The Marxist Leninist, Oct 2009

Issue No. 3

October 2009

Theoretical Journal of the CPI (ML)

The Marxist-Leninist Contents 1.

Editorial

3

2.

Atlantic Charter

6

3.

Brettonwoods Agreement

7

4.

On Dissolution Of The Communist International

10

5.

Communist Information Bureau Resolutions (Nov. 1949) 13

6.

Marx Against Keynes

24

7.

Apologists Of Neo-Colonialism

37

8.

India: Show-Case of US Neo-Colonialism

40

9.

What Has Happened?

42

10. Intensifying the Revolutionary Struggle and onsolidating the World Proletarian Solidarity Against Global Imperialism

80

11. The Devastating Effects of Neo-Liberalism on the Neo-Colonially Dependent Countries

87

12. On Internationalism and Nationalism

105

13. On Mode of Production in India

117

14. How the Theory of “Protracted People’s War” has Harmed Marxist-Leninist Movement

132

Editorial Board KN Ramachandran Sanjay Singhvi Umakant

Umakant R-8, Pratap Market Jangpura-B New Delhi - 110014

Contribution : Rs. 25

Printed and Published by Umakant, R-8, Pratap Market, Jangpura-B, New Delhi - 110014 and Printed at Everest Offset Press, B-162, Okhla Ind. Area, Phase-I, New Delhi 2

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Editorial AS LENIN explained so well “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” and “There can be no strong socialist party without a revolutionary theory”. The severe setback suffered by the international communist movement (ICM) from the brilliant height it had reached half a century back repeatedly underlines the correctness of this Leninist teaching. It is proved again and again that on the whole it is the theoretical weakness leading to compromising political positions on the side of the ICM, in spite of the Marxist-Leninist struggle against it continuing all through giving rise to instances of great leap forward, which had led to the weakening of the ICM. So the task of building a powerful, revolutionary Communist Party in India and the reorganisation of the Communist International calls for putting the importance of developing the Marxist-Leninist theoretical understanding according to the concrete conditions of today in the forefront. The All India Special Conference of the CPI(ML) from 7th November concentrate its efforts on this vital question. The contents of the third issue of the theoretical organ of the CC of CPI(ML) are selected from this perspective. The Atlantic Charter of 1941 and Bretton woods Agreements of 1944 laid the foundation for the launching of the neo-colonial counter-revolutionary offensive by the US-led imperialist camp in the post-WW II situation to combat the growing strength of the socialist camp and national liberation movements. The Atlantic Charter and a summary of Bretton Woods Agreements are reproduced to show how cunningly, conspiratorially the imperialist camp was going ahead with its task. At the same time the dissolution of Comintern in 1943 and the Resolution of the Cominform in 1949 show that the ICM could not recognise the gravity of the steps taken by the imperialist camp to regain their initiative and to consolidate their strength by replacing the colonial forms of plunder and hegemony with the neo-colonial forms. Contrary to what Marx and Engels did by organising the First International and reorganising it soon after its dissolution in to Second International taking in to consideration the experience and lessons of Paris Commune, The Marxist-Leninist

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and Lenin did after the collapse of the Second International by reorganising it soon as Third or Communist International, putting forward the theoretical understanding about imperialism, by developing the theory and practice of communist struggles in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution and leading October Revolution to victory, no initiative was taken to reorganise the Communist International in spite of the maddening pace with which the US-led imperialist camp was uniting their forces and launching counter attacks against the revolutionary forces. Secondly, the Cominform Resolution is permeated with the fear of war threats from the imperialist camp. It overwhelmingly stressed on the peace movement. It reflected a defensive approach while the prime need of that historical juncture was a revolutionary offensive at the international level to overthrow the imperialist system and its lackeys. The Cominform Resolution as a result did not reflect the concrete analysis of then existing situation, and diluted the MarxistLeninist approach needed in that situation. That is why the study of these two is of great importance for a correct evaluation of the weaknesses in the ICM which helped the revisionists, the capitalist roaders to subvert the movement from within in later years. The article “Marx Against Keynes” reproduced from Lalkar (published from Britain, website www.lalkar.org) analyses how Keynes stood against the Marxist teachings and greatly contributed in the post Great Depression period to save the global imperialist system. It will held to understand how opportunist is the utterances of Amartya Sen and the CPI(M) brand of economists and intellectuals. The Quotations from the “Apologists of Neo-colonialism” and the article in People’s Daily of China in 1968 on transformation of India into a typical show-case of neo-colonialism reveals how the CPC under Mao’s leadership had correctly evaluated the transformation of imperialist plunder and hegemonic efforts from colonialism to neo-colonialism. Though the CPC could not carry forward the tasks of developing this theoretical understanding to develop Lenin’s teachings on imperialism according to prevailing global situation due to the intensification of the two-line struggle with it, these contributions are of great importance to develop our understanding about neo-colonialism. 4

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The evaluation of “What Happened” in 1960s in Indonesia when the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) was decimated under a barbarous onslaught by Suharto’s military regime supported by US imperialism is of great importance to the ICM. Together with it, the evaluation of Indonesia as a neo-colonial country by the PKI and the political-organisational tasks it has now taken up based on the understanding to reorganise the party work are of great significance. A chapter from Twilight of the Gods: Gotterdammerung Over the “New World Order” by com. Stefan Engel, chairman of the MLPD, gives an overview of the Devastating Effects of Neo-Liberalism on the Neo-Colonially Dependent Countries, which will help to deepen the understanding on neo-colonialism. The article on “Nationalism and Internationalism” by com. K.N. Ramachandran provides an evaluation of the post WW II developments, especially the weaknesses in the approach of Soviet and Chinese leaderships to overcome nationalist limitations of some of the positions taken by them in which atmosphere it became easy for the capitalist roaders to usurp the leadership causing severe setbacks to the ICM. On “Mode of Production” published in the July-September 1998 issue of Red Flag, the theoretical organ of erstwhile CPI(ML) Red Flag, provides an overview of the debate on this question that took place in the Economic and Political Weekly, on the basis of a neo-colonial understanding during 1960s and early 1970s. The articles of com. Sanjay Singhiv are self-explanatory. We hope this issue of The Marxist Leninist shall help to further sharpen the debate on the question of neo-colonialism and to provide the basis for developing the theoretical approaches of the revolutionary movement according to concrete conditions of today. ● New Delhi 26-09-2009

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With revolutionary greetings Editorial board

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ATLANTIC CHARTER [Joint Statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, August 14, 1941] THE President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world. First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other; Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them; Fourth, they will endeavour, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity; Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security; Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want; Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance; Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measure which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments. ● Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Winston S. Churchill [http://en.wikipedia.org] The Marxist-Leninist

BRETTONWOODS AGREEMENT PURPOSES AND GOALS: The Bretton Woods Conference took place in July 1944, but did not become operative until 1959, when all the European currencies became convertible. Under this system, the IMF and the IBRD were established. The IMF was developed as a permanent international body. The summary of agreements states, “The nations should consult and agree on international monetary changes which affect each other. They should outlaw practices which are agreed to be harmful to world prosperity, and they should assist each other to overcome short-term exchange difficulties.” The IBRD was created to speed up post-war reconstruction, to aid political stability, and to foster peace. This was to be fulfilled through the establishment of programs for reconstruction and development. THE MAIN TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WERE: 1) Formation of the IMF and the IBRD (presently part of the World Bank). 2) Adjustably pegged foreign exchange market rate system: The exchange rates were fixed, with the provision of changing them if necessary. 3) Currencies were required to be convertible for trade related and other current account transactions. The governments, however, had the power to regulate ostentatious capital flows. 4) As it was possible that exchange rates thus established might not be favourable to a country’s balance of payments position, the governments had the power to revise them by up to 10%. 5) All member countries were required to subscribe to the IMF’s capital. ENCOURAGING OPEN MARKETS: The seminal idea behind the Bretton Woods Conference was the notion of open markets. In Henry Morgenthau’s farewell remarks at the conference, he stated that the establishment of the IMF and the World Bank marked the end of economic nationalism. This meant countries would maintain their national interest, but trade blocks and economic spheres of influence would no longer be their means. The second idea behind the Bretton Woods Conference was joint management of the Western politicaleconomic order. Meaning that the foremost industrial democratic nations must lower barriers to trade and the movement of capital, in addition to their responsibility to govern the system. THE BANK OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS CONTROVERSY: In the last stages of the Second World War, in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference The Bank of International Settlements became the crux in a fight that broke out, when the Norwegian delegation put forth evidence that the BIS was guilty in war crimes and put forth a move to dissolve the bank, which the Americans, specifically President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Henry Morgenthau supported, resulting in a fight between on one side several European nations, the American and the Norwegian delegation, led by Henry Morgenthau The Marxist-Leninist

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and Harry Dexter White, and on the other side the British delegation, headed by John Maynard Keynes and Chase Bank representative Dean Atcheson who tried to veto the dissolution of the bank. The problem was that the BIS, formed in 1930, and its main proponents of its establishment, were the then Governor of The Bank of England, Montague Norman and his colleague Hjalmar Schacht, later Adolf Hitlers finance minister. The Bank was originally intended to facilitate money transfers arising from settling an obligation arising from a peace treaty. After World War I, the need for the bank was suggested in 1929 by the Young Committee, as a means of transfer for German reparations payments - see Treaty of Versailles. The plan was agreed in August of that year at a conference at the Hague, and a charter for the bank was drafted at the International Bankers Conference at Baden Baden in November. The charter was adopted at a second Hague Conference on January 20, 1930.The Original board of directors of the BIS included two appointees of Hitler, Walter Funk and Emil Puhl, as well as Herman Schmitz the director of IG Farben and Baron von Schroeder the owner of the J.H.Stein Bank, the bank that held the deposits of the Gestapo. As a result of allegations that the BIS had helped the Germans loot assets from occupied countries during World War II, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference recommended the “liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment.” This task, which was originally proposed by Norway and supported by other European delegates, as well as the United States and Morgenthau and Harry Dexter White, was never undertaken. In July 1944 Dean Atcheson interrupted Keynes in a meeting fearing that the BIS would be dissolved by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Keynes went to Henry Morgenthau to prevent the dissolution of the BIS, or have it postponed, but the next day the dissolution of the BIS was approved. The British delegation did not give up and the dissolution of the bank was held up just long enough until after Roosevelt had died, in April of 1945 the British and Harry S. Truman stopped the dissolution of the BIS. Monetary order in a post-war world: The need for postwar Western economic order was resolved with the agreements made on monetary order and open system of trade at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference which allowed for the synthesis of Britain’s desire for full employment and economic stability and the United States’ desire for free trade. INTERNATIONAL TRADE ORGANIZATION: The Conference also proposed the creation of an International Trade Organization (ITO) to establish rules and regulations for international trade. The ITO would have complemented the other two Bretton Woods proposed international bodies: the IMF and the World Bank. The ITO charter was agreed on at the U.N. Conference on Trade 8

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and Employment (held in Havana, Cuba, in March 1948), but was not ratified by the U.S. Senate. As a result, the ITO never came into existence. However, in 1995, the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations established the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the replacement body for GATT. The GATT principles and agreements were adopted by the WTO, which was charged with administering and extending them. John Maynard Keynes represented the UK at the conference, and Harry Dexter White represented the US. John Maynard Keynes proposed the ICU as a way to regulate the balance of trade. His concern was that countries with a trade deficit would be unable to climb out of it, paying ever more interest to service their ever greater debt, and therefore stifling global growth. The ICU would effectively be a bank with its own currency (the “bancor”), exchangeable with national currencies at a fixed rate. Nations would be the unit for accounting between nations, so their trade deficits or surpluses could be measured by it. On top of that, each country would have an overdraft facility in its “bancor” account with the ICU. Keynes proposed having a maximum overdraft of half the average trade size over five years. If a country went over that, it would be charged interest, obliging a country to reduce its currency value and prevent capital exports. But countries with trade surpluses would also be charged interest at 10% if their surplus was more than half the size of their permitted overdraft, obliging them to increase their currency values and export more capital. If, at the year’s end, their credit exceeded the maximum (half the size of the overdraft in surpslus) the surplus would be confiscated. Lionel Robbins reported that “it would be difficult to exaggerate the electrifying effect on thought throughout the whole relevant apparatus of government ... nothing so imaginative and so ambitious had ever been discussed”. However, Harry Dexter White, representing America which was the world’s biggest creditor said “We have been perfectly adamant on that point. We have taken the position of absolutely no.” Instead he proposed an International Stabilisation Fund (now the IMF), which would place the burden of maintaining the balance of trade on the deficit nations, and imposing no limit on the surplus that rich countries could accumulate. White also proposed creation of the IBRD (now part of the World Bank) which would provide capital for economic reconstruction after the war. White managed to ensure that the US had special veto powers over any major decision made by the IMF or the World Bank, meaning effectively that their “conditionalities” in the way of strict institutional reforms are never imposed. Furthermore, the IMF insists that the foreign exchange reserves maintained by other nations are held in the form of dollars, so no matter how much debt the US accumulates, its economy will not collapse. ● [http://en.wikipedia.org] The Marxist-Leninist

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ON DISSOLUTION OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL [The statement set out hereunder was submitted to all Communist Parties by the Executive Committee of Communist International (ECCI) on May 15, 1943. Upon receiving endorsement by these parties, the Communist International was dissolved forthwith.] THE HISTORICAL ROLE of the Communist International, organised in 1919 as a result of the political collapse of the overwhelming majority of the old pre-war workers’ parties, consisted in that it preserved the teachings of Marxism from vulgarisation and distortion by opportunist elements of the labour movement. In a number of countries it helped to unite the vanguard of the advanced workers into genuine workers’ parties, helped them to mobilise the mass of the toilers in defence of their economic and political interests for the struggle against fascism and the war which it been prepared for support of the Soviet Union as the main bulwark against fascism. The Communist International tirelessly exposed the base undermining activity of the Hitlerites in foreign states, who masked these activities with outcries about the alleged interference of the Communist International in the internal affairs of these states. But long before the war it became increasingly clear that, to the extent that the internal as well as the international situation of individual countries became more complicated, the solution of the problems of the labour movement of each individual country through the medium of some international centre would meet with insuperable obstacles. The deep differences in the historical roads of development of each country of the world, the diverse character and even the contradiction in their social orders, the difference in the level and rate of their social and political development and finally the difference in the degree of consciousness and organisation of the workers’ conditioned also the various problems which face the working class of each individual country. The entire course of events for the past quarter of a century, as well as the accumulated experiences of the Communist International, have convincingly proved that the organisational form for uniting the workers as chosen by the First Congress of the Communist International, which corresponded to the needs of the initial period of rebirth of the labour movement, more and more outlived itself in proportion to the growth of this movement and the increasing complexity of problems in each country, and that this form even became a hindrance to the further strengthening of the national workers’ parties. 10

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The world war unleashed by the Hitlerites still further sharpened the differences in the conditions in the various countries, drawing a deep line of demarcation between the countries which became bearers of the Hitlerite tyranny and the freedom-loving peoples united in the mighty anti-Hitler coalition. Whereas in the countries of the Hitlerite bloc the basic task of the workers, toilers and all honest people is to contribute in every conceivable way towards the defeat of this bloc by undermining the Hitlerite war machine from within, by helping to overthrow the Governments responsible for the war, in the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition the sacred duty of the broadest masses of the people, and first and foremost of progressive workers, is to support in every way the war efforts of the Governments of those countries for the sake of the speediest destruction of the Hitlerite bloc and to secure friendly collaboration between the nations on the basis of their equal rights. At the same time it must not be overlooked that individual countries which adhere to the anti-Hitler coalition also have their specific tasks. Thus, for instance, in countries occupied by the Hitlerites and which have lost their State independence, the basic task of the progressive workers and broad masses of the people is to develop the armed struggle which is growing into a war of national liberation against Hitlerite Germany. At the same time the war of liberation of freedom-loving peoples against the Hitlerite coalition, irrespective of party or religion, has made it still more evident that the national upsurge and mobilisation for the speediest victory over the enemy can best and most fruitfully be realised by the vanguard of the labour movement of each country within the framework of its state. The Seventh Congress of the Communist International held in 1935, taking into consideration the changes which had come to pass in the international situation as well as in the labour movement, changes which demanded greater flexibility and independence for its sections in solving the problems facing them, already then emphasised the need for the E.C.C.I., when deciding upon all problems of the labour movement, “to proceed from the concrete situation and specific conditions obtaining in each particular country and as a rule avoid direct intervention in internal organisational matters of the Communist Parties.” The E.C.C.I. was guided by these same considerations when it took note of and approved the decision of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. in November, 1940, to leave the ranks of the Communist International. Communists guided by the teachings of the founders of Marxism-Leninism never advocated the preservation of organisational forms which have become obsolete; they always subordinated the organisational forms of the labour movement and its methods of work to the basis political interests of the labour movement as a whole, to the peculiarities of given historical conditions and to those problems which arise directly from these conditions. The Marxist-Leninist

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They remember the example of the great Marx who united the progressive workers into the ranks of the International Workingmen’s Association and after the First International fulfilled its historical task, having laid the basis for the development of workers’ parties in the countries of Europe and America, Marx, as a result of the growing need to create national workers’ mass parties, brought abut the dissolution of the First International inasmuch as this form of organisation no longer corresponded to this need. Proceeding from the above-stated considerations, and taking into account the growth and political maturity of the Communist Parties and their leading cadres in individual countries, and also in view of the fact that during the present war a number of sections have raised the question of dissolution of the Communist International, the Presidium of the E.C.C.I., unable owing to the conditions of the world war to convene the Congress of the Communist International, permits itself to submit for approval by sections of the Communist International the following proposal: To dissolve the Communist International as a guiding centre of the international labour movement, releasing sections of the Communist International from the obligations ensuing from the constitution and decisions of the Congresses of the Communist International. The Presidium of the E.C.C.I. calls upon all adherents of the Communist International to concentrate their forces on all-round support for, and active participation in, the Liberation War of the peoples and States of the anti-Hitler coalition in order to hasten the destruction of the mortal enemy of the working people – fascism and its allies and vassals. ●

[Signed by members of the Presidium of the E.C.C.I.: Gottwald, Dimitrov, Zhdanov, Kolarov, Koplonig, Kuusinen, Manuilssky, Mary, Pieck, Thorez, Florin, Ercoli, and immediately endorsed by the representatives of the following Communist Parties, who were living in exile in Moscow: Bianco (Italy), Dolores Ibarruri (Spain), Lehtinen (Finland), Pauker (Rumania), Rakosi (Hungary)]

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COMMUNIST INFORMATION BUREAU RESOLUTIONS (NOVEMBER 1949)

I. THE DEFENCE OF PEACE AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WARMONGERS THE representatives of the Communist Party of Bulgaria, the Rumanian Workers’ Party, the Hungarian Working People’s Party, the Polish United Workers’ Party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), the French Communist Party, the Italian Communist Party and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, after discussing the question of the defence of peace and the struggle against the warmongers, reached unanimous agreement on the following conclusions: The events of the last two years have fully confirmed the correctness of the analysis of the international situation made by the first conference of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in September 1947. During this period the two lines in world policy have been still more clearly and more sharply revealed: the line of the democratic anti-imperialist camp headed by the U.S.S.R., the camp which conducts a persistent and consistent struggle for peace among the peoples and for democracy; and the line of the imperialist antidemocratic camp headed by the ruling circles of the United States, the camp which has as its main aim the forcible establishment of Anglo-American world domination, the enslavement of foreign countries and peoples, the destruction of democracy and the unleashing of a new war. FORCES OF PEACE GROW STRONGER Moreover, the aggressiveness of the imperialist camp continues to increase. The ruling circles of the United States and Britain are openly conducting a policy of aggression and preparation of a new war. In the struggle against the camp of imperialism and war, the forces of peace, democracy and Socialism have grown and become strong. The further growth of the might of the Soviet Union, the political and economic strengthening of the countries of the people’s democracy and their embarking upon the road of building Socialism, the historic victory of the Chinese people’s Revolution over the united forces of internal reaction and American imperialism, the creation of the German Democratic Republic, the strengthening of the Communist Parties and the growth of the democratic movement in the capitalist countries, the great scope of the movement of the partisans of peace — all this signifies a great widening and The Marxist-Leninist

