – action of a small group they could carry out the revolution. This
thesis had supporters in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Austria and France.
The struggle was so hard that Lenin himself had to resort to the discipline of
the Bolshevik Party so that everyone voted for the thesis presented by the
Bolshevik delegation against the “left” opportunists.
At January 8th,1921, the
Communist Party of Germany had published an “Open Letter” in which it made a
call to all syndicalist, socialist and workers organizations to combat together
the growing reaction and reject the offensive of the capital against the
workers’ rights: “we do not hide in any moment
the working masses, nor do we hide ourselves,
that the demands we have established cannot put an end to poverty. Without
abandoning in any moment the idea that within the working masses we will spread
the slogan of the struggle and the dictatorship, as the only way towards
liberation, without renouncing to call and guide the working masses in each favorable moment
for the struggle for the dictatorship. The Unified Communist Party is ready to carry
out, together with other parties that support themselves on the proletariat,
actions to achieve the before-mentioned measures”. (Communist Party of
Germany, Open Letter).
The tactic of the Open Letter was based on the
orientation of Lenin to the Communists of England: according to which “the groups and sympathizers of Communism have to
join the Labor Party, even though they are part of the 2nd International”. Lenin considered the Open
Letter to be an exemplary political step in attracting the majority of the
working class. As a condition, Lenin emphasized that “…the
Communists should, without leave, take all the necessary measures and accept
certain compromises in order to be able to influence the broader and
deepest worker masses, to unmask their opportunist leaders from a higher
tribune”. In a letter form Lenin to Clara Zetkin and Paul Levy, Lenin
declared: “The only thing I have seen is the
Open Letter, which I think is perfectly correct tactics” (…)
Back then Lenin had already proposed the law of
gradual incorporation of the masses in the revolution: “At
the beginning of the struggle, a couple thousands of truly revolutionary
workers were enough to talk about masses… If
the Party, apart from taking its militants to the struggle, can put forward the
workers without a party, that is the beginning of the conquest of the
masses…during our revolution, there were moments in which a couple thousand
workers represented the masses… When the revolution is prepared enough already,
the concept of masses is different: a couple thousands of workers are not the
masses anymore…the concept of the masses changes in the sense that it means the
majority, and also not just a simple majority of workers, but a majority of all
the exploited”. ()
It is a grave error to underestimate the “left”
deviations within the ICM, because Trotskyism took shelter in it. Comrade
Stalin warned us, regarding the deviations by affirming that “the ones from the
“left” [deviationists of the ‘left’] are the ones of the right that dress up
their right positions with phrases like that”.
“It should not be
forgotten that Rights and “ultra-Lefts” are actually twins, that consequently
both take an opportunist stand, the difference between them being that whereas
the Rights do not always conceal their opportunism, the Lefts invariably
camouflage their opportunism with “revolutionary” phrases”. [Joseph
V. Stalin, The Fight Against Right and “Ultra-Left” Deviations 1926].
These defeats reflected the lack of ideological and
political maturity of the Communist Parties to lead revolution and, at the same
time, expressed the necessity of solving what Lenin defined “as getting closer to the Proletarian Revolution”,
in other words, on how to specify the experience of the Great Socialist October
Revolution, combat putschist tendencies and develop the strategy and tactics to
make revolution. Until then, the tactics of waiting for the development of a
revolutionary political crisis prevailed in the International Communist
Movement, in order for the proletariat to be able to raise an armed
insurrection. Lenin said the United Front was the path to solve how to “get closer to the Proletarian Revolution”.
After the death of the great Lenin, these opportunist
tendencies resurrected in the Communist International, which until its 5th Congress was under the presidency of Zinoviev,
with the predominance in the interior and in great part of the parties of the
International Communist Movement.
The 14th Conference of
the Communist Party of the USSR, in April 1925, condemned the thesis of Trotsky
on the impossibility of constructing socialism in one country. The 14th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR
(Bolshevik), in December 1925, defeated the new “opposition” led by Zinoviev
and Kamenev. The 5th expanded
plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
(ECCI), from March to April 1925, approved the thesis for the “bolchevization” of the communist parties of the
Communist International”, a campaign that elevated the ideological,
political and organizational level of the parties in the whole world.
In this plenum, it is defined that the International
is guided by Marxism-Leninism, because “Leninism
is Marxism of the epoch of monopolist capital, of the imperialist
wars and the proletarian revolution”. This important victory of the red
line of comrade Stalin represented a great triumph and an huge number of
communist cadres from the whole world were formed in the biggest school of
communism in this epoch.
In 1926, Trotskysm had formulated its own “thesis” for
the International, being that the pseudo-left positions of Zinoviev, Kamenev,
were nothing but a mask of the rotten and demoralized Trotstkym. Comrade
Dimitrov said that regarding the clique Zinoviev-Kamenev/Trotsky, “in the Comintern an international fraction is
already forming”, emphasizing that this struggle should be coated with an
international character in defense of the Comintern.
The 7th expanded
plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI),
November-December, 1926, marked a decisive victory of the left in the interior
of the Communist International. Under the direct leadership of comrade Stalin,
the trotskyst-zinovievist positions, which accused the Comintern of replacing
internationalism with nationalism, were crushed. In its resolution, the plenum
affirmed that:
“The enlarged plenum
believes that the land of the Soviets . .. has demonstrated its
internationalism in deeds and has given most magnificent examples of its
internationalism. The enlarged plenum regards the accusation of national
narrowness against the CPSU as a calumny.” (Jane Degras, Ed., The
Communist International: 1919-1943).
In the 7th expanded
plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, on October 23,
1926, C. Zetkin, P. Togliatti, O. Geschke, B. Smerral, O. Kuusinen, H. Valecki,
J. Dimitrov, Sen Katayama, K. Manner and others, in the name of their parties,
presented, to the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (ECCI), a resolution draft in which they declared that it was no
longer possible that Zinoviev continued being the Chairman of the Comintern, a
resolution that was approved by the 7th Plenum,
decisively crushing he usurpation of the Comintern apparatus by the zinovievist
clique.
Only in September 27th, in accordance
with the resolution of the 8th Plenum, the
presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI)
excluded Trotsky from this organism. In its resolution, the 8th Plenum of the (ECCI) qualified Trotsky’s
position as “a desperate struggle of handful political deserters against the
front of the communists of the whole world.”
With these victories of the left, conditions were
generated for the development and application of a correct line for the
Communist International. The 8th Plenum of the
(ECCI), of 1927, centered its attention in the preparation of the tasks of the
Communist International, facing the race for a new imperialist war against the
USSR.
In the resolution of the 8th Plenum of the (ECCI) it was said that: “The workers masses of the whole world have to
be more alert today more than ever. The communists of all countries have to
close lines and mobilize their forces against the war already started in China
and the one being prepared against the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics”
(The Communist International in documents, page 699.)
The 8th Plenum
pointed out that the politics of preparing a war that was adopted by the
imperialists inherently brought the fascist, terrorist, methods against the
working class and that the “Internationalizationof
those methodsto wage wars, capitalism needs a ‘quiet rear’”. Thus,
the rise of fascism was correctly seen as a part of the aggressor’s plans
against the USSR and the World Revolution, and the tasks of the proletariat
were defined as part of the defense of the homeland of socialism against the
imperialist aggression.
In its resolutions, The 6th Congress of
the CI (1928) denounced the preparation of an imperialist war, calling the
communist movement and the peoples of the world to defend the USSR and struggle
against the imperialist intervention in China, defend the Chinese revolution
and the struggles of national liberation. Furthermore, This Congress also
played an important role in the cohesion of the proletariat against right
opportunism by struggling against the coalition of “social-democracy” with
reactionary governments.
One has to point out the importance approbation, for
the first time, of the Program of the Communist International, which
established solid bases to advance by defining, among other things, that: “The conquest of power by the proletariat does not
mean peacefully “capturing” the ready-made bourgeois State machinery by means
of a parliamentary majority (…) Hence, the violence of the bourgeoisie can be
suppressed only by the stern violence of the proletariat (…) The conquest of
power by the proletariat is the violent overthrow of bourgeois power, the
destruction of the capitalist State apparatus (bourgeois armies, police,
bureaucratic hierarchy, the judiciary, parliaments, etc.), and the substitution
in its place of new organs of proletarian power, to serve primarily as
instruments for the suppression of the exploiters”. (Programme of the
Communist International, 1928). All developments posterior to the Communist
International has to take as a starting point the principles established in
this important Congress.
While Knowing the inevitability of the Imperialist War
and that it would aim for the destruction of the USSR, comrade Stalin
established the strategy and tactics to defend the dictatorship of the
proletariat and advance the World Proletarian Revolution.
In the 17th Congress of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in 1934, Stalin masterly designed the
tactics of the World Antifascist Front, as part of the defense of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the development of the World Proletarian
Revolution. This Congress represented a powerful influx for the ICM, in which
comrade Stalin defined a correct and brilliant characterization of the
international situation, of the character of fascism, conceive the defense of
the USSR and the nexus to rise the oppressed nations and unify the two great
currents of the World Proletarian Revolution, the proletarian international
movement and the movement of national liberation, impulsing it, thus showing
his status of great Marxist and leader of the ICM: “a
second war against the U.S.S.R will lead to the complete defeat of the
aggressors, to revolution in a number of countries in Europe and in Asia, and
to the destruction of the bourgeois-landlord governments in those countries”.
(Stalin, Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.)).
Stalin pointed out the necessity of preparing a World
Antifascist Front in defense of the USSR and the Proletarian Revolution as part
of a war that also takes place at the rearguard of the enemy: “Not only because the peoples of the U.S.S.R. would
fight to the death to preserve the gains of the revolution; it would be the
most dangerous war for the bourgeoisie for the added reason that it would be
waged not only at the fronts, but also in the enemy’s rear. The bourgeoisie
need have no doubt that the numerous friends of the working class of the
U.S.S.R. in Europe and Asia will endeavor to strike a blow in the rear at their
oppressors who have launched a criminal war against the fatherland of the
working class of all countries”. (Stalin, Report to the Seventeenth Party
Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.))
Soon, he notes that:
“In the capitalist
countries feverish preparations are in progress for a new war for a new
redivision of the world…And if the interests of the U.S.S.R. demand
rapprochement with one country or another…we adopt this course without
hesitation…(the war) is sure to unleash revolution and jeopardise the very
existence of capitalism in a number of countries, as happened in the course of
the first imperialist war”. (Stalin, Report to the Seventeenth Party
Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.))
“The masses of the
people have not yet reached the stage when they are ready to storm capitalism;
but the idea of storming it is maturing in the minds of the masses — of that there
can hardly be any doubt. This is eloquently testified to by such facts as, say,
the Spanish revolution which overthrew the fascist regime, and the expansion of
the Soviet districts in China, which the united counter-revolution of the
Chinese and foreign bourgeoisie is unable to stop.” (Stalin, Report to the
Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the
C.P.S.U.(B.))
Comrade Stalin correctly defined the essence of
fascism and its connection to the imminent aggression towards the USSR: “the ruling classes in the capitalist countries are
so zealously destroying or nullifying the last vestiges of parliamentarism and
bourgeois democracy which might be used by the working class in its struggle
against the oppressors, why they are driving the Communist Parties underground
and resorting to openly terrorist methods of maintaining their dictatorship…
Chauvinism and preparation of war as the main elements of foreign policy;
repression of the working class and terrorism
in the sphere of home policy as a necessary means for strengthening the rear of
future war fronts — that is what is now particularly engaging the minds of
contemporary imperialist politicians”.
In the 13th Plenum of the ECCI, 1933, Dimitrov
defined fascism as follows: “Fascism is the
open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and
most imperialist elements of finance capital. Fascism tries to secure a
base of masses for the monopol capital amount he petty bourgeoisie, appealing
to the peasantry, the artisans, the office and civil service workers that were
taken out of the normal way of their lives, and particularly the declassified
elements of the big cities, trying also to penetrate into the working class…The
possibility to prevent [the fascist dictatorship] depends on the strength of
the combative proletariat, who are paralyzed by the corrupting [desintegrating]
force of social-democracy more than by any other thing”. [Extracts from
the Thesis of the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International on Fascism, the Danger of War, and the Tasks of the Communist
Parties (December 1933), in Jane Degras, ed.; The Communist International:
1919-1943: Documents, vol. 3, London, 1971, pages 296-7]
It’s only with the realization of the 7th Congress in 1935, with the defeat of the
Trotskyist, Zinovievist and Bukarinist positions, that the ICM is going to
assume and decidedly apply the necessity of constructing the United Front and
establish the basic guideline of a strategy and tactics of the proletarian
revolution. On this basis, the International Communist Movement was able to
open a new stage in its development, the one of the existence of the Communist
parties with mass character, developing guerilla warfare and the united front
as instruments to make revolution, as was applied in dozens of countries during
the resistance against fascism, the triumph of the Great Patriotic War and the
victory of the USSR, culminating with the triumph of the Great Chinese
Revolution.
One of the experiences of major importance, over which
the thesis of the 7th Congress of
the Communist International were established, was the uprising of the Austrian
workers in February, 1934. In this great experience, many ideological problems
that would develop in posterior years were already concentrated. In a letter
addressed to the Austrian comrades, comrade Dimitrov made the following
evaluation:
“No, the armed
struggle of the Austrian working class was not a mistake. The mistake consisted
in the fact that this struggle was not organized and was not waged in a
revolutionary, a Bolshevik fashion. The main weakness of the February struggle
of the Austrian workers lay in the fact that, owing to the pernicious influence
of the Social Democrats, they failed to grasp that it was not enough to resist
the attack of fascism, but that they should have turned their armed resistance
into a fight for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and for seizing power by the
proletariat. The armed fight of the Austrian proletariat was not transformed
into an actual armed uprising. Herein lies the main error”. (Georgi
Dimitrov, Letter to the Austrian Workers, March of 1934)
Thus, in 1934, Dimitrov had already clearly warned
that the proletariat shouldn’t limit its struggle only against fascism, but it
should keep developing its armed resistance to overthrow the whole bourgeoisie
and capitalism, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism. By pointing
out that the main responsibility for this defeat was the bourgeois leadership
represented by the social-democracy of Otto Bauer, comrade Dimitrov stressed
that:
“The fighting workers,
however, who had passed through the school of Austrian social democracy,
preferred to starve rather than infringe on sacrosanct private property by a
confiscation of provisions… It is necessary to make use of the lessons to be
drawn from this struggle, which reflects the whole bankruptcy of social
democratic policy… Your armed struggle was
essentially a struggle for the restoration of the Constitution which had been
violated by Dollfuss. it did not go beyond those limits and was never transformed
into a struggle for power. In the century of the general crisis of capitalism,
however, when the bourgeoisie is no longer in a position to rule with the
methods of parliamentary democracy and when it embarks on the road of fascism,
the decisive question in the workers’ struggle is no longer the restoration of
the outdated bourgois democracy, but that of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie,
the fight for the proletarian dictatorship.”
While defending the armed struggle and denouncing the
role of social-democracy, comrade Dimitrov affirmed: “The armed struggle is not an action detached from
the general policy of the party. A party which always retreats, which in
the course of 15 years urges the workers to avoid fighting, can in no case
reconstruct itself politically and organizationally within 24 hours to wage an
armed struggle… It is a question, comrades, of your organizational break with
the Social Democratic Party, and of establishing, together with the communist
workers, a genuine fighting unity of the Austrian working class. This fighting
unity is possible only on the basis of the revolutionary struggle.”.
About the evaluation of these struggles Dimitrov
sentenced: “There is no power on earth
that can check the historical development of mankind towards socialism. A
battle has come to an end, the fighters are counting their dead, but they have
not been crushed. The great proletarian army continues its march forward to the
final victory”. (G. Dimitrov, Letter to the Austrian Workers)
III- THE REPORT OF
COMRADE DIMITROV TO THE 7th CONGRESS OF
THE COMINTERN
The 7th Congress
represented the overcoming of a whole long two-line struggle within the
Communist Party Bolshevik of the USSR and the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, that took more than 17 years to be resolved. It was
only in the 7th Congress of
the Communist International, in which the opportunist positions of
Trotsky-Zinoviev-Kamenev-Bukarin were finally defeated, that for the first time
an Executive Committee subject to the leadership of comrade Stalin was
established.
The Report of comrade Dimitrov to the 7th Congress “The
fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International in the struggle
of the working class against fascism” was guided by the red line
established by comrade Stalin in the 14th Congress of
the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the USSR and represented a synthesis of all
the accumulated experience of the proletarian revolution until then, thus
arming the international proletariat to confront the tasks that the World
Proletarian Revolution demanded.
In the class struggle at world level and of each
country there is a whole set of contradictions, both principal and secondaries,
from which derives the principal and secondary enemies in each case and in each
stage of a determined revolutionary process.
Leading the Communist International, comrade Stalin
knew how to masterly handle the principal contradiction, and, through its
solution, the World Proletarian Revolution could develop. This was undeniably
proven by the powerful impulse that represented the victory over Nazi-fascism
and the triumph of the Great Chinese Revolution, which raised the World
Proletarian Revolution to its stage of strategic stalemate.
In middle of the preparation and unfolding of the
Second World War, the defense of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
represented by the USSR, facing the imminent imperialist aggression, was
converted into the principal problem for the ICM and the Fascist Front became
the main enemy to be combated in the whole world.
Dimitrov demonstrated that fascism was the spearhead
of imperialism to stop the development of the Proletarian Revolution and the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, that means, the principal enemy to be defeated
in order to impulse the World Proletarian Revolution and conceived the World
Antifascist United Front as an instrument to defeat it, from its preparation,
also pointed out the role of China:
“Attacking the Soviet
Union, enslaving and partitioning China, and by all these means preventing
revolution… They
are striving to forestall the growth of the forces of revolution by smashing
the revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants and by undertaking a
military attack against the Soviet Union –the bulwark of the world proletariat.
That is why they need fascism”. (Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the
Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class
against Fascism)
“Joint struggle
against all forms of the fascist offensive, in defense of the gains and the
rights of the
working people, against the abolition of bourgeois-democratic liberties…joint
struggle against the approaching danger of an imperialist war, a struggle that
will make the preparation of such a war more difficult”. (idem)
Dimitrov revealed the true class character of fascism,
against the social-democrat and trotskyist pseudo-theories that sought to place
fascism over the social classes, as well as the “left” opportunism that
underestimated it for not seeing its character and the danger it represented.
“The open terrorist
dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist
elements of finance capital… Fascism is not a form of state power “standing
above both classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,” as Otto Bauer, for
instance, has asserted. It is not “the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which
has captured the machinery of the state,” as the British Socialist Brailsford
declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of
the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It
is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the
revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy,
fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other
nations”. (Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the
Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism)
Did he wanted to say with this, just as some pure
critics intend, that the demo-liberal form of the bourgeois dictatorship would
not be dictatorship? Evidently not. Dimitrov himself points out that it is an
“open dictatorship”, of the most reactionary elements that applies terror to
attempt stopping the revolution.
Chairman Gonzalo underlined against those that try to
equal fascism with the demo-liberal regime, that “fascism is the worst enemydue to the plan
it seeks to set up, for the negation of every right, starting by the
people’s, for undoing all principles of a structuring, to which we use, (e.g.) for the
legal defenses that are made. What it seeks
is to stop revolution” (Chairman Gonzalo, Put the MRDPP in
motion)
Chairman Mao affirmed, “Fascism is war”; this is perfectly true”.
Later on he complements in a footnote at the end of the corresponding page: In
August 1935, in the report to the 7th Congress of
the Communist International, titled “The
Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle
of the Working Class against Fascism”, comrade Georgi Dimitrov affirmed
that “fascism is unbridled chauvinism and
predatory war”. In July of 1937, comrade Dimitrov published an article
titled “Fascism Is War”.
(Chairman Mao Tsetung, On Protracted War Volume II).
Against those that defended a capitulationist position
facing fascism, denying the possibility of developing mass work under fascism,
Chairman Gonzalo pointed out:
“Fascism is violence,
it sweeps everything away, this is why one has to wait
to be able to organize”[say the capitulationists]; such ignorance. Fascism sweeps everything
it can destroy away, and it is on us to build apparatuses that they
could not destroy; the Communist International itself, at the 7th Congress, provides the example of the
Austrian comrades and tells us that it is feasible to work, develop
and organize the masses under fascism and that it is
even feasibleto legality or semi-legality, every vestigethat law provide. Did Chairman
Mao not taught us to use the laws, manners and customs, all
possible vestigesas well? It is in “expanding rapidly the anti-Japanese forces”,
point 6, 2ndVolume. Clear things comrades: terror to fascism.” (Chairman Gonzalo,
PCP, First Congress)
Comrade Dimitrov demonstrated the particular mission
that fascism was charged with:to defeat revolution through terror and the
corporativization of the masses. Furthermore he has shown the reason behind
that: defeating revolution, which was what made it the main enemy. This was a
justified and correct definition at that historical situation, which was
capable of demonstrating that the essence of fascism, as a policy of
imperialism, the financial bourgeoisie and its counterrevolutionary mission,
demanded by the situation, needed to deny the demo-liberal order, apply the
open terror and the manipulation of the masses through its corporativism.