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strengthening of the anti-imperialist and democratic camp. At the same time the imperialist and anti-democratic camp is becoming weaker. The successes of the forces of democracy and Socialism, the maturing economic crisis, the further sharpening of the general crisis of the capitalist system, the sharpening of the internal and external contradictions of that system, testify to the increasing weakening of imperialism. The change in the correlation of forces in the international arena in favour of the camp of peace and democracy provokes mad fury and rage among the imperialist warmongers. The Anglo-American imperialists count upon changing the course of historical development by means of a war, to solve their internal and external contradictions and difficulties, to consolidate the position of monopoly capital, and to achieve world domination. IMPERIALIST WAR PREPARATIONS Feeling that time works against them, the imperialists in feverish haste are knocking together various blocs and alliances of reactionary forces for the realisation of their aggressive plans. The whole policy of the Anglo-American imperialist bloc serves the preparation of a new war. It finds its expression in the frustration of a peace settlement with Germany and Japan, the completion of the dismemberment of Germany, the transformation of Germany’s Western zones and of Japan, occupied by American troops, into hot-beds of fascism and revanchism and into jumping-off grounds for the realisation of the aggressive plans of that bloc. The enslaving Marshall Plan, its direct extension into Western Union and the North-Atlantic military bloc, directed against all peace-loving peoples, the unrestrained armaments race in the United States and in the West-European countries, the inflated military budgets and the extension of the network of American military bases serve this policy. This policy also finds its expression in the refusal of the Anglo-American bloc to prohibit atomic weapons despite the collapse of the legend of American atomic monopoly, and in the fomenting of war hysteria by all possible means. This policy determines the whole line of the Anglo-American bloc in the United Nations organisation, aimed at undermining U.N.O. and transforming it into a tool of American monopolies. The imperialists’ policy of unleashing a new war has also found expression in the plot exposed at the Budapest trial of Rajk and Brankov, a plot which was organised by Anglo-American circles against the countries of People’s Democracy and the Soviet Union, with the assistance of the nationalist fascist Tito clique who have become a band of agents of international imperialist Reaction. The policy of preparing a new war means, for the masses of the people of the capitalist countries, a continuous growth in the unbearable burdens 14

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of taxation, an increase in the poverty of the working masses, side by side with a fabulous increase in the super-profits of the monopolies which are enriching themselves from the armaments race. The maturing economic crisis is bringing still more poverty, unemployment, hunger and fear of the morrow to the working people of the capitalist countries. At the same time the policy of war preparations is linked with continuous encroachments by the ruling imperialist circles on the elementary and vital rights and democratic liberties of the mass of the people. Intensified reaction in all spheres of social, political and ideological life, the use of fascist methods of club law against the progressive, and democratic forces of the people — these are the measures by which the imperialist bourgeoisie are trying to prepare the rear for a robber war. Thus, like the fascist aggressors, the Anglo-American bloc is engaged in preparing a new war in all spheres: military strategic measures, political pressure and blackmail, economic expansion and the enslavement of peoples, ideological stupefaction of the masses and the strengthening of reaction. IMPERIALISTS OVERESTIMATE THEIR STRENGTH The bosses of American imperialism are making their plans for unleashing a new world war and for the conquest of world domination without taking into account the actual relation of forces between the camp of imperialism and the camp of Socialism. Their plans for world domination have even less foundation and are more adventurist than the plans of the Hitlerite and Japanese imperialists. The American imperialists clearly overestimate their strength and underestimate the growing strength and organisation of the anti-imperialist camp. The historical situation today differs radically from the situation in which the Second World War was prepared, and in the present international conditions it is incomparably more difficult for the warmongers to carry out their bloodthirsty plans. “The horrors of the recent war are too fresh in the minds of the people and the social forces in favour of peace are too great for Churchill’s pupils in aggression to be able to overpower and deflect them towards a new war.” (Stalin.) The peoples do not want war, and hate war. They are becoming more and more conscious of the terrible abyss into which the imperialists are trying to draw them. The continuous struggle of the Soviet Union, the countries of People’s Democracy and the international working class and the democratic movement for peace, for the freedom and independence of nations and against the warmongers, is daily finding ever more powerful support from the broadest sections of the populations of all countries of the world. Hence the development of the mighty movement of the supporters of peace. This movement includes in its ranks more than 600 million people and is The Marxist-Leninist

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broadening and growing, embracing all countries of the world and drawing into its ranks ever more fighters against the threat of war. The movement of the supporters of peace is a vivid indication of the fact that the mass of the people are taking the cause of safeguarding peace into their own hands, are demonstrating their unswerving will to defend peace and avert war. WE MUST NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE WAR DANGER However, it would be mistaken and harmful for the cause of peace to underestimate the danger of the new war that is being prepared by the imperialist Powers, headed by the United States of America and Britain. The tremendous growth of the forces of the camp of democracy and Socialism should not evoke in the ranks of the true fighters for peace any kind of complacency. It would be profoundly and unpardonably misleading to consider that the threat of war has diminished. The experience of history teaches that the more hopeless the cause of imperialist reaction, the more it rages, the greater grows the danger of military adventures. Only the most tremendous vigilance on the part of the people, their firm determination to fight actively with all their might and with every possible means for peace, will smash to atoms the criminal designs of the instigators of a new war. In the conditions of an intensifying threat of a new war, a great and historic responsibility rests with the Communist and Workers’ Parties. The struggle for a stable and lasting peace, for organising and rallying the forces standing for peace against those standing for war, must today occupy the central place in all the work of the Communist Parties and democratic organisations. For the fulfilment of the great and noble task of saving mankind from the threat of a new war, the representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties regard the following as their most important tasks: THE MOST URGENT TASKS (1) It is necessary to work still more stubbornly for the organisational consolidation and extension of the movement of the supporters of peace, drawing into that movement ever-new sections of the population and converting it into a nation-wide movement. Particular attention should be devoted to bringing into the movement of the supporters of peace the trade unions, women’s, youth, co-operative, sports, cultural and educational, religious and other organisations, as well as scientists, writers, journalists, workers in the field of culture, parliamentary leaders and other political and social leaders who are in favour of peace and are against war. Today the tasks loom particularly imperatively of rallying all honest supporters of peace, irrespective of religious faiths, political views and party 16

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membership, on the broadest platform of the struggle for peace and against the threat of the new war which hangs over mankind. (2) For the further development of the movement of the supporters of peace, the more active participation of the working class in this movement and the solidarity and unity of its ranks are of decisive importance. For this reason it is a primary task of the Communist and Workers’ Parties to bring into the ranks of the fighters for peace the broadest sections of the working class, to create a firm unity of the working class, to organise joint action of the various sections of the proletariat on the basis of the common platform of the struggle for peace and for the national independence of their country. (3) Unity of the working class can only be won through determined struggle against the Right-Wing Socialist splitters and disorganisers of the workingclass movement. The Right-Wing Socialists of the type of Bevin, Attlee, Blum, Guy Mollet, Spaak, Schumacher, Renner, Saragat, and the reactionary trade union leaders like Green, Carey, Deakin, conducting a splitting, anti-popular policy, are the bitterest enemies of the working class, the accomplices of the warmongers and lackeys of imperialism, who conceal their betrayal in pseudoSocialist, cosmopolitan phraseology. The Communist and Workers’ Parties, continuously fighting for peace, must day by day expose the Right-Wing Socialist leaders as the bitterest enemies of peace. It is essential to develop and consolidate to the utmost the co-operation and unity of action among the lower organisations and the rank-and-file members of the Socialist parties, to support all truly honest elements in the ranks of these parties, explaining to them the disastrous nature of the policy of the reactionary Right-Wing leaders. (4) The Communist and Workers’ Parties must oppose the misanthropic propaganda of the aggressors who are striving to convert the countries of Europe and Asia into bloody battlefields, with the broadest propaganda for stable and lasting peace among the peoples. They must continuously expose the aggressive blocs and military-political alliances — first and foremost, Western Union and the North-Atlantic bloc. They must widely explain that a new war would bring the peoples most profound disaster and colossal destruction, and that the struggle against war and in defence of peace is the task of all peoples of the world. It is necessary to ensure that war propaganda, the preaching of racial hatred and enmity among peoples, which is being conducted by the agents of AngloAmerican imperialism, meets with sharp condemnation on the part of the entire democratic public in every country. It is necessary to ensure that not one single action on the part of the propagandists of a new war remains without a rebuff from the honest supporters of peace. (5) To make wide use of the new, effective and tested forms of mass struggle for peace, such as committees in defence of peace in towns and villages, the The Marxist-Leninist

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drawing up of petitions and protests, ballots among the population, which have been widely practised in France and Italy, publication and distribution of literature exposing the war preparations, the collection of funds for the struggle for peace, the organisation of boycotts of films, newspapers, books, periodicals, broadcasting companies and of the institutions and leaders propagating the idea of a new war. All these constitute a most important task of Communist and Workers’ Parties. (6) The Communist and Workers’ Parties in capitalist countries consider it their duty to join in a single whole the struggle for national independence and the struggle for peace; continuously to expose the anti-national, treacherous nature of the policy of the bourgeois Governments which have become the direct agents of aggressive American imperialism; to unite and consolidate all the democratic and patriotic forces of the country round slogans calling for abolition of the ignominious subordination to the American monopolies, and for a return to the path of an independent foreign and home policy corresponding to the national interests of the peoples. It is necessary to rally the widest sections of the people in the capitalist countries in defence of democratic rights and liberties, continuously explaining that the defence of peace is indissolubly linked, with the defence of the vital interests of the working class and the working masses, with the defence of their economic and political rights, important tasks face the Communist Parties of France, Italy, Britain, West Germany and other countries, whose peoples the American imperialists want to use as cannon fodder in order to carry out their aggressive plans. Their duty is to develop still further the struggle for peace and for the smashing of the criminal designs of the Anglo-American warmongers. (7) The Communist and Workers’ Parties of the countries of People’s Democracy and the Soviet Union have, together with the task of exposing the imperialist warmongers and their accomplices, the task of further strengthening the camp of peace and Socialism, for the sake of defending peace and the security of nations. (8) The Anglo-American imperialists assign a considerable role in the execution of their aggressive plans, particularly in Central and South-East Europe, to the nationalist Tito clique, which is employed in the espionage service of the imperialists. The task of defending peace and struggling against the warmongers demands the further exposure of this clique which has gone over to the camp of the bitter enemies of peace, democracy and Socialism — the camp of imperialism and fascism. For the first time in the history of mankind there has arisen an organised peace front, headed by the Soviet Union, the bulwark and standard-bearer of peace throughout the world. The courageous call of the Communist Parties, proclaiming that the peoples will never fight against the first land of Socialism 18

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in the world, against the Soviet Union, is being spread ever more widely among the mass of the people in the capitalist countries. In the days of the war against fascism, the Communist Parties were the vanguard of the nationwide resistance to the invaders. In the post-war period the Communist and Workers’ Parties are the front-rank fighters for the vital interests of their peoples, against a new war. United together under the leadership of the working class, all the opponents of a new war — working people and men and women of science and culture — are organising a mighty peace front capable of frustrating the criminal designs of the imperialists. The outcome of the developing gigantic struggle for peace depends to a great extent on the energy and initiative of the Communist Parties. It rests primarily with the Communists, as vanguard fighters, to transform the possibility of foiling the warmongers’ plans into an actual fact. The forces of democracy, the forces of the supporters of peace considerably exceed the forces of reaction. It is a question of still further increasing the vigilance of the peoples towards the warmongers, of organising and rallying the broad mass of the people for the active defence of peace, for the sake of the basic interests of the peoples, for the sake of their life and liberty.

II. WORKING-CLASS UNITY AND THE TASKS OF THE COMMUNIST AND WORKERS’ PARTIES The preparation of a new war which is being conducted by the AngloAmerican imperialists, the campaign of bourgeois reaction against the democratic rights and economic interests of the working class and the masses of the people, demand a strengthening of the struggle of the working class to safeguard and consolidate peace, to organise a decisive rebuff to the warmongers and to the onslaught of imperialist reaction. The guarantee of success in this struggle is unity in the ranks of the working class. Post-war experience shows that the policy of splitting the working class movement occupies one of the most important places in the arsenal of tactical means and measures used by the imperialists for the unleashing of a new war, for the suppression of the forces of democracy and Socialism, and for sharply lowering the standard of living of the mass of the people. Never before in the whole history of the international working-class movement has working-class unity, both within individual countries and on a world scale, been of such decisive importance as at the present time. Unity in the ranks of the working class is necessary in order to defend peace, to thwart the criminal designs of the warmongers and to foil the imperialists’ plot against democracy and Socialism, to avert the establishment of fascist methods of domination, to offer a decisive rebuff to the campaign of monopoly capital against the vital interests of the working class and to achieve an improvement in the economic position of the working masses. The Marxist-Leninist

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These tasks can be achieved first and foremost on the basis of rallying the broad masses of the working class, irrespective of party membership, trade union organisation and religious faith. Unity from below is the most effective way of rallying all workers for the sake of the defence of peace and the national independence of their countries, for the sake of the defence of the economic interests and democratic rights of the working people. Working-class unity is fully attainable, despite the opposition of the leading centres of all the trade unions and parties, led by splitters and enemies of unity. The post-war period has been marked by big successes in the elimination of the split in the working class and in the rallying of the democratic forces in general, an expression of which was the formation of the World Federation of Trade Unions, the Women’s International Democratic Federation, and the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and the convening of the World Congress of Partisans of Peace. The successes of unity are expressed in the strengthening of the General Confederation of Labour in France, the establishment of a united trade union association in Italy — the Italian General Confederation of Labour — and in the militant activities of the French and Italian proletariat. In the countries of People’s Democracy historic successes have been won as regards unity of the working class. United parties of the working class have been set up, as well as united trade unions, and united co-operative, youth, women’s and other organisations. This working-class unity played a decisive role in the successes achieved in the economic and cultural advance in the countries of People’s Democracy, ensured for the working class the leading role in the State, and ensured radical improvements in the material conditions of the working masses. All this points to the tremendous urge of the working class towards consolidating its ranks, and points to the existence of real possibilities of creating a united front of the working class against the united forces of reaction, from the American imperialists to the Right-Wing Socialists. The American and British imperialists and their satellites in the countries of Europe are striving to split and disorganise the forces of the proletariat and of the people in general, placing particular hopes in the Right-Wing Socialists and reactionary trade union leaders. On direct instructions from the American and British imperialists, the Right-Wing Socialist leaders and reactionary trade union leaders are splitting the ranks of the working-class movement from the top and trying to destroy the united organisations of the working class which have been set up in the post-war period. They have tried to smash the World Federation of Trade Union from within, have organised breakaway groupings — the Force Ouvrière in France, the so-called Federation of Labour in Italy — and they are preparing to set up a breakaway international trade union centre. Splitting attempts of this kind have also been made by the leaders of the 20

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Catholic organisations in certain countries. The appraisal of the treacherous actions of the Right-Wing Socialist leaders, as the bitterest enemies of workingclass unity and the accomplices of imperialism, given by the first conference of the Information Bureau of Communist Parties, has been fully confirmed. Today the Right-Wing Socialists act not only as agents of the bourgeoisie in their own countries, but as agents of American imperialism, converting the Social-Democratic parties of the countries of Europe into American parties, direct tools of United States imperialist aggression. In those countries where the Right-Wing Socialists are in the Government — Britain, France, Austria, and the Scandinavian countries — they act as the ardent defenders of the Marshall Plan, Western Union and North Atlantic Treaty, and all similar forms of American expansion. These pseudo-Socialists carry out the foulest role in the persecution of working-class and democratic organisations which defend the interests of the working people. Sliding farther and farther down the path of betrayal of the interests of the working class, democracy and Socialism, and having completely disowned Marxist teaching, the Right-Wing Socialists are now acting as the defenders and propagandists of the robber ideology of American imperialism. Their theory of democratic Socialism, of the third force, their cosmopolitan ravings about the need to renounce national sovereignty, are nothing but ideological camouflage of the aggression of American and British imperialism. The wretched offspring of the Second International (which rotted alive) — the so-called Committee of International Socialist Conferences (C.O.M.I.S.C.O.) — has become the rallying ground of the vilest splitters and disorganisers of the working-class movement. This organisation has become an espionage centre in the employment of the British and American intelligence services. Only in decisive battle against the Right-Wing Socialist splitters and disorganisers of the working-class, movement can working-class unity be won. II The Information Bureau considers it the primary task of the Communist Parties to struggle continuously to unite and organise all the forces of the working class in order to offer powerful resistance to the insolent claims of AngloAmerican imperialism, to frustrate their gamble on a new world war, to defend and consolidate the cause of peace and international security, to doom to failure the offensive of monopoly capital against the standard of living of the working masses. In the present international situation, it is the direct duty of the Communist Parties to explain that if the working class do not secure unity in their ranks, they will deprive themselves of the most important weapon in the struggle against the growing threat of a new world war and the offensive of imperialist reaction The Marxist-Leninist

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on the standard of living of the working people. While conducting an irreconcilable and consistent struggle in theory and practice against the Right-Wing Socialists and reactionary trade union leaders and mercilessly exposing them and isolating them from the masses, the Communists should patiently and persistently explain to the rank-and-file Social Democrat workers the full importance of working-class unity, should draw them into the active struggle for peace, bread and democratic liberties, and should pursue a policy of joint action for the achievement of these aims. The tried method of achieving unity for the working class is unity of action on the part of its various sections. Agreed joint action in individual enterprises, in whole branches of industry, on a town, regional, national and international scale, mobilises the broadest masses for the struggle for the most immediate needs which they best understand, and serves to establish permanent unity in the proletarian ranks. The achievement of unified working-class action from below can be expressed in the formation in factories and institutions of committees in defence of peace, in the organisation of mass demonstrations against the warmongers, in joint action on the part of the workers for the purpose of defending democratic rights and improving their economic position. In the struggle for working-class unity special attention should be given to the masses of Catholic workers and working people and their organisation, bearing in mind that religious convictions are not an obstacle to working-class unity, particularly when this unity is needed to save peace. Concrete joint action in the field of economic demands, co-ordination of the struggle of the class and Catholic trade unions, etc., can be effective means of bringing the Catholic workers into the common front of struggle for peace. A most important task of the Communist Parties in every capitalist country is to do everything possible to secure unity of the trade union movement. Today it is of tremendous importance to draw unorganised workers into the trade unions and into active struggle. In the capitalist countries these workers comprise a considerable part of the proletariat. If the Communist Parties properly organise the work among the unorganised workers, they will be able to achieve important successes in the task of securing working-class unity. The Information Bureau considers that it is necessary, on the basis of working-class unity, to establish national unity of all democratic forces for the purpose of mobilising the broad masses of the people for the struggle against Anglo-American imperialism and reaction at home. Of extreme importance is the day-to-day work in the various mass organisations of the working people: women’s, youth, peasant, co-operative and other organisations. Unity of the working-class movement and the rallying of all democratic forces is necessary, not only for the solution of the day-to-day and current tasks 22

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of the working class and the mass of the working people, but also for the solution of the basic questions which confront the proletariat as a class which is leading the struggle for the elimination of the power of monopoly capital, for the Socialist re-construction of society. On the basis of the successes achieved in securing unity of the working-class movement and rallying all the democratic forces, it will become possible to develop the struggle in capitalist countries for the setting up of governments which will rally all the patriotic forces opposed to the enslavement of their countries by American imperialism, will adopt the policy of stable peace among peoples, will stop the armaments race and will raise the standard of living of the working masses. In the countries of People’s Democracy, the Communist and Workers’ Parties are confronted with the task of still further consolidating the workingclass unity already achieved and the united trade union, cooperative, women’s, youth and other organisations already created. *** The Information Bureau considers that the further success of the struggle for working-class unity and the rallying of the democratic forces depends primarily on improvements in all the organisational and ideological work of every Communist and Workers’ Party. For the Communist and Workers’ Parties, the ideological exposure of, and the irreconcilable struggle against, all manifestations of opportunism, sectarianism and bourgeois-nationalism, and the struggle against the penetration of enemy agents into the party milieu, are of decisive importance. The lessons which arise from the exposure of the Tito-Rankovic spy clique imperatively demand that the Communist and Workers’ Parties should increase revolutionary vigilance to the utmost. The agents of the Tito clique are today acting as the bitterest splitters in the ranks of the working class and democratic movements and are carrying out the will of the American imperialists. A decisive struggle is necessary, therefore, against the intrigues of these agents of the imperialists, wherever they try to work in workers’ and democratic organisations. The organisational and ideological-political strengthening of the Communist and Workers’ Parties on the basis of the principles of MarxismLeninism is a most important condition for the successful struggle of the working class for unity in their ranks, for the cause of peace, for the national independence of their countries, for democracy and Socialism. ●