Chairman Gonzalo pointed out the contribution made by
comrade Stalin and comrade Dimitrov in the characterization of fascism:
“The origin of fascism
is in Japan, this is never told. The action is polarized between revolution and
counterrevolution and the demo-bourgeois forms and the demo liberal ideas are
insufficient to contain revolution, there is the necessity for fascism. In 35,
the 7th Congress of the Communist International would take place and Dimitrov would analyze the problem of
fascism, would put forward that fascism is the state expression of the
financial bourgeoisie, of the financial oligarchy that applies the most
shameless terror. A definition like this focuses on
terror. Before that, Dimitrov would analyse fascism together with Clara
Zetkin and the proposition is that one has to see
the negation of bourgeois liberties which fascism represents.
There is a quote from Stalin in which is put forward that it is a shameless
terror and there is also more written works by him and there is the need to
Study what was said by Stalin. In this Congress, Dimitrov
would put forward the possibility of unity of the demo-liberal against
fascism. That make us see that not everything was terror, to understand
that fascism was the negation of the demo-liberal, but the party said that this
does not fit us, because the situations are different. Dimitrov considers
fascism as the state that represents and defend the interests of the financial
bourgeoisie (big bourgeoisie), rejecting the demo-liberal criteria, its
principles, introducing the fascist criteria of negation of its own
demo-liberal principles, rejecting demo-bourgeois parliamentarian order to put
forward corporatism and that besides they use terror, soft politics and hard
politics. Terror, what fascism does is to develop further violence as a
paralyzing instrument for domination to achieve the application of their
fascist goals and the corporatist order (political goals). Stalin put forward
the union with bourgeois democrats (alliance of certain sectors to smash
fascism). In the process of the bourgeois state, the demo-bourgeois system
carries on with the danger of taking bad measures to restrict and hinder the
struggles, it is not that the demo-liberal
make a leap toward fascism, but, with the restriction laws they make,
they prepare the path to it. Dimitrov would analyze that fascism is not the
same everywhere, it has concrete forms according to the conditions in which it
develops and the degree of revolution, and it can coexist with parliament for
some time. But it has some general things that are common, it sweeps away
everything that is bourgeois democracy, potentiate nationalism, use social
demagogy (struggle against the rich), points out to the banks, is a clear
expression, even by their buildings, of wealth. Great offerings to the masses,
to the workers, they offer employment to the unemployed, land to the peasants,
study to the youth, education to the intellectuals, capacity to develop their
faculties (anything like that…). They are cynical and base themselves in the
most shameless lie.” (Mentioned work, underlined on the original)
In another document Chairman Gonzalo affirms:
“Some identify fascism
and violence. Violence is a method to have the masses subjected; violence is a
manifestation of every state. Dimitrov is badly interpreted. The state has a
process of development: the bourgeoisie builds a demo-liberal state, but
when imperialism comes, such state becomes outdated … Violence
is an ingredient but the essence of fascism, its essence is the
questioning of the demo-liberal order and thus, it develops a frame
from the past, renewed, to oppose the struggle of the masses; carry
out the implantation of institutions acknowledged as ‘natural’, its fundamental
norms are: personality, property, family and together with these the State, the
Church, ‘magnifier of men’, and the Army as the ‘living spirit of
nationality’. Fascism is not a simple problem of military and civilians, but
the efficiency to fulfill it. it must be clarified the character of the corporate state.
The government is not openly presented as fascist nor corporate to
avoid its discredit; however, its measures show its ideology and its goals.”
(Chairman Gonzalo, V Extended Plenum of the Regional Committee of Ayacucho,
1972)
That’s why comrade Dimitrov correctly upheld the
necessity for the communists to defend the democratic rights, placing the
defense of these discredited rights as a part of the proletarian revolution and
of the open struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat:
“Let the Communists
recognize democracy, let them come out in its defense; then we shall be ready
for a united front.” To this we reply: We are the adherents of Soviet
democracy, the democracy of the working people, the most consistent democracy
in the world. But in the capitalist countries we defend and shall continue to
defend every inch of bourgeois-democratic liberties, which are being attacked
by fascism and bourgeois reaction, because the interests of the class struggle
of the proletariat so dictate”.
The right opportunists were seeking to place the
struggle against fascism as a stage itself, of bourgeois-democratic character,
prior the socialist revolution in the capitalist countries. In crystal clear
form, Comrade Dimitrov crushed these positions as he made visible that the
struggle against fascism was part of the struggle for the socialist revolution
and the possibility of a government of united front.
In addition, He warned that the unfolding of the
antifascist struggle would lead to the change in contradictions and the
necessity of transiting to the offensive: “We
must tirelessly prepare the working class for
a rapid change in forms and methods of struggle when there is a change in the
situation. As the movement grows and the unity of the working class
strengthens, we must go further, and prepare the transition from the defensive
to the offensive against capital”.
He also clearly indicated that the United Front should
be applied according to the particular situation of each country, that means,
according to the particularities of the revolution on each country and the
necessities of the World Antifascist Front: “It
goes without saying that the practical realization of a united front will take
various forms in various countries, depending upon the condition and character
of the workers’ organizations and their political level, upon the situation in
the particular country, upon the changes in progress in the international labor
movement, etc.”
The Antifascist Popular Front was conceived as a Front
that would develop on the basis of an united proletarian front. The condition
for the construction of a broad popular antifascist front was the unity of the
working class. That means, that the proletariat could exert its hegemony as an
independent force. The tactic of unity of action with social-democracy was
retaken from what Lenin defined, it was established as a tactic to break broad
masses of workers that were still under its influence away. The possibility of
concreting the Proletarian Front, was essentially due to an important
separation between the right and left wings that took place between the 6th and 7th Congress.
This differentiation was mainly defined on its attitude towards the united
front, to the defense of the USSR and to the combat against fascism.
“In the first place,
the crisis has severely shaken the position of even the most secure sections of
the
working class, the
so-called aristocracy of labour which, as we know, is the main support of
Social
Democracy. These
sections, too, are beginning more and more to revise their views as to the
expediency of the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie.
Second, as I
pointed out in my report, the bourgeoisie in a number of countries is itself
compelled to
abandon bourgeois
democracy and resort to the terroristic form of dictatorship, depriving Social
Democracy not only
of its previous position in the state system of finance capital, but also,
under certain conditions, of its legal status, persecuting and even suppressing
it.
Third, under the
influence of the lessons learned from the defeat of the workers in Germany,
Austria and Spain, a defeat which was largely due to the Social Democratic
policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie and, on the other hand,
under the influence of the victory of socialism in the Soviet Union as a result
of Bolshevik policy and the application of revolutionary Marxism, the Social
Democratic workers are becoming revolutionized and are beginning to turn to the
class struggle against the bourgeoisie”. (Dimitrov, Unity of the
Working Class against Fascism)
The division within the opportunist parties of the 2nd International was analyzed by Chairman Mao in
the “Interview with a New Daily Correspondent on the New International
Situation” first in September 1939: “With
Chamberlain and Daladier practicing intimidation and bribery, the
social-democratic parties affiliated to the Second International are splitting
up. One section, the reactionary upper stratum, is following the same old
disastrous road as in the First World War and is ready to support the new
imperialist war. But another section will join with the Communists in forming a
popular front against war and fascism”.
During the 16th Congress of
the CP (Bolshevik) USSR, 1930, comrade Stalin had affirmed that: “The desertion of the masses of the workers from the
Social-Democrats, however, signifies a turn on their part towards communism.
That is what is actually taking place… It is the guarantee that our fraternal
Communist Par-ties will become big mass parties of the working class. All that
is necessary is that the Communists should be capable of appraising the
situation and making proper use of it… [The Communist Parties] must definitely
fortify themselves on this road; for only if they do that can they count on winning
over the majority of the working class and successfully prepare the proletariat
for the coming class battles. Only if they do that can we count on a further
increase in the influence and prestige of the Communist International”.
[Joseph V. Stalin, Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth
Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.), in Works, vol. 12, Moscow, 1949, Page 260-1]
After the 7th Congress,
this tendency was proven with the conquest of broad sectors of the masses
coming from the social-democracy, however, the unity with social-democracy was
not the essence of the proletarian united front, but a tactic to reach it.
Dimitrov clearly pointed out that this could not be an ideological unity:
“It must further be
borne in mind that, in general, joint action with the Social-Democratic Parties
and organizations requires from Communists serious and substantiated criticism
of Social Democracy as the ideology and practice of class collaboration with
the bourgeoisie, and untiring, comradely explanation to the Social-Democratic
workers of the program and slogans of Communism. In countries having
Social-Democratic governments this task is of particular importance in the
struggle for a united front”.
When it comes to the fusion between the Communist
Party and the social-democratic parties or one of its wings), this was defended
under the condition of them abandoning revisionism and adhering the proletarian
revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat:
“The interests of the
class struggle of the proletariat and the success of the proletarian revolution
make it imperative that there be a single party of the proletariat in each
country. …The Communist Parties, basing themselves on the growing urge of the
workers for a unification of the Social-Democratic Parties or of individual
organizations with the Communist Parties, must firmly and confidently take the
initiative in this unification. …This unification is possible only on the
following conditions: First, complete independence from the bourgeoisie and dissolution
of the bloc of Social-Democracy with the bourgeoisie; Second, preliminary unity
of action; Third, recognition of the revolutionary overthrow of the rule of the
bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the
form of soviets a sine qua non; Fourth, refusal to support one’s own
bourgeoisie in an imperialist war; Fifth, building up the Party on the basis of
democratic centralism, which ensures unity of purpose and action, and which has
been tested by the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks.” [Extracts
of the Main Report delivered at the Seventh Congress of the Communist
International, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist
International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism (20-8-25),
Jane Degras, Ed., The Communist International: 1919-1943: Documents, vol. 3,
London, 1971, Pages 368-9]
Afterwards, in 1941, Dimitrov, demonstrating once more
the tactic character of the unity proposed in 1935 and the necessity of
combating revisionism, noted in his diary: “D.