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MARX AGAINST KEYNES ALMOST without exception, the bourgeois media have been forced to come round to the view that the current capitalist economic crisis is going to be at least as serious as that which started in 1929. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor of the Daily Telegraph, contemplating the effects of the economic downturn in Germany and Spain quotes Jacques Cailloux of RBS as saying that “the pace of contraction in Europe is now disturbingly close to levels seen in the Great Depression ... Even the worst case scenarios people talked about now look too optimistic”. But, he adds, “at least the authorities have done enough to prevent the vicious downward spiral from accelerating. We haven’t seen the sort of run on bank deposits or mass bankruptcies that occurred in the 1930s”. The reason we have not done so (although there is still time!) is the massive government interventions that have saved major banks from the ignominious collapse that overtook Lehmann Brothers. The repercussions of that collapse acted as a lifeline for other insolvent banks and brought national governments rushing to the rescue. As a result, “We are all Keynesians now”, to quote the words of Richards Nixon uttered 3 decades ago when he was President, words that are echoing everywhere in bourgeois circles today. “The phrase rings truer today than at any time since, as governments seize on John Maynard Keynes’s idea that fiscal stimulus - public spending and tax cuts - can help dig their economies out of recession. “The sudden resurgence of Keynesian policy is a stunning reversal of the orthodoxy of the past several decades, which held that efforts to use fiscal policy to manage the economy and mitigate downturns were doomed to failure. Now only Germany remains publicly skeptical that fiscal stimulus will work .... “The incoming administration of Barack Obama is preparing a two-year fiscal stimulus package with a reported price tag of $675bn-$775bn, which many Washington-based analysts believe could swell to $850bn (£580bn, €600bn) or even $1,000bn - between 5 per cent and 7 per cent of national income. “Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, told reporters in late December that if monetary policy was impaired - in large part because of problems within the financial system - ‘then governments have to use fiscal policy, and that has been seen in every country of the world’. “Launching France’s fiscal stimulus, President Nicolas Sarkozy said: ‘Our answer to this crisis is investment because it is the best way to support growth and save the jobs of today - and the only way to prepare for the jobs of 24

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tomorrow.’ “ (Chris Giles, Ralph Atkins and Krishna Guha, ‘The undeniable shift to Keynes’, Financial Times 31 December 2009). Even impeccable right wingers like Roger Bootle, Managing Director of Capital Economics and economic adviser to Deloittes now proclaims: “We now find ourselves in Keynesian conditions. So this is the time for Keynesian solutions. What are the implications? There is nothing antiKeynesian about trying to get out of the current position through lower interest rates. For anyone who believes in markets and is wary about state action, this must be the first resort. But don’t be surprised if this does not work. “In that instance, don’t be shy about allowing huge increases in government borrowing to stave off depression. Finance must not be confused with economics. Debt has to be serviced all right, and this has costs, but idle men and machines are real costs which are never recoverable and hence are borne forever” (‘We now face Keynesian conditions and need truly Keynesian solutions’, Daily Telegraph, 28 October 2008). President Obama has jumped right on the Keynesian bandwagon: “Obama has explicitly drawn on folk memories of FDR’s New Deal, telling television viewers to “keep in mind that in 1932, 1933 the unemployment rate was 25%”. “Obama is probably right to assume that those same memories have it that the massive state interventionism of the New Deal triumphantly restored America to full employment. That’s why he felt comfortable in asserting, on the eve of the launch of a $2 trillion (or so) injection of taxpayers’ money, ‘There is no disagreement that we need . . . a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy’ “ (Dominic Lawson, ‘Obama’s new deal is the same old blunder, Sunday Times, 15 February 2009). Let us not forget our own Gordon Brown who has been hailed as the saviour of the western world through his advocacy of a worldwide coordinated return to Keynes: “In a panel discussion [at Davos] of less than an hour, Mr Brown did something that had seemed impossible only minutes before - he offered a way out of the crisis. While the oracles and lemming-leaders were unimpressed by Mr Brown’s message, the lemming-followers had adulation written on their faces as they filed out of the Congress Hall. “How did he do it? First, Mr Brown explained that recessions were a natural feature of capitalism and that they rarely lasted for more than a year or two. But surely this recession felt different? Yes, but mainly because this one was “the first crisis of the global age”. As a result, global solutions were required. He added that a certain British economist had explained why such The Marxist-Leninist

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recessions happened and how they could be overcome. His name was John Maynard Keynes, and the Prime Minister described poignantly how he had seen a document in the Treasury archives in which the young Keynes’s proposals for saving Britain from the Great Depression were dismissed by the Chancellor in only three scribbled words: ‘inflation, extravagance, bankruptcy’. Finally, Mr Brown moved on to a three-stage response from governments around the world. The first stage was to stabilise the financial system and prevent bank failures. After Henry Paulson’s catastrophic blunder in bankrupting Lehman, this had been achieved. The second stage, now in progress, is to counteract the collapse of private economic activity triggered by the near-failure of every bank in the world with huge doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus. The third stage will be to restore the growth of credit by forcing banks to increase their lending” (Anatole Kaletsky, ‘Why I would back the Prime Minister for a Nobel Prize, The Times, 2 February 2009). WHAT EXACTLY IS KEYNESIANISM? Roger Bootle (op.cit.) has usefully summed up Keynes’ major conclusions in the following terms: “I can reduce Keynes’ view to seven essential propositions. “1. The [capitalist] economic system is naturally prone to periods of depression. “2. When one occurs, the system is not necessarily self-correcting. “3. Such depressions are not the result of individual choice. On the contrary, individuals en masse can become trapped in a depression which is in no one’s interest but which, as individuals, no one can counter-act. “4. This represents pure waste. Unemployed workers want to work, and businesses want to use their productive capacity. If they did, then the things they produced would be available for all to buy, and the incomes they received would enable them to purchase the products of others. “5. For individuals it may be appropriate to react to difficult times by saving more. Yet collectively this is a disaster. One man’s saving is another man’s reduced income. Extra borrowing by the Government, if it encourages more output, can be self-financing. “6. The key is aggregate demand. In normal circumstances it is possible to influence this by changes in interest rates. But there is a level below which interest rates cannot go and at that point conventional monetary policy is powerless. Moreover, even if interest rates can be lowered this may have no effect if people cannot or will not borrow. “7. At this point, aggregate demand can only be boosted by the Government 26

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borrowing more, either to spend directly or to give to others to spend via tax cuts or the like.” To answer this question in more depth, however, and in order to understand Keynes’ underlying assumptions, we have drawn on a pamphlet by the erstwhile CPGB’s John Eaton, written in 1950 and entitled Marx against Keynes. “The pre-Keynesians argued that every product that went to market created a purchasing power corresponding to its value, since production costs and other incomes generated in the processes of production and distribution (wages, cost of materials, rent, interest, salaries, profit, etc.) exactly equaled the total value of the product sold. (This doctrine is generally known as ‘Says’s Law’... “Keynes opposed the view that the capitalist system necessarily generated enough purchasing power, or ... effective demand ... to keep all factors of production employed.” (pp.30-31) And further: “The Keynesian theory of employment runs as follows: “Expenditure takes two forms – investment expenditure and consumption expenditure. The latter depends upon (i) incomes received, coupled with (ii) the extent to which these incomes are spent or saved; for example, if incomes totalling, say, £10 billion are paid out and of these 90% is spent on consumption and 10% is saved, effective demand arising from consumption is £9 billion. “But, says Keynes, the mere fact that people aim at saving 10% of their incomes does not mean that this balance of ‘unspent’ or ‘saved’ incomes ... is forthwith and necessarily spent on investment goods. “In fact, the decision to spend income on consumption is quite separate and distinct from the decision to increase expenditure on capital equipment, etc. This latter decision is taken by the capitalist ...; and it is taken in the light of the prospects of making a profit. “The essence of the Keynesian theory of employment is then this: the level of employment is determined by the total effective demand, which means total purchasers of consumer goods plus investment expenditure. In so far as income not spent on consumption fails to be matched by expenditure on investment goods, there is a falling off of total demand and therefore of output and employment as a whole, which, of course, brings with it a reduction in incomes.” (pp. 33-34) Also: “It follows from this line of reasoning that to maintain full or high employment and output it is necessary to maintain investment expenditure at the right level. If this is not done, economic activity falls, incomes paid out in the form of profits and the wage bill dwindle. In short, effective demand in the form of consumption expenditure falls short of the level necessary to maintain full employment and output. The Marxist-Leninist

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“Full employment can, however, be maintained – says Keynes – if the State takes special steps to keep investment expenditure at the right level; this, he says, it may do by (a) controlling the rate of interest; (b) itself undertaking investment or public works expenditure; (c) exercising some general control – about which Keynes is nowhere very precise – over all forms of investment.” (page 38) And “Keynes ... also advocates measures designed to increase the ‘propensity to consume’. These measures include (i) increasing purchasing power ... and (ii) taxation designed to redistribute incomes in favour of the lower income groups (who save less). However, the emphasis on the second group of remedies is less marked.” (Page 39). KEYNES’ FATAL FLAW The fatal flaw in Keynes is that, having failed correctly to identify the cause of the crisis, his ‘solutions’ amount to nothing more than the blind treatment of symptoms. His remedies do not avert crises – at best they ‘manage’ them in such a way as to enable the bourgeoisie to maintain control over the indignant masses whose livelihoods are being destroyed. Saving the banks, for instance, is not just a question of handouts to disgustingly rich bankers. It is also, and above all, a question of ensuring that ordinary masses continue to receive their wages from their employers’ bank accounts so long as they remain employed, and are in turn able to withdraw these wages from their own accounts when they wish to spend them. It is fair to say that if bank account holders in their millions suddenly found themselves cut off from the cash that funds their everyday existence, riots would certainly ensue. It remains to be seen, however, whether the rescues will work in the long term. Keynesianism is based on false premises, and cannot therefore lead to consistently correct predictions. As Eaton says on page 29-30: “Keynes does not abandon the basic bourgeois premises. He accepts the subjective value theory of his bourgeois predecessors (the ‘marginal utility theory’) and rejects the labour theory of value of Adam Smith, Ricardo and Marx. “The essential point of the subjective value theories is that they focus attention on buying and selling – the process of exchange and distribution – and fail to explain the relationship of men in the process of production. Whereas the labour theory of value shows how, before goods enter exchange, value has already been embodied in them by the expenditure of productive labour [a value expropriated by the capitalist], according to the subjective theories goods acquire their value only in the process of exchange... “The practical value of the bourgeois value theories and in particular 28

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their application in the bourgeois wages theory, is, then, that they hide the nature of capitalist exploitation.” What is this ‘marginal utility’ theory that Keynes adopts, and why does it matter that he rejects the labour theory of value? Keynes agrees with the laissez faire economists that “the wage is equal to the marginal product of labour”. ... The theory ... seems to say that the worker is paid for what he produces. If this were so, then the argument that the worker is exploited would fall to the ground ... “On closer examination, however, we find that the ‘product’ in the expression ‘marginal product’ has not got the plain meaning of ‘produced by labour’. The bourgeois economist argues that a number of ‘factors of production’ contribute to the productive process, such as machinery, money at the bank, stocks of materials, the enterprise and imagination of the board of directors, the factory building, the land on which it stands, as well, of course, as the workers. ... The reward that each unit of each factor of production gets, says the bourgeois economist, equals the marginal product, which is the additional output that would result from adding one unit (the ‘marginal’ unit) of one factor of production... “Some bourgeois economists have said in so many words that this marginal productivity theory shows that the worker gets paid the due value of what he produces. This is playing with words, for the activity of producing in the economic sense of the term is nothing but the activity of the human being engaged in production, namely labour. If labour were really rewarded with the full value of what it produces, nothing at all would go to the owners of Capital and Land. ...” (p.44-45) In other words, the ‘marginal utility’ theory, by refusing to accept that value is exclusively produced by labour and that capitalist profit arises from the expropriation of a part of the product of that labour, completely obliterates the antagonistic contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the working class – between profit and wages. This enables bourgeois economists to ignore the fact that the greater the profits expropriated by the bourgeoisie, the lower the wages (and therefore the lower the consumption power) of the working-class masses. THE RESULT OF THIS “In the period of monopoly capitalism the contradiction between productive capacity and the purchasing power of the masses becomes more and more acute, for three basic reasons: (1) accumulation ... becomes progressively greater; (2) wages and middle class incomes are squeezed by rising prices; (3) average technique and intensity of work (that is, output per The Marxist-Leninist

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man) is high and tending to rise, so that the workers’ share in what they produce in terms of goods tends to fall. Markets are insufficient. “This leads to desperate struggles between the monopoly groupings which attempt to establish monopoly domination on a world scale. Two world wars have resulted from their antagonisms” (p.100-101). And naturally the bourgeois economists are unable to see that “The cause of crisis is the contradiction in capital itself, the contradiction, inherent in the worker-capitalist relationship, between social production and capitalist appropriation of the product.”(p. 104-5) Because of this, “Keynes in effect argues that there is no necessary connection between production for profit and economic crisis. The Marxist standpoint by contrast is that economic crisis is inseparably bound up with the profit system. “The basic cause of crisis is that the personal incomes received by the masses of the people are continually being reduced relatively to the expansion of production capacity which takes place in the course of every boom.” (p.8788) As a result of Keynes’ basic theoretical errors – entirely dictated by the bourgeois class interests he serves – Keynes has no real answers to capitalist crisis. Where Keynesian ‘remedies’ have been applied in the past as a cure for crisis, invariably inflation has intervened, causing the decimation of the purchasing power of wages, savings, pensions. The winners were the indebted who found their debt burdens lightened. Generally for the masses of people, however, living standards fall regardless of the application of Keynesian remedies. The fact is that: “More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The sorry facts bear this out. The unemployment rate in the US was still 19% in 1939 [as opposed to 25% in 1933]. Over the following four years the number of unemployed workers declined dramatically, by more than 7m. This had a very particular reason: the number of men in military service rose by 8.6m.” (Dominic Lawson, op.cit.). Nevertheless, Keynes is still flavour of the month with the bourgeoisie and its politicians who, like Obama, have all kinds of reasons for ignoring inconvenient lessons of the 1930s and for rewriting history, even if it is just an example of the triumph of hope over experience. The expansion of the boom years has under capitalism to be balanced by contraction in the recession years. The only problem is that not a single 30

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bourgeois can afford to carry on in business at a reduced scale, allowing losses to eat away at his profits. Not a single capitalist can resist trying to maintain some profitability, or at least reducing his losses, by dismissing as many of his workforce as possible. If the bourgeois state gives these people employment, not a single bourgeois is willing to pay taxes to finance the state to employ them, leaving the state with only the options of printing money (leading to inflation) or borrowing money (leaving it to future generations of taxpayers to repay the debt – at the expense of their ability to spend money on consumption and investment alike and therefore delaying the possibility of economic recovery). Keynesian remedies theoretically could facilitate a more orderly recession but in practice contradictions between different sectors of the ruling class and between different imperialist and capitalist powers become so acute that they develop into antagonisms, principally because of the uneven impact of crisis on different capitalists and imperialists. “In a capitalist boom such as we have been going through, great disproportions develop between the department of industry devoted to production goods and that devoted to consumption goods and also between the various industries in each of these departments. “The production goods sector is very often developed far beyond the point that is necessary to supply all the varied sectors of industry with new equipment. This flows from the fact that the economy is not centrally planned and the extent to which the various sectors of industry have expanded depended on the rate at which profits could be made, capitalist speculations, the availability of supplies to enable expansion to take place in various industries, and other chance factors. “These disproportions remain concealed as the boom develops. It is only when the boom is collapsing that their extent is revealed. “When these disproportions have been carried to extreme lengths in the production goods section, no amount of juggling with purchasing power – or any other central controls – will induce the capitalist class to place sufficient orders to employ those industries to full capacity.” (Eaton, p.129). In these circumstances, the bourgeoisie finds it impossible to sing from the same hymn sheet. No company that is capable of surviving the crisis is willing to have its profitability reduced by measures designed to save businesses (and their associated employees) that are less fortunate. In fact every bourgeois wants there to be high spending capacity so he can sell his products, while paying his own workers as little as possible and reducing his workforce to the greatest possible extent. Every bourgeois would like the state to increase its spending – providing jobs and therefore enhancing workers’ consumption The Marxist-Leninist

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powers, as well as distributing profitable contracts to bourgeois concerns – but not if that means he has to provide the state with the finance to do so through higher taxes! So while every bourgeois clutches eagerly at the increased consumption that Keynesian remedies promise to provide, they universally baulk at paying the cost. As a result: “Unfortunately, even among those enlightened enough to see the need for a powerful stimulus, there are internal disagreements between those who emphasise the monetary and financial side and those who emphasise fiscal policy. And there are divisions within divisions. There are divisions between those who emphasise interest rate cuts followed by so-called quantitative easing and those who call for a reconstruction of the banking system. Among those who favour a fiscal stimulus there are divisions between those who urge more public spending and those favouring tax cuts.” (Samuel Brittan, ‘Economic dominoes are still falling’, Financial Times, 14 February 2009). This contradiction between what every bourgeois wants for himself and what he wants for others also explains the agonising of Joseph Stilgitz in ‘Give us more bangs for our bailout bucks’, The Times, 27 January 2009: “A strong stimulus is one that delivers a big bang for the buck – and quickly. Tax cuts work quickly but, in times like these, are relatively ineffective. With an overhang of debt and asset values declining, most of last February’s US tax cuts were not spent. Yet, remarkably, some are arguing that a substantial fraction of the Obama stimulus should take the form of a tax cut. The first focus should be on preventing further spending cutbacks; with states and localities limited to spending what they receive in revenues, and with tax revenues falling precipitously, making up for this shortfall is the natural place to begin. “Second, spending should have as positive a long-run impact as possible. To be sure, the spending will lead to a rise in indebtedness. But if it creates an asset, whether human capital, infrastructure or new technologies, then the nation’s balance sheet may even be improved. Tax cuts aimed at promoting consumption simply increase liabilities, with no asset to match. “Carefully designed business tax cuts, linked to higher investment, can provide a big bang for the buck and raise productivity. Unfortunately, some of business tax cuts being discussed in the US are likely to have minimal effect on investment. “It is remarkable how countries can be so penny-wise and pound-foolish. Politicians squabble for weeks over how or whether to spend a relatively small amount. Yet, in almost a blink of the eye, a $700 billion blank cheque was given to bail out banks. We need to put that in proportion: it is greater than all 32

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of the foreign aid from rich to poor countries for seven years. It could put US social security on a sound footing for a century. “The hundreds of billions given to the banks have not done what was promised. Credit is not flowing. Part of the reason is that the bailout was not well thought through. As we were pouring money into the banks, they were pouring money out...” At the end of the day, the Keynesian ‘stimulus’ has to be paid for. The US stimulus being promoted by Obama “will be expensive, more expensive than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined and Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader [sic], has called it a mere ‘down payment’” (Christopher Caldwell, ‘Is the stimulus Obama’s Iraq, Financial Times, 31 January 2009). The bourgeoisie does not want to pay for the stimulus. The alternatives are to borrow money and make the working class repay the loans through a programme of high taxation on low incomes – cutting future consumption – or printing money (or “quantitative easing”, to use the current fashionable euphemism). Indeed, to ‘allow’ a moderate amount of ‘controlled’ inflation seems to Tim Leunig (‘Coordinated inflation can bail us all out’, Financial Times, 16 February 2009) the ideal answer: “It would help government finances by inflating away 10 per cent of total government debt. This lowers the interest burden for future taxpayers. Since taxes are levied primarily on income, this has both equity and efficiency benefits. It is (more) equitable as the cost of recession will be borne by wealth holders as well as income generators, and it is (more) efficient in that it reduces the extent of incentive-reducing tax rises on income in the future. “Companies will benefit in two ways. First, a portion of their debt will disappear, with the benefit being the largest for those companies that have debts with fixed interest, such as corporate bonds. “Second, while real wages seem to be downwardly flexible, nominal wages are less so. Higher inflation allows more companies and workers to agree to real wage cuts than would otherwise be the case. This is both useful for those firms that are currently uncompetitive, and preferable for society, because wage cuts are more equitable than unemployment. “A rise in inflation also means that declines in real house prices translate into less negative equity, freeing up the housing market. This is beneficial for labour mobility and helpful to the real economy because additional house sales spur economic activity. “Banks would gain in three ways. Inflation reduces future bad debts by making debt servicing easier. It makes defaults less costly because real collateral is more likely to exceed nominal debt. Finally, it makes existing bad debts less onerous on the balance sheet. This reduces the need for government The Marxist-Leninist