Z. [Manuilsky] and I discussed the draft theses on the Second International. (I
offered him my observations: our intention is not evident in the theses; there
is no clear orientation toward our goal: the final ousting of social democracy
from the workers’ movement, the establishment of a united command for the
workers’ movement in the person of the Com[munist] Party; not to allow social
democracy to rise again and reprise the counterrevolutionary role that it
played at the end of the first imperialist war, etc.)” (page. 354)
Comrade Dimitrov linked the question of the United
Front to the question of Power, establishing that the United Front should serve
the destruction of the old order and that the government emerging from it would
have to be an expression of the new power, of the revolutionary classes.
“(…) we recognize
that a situation may arise in which the formation of a government of the proletarian united front, or
of an anti-fascist People’s Front,
will become not only possible but necessary… I
am not speaking here of a government which may be formed after the victory of
the proletarian revolution…but of the possible formation of a united front
government on the eve of and before the victory of the [Soviet] revolution”.
Comrade Dimitrov aimed against the rightist
conceptions that separated the formation of a government of united front from
the destruction of the old order and the “left” opportunist conception that
excluded the possibility for the formation of said government prior to the complete
triumph of the revolution.
“…the
Right opportunists were able to interpret matters as though we should strive
for the formation of a workers’ government, supported by the Communist party,
in any, so to speak, “normal” situation. The ultra-Lefts, on the other hand,
recognized only a workers’ government formed by an armed insurrection after the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie”.
Comrade Dimitrov clearly pointed out the nexus between
the question of the United Front and the destruction of the old State,
establishing three conditions for the emergence of an united front government:
1) the destruction of the old state apparatus (disorganization and
immobilization of the state apparatus), 2) unfolding of the mass political
struggle against fascism and all reaction, and 3) hegemony of the communist
party in the united front:
“Only the existence of
certain special prerequisites can put on the agenda the question of forming
such government as a politically essential task. It seems to me that the
following prerequisites deserve the greatest attention in this connection:
First, the state apparatus of the
bourgeoisie must already be sufficiently disorganized
and paralyzed, so that the bourgeoisie cannot prevent the formation of a
government of struggle against reaction and fascism. Second, the widest masses
of working people, particularly the mass trade unions, must be in a state of
vehement revolt against fascism and reaction,
though not ready to rise in insurrection so as to fight under Communist Party
leadership for the establishment of a fully socialist government. Third, the differentiation and radicalization in the ranks
of Social-Democracy and other parties participating in the united front must
already have reached the point where a considerable proportion of them demand
ruthless measures against the fascists and other reactionaries, fight
together with the Communists against fascism and openly oppose the reactionary
section of their own party which is hostile to Communism”. (underlined
by us)
At the 7th Congress of
the Communist International, the left needed to inflict a decisive blow to the
“left” opportunist tendencies rightists in fact, at the expense of not being
able to forge and develop a broad world anti-fascist front. Right] opportunist
elements necessarily took advantage of this struggle to hide their opportunist
and revisionist positions. This is a law of class struggle in the ideological
terrain, every time that struggles against right or “left” deviations develop,
an opposite deviationist tendency tends to strengthen during a two-line
struggle, another one hides. Aware of the dangers of right deviations: of
supposing the existence of an intermediate stage between capitalism and
socialism in the imperialist countries, comrade Dimitrov combated these
positions in a totally clear form while affirming that:
“Fifteen years ago
Lenin called upon us to focus all our attention on “searching out forms of
transition or approach to the proletariat revolution.” It may be that in a
number of countries the united front government will prove to be one of the
most important transitional forms. “Left”
doctrinaires have always avoided this precept of Lenin’s. Like the
narrow-minded propagandists that they were, they spoke only of aims, without
ever worrying about “forms of transition.” The Right Opportunists, on the other
hand, have tried to establish a special democratic intermediate stage lying between
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the
purpose of instilling into the workers the illusion of a peaceful parliamentary
passage from the one dictatorship to the other. This fictitious
“intermediate stage” they have also called “transitional form,” and even quoted
Lenin’s words. But this piece of swindling was not difficult to expose: for
Lenin spoke of the form of transition and approach to the proletarian
revolution, that is, to the overthrow of the bourgeois dictatorship, and not of
some transitional form between the bourgeois and the proletarian dictatorship”.
This position was ratified in the final resolution of
the 7th Congress regarding the
report of comrade Dimitrov:
“…the toilers must be
shown the impossibility of bringing about socialism so long as power remains in
the hands of the bourgeoisie”. (Resolution adopted by the 7th Congress of the Comintern regarding the report
of Georgi Dimitrov, 20 of August 1935).
Highlighting the necessity of combating revisionism,
he affirmed:
“It must further be
borne in mind that, in general, joint action with the Social-Democratic Parties
and organizations requires from Communists serious and substantiated criticism
of [reformism, of] Social Democracy as the ideology and practice of class
collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and untiring, comradely explanation to the
Social-Democratic workers of the program and slogans of Communism”.
(Resolution emitted by the 7th Congress of
the Comintern regarding the report of Georgi Dimitrov, 20 of August 1935).
The resolutions showed the necessary link between the
anti-fascist struggle and the conquest of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
by affirming that:
“In the struggle to
defend against fascism the bourgeois-democratic liberties and the gains of the
toilers, in the struggle to overthrow fascist dictatorship, the revolutionary
proletariat prepares its forces, strengthens its fighting contacts with its
allies and directs the struggle toward the goal of achieving real democracy of
the toilers – Soviet Power. (…) The capitalist world is entering a period of
sharp clashes as a result of the accentuation of the internal and external
contradictions of capitalism. (…) Only the welding of the proletariat into a
single mass political army will ensure its victory in the struggle against
fascism and the power of capital, for the dictatorship of the proletariat and
the power of the Soviets.”. (Resolution adopted by the 7th Congress of the Comintern regarding the report
of Georgi Dimitrov, 20 of August 1935).
“…the communists must
increase their vigilance in guarding against the danger of right opportunism,
and
must carry on a
determined struggle against all its concrete manifestations, bearing in mind
that the right danger will grow as the tactics of the united front are widely
applied. The struggle for the establishment of the united front, of the
unity of action of the working class, gives rise to the necessity that the
social-democratic workers be convinced by object lessons of the correctness of
the communist policy and the incorrectness of the reformist policy, and charges
every communist party to wage an irreconcilable struggle against any tendency
to gloss over the differences in principle between communism and reformism,
against weakening the criticism of social-democracy as the ideology and
practice of [class] collaboration with the bourgeoisie, against the illusion
that it is possible to bring about socialism by peaceful, legal methods, against
any reliance on automatism or spontaneity, whether in the liquidation of
fascism or in the realization of the united front, against belittling the role
of the party and against the slightest vacillation at the moment of decisive
action”. (Resolution adopted by the 7th Congress of
the Comintern regarding the report of Georgi Dimitrov, 20 of August 1935).
These are the clear warnings and an absolutely clear
demarcation. Can there exist enough warnings to prevent revisionism? Evidently
not, revisionism is a form of bourgeois ideology within the labor movement,
distinct and opposed to Marxism. Those who think they can keep themselves from
falling into sins, keeping themselves on the immaculate altar of pure
criticism, are already condemned to it. Those who intend to justify the
revisionist treason in the 7th Congress
don’t make a distinction between red and black, between Marxism and
revisionism.
Within the context of strategic defensive of the World
Proletarian Revolution, the policy established by the 7th Congress of the Comintern was a just and correct
policy through which the international proletariat was able to defeat the
offensive of the armed counterrevolution represented by fascism. It was with
the impulse of this transcendental victory, for which the immense sacrifices
and efforts of the Chinese people and the Communist Party of China were made
that, with the triumph of their great revolution, four years later, the
Proletarian World Revolution reached its stage of strategic stalemate.
IV – THE 7th CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST
INTERNATIONAL AND THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA
The Communist Party of China, from its very
foundation, has its history intrinsically linked with the Communist
International and the two-line struggle within it.
In 1935, the Communist International approved an
important resolution affirming that its Executive Committee had to move its
center of gravity to the elaboration of the fundamental line and tactic for the
ICM, not directly intervening in the intern matters of the communist parties.
Chu En-lai recognizes that since then until its dissolution in 1943, the
Communist International did not directly interfere in the life of the Communist
Party of China: “In 1935 it adopted a
resolution to the effect that it should not interfere with the internal affairs
of the various Parties, and after that it did give them a freer hand.” (Zhu
Enlai. The Communist International and the Communist Party of China, 1960)
It is false that the Communist International had
centered its efforts in the countries of Western Europe. The situation of
Germany had a great importance, once it had the biggest communist party on the
West, where the opportunist and revisionist tendencies had more strength and
influence for the whole struggle between revolution and counterrevolution in
the continent. This importance was also for being the rear of the main enemy.
Such conditions became the vertex of preparation for the war against the USSR,
constituting itself as the problem of biggest magnitude for the USSR, given
that the action of the communists would be used as a justification to attack
the USSR, just as it was attempted with the phony burning of the Reichstag.
Comrade Stalin and the Communist International were
fully conscious of the growing importance of the Chinese revolution. The
revolution in China has always taken a central place in the attention of the
Communist International. No other country received as many contribution as the
Communist Party of China. It suffices to see that, given the central importance
of the Chinese question, all the resolutions and telegrams directed to China
signed by comrade Dimitrov in the name of the (ECCI), were debated and revised
by comrade Stalin or, in other cases, by Molotov.
Comrade Stalin brilliantly established that “In China, the troops of the old government are
confronted not by an unarmed people, but by an armed people, in the shape of
its revolutionary army. In China the armed revolution is fighting the armed
counter-revolution”. (Stalin, The Prospects of the Revolution in
China). This affirmation has great transcendence and represented an enormous
contribution to the Communist Party of China with the affirmation that “the colonial and semicolonial question is in
essence the peasant question”. These two assertions have a great transcendence
and played a very important role in the course of the Chinese Revolution.
Throughout the Anti-Japanese War and the Third Revolutionary Civil War,
chairman Mao studied and applied the correlation between these two fundamental
principles.
The conception of the United Front, based on
Marxism-Leninism and the contributions of comrade Stalin, could develop through
the successive two-line struggles against the “left” and right deviations, with
the realization of great rectification campaigns, until reaching the great 7th Congress of the Communist Party of China, that
took place in 1945. During the eight years of the Second Revolutionary Civil
War in China, the Communist Party of China incurred in three “left” deviations
that were only corrected in the Conference of Tsunyi, in January 1935, and the
following ten years until its glorious 7th Congress,
1945. These deviations were to some extent linked to the two-line struggle
within the Communist International.