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recapitalisations and “bad banks” and increases the ability of governments to sell recently acquired banks. This, in turn, reduces the debt burden on future taxpayers. “An extra 2 points of inflation for five years is not a “get out of jail free card”. Bank shareholders, rightly, will still lose greatly from their managers’ decisions. Future taxpayers will, inevitably, still bear most of the cost of countercyclical government spending. “It is not costless. Regrettably, prudent savers will see their assets reduced. That might be the price society has to pay to keep the banking system afloat without crippling future taxpayers.” Tim Leunig’s proposals, however, would certainly draw howls of rage from companies that are managing to turn a profit despite the recession, who will certainly not want to find that profit reduced or annihilated by inflation not to speak of millions of those living on fixed incomes such as pensions. Enhanced contradictions lead to war The bourgeois economists of today, while no longer as triumphalist as at the time of the collapse of the USSR and the eastern bloc of erstwhile socialist countries, while no longer as foolish as to jubilantly pronounce the death of Marxism as they then did, are still unable or unwilling to accept the truth that it is impossible to get rid of the crises of overproduction while capitalism lasts. Under this system of production, the expansive force of modern industry comes up against the resistance offered by the limited capacity of consumption, by the limited capacity of the market to absorb the products of industry, owing to the impoverishment of the masses. As the expansion of the markets cannot keep pace with the expansion of production, collision becomes inevitable and, failing the overthrow of the capitalist system, these collisions become periodic. This has been the case since 1825, the year when the first general crisis of capitalism broke out. Neither Keynesianism nor monetarism, neither inflation nor deflation, offer any solution to the problem of the crises of overproduction under capitalism. They merely offer temporary palliatives, which, far from being the cure they are presented as by the bourgeoisie and its intellects, only make the malady worse by “paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented” (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p.38). Neither Keynesianism nor monetarism is able, in the final analysis, to do away with the continuing impoverishment of the masses under capitalism - an impoverishment which serves to undermine consumer spending and economic growth, thus inevitably bringing to a shuddering halt any recovery engineered through a combination of monetary and fiscal tricks and precipitating yet another 34

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crisis, for the “...last cause of real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit” (K Marx, Capital, Vol III, p.484). The crisis of capitalism is propelling various imperialist countries, on the one hand to wage wars for domination against the oppressed countries, as for instance in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and on the other hand it is serving to intensify inter-imperialist contradictions to a new pitch. In the end, these contradictions, which in the final analysis boil down to a struggle for the redivision of the world, cannot be resolved amicably and peacefully. The leading powers involved in this life-and-death struggle are bound, unless stopped by a series of proletarian revolutions, to come to blows with each other. Capitalism by its very nature is inextricably bound up with crises of overproduction and with war. Neither crises in industry nor wars in politics can be eliminated without the overthrow of capitalism. The productive forces of modern industry long ago outgrew the capitalist mode of using them. Only the proletariat, through the seizure of state power, the transformation of the socialised means of production into public property, the organisation of “socialised production upon a predetermined plan”, can free the means of production from their character as capital, and thus rid society of the tyranny of the periodically-recurring crises of overproduction and imperialist wars. “To accomplish this act of universal emancipation,” to quote the never-to-be-forgotten words of Engels, “is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish - this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism” (Anti-Dühring, p.395). If any proof be needed of the above analysis of Marx and Engels, it is furnished by a comparative study of the economies of the leading capitalist countries, on the one hand, and that of the socialist USSR, on the other hand, during the Great Depression, which started in 1929 and lasted more than 10 years - well into the Second World War. Between 1929 and 1933, the US economy shrank by a third. Only in 1937 did the physical volume of production reach the levels of 1929 - only to slide again. In the 10 years between 19301940, only once (in 1937) did the average number of US jobless during the year drop below 8 million. In 1933, a quarter of the labour force (13 million) in the US were out of work. The rest of the capitalist world too was in the grip of an unprecedented depression, suffering from similar levels of economic contraction and rising unemployment. The Marxist-Leninist

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In comparison with the doom and gloom, despair and despondency engulfing the entire capitalist world, the USSR, the land of socialism, alone stood as a shining beacon of rising production, rising employment and working class power, beckoning the world proletariat, by its sheer existence, to overthrow capitalism. As the capitalist crisis wreaked havoc on the economies of all the major capitalist countries, year by year the USSR registered world-historic increases in industrial production. From 1929 to 1933, Soviet industrial production more than doubled, while unemployment disappeared completely, never to return while the USSR lasted. In the end, imperialism could find no way out of the crisis other than through the horrors of the Second World War, which brought untold destruction and wiped out 55 million workers and peasants, including 27 million from the USSR, which led, and made the greatest sacrifices in, the successful fight against Hitlerite fascism. CONCLUSION It can be seen that Keynes based his belief that crisis could be averted on false premises and failure, or more correctly unwillingness, to understand the antagonism between wages and profits, let alone the necessary implication of this, which is the relative impoverishment of the working masses and of the oppressed countries, which will erect a barrier that will sooner or later prevent the bourgeoisie from selling the products of their ever expanding industries. John Eaton’s book referred to above explains all this very well, although he in turn exhibits traces of erroneous understanding in that he seems to believe that Keynesianism is incapable of increasing the share of the working class in the national wealth - at least temporarily. From the end of the Second World War to the mid-1970s, however, what is known as the ‘Keynesian consensus’ in fact delivered a higher proportion of national wealth to the working masses, in the form, for instance, of free education and health services and unemployment and welfare benefits - however grudgingly conceded. It is the extraction of superprofits by imperialism from the oppressed countries of the world that has made this largesse even possible - and it was the imperialist bourgeoisie’s fear of proletarian revolution as long as the living successes of Soviet Russia and other socialist countries were threatening to lead the working masses to revolution that motivated the bourgeoisie to distribute that largesse. Even today in the midst of crisis, benefits still accrue to the working masses in imperialist countries that are certainly not available to the exploited and oppressed masses of the third world. In the context of Eaton’s book, this is not a very important point; but in the wider context of understanding the strength of opportunism in the working-class movements of the imperialist countries and resisting its call, then the error is potentially fatal. Even at the time of writing, John Eaton was unable to see the treacherous and reactionary role of the ‘left’ wing of the Labour Party, although he was still capable of seeing that the only way out of ☞ 36

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APOLOGISTS OF NEO-COLONIALISM [Comment By The CPC On The Open Letter Of The Central Committee Of The CPSU, October 22, 1963] A GREAT revolutionary storm has spread through Asia, Africa and Latin America since World War II. Independence has been proclaimed in more than fifty Asian and African countries. China, Viet Nam, Korea and Cuba have taken the road of socialism. The face of Asia, Africa and Latin America has undergone a tremendous change. While revolution in the colonies and semi-colonies suffered serious setbacks after World War I owing to suppression by the imperialists and their lackeys, the situation after World War II is fundamentally different. The imperialists are no longer able to extinguish the prairie fire of national liberation. Their old colonial system is fast disintegrating. Their rear has become a front of raging anti-imperialist struggles. Imperialist rule has been overthrown in some colonial and dependent countries, and in others it has suffered heavy blows and is tottering. This inevitably weakens and shakes the rule of imperialism in the metropolitan countries.

recurrent crisis was to overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist planned economy under the aegis of a working-class state – ideas that his party, the CPGB, were gradually to abandon. With these reservations, however, we do not hesitate to recommend his pamphlet to the modern reader who will find there many arguments extremely relevant to the present situation, to explain the attempts by the bourgeoisie to put Keynesian remedies into effect and to arm the working class against being deceived into believing that these will safeguard their interests. Our job is to ensure that Keynesianism is not used to draw the working masses into pursuit of a futile reformism and away from the road to proletarian revolution – their only salvation. ● NOTES [1.] Notwithstanding its sceptical public stance, the German government too has poured in a lot of money to prop up and bail out its bankrupt financial institutions. [Reproduced from www.lalkar.org] The Marxist-Leninist

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The victories of the people’s revolutions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, together with the rise of the socialist camp, sound a triumphant paean to our day and age. The storm of the people’s revolution in Asia, Africa and Latin America requires every political force in the world to take a stand. This mighty revolutionary storm makes the imperialists and colonialists tremble and the revolutionary people of the world rejoice. The imperialists and colonialists say, “Terrible, terrible!” The revolutionary people say, “Fine, fine!” The imperialists and colonialists say, “It is rebellion, which is forbidden.” The revolutionary people say, “It is revolution, which is the people’s right and an inexorable current of history.” An important line of demarcation between the Marxist-Leninists and the modern revisionists is the attitude taken towards this extremely sharp issue of contemporary world politics. The Marxist-Leninists firmly side with the oppressed nations and actively support the national liberation movement. The modern revisionists in fact side with the imperialists and colonialists and repudiate and oppose the national liberation movement in every possible way. In their words, the leaders of the CPSU dare not completely discard the slogans of support for the national liberation movement, and at times, for the sake of their own interests, they even take certain measures which create the appearance of support. But if we probe to the essence and consider their views and policies over a number of years, we see clearly that their attitude towards the liberation struggles of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America is a passive or scornful or negative one, and that they serve as apologists for neo-colonialism. .......... What are the facts? Consider, first, the situation in Asia and Africa. There a whole group of countries have declared their independence. But many of these countries have not completely shaken off imperialist and colonial control and enslavement and remain objects of imperialist plunder and aggression as well as arenas of contention between the old and new colonialists. In some, the old colonialists have changed into neo-colonialists and retain their colonial rule through their trained agents. In others, the wolf has left by the front door, but the tiger has entered through the back door, the old colonialism being replaced by the new, more powerful and more dangerous U. S. colonialism. The peoples of Asia and Africa are seriously menaced by the tentacles of neo-colonialism, represented by U. S. imperialism. Next, listen to the voice of the people of Latin America. The Second Havana Declaration says, “Latin America today is under a more ferocious imperialism, more powerful and ruthless than the Spanish colonial empire.” 38

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It adds: Since the end of the Second World War, . . . North American investments exceed 10 billion dollars. Latin America moreover supplies cheap raw materials and pays high prices for manufactured articles. It says further: ... . . there flows from Latin America to the United States a constant torrent of money: some $4,000 per minute, $5 million per day, $2 billion per year, $10 billion each five years. For each thousand dollars which leaves us, one dead body remains. $1,000 per death, that is the price of what is called imperialism. The facts are clear. After World War II the imperialists have certainly not given up colonialism, but have merely adopted a new form, neo-colonialism. An important characteristic of such neo-colonialism is that the imperialists have been forced to change their old style of direct colonial rule in some areas and to adopt a new style of colonial rule and exploitation by relying on the agents they have selected and trained. The imperialists headed by the United States enslave or control the colonial countries and countries which have already declared their independence by organizing military blocs, setting up military bases, establishing “federations” or “communities”, and fostering puppet regimes. By means of economic “aid” or other forms, they retain these countries as markets for their goods, sources of raw material and outlets for their export of capital, plunder the riches and suck the blood of the people of these countries. Moreover, they use the United Nations as an important tool for interfering in the internal affairs of such countries and for subjecting them to military, economic and cultural aggression. When they are unable to continue their rule over these countries by “peaceful” means, they engineer military coups d’etat, carry out subversion or even resort to direct armed intervention and aggression. The United States is most energetic and cunning in promoting neocolonialism. With this weapon, the U.S. imperialists are trying hard to grab the colonies and spheres of influence of other imperialists and to establish world domination. This neo-colonialism is a more pernicious and sinister form of colonialism. ● [SOURCE: by the Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) and Hongqi (Red Flag), Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1963]

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INDIA: SHOW-CASE OF US NEO-COLONIALISM THE People’s Daily in a commentary on May 8 exposed India as a showcase of U.S. neo-colonialism. The commentary says: India, under the rule of the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie, has been lauded by the trumpeters of the imperialists as a “show-case of democracy”. As a matter of fact, it is nothing else but a typical show-case of U.S. neocolonialism. True, the United States has not put any governor-general in India, but the Indian Government which represents the interests of the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie fulfils the function of a governor’s office of a U.S. colony. In foreign affairs, the Indian Government is closely following U.S. imperialism. At home, by utilising its state power to issue all kinds of decrees and regulations, it has thrown the door wide open to U.S. imperialism’s control over India’s politics, economy and military affairs. The reactionary Indian rulers are actually a bunch of agents hired and paid for by the U.S. neo-colonialists. The weapons and equipments of the reactionary armed forces of India are supplied by U.S. imperialism and its accomplice, the Soviet revisionist ruling clique. They are employed by U.S. imperialism and its accomplice to suppress the Indian people’s revolutionary struggle and to launch military provocations in Asia. True, the United States has not formally set up an “East India Company” in India. Nevertheless, in the past twenty years, the United States’ control and exploitation of India has been on a scale comparable to that of the British, which has a history of colonialism in India of three hundred years. The massive infiltration of U.S. monopoly capital into India has enabled it to grab fabulous profits while the thousands of so-called American “experts” and “advisers” who have wormed their way into the economic, political, military and cultural spheres have stepped up their control and enslavement of the country. India’s natural resources have been sucked out by the United States in large quantities. India has become a market for the flooding of American goods. Through the dumping of “surplus” farm produce alone, the United States controls one half of India’s currency as well as its finance and banking. The United States has also been steadily deepening the agricultural crisis in India and aggravating its starvation for years on end. Each year millions of working people die of starvations in India. Isn’t this a fact of the bloody and ruthless U.S. imperialist exploitation of the Indian people? 40

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Our great teacher chairman Mao has pointed out: “The biggest imperialism in the world today is U.S. imperialism. It has its lackeys in many countries. Those backed by imperialism are precisely discarded by the broad masses of the people”. U.S. imperialism has carried out its neo-colonialist policy of enslaving India precisely by means of fostering its agents in India. This neo-colonialist tactics of U.S. imperialism is more sinister and ferocious than that of the old colonialists! The Soviet revisionist renegade clique is blabbering enthusiastically about this show-case of U.S. neo-colonialism. And, on top of that, it is trying its utmost to rule this “show-case” jointly with U.S. imperialism. The Soviet revisionist ruling clique is now only second to the United States in the degree of control over India through its “aid”. It has become the biggest supplier of military “aid” and the second biggest creditor to India, and it ranks third in trading with the country. The Soviet revisionist renegade clique, also, is practicing neo-colonialism in India in collusion with U.S. imperialism. However, U.S. imperialism and its accomplices of every description can never fool the awakening broad masses of the Indian people, no matter how hard they try to hoax them and no matter how painstakingly they try to embellish themselves. The Indian people will certainly rise to smash this show-case of U.S. neo-colonialism, break up the cannibal feast of imperialism and Indian reaction, and build a bright new India. ●

[From June 1968 issue of Liberation]

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Document of Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI)

What Has Happened? [Important questions of our Party Life] INTRODUCTION THE September 30 Movement (henceforth: G-30-S), with all its accompanying sufferings and bitterness, is not an isolated phenomenon. It was an inevitable result of preceding events, the zenith of a series of preceding happenings. As communists we have to study, to understand and to evaluate the tragedy we went through. We have to study it from all angles in order to learn as much as possible from it. In studying and evaluating we cannot avoid criticism and self-criticism as to the mistakes which we have made in the past, because without studying that event from all possible angles we cannot draw correct and objective conclusions. Besides, we, as Communists, have to stick to the principle that criticism and self-criticism are necessary in order to avoid the same mistakes in the future and to take the correct road towards a correct aim. To cover up mistakes is not the method of work of Communists and Communist parties. Lenin said: “.... The attitude of a party towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways to evaluate how serious that party is and how in practice it fulfils its obligations towards all workers. Frankly admitting mistakes, establishing its causes, analyzing the conditions which have brought about these mistakes, that is the basic feature of a serious party. That is the course to be taken to educate and to instruct the class and then the masses .....” (Collected Works, XXV, 200) Lately we often hear that under the present white terror it would not be proper to level criticism sand self-criticism of our mistakes since that would help the enemy and stab us in the back. Such an opinion is of course wrong. Exactly because we have to face such a savage enemy, we must know and eradicate our mistakes and weaknesses in order to emerge with new force and energy and to avoid taking the wrong course again. For the very reason that we desire to live, to grow and to be strong, we have to pull out all the diseases and poison which are within us. Said comrade Stalin: “..... There are people who think that to expose one’s own mistakes and to make self-criticism is dangerous for the party since that could be used by the 42

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enemy against the party of the proletariat. Such a view was regarded by Lenin as narrow-minded and completely erroneous.....” (Works, VI, 89-90). As a matter of fact, already since 1904 , when the party in Russia was still very weak, Lenin put forward this question of criticism and self-criticism as something which had immediately to be carried out (Works, VI, 161). Such a method of criticism and self-criticism is one of the basic features of a Leninist party.

I WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF THE SEPTEMBER 30 MOVEMENT? A Few Words On The Development of Revisionism In Indonesia 1. THE SEPTEMBER 30 MOVEMENT IS NOT A REVOLUTION BUT “LEFT” ADVENTURISM The actions of the September 30 Movement (G-30-S) were clearly not a revolution, the more a revolution led by a Marxist-Leninist party. The basic problem of every revolution is the seizure of state power, carried out by force of arms, based on the consciousness, conviction and strength of the people’s mass in particular of the workers and peasants, under the sole and all-embracing leadership of the Communist party, with a clear, correct and clean program, banners and slogan. The G-30-S was evidently not a revolution, also because the most important and basic feature of a revolution was absent. What is this most important and basic feature of a revolution? The most important and basic feature of every revolution is the transfer (seizure) of power from one class to another class. (Lenin: letters on Tactics). The movement, launched by the G-30-S had better be called “left” adventurism. Right from the start it copied the bourgeoisie with their “council of generals”. It was Trotskyist, basing itself on intrigues and terror and leaving its execution to (apart of) the patriotic army, which ought to be not more than a secondary reserve. As Lenin pointed out: “..... to be successful, a revolution (uprising) must not base itself on intrigues and on a party, but on the advanced class. This is the first point. A revolution (uprising) has to base itself on the zenith of revolutionary insurrections by the people. This is the second point. A revolution has to base itself on the turning point in the history of a revolution in development, when the activities of the people’s ranks reach their climax and when hesitation in the enemy’s ranks and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and wavering friends of the revolution (meant is here the small bourgeoisie) is at its summit. This is the third point” (Collected Works, XXVI, 23) The Marxist-Leninist

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The experience of all revolutions led by the proletariat, have proved how correct those words of Lenin are an how inseparable are those three points, which have to be taken as a single whole. The G-30-S not only did not fulfil these Leninist conditions at all, it was even the reverse. First: It was not based on strength and the interests of the people’s masses, on the advanced class, but on intrigues and terror. Second: It was not based on the zenith of the revolutionary insurrections by the people who considered it the right time to take up arms until the last drop of blood (Stalin: Foundations of Leninism), because in the last 14 years the people have indeed not been prepared and educated for the seizure of power by arms. Third: a) It was not carried out at the moment when the enemy was at the summit of its weakness and hesitation, but exactly when they were strong and consolidated, economically (by intensive exploitation via the national enterprises) as well as militarily. b) The hesitation of the national bourgeoisie was not at the summit. As long as the national bourgeoisie is not yet sufficiently exposed before the masses, it can be regarded by the masses as a leader, and thus can divert the attention of the masses from its only leader, the Party. (When the G-30-S broke out, the allies of the revolution could be said to have the same prestige in the eyes of the masses, because of the propaganda for Nasakom (Nationalism, Religion and Communism) and the demands of a nasakomization in all fields which put all parties on a par). As a matter of course, right from the start it could be foretold that this adventure would meet with failure. Never in her 45 years’ history had the PKI suffered such enormous losses as now, as a result of the G-30-S. Marxism-Leninism is the iron law of the development of society and of the international struggle of the proletariat. A deviation from Marxism-Leninism means also a deviation from the iron law itself and will surely result in damage and suffering in an amount, corresponding to the amount of the deviation. 2. STRATEGICAL AND TACTICAL MISTAKES a) Marxist-Leninist strategy, the science of leading the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, has long ago been abandoned by the Party leadership. This reached its culmination in the G-30-S. As was the case with the parties of the Second International, the Party leadership too, during the last 15 years, has never had an integral whole of strategy and tactics, but loose ideas, not connected with each other. 44

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The greatest deviation of the Party leadership did not lie in the use of parliamentary struggle, but (though covered will all means and arguments) in giving an exaggerated meaning, attention and energy to parliamentary struggle and peaceful means and in actually considering it the only from of struggle. It is not astonishing that after the forced outbreak of the G-30-S, i.e. when extra-parliamentary forms of struggle emerged, the Party leadership lost its head and was not able to lead the struggle in a correct way. b) Tactics have to be subordinated to strategy The essence of legal, parliamentary and reformist work The strategy for certain period of the revolution does not change, but tactics, being a part of strategy, have to be changed many times, in accordance with the tide of the revolution. Tactics deal with the forms of struggle and the forms of organization of the proletarian struggle in combinations. That means that in a situation when the Party experiences white terror, tactics too must automatically be immediately adjusted to it; it has to abandon its former tactics which were proper for the period of the peaceful road. This change of tactics must be such that during the period of white terror it has not only the task of safeguarding the Party and the peoples’ masses from wholesale destruction; it must also guarantee the continuation of the struggle of the Party and of the people’s masses, immediately and in a correct way. This must naturally be prepared long before and this can only be done when the Party in every situation, the more in a peaceful situation, intensifies it revolutionary work. Legal, parliamentary and reformist work in relatively peaceful periods has to be used to weaken the bourgeois government, to strengthen and to consolidate the preparations for the revolution. Legal, parliamentary and reformist work must only be used as an instrument to combine legal and illegal work, to intensify illegal work in preparing the masses in a revolutionary way, by actions, for the armed struggle which is sure to come (Stalin: Foundations of Leninism). When the revolution has broken out or when white terror rages the Party can then correctly and immediately adjust itself to the situation, continue the struggle properly and immediately, and safeguard the Party and the people’s masses from wholesale destruction. c) The mistake in using reserves Marxism-Leninism teaches that there are two reserves of the revolution, i.e. direct and indirect reserves. The Marxist-Leninist

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Direct reserves are: 1.

The peasant of the middle strata (not the village proletariat or poor peasants) and other middle strata.

2.

The proletariat of neighbour countries.

3.

Revolutionary movements in colonial and semi-colonial countries.

4.

The victories and the results of proletarian dictatorship.

Indirect reserves are: 1

The contradictions and conflicts between the non-proletarian classes.

2

The contradictions, conflicts and wars (e.g. imperialist wars can be used by the proletariat in its offensive or in manoeuvring when forced to retreat.

Indirect reserves must have our attention, also because those indirect reserves can sometimes play a big role in the progress of the revolution. But it must be remembered and always be taken into account that in using those indirect reserves we must by no means involve ourselves in their controversies and contradictions, under whatsoever argument. We have to use those reserves to direct them in order to weaken the enemy and to strengthen our own position. In this connection the task of the Party as the strategic leader is to use properly all those reserves in order to achieve the principal aim of the revolution in a certain period of that revolution. We know that before and during the G-30-S (up till now) the Party leadership has wrongly involved itself in the contradictions of non-proletarian classes and then entrusted itself to the bourgeoisie and her to leader.

What are the other mistakes in using those reserves? As a further explanation of above we herewith put forward the MarxistLeninist conditions for the proper use of reserves. These conditions have been completely abandoned by the Party leadership. The necessary conditions, which have been abandoned, are: a. Concentration of the basic revolutionary forces in places where the enemy is weakest. • That concentration has to be carried out at a decisive moment, i.e. when the revolution is ripe. It must also be done when offensive is at its fiercest, bringing the uprising right to the door and when bringing reserves to the vanguard (Party) at this moment is a decisive factor for the victory of the revolution. 46

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In discussing and analysing the theses of Marx and Engels on Uprising, Lenin drew the following conclusions on the conditions of strategic use of those revolutionary forces: • Don’t play with uprising, but once we start be aware that we have to bring it to the end. • Concentrate a great amount of forces at the decisive point; otherwise the enemy, who is superior in preparations and in organisation, will certainly crush the uprising. • Once an uprising has started, we have to act with determination and we must anyhow be always in the offensive. Defensive means death for every uprising and armed struggle. • We have to attack the enemy by surprise and to choose the moment when the enemy’s forces are divided. • During the uprising we must have daily successes; in the towns we must score successes every hour. In any uprising we have to raise continuously the morale, courage, determination and optimism of the masses on the uprising and on its victory. b) In choosing the right moment for a decisive blow, besides the abovementioned (1) conditions, Lenin added (Collected Works, Vol. XXV, page 229): • All forces of the enemy classes are sufficiently twisted, confused, have sufficiently weakened themselves in a struggle beyond their forces. • All wavering and unstable elements, small bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie, have sufficiently besmirched themselves before the masses because of their wavering attitude, their trickery and their own bankruptcy. • In circles of the proletariat emerges and quickly grows the mass feeling to support the most determined, most daring and revolutionary actions. To choose the right moment, without undue haste (abandoning the masses), and on the other hand not tailing behind the masses, but at the right moment, that is an absolute condition. To ignore this absolute condition means losing tempo and will certainly result in destruction of the uprising, as we have seen in the case of the G-30-S. C) When a decision has been taken, we have to follow unceasingly the course taken, irrespective of the difficulties and complications to be met. The Party must not only always pursue the course taken, but has also to establish a clean, correct and continuous course for the masses. The masses must always be led to the correct road, have to be gathered around their vanguard and not be led astray. To determine and to pursue a zigzag course, as has been done by the Party leadership during the G-30-S, will result in a zigzag of everything; the The Marxist-Leninist

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masses are left without leadership and without aim. This mistake is called: loss of direction (loss of course). d) In calling up the reserves, the Party has always to take full account of a retreat in good order when the enemy is strong, when the battle, forced upon by the enemy, is clearly detrimental. The Party has to take proper account of an orderly retreat for preparing the reserves (under the Party leadership) to strike back at the right time. “….. A revolutionary Party must be able to convince – and the revolutionary class has via bitter experience learned how to convince that victory cannot be achieved when it does not know how to attack and how to retreat in good order …..” (Lenin, Collected Work, XXV, 177). The strategic objective is to win time, deceive the enemy and to regroup its forces for counter-attacks. The Party leadership has before, during and after the G-30-S forgotten and thrown away these fundamental Marxist-Leninist teachings on strategy and tactics. The inevitable results have thus been: destruction and sufferings, new additions to the arsenal of our struggle.

3. “LEFT” OPPORTUNISM, A TWIN BROTHER OF REVISIONISM The leftist acts which gave birth to the September 30 tragedy basically reflects the subjective character and desires of the impatient small bourgeoisie. It is a twin brother of revisionism which was rampant before, and which for a long time has been pursued by our Party leadership. The revisionism pursued by the Party leadership, is essentially based on the illusion that state power can be achieved by peaceful means and not by armed force. On this base were developed and put into practice new “theories” on revolution, the state and the class struggle. These “theories” not only have no sources in Marxism-Leninism, but even denied its fundamental principles.

4. HOW HAS REVISIONISM IN INDONESIA DEVELOPED? On the eve of the general election, the Party leadership stated concretely that “General elections are the road to a People’s Democratic Government”. This theory is fully in accordance with the theory of the opportunist leaders of the Second International, Karl Kautsky and Bernstein. (Lenin: The Collapse of the Second International). Although this slogan in the election manifesto has secretly been withdrawn, there were at the same time other factors which prevented those revisionist theories to be openly and fundamentally corrected and its sources to be examined. Those “theories” were even “enriched” with new “theories”, i.e. the “revolution from above and from below”, “two aspects in state power”, “the stomach is moving to the right – politics to the left”, etc., etc. 48

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WHAT WERE THOSE FACTORS? The first factor: The concept of President Sukarno of February 21, 1957 On February 21, 1957, President Sukarno announced his concept on a “Mutual Aid Cabinet” in which Communists would take part. The Party leadership spontaneously agreed to it and mobilised all funds and forces to achieve this aim. In this connection, together with the new “victories” in the general elections for the regional parliaments and the appointment of Party representatives as members of the BPH’s (regional executive bodies), as Bupati’s (regional district heads), as Mayors, etc., the Party leadership definitely, on a large and embracing scale (by putting the most important cadres on these posts) carried out the “revolution from above” — in essence: intrigue — to gain state power by peaceful means, in conformity with President Sukarno’s concept. Mass actions were henceforth organised, mobilised and developed to serve this “revolution from above”, within the framework of the existing laws, and to create “democratic laws”. The Party developed and revived the legalism of Tan Ling Djie, who considered that everything could and had to be solved by means of formal-juridical laws. The difference was that now, the forum of the Constituent Assembly (later: MPRS = Temporary People’s Congress), Parliament, Regional Parliaments, National Planning Board, etc. etc., it was revived on a much larger scale. With the argument “class interests are subordinated to national interests”, class struggle and class analysis became increasingly blurred, were removed and replaced by the “Nasakom” idea of President Sukarno. In its further development it was this Nasakom idea that essentially directed all activities of the unity front etc. It is self-evident that we then surrendered the leadership to the bourgeoisie and the landlords. (It is of interest that the research of Com. Aidit himself in Java has shown that the majority of landlords in Java belong mainly to the nationalist and religious groups). All this went so far as to culminate in our acceptance of the Manipol (Political Manifesto), which actually pulled down the pillars of Marxism, i.e. the leadership of the proletariat in the revolution, the class struggle and state power. In the VIII CC Plenum, 1959, Com. Aidit frankly declared that the leadership of guided democracy had to be in the hands of President Sukarno. This was later developed to its zenith in connection with the demands of a Nasakom cabinet. Class struggle in Indonesia was thus consciously abolished. All kinds of arguments on this question have been put forward, of which the essence is however the same: to achieve power by peaceful means. The second factor: The tactics of influencing, using and restricting, employed by the rightists and the middle-roaders. The Marxist-Leninist

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We all know that rightist and middle-road forces (who have drawn lessons from history and from negative experiences, especially from Communist parties aboard) employ the tactics of influencing, using and restricting our Party. This is in fact no new thing if we want to learn from history. At the end of the last century, after the bourgeoisie in their attempts to destroy the Communist movement switched over from armed force to “flexible” tactics, i.e. influencing, using and restricting them, the damage suffered by the Communist movement in Europe became much bigger than before, i.e. when the bourgeoisie used force. Those tactics gave birth to rightist opportunism on a large scale which undermined Communist parties. They were also the main reasons of the more and more receding revolutionary crisis, thus intensifying exploitation by capital of the proletariat. Throughout its history, the bourgeoisie has always used complicated tactics to destroy its enemies. The essence of those tactics is to bestow positions, facilities and high-sounding promises to Communist leaders and members, without giving them real state power.

What happened in Indonesia was: On the one hand: the Party succeeded in entering the cabinet, succeeded in obtaining “extraordinary” results and facilities by occupying several functions in government institutes, and other like facilities. The results of parliamentary struggle, achieved by the Party during the last few years exceeded the results of parliamentary struggle, achieved by any other fraternal Party outside the Socialist bloc. This raised the prestige and the standing of the Party within a short span of time.

On the other hand: the bourgeoisie actually succeeded in: a. Using the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) as a bumper against the people b. Using the PKI to get the support of the people c. Undermining the PKI from within. In this way they achieved that the road of the armed revolution was abandoned and replaced by the fertile growth of revisionism. This fertile growth was prepared by the creation of a layer of cultured party leaders, with high positions and high income, isolated from the sufferings of the working masses. This layer lived in pleasure upon the accumulated profits, drawn from the exploitation by national capital. (Collected Works, Vol. XIX, page 77) The G-30-S has shown us how all those “results” of the Party were actually meaningless and only a bait of the bourgeoisie who purposely trapped us. We 50

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fell into this trap because we were very eager to swallow the bait. The G-30-S and its “epilogue” has proved clearly how rotten our body was from within, and how (a big part of) its leadership was “bourgeoisie in communist clothes”, unable to lead the people and control the situation. Third factor: The removal of the six conditions for a Leninist type of party With revisionism rampant in the Party leadership, the six factors for a Leninist type of party were gradually removed by the Party leadership. The Party sunk to the level of other non-communist parties, with the result that the body of the Party rotted away from within. (On the six conditions for a Leninists type of party, see the chapter “On the Party”). Under the slogan “Party cadres and Party masses” the doors of the Party were widely opened for the acceptance of new members. In this way the Party was invaded and joined on a large scale by non and anti-proletarian elements at a time when revisionism reigned supreme in circles of the Party leadership. This accelerated the fall of the Party in the mud of revisionism. The fourth factor: The failure of the Marxist-Leninist groups The development of revisionism in Indonesia can of course not be separated from the failure of Marxist-Leninist elements and groups in the Party to uphold Marxism-Leninism and to purge the Party from revisionist elements and ideology. The principal causes of this failure were: a. These M-L elements and groups did not master sufficiently MarxistLeninist theory so that they had a wrong interpretation of democratic centralism, of discipline and of “the minority following the majority”. As we will explain in the chapter on the Party, in the revisionist party every member has to struggle against the revisionist line and revisionist teachings and has to refuse carrying them out. “To submit to discipline” without more, to help implement those ideas, means to spread them among the masses, to develop them in practice, which means that, together with tens of millions of people, they draw themselves closer to wholesale destruction. This fallacy caused the M-L elements and groups in the Party to submit themselves without more to the decisions, line and instructions of the Party leadership. This not only meant that they participated in carrying out and developing the revisionist line, but also that, when the Party leadership considered them “too dangerous”, they were removed from all internal positions in the Party by means of “throwing them above” (members of parliament, national Planning Board, enterprise’s councils, etc.), sending them abroad (in embassies, representations of the Party and of mass organisations abroad, etc.) and by actually removing them in the literary sense of the word. The Marxist-Leninist

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b. Those elements and groups were not well organised because of false notions (“afraid to be accused of making factions”), which caused them to struggle sporadically and/or individually. Such a struggle was of course not efficient and was easily disarmed by the leadership. c. Being of petty-bourgeois origin, these ML elements and groups inherited many negative features like soon giving up, voluntarily yielding their rights (resigning), “averse to kick up a row”, etc. etc. Not a few among them, as a result of “being thrown above” were enjoying their new jobs and forgot their high aspirations for the victory of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. d. As a result of all these, M-L elements and groups had of course no organ (magazine, papers, etc.) as a means of co-ordination of these elements and groups and to spread Marxism-Leninism and to mobilise the masses in general. Those M-L groups and elements thus failed in their struggle which further accelerated the rate of development of revisionism in Indonesia. The fifth factor: Influence of the revisionism of Khrushchev This influence was from the very outset received with open arms by the Party leadership, until the end of 1962 (The report of com. Aidit to the CC Plenum at the end of 1962 still mentioned the CPSU as the leader and centre of the World Communist Movement). Since that time we were on “bad terms” with the CPSU, but this was restricted to the question of: a.

peaceful co-existence between capitalism and socialism

b.

the state of the whole people in the countries where Communist Party had already achieved victory

c.

the building of a Communist society at the present time

d.

peaceful co-existence between colonial countries and oppressor countries

e.

the question of disarmament.

In short: question of external policy. Internally we agreed completely with Khrushchev on peaceful transfer of power. 5. THE SPECIFIC FEATURE OF REVISIONISM IN INDONESIA It strikes us that the modern revisionists in Indonesia have a specific outward appearance. We still remember that formerly the Party leadership pretended to be “anti-remo” (anti-modern revisionism), “anti-Khrushchev”, “genuine Marxist-Leninist”, “siding with the RRT (People’s Republic of China)”, “firmly waging an anti-imperialist struggle”, etc. etc., despite slogans and masks they remained revisionists. 52

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Because of the level of fundamental theoretical knowledge of MarxismLeninism of the masses of Party members, which was purposely lowered by the Party leadership (and replaced by remo theories), they could deceive the masses of Party members and cadres by its pseudo-revolutionary outward appearance and slogans. The Party leadership thus succeeded in getting almost unreserved support from the masses of Party members. Those specific features were caused by the general conditions in Indonesia which were rather different from conditions in other countries which also gave birth to modern revisionist theories. a. After the armed struggle against the Dutch had ended, the Indonesian working class via its Party took part in peaceful parliamentary struggle; after the return of the RI (Republic Indonesia) to the 1945 Constitution it even took part in the government cabinet. The national bourgeoisie, however, who, because of this legal struggle succeeded in using, influencing and restricting the Indonesian proletariat and its Party, was by virtue of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal character of Indonesian society, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist within certain limits. b. Small bourgeois elements and peasants formed the majority of Party members; among them were even lumpen proletariat (those who use improper means for their livelihood). These particular conditions caused that on the one hand the Indonesian remos (modern revisionists) continued to “firmly” wage an anti-imperialist struggle whereas on the other hand they were characterised by a double faced attitude, exaggerations (like: “Marxism” as subject in all state universities, nasakomization of all governmental and social institutions, etc.), superficiality and vulgarism. It is thus impossible to know the real nature of he Indonesian “remos” only by looking at their outward appearance and their slogans: they could make Marxist-Leninist sounding speeches (actually just loose parts of MarxismLeninism), they seemed hard-working, cordinal and friendly toward cadres and members, etc., etc., but what they feared most was an examination of their work and their working programme on the basis of criticism and self-criticism, in a genuine Marxist-Leninist way. 6. F ROM RIGHT TO “LEFT” AND BACK TO RIGHT AGAIN It goes without saying that such a Party, which was entirely contradictory to the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, would not be able to accomplish its historical mission. It was more and more felt that all its results were void. This caused the Party leadership on the one hand to drift increasingly closer to the bourgeoisie whereas on the other hand they tried to protect themselves towards the demands The Marxist-Leninist

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and revolutionary instincts of the people’s masses, the Party cadres and members, by fierce and ardent speeches, slogans and phraseology. In particular on financial and economic questions the Party leadership tried hard to create “concepts” which would “aid” the people, but which even more exposed their incapacity. They forgot that this state is a bourgeois state, where crises are inevitable and incurable. They forgot that one of the main features of revisionism is exactly the attempt to help the bourgeois state out of the crisis, thus rejecting the thesis that crises in capitalism are inevitable (Lenin: Against Revisionism, 117). The question then arose: What to do? As they saw that the revolutionary instinct of the masses became more and more oriented to the correct road, they started delivering speeches on the “necessity to prepare for the possibility of armed struggle, to build revolutionary bases”, etc. But all that needed of course a correct understanding of Marxism-Leninism, needed preparations which would take long time, full energy, correct strategy and tactics. The weaknesses in the Party and revolutionary mass organisations which became known to com. Aidit after his research on the rural areas in Java, and after twice have made investigations on the spot, was not at all according to the small bourgeois wishes of the Party leadership which was imbued with impatience to gain quick victory. The deteriorating health of President Sukarno and the coup in Algeria by Boumedienne on the one hand alarmed the Party leadership and caused them fear that the rightist “council of generals”, in charge of the armed forces (army), would take the road of Boumedienne. On the other hand it inspired the Party leadership to hastily agree with the G-30-S and to support their actions, a “left” adventurist act which they regarded as the easiest and quickest way to accomplish the revolution. Revisionist thought thus turned the wheel to the “left” denying Lenin’s fundamental thesis which runs as follows: “….. To confirm the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean, irrespective of victims, at any time, plunging into attacks as a typhoon in an uprising. This is madness. For an uprising to succeed are needed long, skilled and exact preparations which demand many sacrifices ……” (Lenin: Notes of the publicist). And after that “left” adventurism failed dismally, they lost their head and immediately ran into the valley of rightist opportunism, i.e. liquidationism, surrendering to the attacks of reaction under the pretext of “guarding the legality of the Party” and guarding the “National Unity Front with Nasakom-axis”. 54

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They put the fate of the party in the hands of another person (President Sukarno), begging him to “interfere and defend justice and law”. While white terror was raging, com. Aidit issued an instruction to “uphold the legality of the Party”, and to “carry out the line of active defence”. Lenin said that in such a situation, in a situation where the Party has immediately to move underground, the ultra-rightists always urge to uphold the legality of the Party, at any cost. Such a situation is called: crisis of organisation and crisis of politics (Lenin: Selected Works, Vo. 1, page 616). That so-called “line of active defence” did not recommend us “to defend ourselves in order to strike back” (Mao Tse-tung’s words). The Party leadership meant “defence only” or “total defence”. It is this line which Mao Tse-tung called the line of “blockheads” and “fools” (Selected Military Writings, 103). And so it was. The G-30-S was launched. As a variant on Marx’s words in “the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, the Party leadership “began tragically and ended as a clown”. It is the responsibility of all of us to take up the banner of the Proletariat which has been thrown away by the Party leadership in its flight, and to wave it proudly from the ranks of the Indonesian proletariat and People in a determined struggle which will end in victory. The earth of our fatherland had once again been suffused with the blood of her sons and daughters. We are determined to see to it that their sufferings, their sincerity, their Communist courage, will not be in vain. Has not Lenin said: “Do not bow your heads, Comrade. We will certainly win, just because we are right….”.