The victory of the left in the Communist Party of
China, in 1935, is directly linked to the triumph of the left in the Communist
International under the leadership of comrade Stalin. When refuting the
Trotskyist chattering regarding the Chinese question, Stalin very clearly
stated the main tactical principles of Leninism :
“1- The principle of necessity
of taking into consideration the national peculiarities and the
national characteristics of each country when elaborating the directives of the
Comintern for the workers’ movement in that nation”.
“2 – The principle of
necessity of each Communist Party of every country to use the smallest
possibilities of conquering allies of masses for the proletariat, even if they
are temporary, hesitant, indecisive, or untrustworthy”.
“3 – The principle of
necessity of taking into account the truth that propaganda and agitation alone
are not enough for the political education of the millions of masses of men,
furthermore this political education requires the political experience of the
masses”.
Stalin continues emphasizing the combination of the
general Marxist-Leninist principles with the national characteristics. He
wrote:
“Notwithstanding the
ideological growth of our Party, unfortunately there is still in our Party a
certain type of “leaders”who sincerely believe that it is possible to direct
the revolution in China, so to speak, by telegraph on the basis of
the known and universally recognized general principles of the Communist
International without taking into consideration the national peculiarities of
Chinese culture, Chinese customs and traditions. These “leaders” differ from
the real leaders precisely in that they always have in their pockets two or
three ready-made formulae that are “suitable” for all countries and
“obligatory” in all conditions. For them there is no question of taking into
account the national character and national peculiarities of each country. For
them there is no question of coordinating the general principles of the
Communist International with the national peculiarities of the revolutionary
movement in each country, of applying the general principles of the Communist
International to the national and state peculiarities of different countries”.
“They do not
understand that the main task of leadership at the present time, when the
Communist parties have already grown up and have become mass parties, consists
in finding, grasping and skillfully combining the national and characteristic
features of the movement in each country with the general principles of the
Communist International in order to facilitate and make practically possible
the carrying out of the basic aims of the Communist movement”.
“Hence the attempts to
stereotype the leadership for all the countries. Hence the attempts to apply
mechanically certain general formulae regardless of the concrete conditions of
the revolutionary movement in different countries. Hence the endless conflicts
between formulae and the revolutionary movement in different countries, which
are the essential outcome of the leadership of these miserable leaders”.
(J. Stalin – Commentaries on questions of the moment: The question of China)
The Tsuny Meeting (January 1935), in which the
leadership of Chairman Mao triumphed, represented the overcoming of two “left”
opportunist deviations, which were manifested in the attitude of “closed doors”
toward the formation of a United Front against the Japanese aggressors. It
expressed an understanding on the united front, as an application of the Global
Anti-Fascist Front in China, which was debated in the Comintern and would be
sanctioned by the 7th Congress of
the International. About these mistakes Chairman Mao affirmed:
“The present situation
demands that we boldly discard all closed-doorism, form a broad united front
and guard against adventurism. We must not plunge into decisive battles until
the time is ripe and unless we have the necessary strength.”
The followers of the “closed doors policy” who
considered that: “The forces of the
revolution must be pure, absolutely pure, and the road of the revolution must
be straight, absolutely straight. Nothing is correct except what is literally
recorded in Holy Writ. … The yellow trade unions must be fought tooth and nail.
…Was there ever a cat that did not love fish or a warlord who was not a
counter-revolutionary? Intellectuals are three-day revolutionaries whom it is
dangerous to recruit. It follows therefore that closed-doorism is the sole
wonder-working magic, while the united front is an opportunist tactic.
Comrades, which is right, the united front or closed-doorism? Which indeed is
approved by Marxism-Leninism? I answer without the slightest hesitation–the
united front and not closed-doorism. Three-year-olds have many ideas which are
right, but they cannot be entrusted with serious national or world affairs
because they do not understand them yet. Marxism-Leninism is opposed to the
“infantile disorder” found in the revolutionary ranks. This infantile disorder
is just what the confirmed exponents of closed-doorism advocate. Like every
other activity in the world, revolution always follows a tortuous road and
never a straight one. The alignment of forces in the revolutionary and
counter-revolutionary camps can change, just as everything else in the world
changes.” (On the tactic of struggle against Japanese imperialism,
Volume II, p 177)
While hoisting the Anti-fascist Front policy, Chairman
Mao affirmed: “Now, in the mounting tide
of nation-wide struggle against Japan and of world-wide struggle against
fascism, just wars will spread all over China and the globe. All just wars
support each other, while all unjust wars should be turned into just wars–this is
the Leninist line.” (On the tactic of struggle against Japanese
imperialism, Volume II, p 177)
The Communist International, through its Executive
Secretariat, personally commanded by comrade Dimitrov, played an important role
in the concreting of the Anti-Japanese United Front. When the incident in Sian
took place, in December 1936, comrade Dimitrov played an important role in the
correct solution of the conflict. The Secretariat of the Communist
International emitted a telegram supporting the position of Chairman Mao,
against the position of Wang Ming, who comrade Stalin accused of having a
position of an agent provocateur (See Dimitrov Diary, page 42), where it reads:
“1. Zhang Xueliang’s
action, whatever his intentions were, objectively can only harm the
consolidation of the Chinese people’s forces into a unified anti-Japanese front
and encourage Japanese aggression with respect to China.
2. Since this
action has been taken and we must reckon with the real facts of the matter, the
Communist Party of China vigorously supports a peaceful resolution of the
conflict on the following basis:
a) Reorganizing the
government through the inclusion of a few representatives of the anti-Japanese
movement, supporters of the integrity and independence of China (The suggested
text in our draft: “reorganizing the government from among the most conspicuous
activists in the anti-Japanese movement, supporters of the integrity and
independence of China”) b) Ensuring the democratic rights of the Chinese people
c) Discontinuing the policy of destroying the Red Army and establishing
cooperation with it in the struggle against Japanese aggression d) Establishing
cooperation with states sympathetic toward the liberation of the Chinese people
from the attack of Japanese imperialism”. (Telegram of the
Secretariat of ECCI to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on
the Necessity of a Peaceful Solution to the Xian Conflict)
At the debate of the Secretariat of the ECCI regarding
the Chinese Question of August 10th 1937, comrade
Dimitrov pointed out that: “He knows well,
and we have talked with him on more than one occasion as I am the one directly
dealing with the Chinese party, that the problems confronting the Chinese party
are extremely complex and the position of the party is exceptional. Imagine all
that has occurred during the past two years. The Chinese Communist Party, which
was leading the Red Army in China, takes a crucial turn. You will not find a
single section of the Comintern that has been put into such a situation and
that has made such a crucial change in its policies and its tactics during the
past few years as has been done by the Chinese Communist Party. It fought for
the Soviets in China, for Soviet regions, created a Soviet government, created
an army, estranged a part of the army of Chiang Kai-shek from him in its aim of
sovietisation etc. The cadre of the party, materials of the party and the
strength of the party – all of this was concentrated up to 95% if not wholly
100% in these Soviet regions. And in the armed struggle against Nanking the
cadre was educated, they matured and grew; good cadre emerged as did their
political leaders. (…) But from this orientation it was required at this moment
to turn around 180 degrees in the policies and the tactics of the party. And
now the same cadres, not another party, not new people but the same members of the
party, the same masses must conduct a different policy. (…) Is this policy
correct? Certainly. It is being conducted in accordance with the general line
of the VII Congress of the Communist International and is in accordance with
the development of the Chinese revolution. The issue in China today is not of
Sovietisation but about keeping the Chinese people from being devoured by
Japanese imperialism. It is necessary to unite large forces of the Chinese
people in the struggle against the Japanese aggression for upholding the
independence, freedom and integrity of the Chinese people. And here the party
was supposed to – and on the whole it did so – make the transition to the
position of struggle not for the Sovietisation of China but for democracy, for
unification on a democratic base of the forces of the Chinese people against
Japanese imperialism, against Japanese aggression.”
The resolution of the Secretariat of the ECCI
regarding the Chinese Question of October 10th 1937,
affirmed:
“1. The start of the
all-Chinese armed resistance against the Japanese aggressor and the successful
advances in creating the united national front would mark a new stage in the
struggle of the Chinese people…
2. One of the most
important tasks of the party consists in re-educating the old cadre
politically, in military matters and in the use of new methods of work, and in
promoting new cadre from the ranks of, above all, the workers and the activists
and leaders of the mass revolutionary movement.
3. We must obtain
by persistent pressure on the Kuomintang and the Nanking government and by
means of mass campaigns the legalisation of the functioning of the party in all
the regions under the Kuomintang and must turn our attention towards setting up
of a massive legal press in the major towns.
4. The Communist
Party of China, as the party of the workers, must increase its work especially
among the workers and their trade organisations, and draw them into active
participation in the anti-Japanese struggle and in the united national front…”
In 1937, Wang Ming, who was back then in the Communist
International, came back returned to China and went on to head a right
capitulationist line at the initial period of the War of Resistance against
Japan. Wang Ming negated back then the hegemony and the independence of the
proletariat at the core of the Unite Front, he sought to place the Communist
Party of China under the rule of the Kuomintang, making concessions to the
anti-popular politics of the KMT, he didn’t dare to mobilize the masses to struggle
nor to expand the popular forces and extend the anti-Japanese bases in the
zones occupied by Japan. Wang Ming then advocated the opportunist line
“everything through the United Front”.
“During the War of
Resistance to Japanese Aggression, those comrades who had earlier committed
“Left” opportunist mistakes swung over to Right opportunism. Their views were
exactly like those of the Chen Tu-hsiu opportunism of 1927 in that they
overlooked the anti-feudal aspect. They “saw only the bourgeoisie” and “failed
to understand the decisive significance of China’s agrarian revolutionary
movement.”
“They ‘do not consider
it possible to unleash the revolution in the countryside, because they are
afraid that the drawing of the peasantry into the revolution will undermine the
united anti-imperialist front’ … Such erroneous views were, of course, in
direct opposition to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin. According to Stalin:
‘The anti-imperialist united front in China will become stronger and more
powerful, the sooner and more solidly the Chinese peasantry is drawn into the
revolution’.”. (Chen Po-ta, Stalin and the Chinese revolution)
This opportunist line was combated in the 6th Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China from September to November , 1938, unifying the whole
party around the left line of Chairman Mao Tsetung, according to which the
proletariat should exercise independence and self-decision making in the heart
of the United Front. The report made by Chairman Mao Tsetung with “The role of
the Communist Party of China in the National War” (Selected Works, T II, page
201)
In a celebratory message for the 21st year of foundation of the Communist Party of
China, comrade Dimitrov combated these capitulationist positions of Wang Ming: “But there are also internal difficulties in the
path of the Communist Party of China. It has to win against the resistance of
the sectarian elements, which do not understand that in the present conditions
the only way to assure the liberation of the Chinese people is by establishing
a united national front against the Japanese aggressor. It also has to keep up
the struggle against the capitulationist opportunists, who are on the verge of
sacrificing political and organic independence of the Party and the Red Army,
and to dissolve them in other organizations and armies”.