II THE STATE In order to know how far the Party leadership has gone in abandoning the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, we will look first of all at the deviations in their theories about the state as well as their attitude towards the state. The attitude and concept of a Communist Party concerning the state is one of the main indications of whether that party is Marxist-Leninist or not. 1. The theory on the pro-people’s aspect and the anti-people’s aspect in state power. The Marxist-Leninist

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As is known, the Party leadership held a “theory” that in the teachings of Marx and Lenin themselves, we will first explain some terms within the framework of that “theory”. The words “pro-people” and “anti-people” reflect two groups which are in antagonistic contradiction with each other. With “pro-people” is naturally meant also the workers’ class and the peasant, who are considered to be represented by the Communists in the cabinet. In “anti-people” is of course included the bourgeoisie, the imperialists (or their compradors) and the landlords. Everyone knows that the bourgeoisie, imperialists their compradors exploit the workers, and that an irreconcilable class struggle is waged between them. In the same way the landlords are the class which exploits the peasantry; also between them is waged an irreconcilable class struggle. The conclusion can thus be drawn that the theory on two aspects in understood as the existence of two some antagonistically contradictory classes in state power, but who are held together by state power. What did Lenin say on this matter? In his “State and Revolution” Lenin said: “…. The state is the result and manifestation of irreconcilable class contradictions. The state emerges …. when objectively the class struggle cannot be reconciled. And the existence of the state automatically proves that the class struggle is irreconcilable …..” In that book Lenin also quoted Marx’s words that the state is an instrument of power of one class towards the other. It is thus impossible that two such antagonistically contradictory classes exist in one state power. A state of slave owners is an instrument for oppressing the slaves by the slave owners; the feudal state is the instrument of the landlords to suppress the peasants; the bourgeois state is the instrument of the bourgeoisie to suppress the proletariat; the People’s Democratic state/Socialist state is an instrument of Proletariat to suppress the bourgeoisie/landlords and all other exploiter classes. “The state”, wrote Lenin in above-mentioned book, “is a state of the class which is strongest and dominant in economy, and which by means of the state becomes also the class which dominates in politics and thus has a new instrument (the state) to strengthen its position and the exploitation and oppression of the other class”. It is clear that the Party leadership has distorted the most fundamental thesis of Marxism-Leninism on the state. Their “theory” is actually a sermon for class peace and class collaboration, embraced in the state power. 2. What were the consequences of this distorted theory? It goes without saying that not only theory was distorted; it has also 56

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consequences in political deeds. What were those political deeds which had their source in that distorted theory? First: the attitude to the question of how to seize state power We know that in this connection the Party leadership has drawn the conclusion that within the framework of the state at that time (when Communists took part in it) the principal task of the Party (according to com. Aidit) was not to overthrow state power but to increasingly enlarge its pro-people’s aspect and to reduce its anti-people’s aspect, and at last to oust completely the antipeople’s aspect. This attitude is in complete contradiction with Marxism-Leninism. Why? Because they thought that with the ousting of the anti-people’s aspect from the cabinet would be created a power qualitatively different from the former one, since a cabinet which entirely consists of a pro-people’s aspect is a cabinet/ state of the People’s Democracy. A new variant of the standpoint of the opportunists of the Second International and of Khrushchev, i.e. that the transition in a peaceful way. Lenin however wrote: “We have said and we will explain further, that the teachings of Marx and Engels on the inevitability of the revolution by force points to the bourgeois state ….” (State and Revolution). At times the Party leadership defended themselves that they did not mean “not to make revolution” because “completely ousting the anti-people’s aspect” would mean “revolution”. This is of course nonsense because Marx, Engels and Lenin meant by “revolution” a revolution with armed force to seize the entire state power (where communists do not take part in it) by destroying the entire old state machine. To discuss state power (and state machine) as two separated parts (this aspect and that aspect) is an old trick of the opportunists. When the state has to be seized and the entire old state machine to be destroyed what would then be the “destiny” of the “pro-peoples’ aspect” in the old state power? Has it to be destroyed too? That would be a pity. Lenin taught us: “…. If the problem is to confirm the revolution, everyone has already confirmed it. It has since long been confirmed by Mr. Struve and the Ozvobozhdentsi, and is now confirmed by Mr. Witte and also by Nicolai Romanov (the Czar) ….. All that is illusion, except the power …..” (The situation reaches its decisive moments, in ‘Proletarii’, No. 25, 1905). Used Aidit not to say: “The similarity between Marxism and Bung Karno’s teachings is the fact that both teach revolution …..” Formerly the Czar, now Bung Karno. The Marxist-Leninist

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Second: What are actually the attempts to “enlarge the pro-people’s aspect” and to “oust the anti-people’s aspect”? The main point of the implementation of that theory was the “peaceful” road and the total neglection of the preparations for an armed revolution. The root of all teachings of Marx and Engels however, is, as Lenin said in his “State and Revolution”, to uncalculate the concept of the inevitability of the revolution by force. This “peaceful” road was centred in “cultivating President Sukarno” in such a way that factually we surrendered ourselves and our masses to him. Our Agitpop (agitation and propaganda) was for the greater part devoted to those actions, conducted by the masses which we organised. What had to be done by the Agitprop in this connection? In “State and Revolution”, Lenin also said that it is treason (as was the case with Kautsky) when we do not exclusively in a systematic and continuous way, propagandise to the masses the necessity to seize power by force. Third: What are Communist ministers in fact? As a logical consequence of the above-mentioned theory, the Party leadership continuously tried to increase the number of Communist ministers in the cabinet. But, as we know, the Party never succeeded in getting a real position in government, which proves that Lenin was right when he prohibited Communists (at that time called “socialists”) to sit in a cabinet, controlled by the bourgeoisie. “…. That is why we see in all kinds of coalition cabinets in which socialists have seat, that they (the socialists), though there are among them really sincere people, in fact proved to be useless ornaments or curtains of the bourgeois government, the lighting rod of that government, an instrument to deceive the masses. So it was in the past and so it will be in the future as long as the bourgeois system exists and as long as the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus remains in good order….” (Lenin: On the dictatorship of the Proletariat, 21). That is why we saw that our Party via agitation and propaganda as well as via the position of its representatives in cabinet and in other governmental apparatus could not possibly educate the masses towards armed struggle because they themselves were a part of that state. Their position was an instrument of the bourgeoisie to deceive the masses, to be lighting rod for the fury of the masses towards the state which exploited and oppressed them. The party leadership thus made itself an instrument of the oppressors to oppress and exploit the masses via the state. As Lenin said: “….. Opportunism is our main enemy…. Practice has shown us that those who were active in the workers’ movement and were carried away 58

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by the stream of opportunism, became better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself. Without accomplices originating from the working class itself (who became opportunists), the bourgeoisie would not be able to maintain its rule.... (The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Proletarian Revolution, page 74). Fourth: “Making this state mouth-watering for the people”, a revisionist concept Within the framework of “democratizing” the government, within the framework of “helping to relieve the economic burden of the people”, the Party leadership, via the state, has fought for all sorts of “democratic” and patriotic” laws and regulations, fought for the realisation of “guided economy”, etc. On this matter the Party leadership not only forgot the fundamental Marxist-Leninist thesis on the inevitability of crises in the capitalist system and the inevitability of exploitation of the people by their oppressors via the state, but also that laws, constitution, etc. are completely useless if they are not in conformity with reality and if they are separated from its class character/ the state…. (Lenin: Collected Works, XV, 308). Besides, making these state laws mouth-watering for the proletariat and the people in general (the laws on agrarian reform, on crop division, on land reform courts, etc.) and to base mass actions upon them, is essentially the same as to spread illusions on this state which has to be seized by force and to be destroyed. (Lenin: The First Congress of the Comintern, in “Lenin on the Workers’ class movement and the International Communist Movement, 225). In particular on the redistribution of land and the abolishment of monopoly on agrarian produce, Lenin said: “…. Attempts to bring about changes like the abolishment of land tenure rights without compensation, the abolishment of the monopoly on flour (think of the Law on Agrarian Reform and on Crop Division in Indonesia), is the greatest illusion, the greatest self-deception, and deception of the People…” (Lenin: One of the Fundamental Problems of the Revolution). At a certain moment of its history, every Communist party will be faced with only two alternatives: It seizes the power from the bourgeoisie by force or it faces white terror. In this connection every Party has to prepare itself, based itself on the masses and to lead them in preparing the armed revolution in the genuine sense of the word. Marx and Lenin warned us not to be obsessed by the existing laws or constitution. In his “Two Tactics” Lenin wrote: “…. The Conference forgets that as long as state power is in the hands of the Czar, all decisions achieved by whatsoever representatives, will remain faint-hearted nonsense, just like the “decisions” of the Frankfurter Parliament, well known in the history of the German Revolution of 1848. In his “Neue Rheinische Zietugn”, Marx, the representative of revolutionary proletariat, lashed the The Marxist-Leninist

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Frankfurter liberals with merciless sarcasm, because they spoke such beautiful words, took all kinds of “democratic” decisions, “created” all kinds of freedom while actually they left the power in the hands of the prince. They failed to organise the armed struggle against the military forces of the prince. And while the Osvoboshdentsi were engaged in talking, the prince used his time to consolidate his military forces and the counter-revolution, which based itself on real strength and which in the end swept clean all those democrats who had only their splendid “decisions”…..” Objections could be raised like: “but President Sukarno cannot be compared with other Heads of State….” In its polemics with the CPSU on Kennedy, whom Khrushchev called: “a good man, surrounded by wolves”, the Chinese Communist Party answered about it like this: “The leadership of the CPSU seems to have forgotten that the most elementary thesis of Marxism says that the Heads of State is the most characteristic representative of the class in power….” Also Lenin said: “The forms of a bourgeois state are varied, from the most democratic to the most absolute, but in essence they are one: a tool of oppression and exploitation of the bourgeoisie towards the proletariat….” When Communist would face white terror, on which side would be Sukarno? On the side of the counter revolution, i.e. on the side of the state, or on the side of the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia)? He would have to choose. There is no middle road. And history has given proof of this. Fifth: the non-Leninist attitude of the Party leadership towards Parliament, MPRS (Temporary People’s Congress) and other representative bodies The Party leadership has used this forum to support the government; it even took part in consolidating the state. Indeed, the Parliament has to be used well, every possibility has to be explored, examined and exploited. A rejection to use this would be childish and leftist. But this has to be done in such a way that it increasingly pushes the situation to a revolutionary crisis, to be consolidation of the preparations to seize power by force.

What were Lenin’s instruction on this matter? “…. This bourgeois parliament has to be used in a revolutionary way. The proletariat must also use bourgeois parliament, but with a different aim. As long as we are not strong enough to destroy the bourgeois parliament, we must work to oppose it from without and from within. As long as there are workers — not only proletariat but also semi-proletariat and small peasants — who still have faith in the democratic instruments of the bourgeoisie, used to deceive the 60

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workers, we have to explain this deceit from that very platform which is considered by the backward part of the workers, in particular by the nonproletarian workers, as the principal and most authoritative body. As long as we, Communists, are not strong enough to seize state power and to hold election by the workers themselves ... we have to use this forum to explain the relations between the classes and the Party, the relations between landlords and peasants, between rich peasants and poor peasants, between big capital and employees, workers, small bourgeoisie, etc. …” (Letter for the Austrian Communists). The Party leadership could raise another objection: Our representative bodies are democratic and reflect mutual aid between Nasakom-partners. This must not be destroyed but improved. But that objection was refuted long ago by Lenin: “The higher (bourgeois) democracy, the more bourgeois parliament bows for the money owners….” (Selected Works, II/2, 52). What was put forward by Lenin proved completely true after the G-30-S. What has been done by Arudji Hartawinata and the Parliament as a whole? Sixth: The blurring of the class character of the State. The similarity with the Italian revisionists. We have seen how the Party leadership for a long time has taken a nonLeninist road in matters of state and revolution. We will briefly show here that this non-Leninist road was not something particular but was related and similar to the road taken by other revisionists, in this case the Italian revisionists. It looked as if our Party and the Italian Communist Party took different roads, but the difference was in fact restricted to the external political line only; the internal line was essentially the same. It is not surprising when in the Budapest meeting (within the framework of the Congress of the Rumanian Communist Party) we were countered by the Italian comrade with a.o. the following words: “…. The Indonesian comrades have attacked us because of our theory of “structural Reform”. Indeed, it is we who have made this theory, but the irony lies in the fact that it is the Indonesian comrades who attacked our theory, who have applied it themselves in Indonesia….” What are the most salient features of this similarity? The way of thought of the Italian Communist Party leadership, known under the name of “Structural Reform” can briefly be set forth as follows: “…. Politically: in the framework of bourgeois dictatorship to change progressively the balance of forces and the structural balance of the state and thus forcing the growth of new classes in that state leadership via the legal ways of the bourgeois state, bourgeois constitution and bourgeois parliament. The Marxist-Leninist

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Economically: in the framework of the capitalist system gradually restricting and breaking monopoly capital via nationalisation, planning and the state sector of economy, which has to hold the commanding posts. In short, to confirm the possibility that in this way socialism can be achieved via bourgeois dictatorship.” Literature: The difference between com. Togliatti and us – Peking (Theses for the Xth Congress of the Italian Communist Party). Comparing this revisionist line of the Italian CP with the line followed and practiced by our Party leadership, we cannot distinguish any difference at all. Politically, in the state of this bourgeois democracy we have always tried to Nasakomize the cabinet via legal way as: the 1945 constitution, the parliament, MPRS, palace-intrigues, change of the balance of forces, enlarge the propeople’s aspect, etc. Economically: trying to anything to “stand on our own feet”, to implement the “Economic Declaration”, the 1001 movement, to increase the state’s commanding posts in the economic sector …. as the conditions to accomplish the national-democratic stage, moving onward to socialism. Nationalisation was considered as the other “absolute condition” to strengthen the state economy sector and to abolish monopoly capital. The workers’ class had to take part in the enterprise’s councils, the managing boards of national enterprises, national state enterprises, etc. All this in order to accomplish the national-democratic state, moving onward to socialism. Was that correct, according to the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism? By no means; it was their very anti-thesis. Marxism-Leninism teaches us that each state power must always be analysed from the class standpoint. The deviations of the Italian revisionists, headed by Togliatti, and of our Party leadership are actually the same as the deviations by Kautsky and other figures of the Second International, who have been clearly exposed by Lenin in his “State and Revolution”. Especially in this connection the revisionists have forgotten the principal difference between a proletarian and bourgeois revolution.

What did Lenin say on this subject? “…. The difference between a socialist and a bourgeois revolution lies in the very fact that the bourgeois revolution already contains the ready-made forms of capitalist relations. Whereas …. the power of the proletariat …. does not inherit any such ready-made relations.” (Quoted from “The differences 62

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between com. Togliatti and us”, 95). Every state power has the role to defend and to consolidate the existing relations since it is a direct manifestation of those production relations. That means that every state has the role to defend and to consolidate the existing economic and social structure. The characteristic feature of capitalist society is the very fact that it cannot possibly contain seeds of socialism in it. That is why a capitalist (bourgeois) state cannot possibly contain people who represent the proletarian class — except the pseudo representatives of that class. Why cannot there exist any seeds of proletarian relations in capitalist production relation? Because the proletariat is “the class of modern wage workers who, because they have no means of production of their own, are forced to sell their labour power in order to live….” (Note by Engels to the “Communist Manifesto”, English edition, 1886). When the proletariat in capitalist society already possesses means of production, it is no proletariat any more. The courses pursued by both Parties are thus completely revisionist and deny the fundamental theses of Marxism-Leninism. Because to carry the national-democratic revolution through to the end, moving onward to socialism, in fact means the dictatorship of the People’s Democracy, i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat at the lowest stage. To achieve this is need a revolution by force of arms to seize the state as a whole, to destroy the old state machine, and to replace it by a new one. Attempts as “National Planning Board”, “Enterprise’s Councils”, “to participate in the managing boards”, etc. not only have never been proved to be successful, but have even more drifted the workers’ class away from the real seizure of state power, i.e. the revolution by force. Attempts at “nationalisation” and “to strengthen the state sector of the economy” within the framework of this state means only consolidating this bourgeois state in the economic field. Consolidating socialism by nationalisation and strengthening of the state sector of the economy is possible only within the framework of a state led by the Proletariat, i.e. a People’s Democratic State. The mistake of principle by the Party leadership in connection with those nationalisation efforts were: a) It did not take into account the class character of the state, and b) it considered that with nationalisation, etc. the national democratic revolution was accomplished, being the beginning of the socialist path. To differentiate themselves from the Italian revisionists, the Party leadership has put forward the “thesis” that the above-mentioned question could The Marxist-Leninist

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not be separated from the problem of the revolution. But we have already shown that on the problem of the Revolution, the Party had blurred and obliterated its real meaning, its essence. Seventh: Contradictory theses, phraseology and slogans As Stalin has said, one of the most important features of the opportunists of the Second International is the continuous quoting of the writing of Marx, Engels, a.o., but at the same time launching theses, phraseology, slogans and theories, which are in contradiction with each other. (Works, VI, 83). The confirmation of class struggle, of revolution, of the state as a tool of oppression, was mixed up with Nasakom, the revolution from above and from below, and the pro-people’s and anti-people’s aspects. Almost daily we come across these conflicting theses in the Party publications and in speeches by important Party leaders and also in Party standard books such as “Selected Works of D.N. Aidit”, etc. Besides those questions there is one important problem whose meaning has been distorted by the Party leadership, i.e. the problem of state Apparatus. According to Engels, the features of a state are, a.o.: the formation of its public power composed of armed forces, police and other organs of force. In the revolution, the Proletariat must not only seize power by force, but it has also to destroy the existing state machine and to replace it by a new one. The army (armed forces) and the bureaucracy are the main parts of the state, the parasites, bleeding white the oppressed classes. The Party leadership however considered the Indonesian armed forces as the “genuine child of the Revolution” and thus patriotic and democratic. Because the majority originated from the working class and the peasants, it could not possibly deny its class origin. At a mass meeting of the P(emuda) R(akyat) — People’s Youth in Cheribon, com. Aidit even said: “…. Our armed forces are actually armed peasants….” In his writings from 1959, titled “Back to the ’45 constitution for a change in politics and in life”, com. Aidit wrote: “…. Our attitude, a priori rejecting military participation in the cabinet is of course not a correct attitude, because military as well as Communists and nationalists are also citizens of RI” (Selected Works of D.N. Aidit, III, 69). We could ask: How about Soemitro, Kartosoewirjo and Kahar Muzakkar? Could we accept them into a cabinet because they too are citizens of the RI? In this connection we read on the cover of the above-mentioned book (published by a commission of the CC, consisting of 4 people) the following: “…. The slogan for Democracy and a Mutual Aid Cabinet (from the VIth 64

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Congress of the PKI, 1959) …. Created the conditions in politics, organisation and ideology to bring the Indonesian People and Nation closer to the strategic aim of the Indonesian revolution….” That was also the reason why afterwards the Party leadership launched the slogan: “For workers, peasants and soldiers”. Is this not all too clear proof of how the Party leadership blurred the class character of the state and in particular of the state apparatus? This was also the reason why the Party leadership “forgot” that at a certain moment we would directly be confronted with these Indonesian armed forces, as has been proved in the case of the G-30-S event. The G-30-S event has been the unremovable witness of this absurd attitude trying to place revolution on a par with “left” adventurism. Certainly, we must not neglect working in the armed forces of the enemy, but this must be done with full consciousness that they are only a secondary reserve: (We could add that in the course of history the majority of the army of an oppressing ruling class was composed of people who originated from the oppressed class. The problem is not their class origin but the new class, i.e. the oppression tool of the state, as a parasite. Since that moment they stop being a part of their old class, they have definitely entered their new class.)

III ON THE NATIONAL UNITY FRONT (NUF) 1. Class analysis. Two kinds of alliances The question of the NUF (as well as of the other problems of society) is inseparably connected with class relations in society. There are two kinds of alliances in the NUF: a. The basic alliance: the alliance of workers and peasants and other working people, but with the workers-peasants as nucleus. b. The supporting alliance: the alliance of workers and national bourgeoisie and other patriotic elements. Our Party leadership, with its slogan “the NUF with the workers and peasants as pillars and Nasakom as axis” has actually blurred class interests. 2. The basic question of every NUF is the hegemony (leadership) The class which has the hegemony in the NUF decides the road of its development and of the revolution (and thus also decides the outcome and even the future of the revolution). That is why the workers’ class with its party, the PKI, has to contend for the hegemony with: The Marxist-Leninist

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a. The national bourgeoisie who want to establish a bourgeois democratic state/a democratic state of old type, by means of the “middle road”. b. The big bourgeoisie/compradors/bureaucrat-capitalists, who want to make/retain our state as a semi-colonial state. The victory of the national bourgeoisie or comprador bourgeoisie means the defeat of the revolution. 3. The formation and strengthening of a revolutionary NUF must be based on experience and an understanding of who is friend and who is foe, with the ability to distinguish between friend and foe. The enemies of a National Democratic Revolution of new type are: imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalists/compradors. The main difficulty in distinguishing correctly between friend and foe lies in the division of the bourgeoisie in two groups: a. The big bourgeoisie, dependent on imperialism and making common cause with feudal forces, and therefore the targets of the revolution. b. The national bourgeoisie, double-faced and prone to compromise, is a wavering ally but capable of taking part in the national democratic revolution. We do not discuss here the small bourgeoisie as these will be discussed separately. These groups are difficult to distinguish because the process of formation and differentiation of the big bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie results also in intermediate groups and groups in transition from one group to the other. 4. The correct stand towards friends and foe is to lead the allies in a firm struggle against the common enemy and step by step achieving victory. In order to realise its hegemony in the revolution, the workers’ class has to prove itself the most consistent and the most courageous group, fighting in the front ranks of the revolutionary struggle and leading that revolutionary struggle independently. To contend itself with being an assistant or a coolie of the bourgeoisie, as has been the case till now (towards the comprador bourgeoisie as well as the national bourgeoisie, via National Front organisation led by military/landlords/ national bourgeoisie and to emphasise work in palace-intrigues), is virtually the same as bringing the national revolution to failure. The Party leadership was not only a party to the decision to create the President “Great leader of the Revolution”, it permanently regarded him in 66

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their daily political activities as the unifying figure whose opinions had always to be respected. It has been proved in the prologue, in the actual event and during the epilogue of the G-30-S, that the Party surrendered the leadership to a doublefaced figure whose real face was opposing the dictatorship of the People’s Democracy. The Party leadership, with the argument “firm in principle, flexible in its implementation”, adhered steadfastly to the common program only and abandoned its own program, in its actions, statements, in agitation and propaganda, etc. Three very characteristic events could be chosen as the climax of all this: a. In the prologue period: In a mass meeting on the occasion of the closure of the Second MPRS Plenum in 1963 in Bandung, com. Aidit declared something like this: “May Socialism be realised under the leadership of President Sukarno within a not too long span of time”. On another occasion com. Aidit stated that the Pantjasila was a unifying philosophy, which was not only valid for the national-democratic stage, but also for the next, socialist stage. To deal in such a way with philosophy means to recognise the existence of class collaboration, because philosophy is the expression of class interests and each class has its own interests which, as a whole, cannot be unified with those of other classes. This applies with greater force to a socialist society where there is only the dictatorship of the proletariat whose philosophy is Marxism. To confirm the Pantjasila as the unifying philosophy in the socialist phase, is the same as to confirm the dictatorship of the whole people — Khrushchev’s theory. On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the PKI, i.e. at the official forum of Party life, com. Aidit called the President the Great leader of the Revolution and said that the Indonesian people could never go hungry since the villagers used cassava for building dams against floods. Such talk did not only surrender the leadership to the bourgeoisie but also blurred the class struggle, since economic problems (starvation, etc.) form the very basis of class struggle, which must be raised to a political plane. b. During the G-30-S event, the Party leadership formed a Revolutionary Council which was not dominated by us; they made thus a fundamental mistake, not grasping the actual meaning of the revolution. On the one hand the Party leadership performed leftist acts whereas on the other hand the Party leadership (in the case of the Unity Front and the power) based itself on rightist thought. The Marxist-Leninist

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c. In the epilogue of the G-30-S, the Party leadership through leaflets declared that in conformity with President Sukarno’s orders the PKI would not put up any resistance, in whatsoever form! 5. On the basis in the Unity Front Not to understand that the alliance of workers and peasants forms the basis of the NUF, to contrary, basing itself on the alliance with the bourgeoisie, is rightist opportunism. On the peasants: in order to understand and to have a thorough knowledge on the place of the peasants in the NUF, it would be good to recall what Mao Tse-tung wrote in his Research on the Peasant Movement in Hunan, in 1927. He showed that there are three attitudes towards the peasants: a. To be in front of them and to lead them; b. To stand behind them and to criticise them while swaying the arms; c. To stand face to face with them and to fight them. The only correct attitude is to be in front of them, to go forward, in the sense of leading their actions. The Party leadership in the past also “adopted” this correct attitude. Actually, as was the case with the other parties who officially supported the Political Manifesto, the Party never put it into practice. The Party did not continue leading the peasant actions in Bojolali, Kediri, Klaten, etc. …., until certain results were attained, did not connect them with actions by workers in the towns, especially transport workers (who are the direct link between town and village), and did not lift them to actions on a national and political plane. These one sided actions were even slowed down because of the President’s order, and were directed into channels of legalism a la Tan Ling Djie; that is to say by demanding and then establishing land reform courts where representatives of peasant mass organisations, members of the Unity Front, had a seat; the 3 Ministers’ Committee (in which sat com. Njoto), etc. …. The attitude of the Party leadership of standing behind the peasant, swaying their arms and criticise them in a non-Communist way for being “stupid”, making “big mistakes”, etc. …. was even more lamentable. 6. What is the most fundamental work in the NUF? The moves and actions of the workers are, at any time, the most fundamental activities for the Party work. The entire work of the Unity Front has to be built within the framework of actions by workers and peasants, and also by fishermen on the coasts. Those actions must always be lifted to a political plane, in the sense of 68

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bringing the people’s masses under the leadership of the Party, increasingly closer to the seizure of state power by force. The policy and acts of the Party leadership in the past however have virtually driven the masses away from the revolutionary crisis since it caused the masses to have more illusions about this state and its President, the Great Leader of its Revolution, and since the actions were not directed to the seizure of state power by force. 7. On the role of the urban small bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie The urban small bourgeoisie, large in number and suffering under the oppression of imperialism, bureaucrat-capitalists and feudalism, is for the greater part revolutionary. They are on the whole and important force for the nationaldemocratic revolution of new type and are the trusted allies of the workers’ class. To unite with the small bourgeoisie is the principal work in the towns. To attract the national bourgeoisies and other patriotic elements is a task of the Unity Front in the towns, to be carried out by the workers’ class after the fundamental works have been accomplished. 8. On the question of influencing, restricting and using The workers’ class in the NUF endeavours to influence and to attract other classes and groups. In the same way other classes and groups try to influence and to shake the workers’ class, or, in other, more usual words: to influence, to restrict and to use. The workers’ class must not allow itself to be influenced and shaked by other classes and groups, thus sinking to the same level as their allies or to the level of assistant or coolie of their allies. To prevent this, some conditions must be fulfilled, the main ones, a.o.: a. Basically, the workers’ class must have a Marxist-Leninist Party, b. The workers’ class with the Party as its vanguard has to draw a distinct class boundary with all its allies. This means, politically, to have an independent program and slogan of its own and then, on the basis of that program and those slogan, to reach agreements (on some points, on most points, or on all points), with other classes and groups in order to forge the Unity Front in different spheres and on different levels, while maintaining an independent attitude and acting independently on all basic differences, raising all those allies gradually to their own minimum program. Not following this line results in a hotchpotch, in capitulationism or in Khvostism (tailing after the others) in the NUF. This is what we experienced with the Political Manifesto (Manipol), where The Marxist-Leninist

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we lowered ourselves to Marxism without its main pillar and abandoned our own program so that we entrusted ourselves to the bourgeoisie, tailing after them, and allowing us to be influenced, restricted and used. 9. On the conditions to attract the middle forces. The role of the armed forces Mao Tse-tung wrote (in “The question of tactics in the anti-Japanese unity front”), that the task to attract the middle forces can only be performed under the following conditions: a. we are strong enough b. we appreciate them c. our firm struggle against the die-hards scores successive victories. Though the Party leadership professed to implement those conditions, they were actually only window-dressing. But let us take a genuinely Marxist-Leninist view of the question: The condition “we are strong enough” must be more fully explained. From the practice of the Chinese revolution where the working class and its Party time and again has felt the bitter experiences of the oppression by the internal and external enemy, and the betrayal by their allies, com. Li Wei-han drew the conclusion that without armed forces in the hand, it had been impossible for the working class and the Communist Party to lead the people’s revolution independently, to gain and to maintain the hegemony in the Unity Front. Without armed forces, the working class and its Party could be kicked out by the bourgeoisie at any time (Li Wei-han, 33). G-30-S event has taught us the all too bitter lesson: we were not only kicked out from the National Front which had been boasted on by the Party leadership, but we also allowed the Party and almost all progressive groups in Indonesia to be destroyed without any appreciable resistance. In China — as a result of the local historical developments — the middle groups have never had armed forces of their own, whereas in Indonesia the rightist and the middle groups have their armed forces. That means that to attract the middle forces in Indonesia so much the more are needed armed forces of the workers and peasants themselves. This is the condition to attract the middle groups, to criticise their compromising character and to stimulate their anti-imperialist and anti-feudal character.

IV ON THE PARTY In the Past, the Party leadership boasted the PKI to be a Marxist-Leninist 70

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Party and the biggest Party outside the socialist bloc. Is it true that, to be strong, a Party with the greatest quantity of members is needed? Is it true that with a big number of members that Party automatically becomes Marxist-Leninist? The fact that we failed in the Unity Front, and more so, in the question of the G-30-S, clearly show that our Party was not a strong Party, the more a Marxist-Leninist Party. Revisionism, which held sway in the Party leadership, dragged our Party to the valley of bourgeois ideology and made us forget all conditions for the building of a Party of Leninist type. The enormous damage, suffered by our Party because it took the wrong road, and the fact that without a Marxist-Leninist Party the people cannot possibly gain a just and prosperous society, oblige us to rebuild our Party on a genuine Marxist-Leninist basis. We nee a militant and revolutionary Party, capable to lead the proletariat in the struggle to seize power, with enough experience to find the correct road in a complex revolutionary situation, able to withstand any storm — a beacon for the final victory, in short, a Party of Leninist type. Analysing all aspects of the G-30-S failure and taking a look into the future in seeking a way out of the damage, suffered by our society and our Party, we can draw the basic conclusion that the very essence of this way out lies, first and foremost, in the rebuilding of our Party. This reconstruction must embrace the Party throughout the country, clean from revisionist ideology and elements, with correct strategy and tactics, and implementing all fundamental Marxist-Leninist teachings, which we have briefly touched upon in the foregoing pages. Therefore, in the first stage of our work, all energy, attention and activities have to be devoted to the building of the Party and, within this framework, we have to integrate ourselves dialectically with masses of workers, peasants, fishermen and urban small bourgeoisie in their actions which must progressively be higher levels. What are the conditions for such a Party of Leninist type? First: It has to be the foremost detachment of the proletariat. As the foremost detachment of the proletariat it must be composed of the best elements of the proletariat. The proletariat is a class with high discipline, revolutionary spirit, sepi ing pamrih rame ing gawe (unselfish, imbued with a zest for work). From this class, the Party has to choose and to draw the best elements. The acceptance of members is thus not a question of quantity only but rather of quality. The Marxist-Leninist

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The argument always put forward is: Yes, but from that very quantity emerges quality. Those who put forward this argument seem to forget that the Party, that the Party members, must be of a quality, which grows out of quantity of the working class. From that quality will then grow again a new, highest quality. This foremost detachment must be armed with correct Marxist-Leninist theory, because “without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” (Lenin). Those revolutionary theories are: Marxism-Leninism, merged with the objective situation and development in Indonesia. The implementation of Marxism-Leninism in the specific conditions in Indonesia can by no means be made a cause for turning Marxism-Leninism upside down. Marxism-Leninism must be implemented in such a way that it comprises practice, situation and development in Indonesia on the basis of pure, fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism. The struggle of every Communist Party is a very difficult one, more difficult than whatever kind of war (Lenin). A Communist Party must therefore be capable to lead the proletariat in a protracted, difficult and complex struggle. It must be far-seeing, it must know when to attack and when to retreat (if forced to), but it must always lead the proletariat/people’s masses in whatever situation. In short, the Party must be the General Staff of the Proletariat. The Party must be distinguished from the proletariat, but this does not mean that it is separated from the proletariat. It must be distinguished because it is the leadership of the proletariat/other non-proletariat masses. Without this distinction the Party standard is lowered to the level of common masses, not of chosen quality, and thus cannot possibly take the command. The distinction between the Party and the proletariat/other non-proletariat masses will exist as long as there exist classes. But if the distinction between the Party and the proletariat and other nonproletariat masses becomes a ravine which separates them, then the Party is not a Communist Party any longer. The Party and the masses must always be connected, as flesh and nails, it must always and in any situation be accepted by the masses and lead the masses. The paramount slogan for masses and Party must be “close to the heart and close to the eyes”. Did we fulfil this first condition for a Party in the past? What were the conditions for becoming a member of our Party? Was it not a fact that filling in 72

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a blank was the only condition for becoming a Party member, with the result that our party became a Party of quantity and was thus flooded by small bourgeois mud and poison? The first outside the socialist bloc — in quantity, quantity of members as well as in quantity of mud and poison inside. The second feature: The Party is the organised detachment of the working class. To be able to lead the very difficult struggle against the enemy, well and efficiently organised, the Party is not only the foremost detachment of the proletariat, but must also be its organised detachment. To be able to lead the proletariat and tens of millions of other masses, the organisation of the Party must be tight and efficient, united in an iron discipline, binding on every Party member and every Party organisation. Not everyone can become Party member because to perform his task well, every Party member must be able to lead the masses on the lines laid down by the Party. Every Party member has thus to join one of the Party organisations. Every Party member and every Party organisation must therefore, at any time and in any situation, be able to lead, organise and mobilise the masses within the framework of the preparations for revolution and focussing on revolution. Ironically, the opposite was true: Party organisation (Factions, resorts, etc.) was not solid unity, able to lead, mobilise and organise the masses; they even quarrelled and disputed among themselves. We can answer for ourselves what were our experiences in this connection. As an organised detachment, the Party must be a single system of all its organisations, where the minority submits to the majority, where Party work is led from one centre (democratic centralism). It is within this framework that we have to maintain discipline, iron discipline on the basis of common decisions with a single supervision and leadership. Such kind of discipline is not dead discipline but self-imposed discipline based on principle and conviction. This is possible when: a. the Party is a Party whose members are of the best quality of the proletariat; b. internal democracy within the Party is revived and developed which is to say that the opinions of all members, without exception, are heard and discussed in guided meetings; c. in the leadership who implements and controls the decisions, are concentrated the best elements of the members, able to creatively develop the decisions taken; The Marxist-Leninist

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d. each member, the more the leadership, must master the fundamental theories and the concrete situation; e. the inner-party struggle must be based on: •

the pureness of Marxism-Leninism;

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the monolith character of the Party;

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the control of the implementation and elaboration of the decisions;

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the elevation of the ideological and organisational level by means of criticism and self-criticism at the tight time and always taking in mind that within this framework unnecessary contradictions and nonproletarian methods must be avoided.

When all this is correctly conducted without “corruption” of one of its “pillars”, there will be no feeling of democracy as an unnecessary formality and of centralism as bureaucracy and commandism. But in an emergency situation where democracy cannot possibly be practiced as it should be (e.g. in a revolution, revolutionary situation, revolutionary crisis, a.o.) and where quick decisions have to be taken to avoid the hovering and destruction of the Party and the masses, centralism must be the only permitted way, according to the principle that in any situation the Party has to lead the proletariat and other people’s masses. In the past those conditions have been ignored by the Party leadership, with the result that the Party became an inert body with a leadership who could only give orders since they had become “a layer of bourgeoisie in Communist clothes”. The third feature: The Party must be the highest form of organisation of the proletarian class. The proletariat and other people’s masses have also other organisation besides the Party, like: trade unions, co-operatives, women organisations, etc. …. The majority of those organisations are non-Party, but are absolutely necessary for the working class, because without those organisations it would be impossible to consolidate the Party leadership in several fields of struggle. The problem is how all those numerous organisations can be led from a single centre, so that they do not obstruct each other, all serving the proletariat on the basis of the same principle. Who must lay out the line and the course? A Marxist-Leninist Party can and must fulfil such task, because: a. It is the centre, unifying the best elements of the class, directly connected with the non-Party organisation concerned, and in general 74

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also leading it. b. It is the centre of the best elements of the proletariat and is thus the best school for training its members and other proletarian elements to lead all kinds of organisation forms of the proletariat. c. As the best school to train leaders of the working class it is by virtue of its experience and prestige the only organisation capable to centralise the struggle of the proletariat. Each non-Party organisation thus becomes a continuously moving link, connecting the Party with the class and the classes. This does not mean that trade union, women, youth, student, peasant organisations, etc. must officially follow the Party leadership. The point is that every Party member in those organisations must with might and main fight for it that in practice the organisation concerned voluntarily accepts the Party leadership. In the past, applying the same yardstick to all organisational activities, i.e. within the framework of the NUF — Nas (Nationalist groups), A (Religious groups) and Kom (Communist groups) — the Party leadership indirectly caused the masses with the same class interests to be divided in organisations used on Nas, A and Kom. The result was that the class struggle and other forms of struggle were pushed in a direction of struggle which essentially blurred everything, since they joined the Unity Front on the basis of the common program under bourgeois leadership, abandoning their own program. More, the open or secret proclamation of mass organisation, as: trade unions, youth-student-scientist-women-organisations, a.o. led by Party members, as Communist organisations (to obtain a place in the Nasakom forum), meant actually to reduce the position of its cadres from mass leaders who had to bring the masses closer to the Party (not only those in the mass organisation) to the level of leaders who only took care of its members who were actually already close to the Party. The cadres were thus bound hand and foot and their liberty of action restricted. In this way the strategic task could not be performed, i.e. the task of the Party members in that mass organisation to bring broad masses in a position where it could support the Party, directly or indirectly (for instance, by adopting a neutral attitude) when the Party launched and armed uprising (revolution) to seize power. Our bitter experience with the G-30-S has proved this. The fourth feature: The Party is a tool of the dictatorship of the proletariat The Party is the highest form of organisation of the proletarian class but it is not an aim. The aim of the proletariat is to abolish exploitation. The “greatness” of the Party, the “good reputation” of the Party does not mean anything if it is The Marxist-Leninist

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not able to perform its task as the general staff for successfully seizing state power. The entire work of the Party must therefore basically be directed to the seizure of power to establish the dictatorship of the people’s democracy. That seizure of power can be carried out only by an armed revolution. The task to a Communist Party who has already achieved victory is the same, i.e. it remains a tool of the dictatorship of the proletariat which must be consolidated and developed to the highest summit, until the classes in society have been abolished. The fifth feature: The Party is the realisation of the unity of thought and incompatible with factions The proletariat will not gain victory without a strong party, based on solidarity and iron discipline. But iron discipline is not possible without absolute and complete unity of thought and unity of action of every Party member. This does not mean that there are no differences of opinion within the Party (see the Second feature). The point is that after those differences of opinion have sufficiently been discussed and then decided about, after criticism have sufficiently levelled, all Party members must absolutely abide by the decisions. The forming of factions must therefore be prevented, i.e. groups of Party members who do not want to bow to the collective leadership, and follow a line by themselves which they consider the right one, thus creating a multi-centred Party system. In this connection it must be remembered that opportunism and revisionism are the only reason of faction forming. In a Party, headed by a revisionist group, the formation of factions is unavoidable. Revisionism is the manifestation of bourgeois ideology; the economic basis of the bourgeoisie is free competition. Their ideology with unhealthy competition is therefore the contrary of proletarian ideology with its single leadership. The epilogue, the event and the prologue of the G-30-S have given clear proofs of how the Party leadership has failed in factionalism with the inevitable result that the line which were laid out were crisscross and confused. The sixth feature: The Party can only be strong if it cleans itself of opportunist elements As has bee said above, the mainspring of factionalism is opportunism. What are the other sources of factionalism? a. The party accepts also members who originate from other classes: 76

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from the small bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie, intellectuals, peasants, etc. They contain ideological remnants which cannot be immediately removed. b. The upper layer of the proletariat in the Party, the Party members in parliament, the members of representative bodies and members of government, etc. …. They are bourgeoisied proletariat who can enjoy living on the profits, robbed together by the bourgeoisie. It is the source of factionalism, undermining Party unity. To fight imperialism, bureaucrat-capitalists and feudalism, to prepare revolution to seize power with such troops, is similar to being squashed by the enemy and allow itself to be stabbed in the back. To purge the Party continuously from such elements is therefore the basic condition for leading the revolution and to gain hegemony and victory. Com. Stalin has shown that the theory which would “defeat” opportunist elements by ideological struggle within the Party, the theory to “overcome” these elements within the framework of one party, such theory is a putrid and dangerous theory (Works, VI 192). Com. Lenin too has shown that “at such moments it is not only absolutely necessary to remove the Mensheviks, the reformists from the Party, but even useful to remove good Communists who show vacillation and a tendency to “unite” with the reformists, from all responsible posts …., the slightest hesitation in the Party ranks can ruin everything, abandon the revolution and tear the power from the hands of the proletariat. The leave of these wavering leaders at such a moment (the moments on the eve of the revolution) does not weaken but strengthen the Party, the workers’ movement and the revolution …” (Collected Works, XXV, 462, 463, 464). In “Notes from a publicist”, Lenin further said that to feel pity for some tens of thousands or some hundreds of thousands revisionist/opportunist ….. will harm “the interests of tens of millions of people.” One of our principal tasks in the future is therefore to steel the Party, firmly and continuously, in the struggle to destroy and remove reformism, opportunism and revisionism. There is no other way, there never was anther way.