(Dimitrov, The People’s Front)
Between 1942 and 1944, in the course of the great
Rectification Movement developed in the Communist Party of China under the
leadership of Chaiman Mao Tsetung, the Communist Party of China dedicated
itself into making a deep evaluation about the problems of its history.
Especially on the period between 1931 and 1934, when sharp “left” opportunist
deviations were manifested, which would only star to be overcome with the
Conference of Tsuny in January 1935. These discussions were part of the
preparation of the great, historic and transcendental 7th Congress of the Communist Party of China (1945),
with the triumph of Mao Tsetung Thought. With it, it was established that the
communist Party of China was guided by Marxism-Leninism and the ideas of Mao
Tsetung Thought.
In the course of this debate, Chairman Mao wrote in
“Our Studies and the current Situation”, 12th April 1944
(Selected Works, V. III) published together with an attachment “Some questions
regarding the history of our party”. Such documents, which stand out together
with others, are of fundamental importance for the whole ICM. In our study and the current situation, he
brilliantly systematized the situation when he affirmed:
“The
present situation has two characteristics: one is that the anti-fascist front
is growing stronger and the fascist front is declining, and the second is that
within the anti-fascist front the people’s forces are growing stronger and the
anti-popular forces are declining. The first characteristic is quite
obvious and can readily be seen. Hitler will be defeated before long, and the
Japanese aggressors, too, are heading for defeat. The second characteristic is
not so obvious and cannot readily be seen, but it is daily becoming more
manifest in Europe, in Britain and the United States and in China.”
Chairman Mao showed how, during the seven years that
passed since July 1937, the democratic forces, led by the Communist Party of
China, confronted three phases: 1) rise between 1937 and 1940, when the
Japanese aggressors centered their attacks against the Kuomintang and
underestimated the Communist Party of China. In this phase the Kuomintang
undertook serious battle against the Japanese aggressors and politics of unity
with the Communist Party of China. Later, after the fall of Wuhan in October
1938, the Japanese aggressors started to center combat against the
anti-Japanese bases led by the Communist Party of China, and the Kuomintang increasingly
started to make active anti-communist politics and passive resistance towards
Japan.
In this period, Chairman Mao masterly systematized the
three fundamental instruments of revolution and their interrelation: “Our eighteen years of experience show that the
united front and armed struggle are the two basic weapons for defeating the
enemy. The united front is a united front for carrying on armed struggle. And
the Party is the heroic warrior wielding the two weapons, the united front and
the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the enemy’s positions. That is how the
three are related to each other”. (Mao, Introducing the Communist, Volume
II, 1939)
2) descent, between 1941 and 1942, in order to prepare
and wage war against the United States and England, the Japanese aggressors
intensified their politics of centering their attacks against the Communist
Party. During this period, the Kuomintang, feeling free-handed, undertook its
second anti-communist campaign, attacking the bases of the Communist Party in
coordination with the Japanese aggressors.
During this difficult period, the Communist Party
initiated the politics of the “three thirds” within the organizations of power
in the Front/New State. In this period, the Communist Party of China
established the principle of struggling with “reason, advantage and limit
without surpassing it” and underlined the necessity of practicing “unity and
struggle at the same time and unity through struggle” within the united front.
The system of three thirds, whose application is not made in the army, in which
the Communist Party should hold “...the “three thirds system” should not be introduced
into our main forces, but so long as the leadership of the army is kept in the
hands of the Party (this is an absolute and inviolable necessity), we need not
be afraid of drawing large numbers of sympathizers into the work of building up
the military and technical departments of our army. Now that the ideological
and organizational foundations of our Party and our army have been firmly laid,
not only is there no danger in drawing in large numbers of sympathizers (not
saboteurs of course).
3) new rise starting from 1943: the Japanese
aggressors kept centering their attacks against the Communist Party, but the
Kuomintang, strongly beaten, kept up the politics of “running to the mountains”
and “contemplate the fight”. Chairman Mao Tsetung showed that through this
relationship of unity and struggle within the united front, in middle of the
combat with the main enemy, the Communist Party was able to develop and get
stronger. Chairman Mao affirmed that the Kuomintang “from looking on with
folded arms for five and a half years is the loss of its fighting capacity.
What the Communist Party has gained from fighting and struggling hard for five and
a half years is the strengthening of its fighting capacity. This is what will
decide China’s destiny“. (Mao. Our Studies and the current situation. 12th April 1944, V III).
In “On New Democracy”, regarding the character of the
democratic revolution in China, Chairman Mao put forward that it doesn’t belong
to the old bourgeois revolutions, but to the “Socialist World Revolution”, he
affirmed that “This correct thesis advanced by
the Chinese Communists is based on Stalin’s theory”. (Mao. On New
Democracy, 1940, T II)
The problem of the uninterrupted revolution, developed
by Chairman Mao, departs from Stalin and the International, as Chairman Gonzalo
pointed out:
““Did the Communist
International knew? Of course it did. many things, my dear comrades, that are
on Mariátegui are from the Communist International, this is why you do not
know; i believe that we do not know history and we talk of things we do not
know. Do you believe that the Communist International did not know that
revolution was uninterrupted, you believe the Communist International did not
know that? Comrade Stalin perfectly knew that. Was Stalin not a Marxist?
Please, man!” (Chairman Gonzalo, First Congress)
In the course of war against the Japanese aggressors,
the contradiction between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang
turned into a secondary contradiction, although this one, by its own nature,
has an antagonistic and irreconcilable character. When the main enemy was
defeated, there was a change in the principal contradiction and the principal
enemy and there was a new differentiation in the interior of the Antifascist
Front. The secondary enemies, just like Yankee imperialism and the Kuomintang,
allies at the time, increasingly became main enemies, and the revolution
entered a new phase, starting the Third
Revolutionary Civil War, developed until the conquest of Power in the
whole country.
V – The Great Patriotic War
“After the first
imperialist war the victor states, primarily Britain, France and the United
States, had set up a new regime in the relations between countries, the
post-war regime of peace. The main props of this regime were the Nine-Power
Pact in the Far East, and the Versailles Treaty and a number of other treaties
in Europe. The League of Nations was set up to regulate relations between
countries within the framework of this regime, on the basis of a united front
of states, of collective defense of the security of states. However,
three aggressive states, and the new imperialist war launched by them, have
upset the entire system of this post-war peace regime. Japan tore up the
Nine-Power Pact, and Germany and Italy the Versailles Treaty. In order to have their
hands free, these three states withdrew from the League of Nations. The new
imperialist war became a fact.” (Stalin. Report on the 18th Congress of
the party regarding the work of the Central Committee of the CP USSR)
In 1935, fascist Italy had thrown itself and occupied
Abisinia. In the summer of 1936, Italy and Germany intervened in Spain against
the Republic. In 1937, Japan, after occupying Manchuria, advanced over the
northern and central region of China, occupying Beijing, Tientsin and Shanghai.
In the beginning of 1938, Germany occupied and annexed Austria and, in autumn,
the region of the Sudetes in Czechoslovakia. At the end of 1938, Japan occupied
Canton. In March 1935, Hitler proclaimed a new law establishing obligatory
military service, breaking with the Treaty of Versailles and exceeding France
in troops.
Only the USSR made systematic efforts for a broad pact
of collective security with the western powers, against the expansion of the
fascist aggression and to breaking the attempt of isolating the USSR. The
revolutionary diplomacy of the USSR spent the 1930 decade trying to obtain a
treaty of non-aggression with England and France without reaching it. England
and France systematically rejected signing a pact with the USSR, adopting the
lying “appeasing policy”. Which means, While Hitler threatened to annex
countries of Europe, Austria and others, invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland,
nothing was done to stop it, in the attempt to push Germany against the USSR.
Politics that ended in the treaty of the Munich Conference, celebrated on the 29th and 30th of September
1938, between Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Daladier, who gave up
Czechoslovakia. Regarding this, comrade Stalin affirmed, during in the 18th Congress of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of
the USSR, celebrated in March 1939:
“The policy of
non-intervention means conniving at aggression, giving free rein to war, and,
consequently, transforming the war into a world war. The policy of
non-intervention reveals an eagerness, a desire, not to hinder the aggressors
in their nefarious work : not to hinder Japan, say, from embroiling herself in
a war with China, or, better still, with the Soviet Union : to allow all the
belligerents to sink deeply into the mire of war, to encourage them surreptitiously
in this, to allow them to weaken and exhaust one another; and then, when they
have become weak enough, to appear on the scene with fresh strength, to appear,
of course, “in the interests of peace,” and to dictate conditions to the
enfeebled belligerents.”
The USA had made so many campaigns demonizing the USSR
up to this point, that for it to enter the war it had to mount the coward
machination of Pearl Harbor. Hundreds of North-Americans, military and
civilians, were massacred and wounded in it, due to having been taken by
surprise by the operation Tora Tora of Japan. An attack on the naval base in
Hawaii of which the Yankee government knew beforehand, but needed something
that would cause popular indignation and national commotion so that the Congress
would be obliged to approve its entering the war.
Counting with his expertise, the great Stalin
succeeded in a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in one week and in the
next one with fascist Japan, gaining valuable time to prepare for the German
invasion. The secret correspondence between Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and
soon after with Atle and Eisenhower, is a proof of how comrade Stalin applied
with mastery the World Antifascist Front, placing the Soviet State as the axis
and in the defense of the popular forces led by the communist parties in each
country involved in the conflict. This is fact and is extensively documented.
When Germany invaded the USSR on 22nd of June 1941, the next day Chairman Mao
affirmed: “For Communists throughout the world
the task now is to mobilize the people of all countries and organize an
international united front to fight fascism and defend the Soviet Union, defend
China, and defend the freedom and independence of all nations. In the present
period, every effort must be concentrated on combating fascist enslavement”.
(Mao. On the International Anti-Fascist United Front. 1941. T II)
Soon after he specified the form and content that
should be assumed in China:
“For the Chinese
Communist Party the tasks throughout the country are as follows: 1. Persevere
in the National United Front Against Japan, persevere in Kuomintang-Communist
co-operation, drive the Japanese imperialists out of China, and by these means
assist the Soviet Union. 2. Resolutely combat all the anti-Soviet and
anti-Communist activities of the reactionaries among the big bourgeoisie. 3. In
foreign relations, unite against the common foe with everybody in Britain, the
United States and other countries who is opposed to the fascist rulers of
Germany, Italy and Japan”. (Mao. On the International Anti-Fascist United
Front. 1941. T II)
Again we point out that Chairman Gonzalo put forward: “To make the
evaluation of the Communist International, especially its 7th Congress, linked
to the world war and the role of comrade Stalin”. In the
exposition in front of the First Congress of the Communist Party of Peru
Chairman Gonzalo, fundamenting substantiate the definition of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, affirmed:
“The
World war II is a milestone of transcendence in world history, is strictly
began on 1939 and ended in 1945 (…) it is a world war in which on the one hand there is the
imperialist plunder, the dispute for world hegemony, which Germany, under
Hitler, claimed to itself; but on the other
hand there is the defense of socialism and development of revolution,
it is clear and correct that the war then
unleashed by the USSR was a great patriotic war … it was a justified war of defense, a great patriotic war, this is how it was defined
with all correctness, that is why; And
development of the world revolution because more than that
glorious defense that costed 20 million men to USSR, we have an anti-imperialist struggle that will develop in
the oppressed countries, mainly in China (… )
It is the great war
of resistance of the oppressed nations, like China, like Korea, like Birmania,
like Indonesia, Philippines, etc. Where precisely the imperialists fled like
rats and went to the peoples of those nations who took up arms; the ones who had luck to rely on a
communist party had triumphed and advanced and the ones who did not,
at least freed themselves of being colonies by means of transactions, as an
example, Indonesia had ceased to be, as a consequence of this war, a colony of
the Netherlands.
There was a
sinister plan in this war: the crusade against the USSR, … (a word that
expresses) clearly its reactionary innards and because this is how it was put
forward by Hitler himself, as an anti-Bolshevik crusade, because the black dream they had was to sweep the USSR away
from the face of Earth; futile, glass dream, it shocked
against the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, with the leadership
of the party and comrade STALIN, the Russian proletariat, the Russian people.
Comrades, heroic pages!: Stalingrad … also there was clearly seen the dirty,
tricky work of the imperialist allies … seeking that fascist germany would
defeat USSR … What could Russia do facing such smite? To apply a strategic
defensive then, and that is what was done … together with razed grounds, not
leaving anything to them, naked land (…)
“Comrades, the
dictatorship of the proletariat was at stake, revolution was at stake, we can
not stop in our minds nor simple let ourselves be stupefied as said by Chairman
Mao, for the defense of pieces of land neither vases; this is how we are, the
communists.”
All this great deed of the World War II has shaken the
world and marked men and given good results; not everywhere, but
inclusively had given medium results, as example, France and Italy, the reason:
revisionists, they let be carried away due to triumph, the results of
victory having the 500 thousand men guerrillas, 300 thousand men, forged in
this heroic struggle of the class and the European peoples that we also
have to take into account. This is then, the World War II is a milestone of
great transcendence. The prestige of the
USSR highly increased across the Earth. Enough is to see the
newspapers at that time (…) given that, we
can no more judge comrade STALIN, this is why the party said we have to look at
the World War II”. (Chairman Gonzalo, PCP, First Congress)
We consider that this appreciation has a value of
synthesis for the whole ICM. The victory against fascism on the Second World
War is one of the great historic all events of the process of the Proletarian
World Revolution, which has to be seriously studied for its just and correct
comprehension, it has to be highlighted and celebrated.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the
imperialist camp found itself deeply beaten, three important imperialist powers
were defeated: Germany, Japan and Italy. Other powers such as France and
England were weakened, as for the international proletariat and the oppressed
peoples of the whole world enormously rose up. The socialist camp, covering the
popular democracies had expanded and a powerful movement of national liberation
was impulsed.
Chairman Mao warned us that it would be a grave
mistake to underestimate the importance of the victory on the Second World War:
“The world revolutionary
united front, with the Soviet Union at its head, defeated fascist Germany,
Italy and Japan. This was a result of the October Revolution. If there had been
no October Revolution, if there had been no Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, no Soviet Union and no anti-imperialist revolutionary united front in
the West and in the East led by the Soviet Union, could one conceive of victory
over fascist Germany, Italy, Japan and their running dogs? If the October
Revolution opened up wide possibilities for the emancipation of the working
class and the oppressed peoples of the world and opened up realistic paths
towards it, then the victory of the anti-fascist Second World War has opened up
still wider possibilities for the emancipation of the working class and the
oppressed peoples of the world and has opened up still more realistic paths
towards it. It will be a very great mistake
to underestimate the significance of the victory of World War II”.
(Mao. Revolutionary Forces of the World, unite, Struggle against the
imperialist aggression! November 1948. T IV)
In the editorial of the Hongqi magazine of 1965,
published for the occasion of the 20 years of the victory on the Anti-fascist
War, the Communist Party of China affirmed, regarding the evaluation of this
historic experience:
“Points out that
surrounding the evaluation of the experience in the Anti-Fascist War
questions of principles between Marxist and revisionist are defined: “There is
an entire series of important differences of principle between Marxist-Leninist
and modern revisionism in the question of how to evaluate the Anti-Fascist War
and in the lessons that can be extracted from it”
They highlight the great role of the anti-fascist war
in defense of Socialism, of the Peoples War and the United Front:
“In the first place,
the history of anti-fascist war shows that the socialist system has an enormous
vitality that can resist the most severe test and that a state of the
dictatorship of the proletariat is invincible.
In second place,
the history of the anti-fascist war shows that imperialism is the source of all
wars in modern times, that the aggressive nature of imperialism will not change
and because of that, to defend world peace it is necessary to persist in the
struggle against imperialism.
In third place, the
history of the anti-fascist war shows that the peoples war sure to attain
victory, that it is completely possible to defeat the imperialist aggressors,
that imperialism is a paper tiger, who is apparently strong, but in reality is
weak, and that the atomic bomb is also a paper tigress and it is the people and
not the arms, of any class, who decide the outcome of the war.
In fourth place,
the history of the anti-fascist war shows that, in order to defeat the
imperialist aggressor, it is imperative to trust in the unity of the
revolutionary forces of the people in all countries, to attract to our side all
the forces that can be won, to form the broadest possible international united
front and concentrate our blows on the main enemy of the peoples of the world”.
Still In the same editorial it is shown how Kruschov,
when he had to praise the role of the Great Patriotic War aiming to insufflate
the “Great Russian” feeling among the masses, negated the role of the
anti-fascist war, affirming that fascism was crushed only by the USSR, crashing
this way against proletarian internationalism:
“The Soviet Union,
which was the only socialist country of that time, was the main force to
annihilate the German fascists and played the decisive function in the defeat
of fascism. The Chinese people undertakes its revolutionary war against
Japanese imperialism, for a really long time on its part, and made one of the
most significant contributions to the victory in the Anti-Fascist War. The
peoples of many countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and America made
their own contribution to the Anti-Fascist War.
The peoples of the countries occupied by the German, Italian, and Japanese
fascists also persisted in the guerilla war and the clandestine struggles at
home or organized in armies in foreign countries, which later came
back to fight in their home countries. In the last period of the war, the
people in some countries rose up successfully in revolting armies and liberated
great parts of their territory, or sent troops to unite in the persecution of
the hordes and to support the liberation struggles of the peoples of other
countries after their own countries had been liberated. In Germany, Italy and
Japan, the masses of the people under fascism also resisted at home in
carious ways, even including armed struggle, and supporting the struggle of
other peoples that suffered the fascist aggression and slavery. All these
struggles have contributed to the victory of the Anti-Fascist War and
each one takes a place of honor in the history of the War. The revisionist Kruschov, tries to write to erase
from a pen stroke played against the peoples of all the other countries in the
Anti-Fascist War, declaring arrogantly that the Soviet Union was the only force
in “breaking the German fascist machine”. In this way they intend to
promote great-power chauvinism and demand that other countries that were helped
by the Soviet army had to obey their orders, give in to their control and
harassment and put up with their exploitation”.
Under the guns of the glorious Red Army, the Nazi
German State and its capitalist relations of production were destroyed,
Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat arose in Eastern Germany. The
Red Banner of the Communist Party and the USSR waving over the shadowed and
destroyed German Reichstag is an undeniable great moment of the international
proletariat that symbolize the whole heroic and glorious epic of the struggle
against fascism in defense of the USSR and for the development of the
Proletarian World Revolution. The sentence made by comrade Dimitrov when he
embarked in the direction of USSR after the great victory in the Nazi Tribunal
in Leipzig was thus accomplished: “we will make Germany Soviet!”.
This way the lapidary words of Chairman Gonzalo demand
full value and understanding:
“Against history, what
do the words do, comrades, what could the denials do, what could the
questionings do, what could the interrogations do? Nothing! The reason: as
time passes on, history has wider dimension and perspective, so, further
clearly this shining peak will stand out.”
(Chairman Gonzalo, First Congress, Transcriptions)
The 7th Congress had
its highest and fullest expression and development at the development of the
Great Patriotic War to which the Anti-Japanese Resistance War against the
Japanese aggressors in China is included. Through the Anti-Japanese United
Front formulated by Chairman Mao, which he developed by applying unity and
struggle and independence of the Communist Party, defining it as one of the
three fundamental instruments of the revolution, fulfilling a fundamental role
when stopping close to 60% of the Japanese army in the important East Front.
Beyond this, all the other wars and anti-fascists actions of resistance in
Italy, France, Austria, Yugoslavia, Japan, Spain, Greece, Belgium and dozens of
other countries were added, as part of the Global Anti-fascist Front. This
great historic experience is part of Maoism, and to negate its role, importance
and meaning is revisionism.
The defeat of fascism meant the change in the
principal contradiction in each country. During the course of the anti-fascist
wars, the imperialist bourgeoisie of each country was weakened and the
communist parties and the masses were enormously strengthened. The defeat of
the fascist regime led to the consequent change of the main contradiction and
the main enemy in the interior of these countries. At the Communist Parties of
those times, wherever there was an opportunist leadership, they limited
themselves to a struggle against fascism in favor of the old bourgeois order
and didn’t lead the revolution until the end.
While synthesizing the experiences of the United
Front, Chairman Mao taught us that the correct handling of the politics of the
United Front of the proletariat can be summarized in three fundamental
questions: whom base oneself on, whom to ally and whom to combat (11). A correct
handling of these three questions and their interrelation, in each stage and
phase of the revolution guarantee an asserted political leadership. The
contradiction between the anti-fascist front and the fascist front, on the one
hand, and the contradiction in the interior of the anti-fascist front on the
other, between the popular forces and the anti-popular forces, e success or
defeat of the revolution depended on the correct handling of these
contradictions.
In the countries, such as Italy and France, where a
right opportunist leadership prevailed, the communist party didn’t lead the
revolution to the end, leaving it in the middle of the way. The leadership of
the respective parties didn’t proceed with the struggle to defeat the whole
imperialist bourgeoisie of their own country and capitulated in front of it thus
betraying the revolution, handing over the weapons, degenerating themselves by
following the putrid parliamentary way.
Chairman Gonzalo summarized the problem with clarity,
that it was not the anti-fascist front, but the revisionist criteria of Thorez,
Togliatti, as also Earl Browder who centered only in the struggle against
fascism: “Two problems of great
repercussion arose in the Communist International during the
1920s, the problem of Germany, which means the revolution in an
advanced country, and the problem of China, which means, the
revolution in a not advanced country. Later, the situation sharpened with
the rise and triumph of fascism and the question on how to build the Front;
there were revisionist criteria from Togliatti and Thorez who were seeking
tomaintain the order and not to overthrow it and focused only on
the fight against fascism”. (PCP. International Line).
The two-line struggle at the core of the Comintern
during the period of the 7th Congress
(1935-1943) fundamentally developed itself between the left line represented by
comrade Stalin, Chairman Mao Tsetung and comrade Dimitrov, against the ideas,
criteria, positions and right opportunist lines of Trotskysm, Browder, Tito,
Togliatti and Thorez.
Chairman Mao established with clarity and correction
that the revisionist line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union “arose in
the 20th Congress and
was systematized in the 22nd congress of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” (About the false Communism of Kruschov
and the Historical Lessons for the World). For revisionism to be able to impose
itself on parties where right positions predominated, these parties had to make
successive Congresses in order to modify their ideological and political line,
which had then been oriented by the Communist International with its 7th Congress, and was substituted by the most putrid
revisionism. Just as it happened with the 10th Congress of the
Communist Party of Italy, the 8th Congress of
the Communist Party of Bulgaria. The 10th Congress of
the Communist Party of Italy substituted the struggle for the proletarian
revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat with the ‘path of structural
reforms”.
Chairman Mao defined that the rise of modern
revisionism takes place “starting at the
Second World War, the international communist movement, on the side of great
developments it developed its greatest anti-thesis inside its own lines, a
revisionist counter-current opposed to socialism, to Marxism-Leninism and the
proletarian revolution. This counter-current was mainly represented first by
Browder, later by Tito and today by Kruschov. Kruschov’s revisionism is nothing more
than a continuation and the development of Browder’s and Tito’s
revisionism. (CPCh The Proletarian Revolution and the Revisionism of
Khruschev)
The opportunist and revisionist right inside the
international communist movement is clearly defined and developed in modern
revisionism of Thorez, Togliatti, Tito and Kruschov. And that “ Kruschov is a disciple of Bernstein and
Kautsky and also Browder and Tito…Browder’s and Tito’s revisionism as well as
the theory of the “structural reforms” arose at
the start the Second World War. These varieties of revisionism are
local phenomenons in the international communist movement. Nevertheless,
Kruschov’s revisionism arose and acquired predominance in the leadership of the
CPSU, it became a great problem of general significance for the international
communist movement, from which the success or the failure of the revolutionary
cause of the international proletariat (considered in its whole) depends”.
(PCCH. The Proletarian Revolution and the Revisionism of Khrushchev, 1963)
The first person to put forward the positions of
modern revisionism was Earl Browder, already in the 1930s. “Browder had begun to reveal his revisionism around
1935. He worshiped the bourgeois democracy renounced to the necessary
critiscism to the bourgeois government and took the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie for the paradise of communism. His motto was: ‘Communism is
americanism of the 20th century’2
With the formation of the International and National
Antifascist United Front during the World War Two, he was obsessed with
‘democracy’, ‘progress’ and the prudence of the bourgeoisie, he was totally
bent facing the bourgeoisie and degenerated in a capitulationist from the
bottom to the top… He preached that the Teheran Declaration of the Soviet
Union, of the United States and Great Britain had permanently opened for the
world an epoch of ‘protracted trust and cooperation’ between capitalism and
socialism and could assure a ‘stable peace for generations’,” 3(idem)
Browder pretended to give to the revolutionary debates
and resolutions of the 7th Congress of
the Communist International an interpretation convergent with his rightist
position of class collaboration. The positions of Browder were fiercely
combated by the Communist International.
The ones seeking to identify the origin of modern
revisionism in the the 7th Congress of
the Communist International are repeating Browder, opposing Chairman Mao with
Stalin, and doing nothing more than resurrecting Trotsky and the old paladins
of revisionism. Under the leadership of comrade Stalin, hard struggles against
revisionism were developed inside the Communist Party and the Communist
International, while comrade Stalin was alive revisionism never managed to get
its head up and was crushed. Revisionism could never raise its head and impose
itself while Stalin was alive.
After the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, the
right deviations and revisionism, such as the Titoism, were fiercely combated
by comrade Dimitrov: “With frequency we can lose
track of the fact that, although the Comintern does not exist , the communist
parties form a united international communist front under the leadership of the
most powerful men in the experience of the struggle against capitalism and the
construction of socialism: the party of Lenin and Stalin; that all communist
parties have scientific theory as their only guide for action –
Marxism-Leninism -, and that all of them have a generally recognized teacher
and leader – comrade Stalin – leader of the glorious Bolshevik party and the
great land of socialism”. (Dimitrov. Report to the 16th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian
Workers Party (Communist), July of 1948)
Regarding the mistakes of the 7th Congress, we consider that these mainly took
place regarding the application of the resolutions in each country, due to the
existence of many parties that were not mature enough and due to
capitulationist opportunist leaders, who didn’t lead the revolution to the end
and sold it, of course. Regarding the limitations, these were overcome with the
solution of the problems by Chairman Mao in the development of the Peoples War
and the triumph of the revolution in China, which, with the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, its magisterial contributions developed in an new, third
and superior stage of Marxism : Maoism.
It’s the duty of the communist parties on each country
to make a serious and well-thought evaluation of the historic process of the
communist movement in their own countr, clearly differentiating the errors that
take place at the practical work (problems of application) from the errors of
principle (problems with the conception), separating Marxism from revisionism,
to serve the just, correct and full evaluation of these extraordinary milestone
of world history, in general, and the Proletarian Revolution, in particular.
VI – Conclusion
The 7th Congress of
the Communist International was a great Marxist-Leninist Congress led
brilliantly by comrade Stalin who laid bases for the Proletarian World
Revolution to be able to make a powerful leap, with Maoism and the Peoples War.
Chairman Gonzalo, when highlighting what was
established by Chairman Mao, underlined in regards to the role of comrade
Stalin that “There are historical figures
that always require time span for its full comprehension, there are multiple
cases in history; it was not understood that even the figures are historically
re-evaluated, and sometimes they are forgotten and soon they are again upheld or acknowledged in
these or those contributions and, in every field this happens, even on music
comrades. Let us put an example forward: nowadays everyone enjoy listening
to Bach, was Bach acknowledged in the last century? No, it was then
taken from him, it was re-evaluated and how much time had to pass? Do you know
what does this Irani comrades speaks of? He Speaks as a restrained dog, with
lent thought, is not good. One can not condemn comrade Stalin like it is being
done, to the letter! No this can not be consent,” (Chairman
Gonzalo, I Congress PCP, 1988)
This affirmation is covered with a great significance.
The Irani Avakianists cackle that “if there are a hundred years ahead to
understand the historic figure of comrade Stalin,…there are hundred years to
combat him!” For our party, 67 years after the death of comrade Stalin, when
one brings into the light the historic experience of the proletarian revolution
and the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism with contributions of universal
validity of Chairman Gonzalo, the great and unscathed figure of comrade Stalin
elevates more and more.
The undertaking of the first Unified Maoist
International Conference and the founding of the New International Organisation
of the Proletariat is a great event that will mark the history of the ICM and
the Proletarian World Revolution for decades. Such event, facing the highest
milestone of the glorious Communist International, its 7th Congress, at this point cannot make a criminal
silence on it, not to say lowering oneself to the judgment of Trotskyst and
other revisionist, as until recently Avakian and Prachanda stand out, but
uphold it as a decisive and great event in the history of the ICM and of the
proletarian revolution. At this historic moment, to remove the red flag of the 7th Congress, the role of comrades Stalin and
Dimitrov at the leadership of the ICM from the shadows and to retrieve them to
the golden pantheon of the world proletariat is an imperative demand for the
communists of the whole world.
The history of the ICM is not simply for record or
information. To our Party it’s mainly a weapon of combat and of great positive
and negative lessons, in the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, as a
condition to fulfill what was foreseen by Chairman Mao that “within the fifty
to hundred years”, the complete razing of imperialism and the whole reaction
from the face of the earth by the Proletarian World Revolution.
Long live the Centenary of the Glorious
Communist International!
Long live the
victory over Trotskysm, revisionism and all opportunism inside the Communist
International!
Long live its great
7th Congress and
the firm, resolute and wise leadership of comrade Dimitrov!
Long live the
magisterial leadership of comrade Stalin in the Communist International and its
7th Congress, in
the World Anti-fascist Front and the Great Patriotic War!
Long live the 75th anniversary of the
victory against Nazi-fascism!
Long live Chairman
Mao, developer of the Revolutionary United Front and the Theory of the Three
Fundamental Instruments of the Revolution!
Long live Chairman
Gonzalo, continuer of Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao, greatest
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist living on the face of the earth and his almighty
Thought!
Down with
revisionism and all opportunism!
Long live
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism and the contributions of universal
validity of Chairman Gonzalo!
Long live the
invincibility of the People’s War and its universal validity!
Communist Party of Brazil – C.P.B.
Central Committee
February 2020
1 9th Commentary to the letter of the CPSU,
July 1964: “The communism of Khrushchev and the lessons it gives to the world”.
2 Willian Z Foster, quoting Browder at
“History of the Communist Party of the United States”
3 E. Browder “Teheran: Our Path in War and
Peace”