V ON THE ARMED STRUGGLE The revisionist leadership of the Party spread the fairy tale that the ABRI (armed forces of the RI) were patriotic and democratic and therefore the child of the revolution, originating from the workers’ and peasant classes. This made The Marxist-Leninist

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the Party leadership take the peaceful road by collaborating with the ruling class and not preparing for the armed struggle. The G-30-S, though an armed struggle, is clearly not an armed struggle of Marxist-Leninist type, since it does not fulfill the conditions which we have elaborated in the foregoing pages. How is the Marxist-Leninist view of this armed struggle (revolution)? We must, first and foremost, incalculate the concept that “political power grows out the barrel of the gun” and that “the Marxist-Leninist principles on this revolution are general truth, in China as well as in other countries” (Mao Tsetung: Problems of War and Strategy, 1-13). Lenin too said: “…. Who confirms class struggle must inevitably confirm civil war, which in every class society is a natural continuation, and under certain conditions an unavoidable continuation, a development and intensification of class struggle. All great revolutions have proved this. To avoid civil war, to forget this, means to sink in extreme opportunism and to deny the socialist revolution”. (Quoted by Che Guevara in “Guerrilla Warfare, a method”, 8-9). Is it true that an armed struggle is not possible without a hinterland? The revolution of Russia, Cuba and Zanzibar have proved that this fairy tale does not hold true. A revolution must be based on the strength of the people, led by the Party, not on geographical consideration or on an already victorious neighbour state. A hinterland can indeed play a big role but it is not decisive. This was strategically already established by Lenin and Stalin (Stalin: “On strategy and tacticss”, in works VI, 161). What is the meaning of the bourgeois armed forces? We have explained above that the armed forces of the RI are the backbone of the state which will defend that state against us and therefore at decisive moments, will face us. In such a situation we have only two choices. They destroy us or we destroy them (Che Guevara, op. cit., 2). But though we must regard the armed forces of the RI as the backbone of the state whom we have to destroy, we must not neglect working in their circles, to undermine them from within and to draw as many as possible of their members to our side. But those who have gone over to our side are only secondary reserves and can never be regarded as primary reserves. What is the essence and the future of this armed struggle? 78

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It cannot be denied that his struggle will be struggle on many fronts and a multi-various struggle. It will demand many sacrifices from all of us, many victims and much blood will certainly be shed. In preparing every Party member and the people’s masses to be ready to enter the battle field, there will inevitably rise the question: Can these sacrifices, sufferings and blood-spilling not be avoided? Yes, what can we say? This armed struggle is a struggle which is forced upon us by the armed bourgeoisie. To ignore this fact means to let the sufferings of humanity grow bigger and to increase useless blood-spilling, as has been evident with this G30-S. This armed struggle will sooner or later break out, that is certain. It is a historical necessity, and we do not want to shift this historical task on the next generation. The wounds suffered by our Fatherland, by our people, yes, by the History of Humanity, will heal in the future, when the working people, led by the Party, has seized state power, and Socialism will be established, in peace and mutual affection. Then people will probably talk about past times, when our Party rose again from the wounds it suffered and led the proletariat and the people of Indonesia to eradicate the sores, caused by the past on their oppressors. People will talk on our Party, the PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, who never could be destroyed by defeat and oppression no matter how cruel, but even rose again as the victor in a fierce decisive battle. ● [*The experience of revolution and counter-revolution in Indonesia is a rich experience for the ICM. The counter-revolutionary coup in which over half a million communists and sympathisers were assassinated by the reactionary army led by the hated army general Suharto is one of the worst black events in the entire history of mankind. What were the mistakes of the leadership of the Communist Party of Indonesia which gave ground for the fascist army to launch such ghastly massacre?]

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INTENSIFYING THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE AND CONSOLIDATING THE WORLD PROLETARIAN SOLIDARITY AGAINST GLOBAL IMPERIALISM Dear comrades, IT IS an honour for us to be with you all for participating this forum which is to come to terms in uniting our actions and intensifying our struggle and solidarity amongst Marxist-Leninist parties and revolutionary organisations all over the world, especially Asia, in order to fight against all forms of injustice, oppression and exploitation conducted by imperialism and reactionary ruler in the country. In Indonesia, the reactionary regime intentionally oppresses in a colossal way all Communists and revolutionary progressive democratic movements. These prove only as an initial step in destroying all political system and the democratic foundation throughout Indonesia. These are done by the existing regime in order to pave the path for the world monopoly capitalist in exploiting systematically the workers and simultaneously plundering the economic wealth of the country. INDONESIA IS A NEO-COLONIAL COUNTRY WITH THE WELL-CONSOLIDATED RESIDUE OF FEUDALISM

The global imperialism, controlled fully by the world monopoly capitalist, has resulted in destroying the Indonesian economy and impoverishing the people which today known as one of the poorest in the world. All aid and assistance from IMF, World Bank, ADB which are institutions controlled by world capitalists, apparently are not able to lift Indonesia from its worsening economy. Moreover, the national economy of the country becomes more dependent on the world monopoly capitalist by imposing privatisation programme concerning the assets of national economic wealth and by interfering for the sake of efficiency and free market economic globalisation. By the assistance of those institutions, the reactionary regime formulates “new development strategy” called “structural adjustment programme”. What happened then? The regime that follows such economic policies in fact cannot lift itself from the deepening debt trap. Instead, the living standard of the people becomes down-grading. It becomes crystal clear that those advices deriving from the above mentioned 80

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institutions are not able to solve the crises in Indonesia. On the contrary, almost all initiatives taken by the government are ruining the people. This shows the doctrine “free market” of neo-liberalism is a trick. Up to 31st of January 2009 the total debt of the country reaches US $ 166.7 billions, or 32% of GNP, consisting actually foreign debt as much as US$ 74.6 billions and internal debt in the form of certificate from security payments climbs to the amount of US$ 92.1 billions. Since the enforcement of Foreign Capital Investment Law, huge foreign capital belonging to the world monopoly capitalists flows into Indonesia. Almost all economic sectors have been penetrated and controlled by foreign companies such as oil, gas, minerals, telecommunications, retails, banks, cement, chemical industries, water, plantations, service and industrial manufactures. The power as shaped by the reactionary of the country is the power of bourgeois dictatorship which is fascist in character, undertakes open terror against working class and communist, so that they can freely launch political and economic repression in order to take super-profit maximally by opening the door so widely to foreign capital, and the Indonesian economy becomes dependent on imperialism financially speaking, also on trade and technology which in the end also dependent in political and military terms. Economic policies which are in any way relying on the foreign capital bring in fact about the worsening of the economy of our country and cause the continuing deepening of “economic crisis”. Economic dependency and the huge debt have shaped Indonesia as a neo-colony for the world imperialist/monopoly capitalists. Beside the neo-colonial character of Indonesian economy, there is some residue of feudalism which in fact exists firmly in countryside. Indonesian population is made of 60% peasants whose lives are relying on agricultural products. There is only slightly different with the fate of workers, the peasants too are impoverished in the countryside. The penetration of capitalism throughout villages in the country is bringing out significant change in production relations in villages. However, one character is land monopoly by landlord, which still exists firmly. The feudalistic exploitation in now transformed into capitalist one. The landlord that earlier used share crops system, partly is transformed to wage-system in exploiting the landless peasants. That is why, in the countryside, we can still find exploitation according to feudal system, also land monopoly by landlords. To understand such a condition is very important, as it shall define the character of the change we should undertake through Indonesian revolution. The assessment saying that there exists strong residue of feudalism is very significant, because it defines the revolutionary character. Here conclusion can be drawn: the country remains a neo-colonial one with strong residue of The Marxist-Leninist

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feudalism. These are the causes of poverty, under development of the people that live in a country which has fertile soil and provided with prosperous natural resources. It is wrong to say that the cause of poverty and under development is lack of capital or corruption as propagated by the exploiting class. Imperialism maintains the feudalist system and uses it as the base for the capitalist exploitation in the countryside. THE ONLY WAY IS THE REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE Through empirical practice that we have so far, we can say that the ruling class power derived from the neo-colonial economic system will no other way dedicate to the economic system which has given birth to said power, and will maintains and develops it. General elections done by the bourgeois ruling class disappointed the people and the mass, as they saw intrigues, competitions between representatives of bourgeoisie in fighting for positions of their own clique, which is in essence the division of position and gaining power for contributing the repression of the already oppressed classes in the country. In the recent legislative elections, about 40% of legitimate voters did not participate. The solution as given through general elections and exhibited by bourgeois political parties, do not offer anything to deconstruct the system that brings about the worsening economy. The fundamental change can only be achieved by destroying the existing economic and political system and this need real forces, the driving forces and the principal forces that lead the change under consideration. Therefore, it is the duty of the Indonesian proletariat to rise, mobilise and organise the oppressed mass, the workers, the peasants, and the non-peasants little bourgeoisie to make fundamental social change in Indonesia which is a neo-colonial country by character to become a free and democratic one. Indonesian proletarian should pay attention solely to create the conditions for leading the agrarian revolution by the armed peasants, which is to be the principal struggle in achieving the Indonesian People’s Democratic Revolution. World history has taught us for underdeveloped countries, especially in the countries where peasants form the majority of the mass who suffer mostly from oppression and those whose rights are so severely violated or completely taken away, then the only valid way out is the revolutionary way. Such a path need an objective revolutionary situation for commencing the revolution, but we should not only wait the objective situation in the whole country. The revolution can be started by launching the struggle from the countryside to encircle the towns and cities. US imperialism is the main force of imperialists as it shows through its economic, political and military power. So our joint struggle all over the world should be mostly emphasised towards US as the no. one imperialist power in today’s world. 82

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Within the imperialist countries, each ML party should exercise the struggle of the working class and its alliance against imperialist bourgeois in the country and support revolutionary struggle and anti-imperialist actions of the oppressed people and nations. In the oppressing countries, on the other hand, ML parties and organisations should study particular concrete situation and lead the revolutionary struggle against imperialist forces which oppresses mostly in the country and last but not least the ruling class in the country. ML parties and organisations from oppressed countries are obliged to educate the proletarian and people in their country with the spirit of proletarian internationalism so that they can unite with the proletarian of the imperialist countries. In the countries occupied by imperialism, the most urgent tasks ahead of communists are to create unity as broad as possible in mobilisation against and driving away the occupying power. They should also take historical responsibility to lead the national liberation movement towards revolution and socialism. As Lenin teaches us, there is only one solution for the people all over the world under imperialism: socialism! In the coming future, ML parties and revolutionary organisations should coordinate closely neatly. With the spirit of proletarian internationalism, we must strengthen the ideological, political and organisational line within the framework of the consolidation of the International Communist Movement, so that we can break the chains of the imperialist oppression and also eliminate the revisionist ideological penetration. PARTY BUILDING To understand the problem and obstacles we have in building the party, we need to explicate in a general way the history of the Party. The Party is established on the 23rd of May 1920, which is the oldest communist party in Asia. In her still young age, in 1926, the Party had led the first armed struggle at a national scale, against the Dutch colonial government. It seems that this is the first party in Asia, which has led the armed struggle against colonialism. Thus, starting from her birth, the Party has not taken compromises as the way to fight against oppression of a nation to other nation, of human being to other human being, and has traditionally launched the revolutionary struggle by arms. However, the Party has experienced three severe bloody attacks. We noted them as white terrors, since they were launched by subsequent reactionary ruling class of the country. These terrors reflect the degree of the fierce class struggle in the country. Our Party has also noted that each time it experiences the terror, we loose our leader, even the whole members of leadership, through murder or put in The Marxist-Leninist

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concentration camp. This shows not only the how savage the class enemy is, but also the weakness in the building the organisations of the Party. This implies to the continuing the revolutionary movement, the Party has to give birth new cadres who should build the Party from the beginning. The first White Terror launched by the Dutch imperialist following the failure of 1926 revolt. The government forbid the Party and all members of the leadership have been arrested and put in the camp concentration at a remote and isolated area called Boven Digul, Papua, which is populated by backward people. Not until 1935, the Party found a momentum to be built illegally by young cadres. They operated underground for a decade an found its way to appear after the Indonesian people has succeeded in seizing the political power from Japanese fascists in 1945. The second White Terror (1948) launched by reactionary bourgeois of the country in a conspiracy with US imperialist, have provoked the communist leadership of the armed militia in Madiun, an important town in East Java. This forced the militia to defend and protect themselves from the provoked aggression. This act of defensiveness is seen as an act of revolt by the communists against the bourgeois government by establishing ‘Soviet’ government in Madiun. This provocation is launched by the reactionary to prevent the communists in consolidating their forces following self-criticism as they made some political mistakes for the last two years. The Party had released a resolution called ‘New Path for the Republic Indonesia’. The incident is then known as “Madiun Provocation (1948)” and is used by the reactionaries of the country to launch the terror against the communists throughout the country. Thousands communists and cadres were killed. The principal leadership were caught and without any process, have been executed. Once again, Party leadership has been cut off. However, there were some young leaders who escaped from the terror and through 1950s have succeeded in (re)building the Party throughout the country. Starting with some 10,000 members, the Party through 1950s had become almost 3 million in 1960s, which were spreading throughout the archipellago and consisted all ethnical groups. In the mean time, the Party was said as the biggest one outside the CPC and CPSU. The third White Terror, repeatedly the Party experienced the severest attack from the reactionary class of the country, which seemed not only in national terms but international one. This time the reactionary used the incident of G30-S (30th September Movement) as a raison d’être. G-30-S was a movement of young army officers which took place on 30th September 1965 to abduct some generals belonged to the right-wing army leadership, to be brought to President Sukarno. Few leadership of the Party have been involved in the above mentioned movement outside the regular mechanism of Party organisation. For the army, the involvement of few Party leadership in the movement, was more than enough to launch fierce attack against the Party. The Party and all 84

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revolutionary mass organisations were dissolved and banned. The chasing in physical terms, then took place throughout the country and conducted by the army by mobilising uninformed masses. And communists and their sympathisers became victims. Within one and half months, thousands of dedicated and well experienced cadres have been killed, and other hundreds of thousands have been arrested and detained for some decades without any legal process. The chief leadership was murdered. Within a very short time, Party organisation was completely destroyed and paralysed. A big question should be raised somehow: Why could the Party with its organisations spread throughout the county be destroyed within such a short time and without any revenge at all? How was it possible that cadres and members were passively killed? Rest of the Party leadership who escaped in the mean time has made selfcriticism on the serious mistakes made by the Party concerning the political line. All answers regarding the above mentioned questions were found in the Self-Criticism of the Polit Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Indonesia, dated 1966. This document explicates all weaknesses of the Party during her 20 years of (re)building process. These covers: •

In the field of ideology: the leadership suffered from subjectivism, which according to the sister parties formulated as petty bourgeois method of thinking, not the proletarian mode of thought;

•

In political field: the leadership took the opportunist and revisionist way such as parliamentary and peace, instead of revolutionary way in achieving the revolution in Indonesia;

•

In the field of organisation: the leadership has adopted the liberalism, which meant that organisation was open widely for new membership, even without any ideological qualifications.

The above mentioned Self-Criticism has pointed out solutions, which were formulated in the following Three Banners of the Party, namely: 1. Party building according the ML principles, free from subjectivism, opportunism and revisionism; 2. People’s Armed Struggle which is in essence the peasant armed struggle from arming the agrarian revolution, whish is anti-feudal under the leadership of working class; 3. Revolutionary United Front on basis of an alliance between workers and peasants under the leadership of working class. In 1967, the Party leadership has made serious endeavour to rebuild the Party through selection and organising former cadres and members and tried to transform the open and legal Party to be completely illegal and closed one; The Marxist-Leninist

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form parliamentary struggle to made preparation for armed struggle as shown in the Self-Criticism document dated from 1966. Revolutionary bases have initially built in some places for preparing the armed struggle. Somehow by the end of 1967, the reactionary forces launched attack in several revolutionary bases. This was the second phase of effort in destroying the Party, which has been declared to be dissolved up to its roots. The diminishing of communists had taken place not only in base-areas, but also throughout the country. Intensive chase to communists and their sympathisers who have not been caught through the saying “arrest first, and the reason follows. Indonesian Armed Forces will not take a risk for the existence of communists outside the detention places”. Party leaders were killed or arrested and sentenced to death or to life-long imprisonment. Repeatedly the Party lose all leaders, and all cadres who have much experience in building the Party. Since the destroying of all prepared revolutionary base-areas (1968), the effort to rebuild the Party has been halted completely. Throughout 1970s, as international pressure increased, the military regime in Indonesia was forced to release tens of thousand communists and their sympathisers from some concentration camps. However, their space of physical movement was restricted. They received specific mark in their ID, and they were not allowed to take any function in social organisations. They were not allowed to work as a teacher, become a civil servant, in army, etc. However, at the beginning of 1980, some small number of Party cadres who took responsibility to continue revolutionary works, have made serious efforts to rebuild the Party by establishing an interim Central leadership. Party building has been done by combining the building process from above and from the below. This is not an easy work. Major cadres still suffer from trauma and are forced to work underground amongst the people who have been educated and drilled to be anti-communist for some decades during the military regime. After some 20 years of working, then the above mentioned interim central leadership in 2000 has succeeded in organising Party Congress, which was the 8th one. The Congress has adopted new Constitution and Programmme, and reaffirms the Self-Criticism dated 1966 as the principal way to rebuild the Party and nominate new members of Central Committee and Executive Committee. While it carried out continuously the rectification movement in the whole Party, by the end of 2005, the Party carried out the 9th Congress. The Congress decided to uphold firmly Marxism-Leninism and Maoism principles, to realise the three banners of the Party especially the second banner through preparations of the revolutionary bases concretely. ● Let us intensify the revolutionary struggle and consolidate the world proletarian solidarity against global imperialism! [Communist Party of Indonesia, June, 2009] 86

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THE DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERALISM ON THE NEO-COLONIALLY DEPENDENT COUNTRIES STEFAN ENGLE After the Second World War, the people’s liberation struggle smashed the old colonial system. A strong ally of the liberation struggle was the socialist camp. In this situation, imperialism was compelled to develop new forms of colonialism. The book, Neo-colonialism and the Changes in the National Liberation Struggle, explained this as follows: As long as imperialism and its law-governed striving for elimination of competition, for world domination exist, there will also be colonialism. The division of nations into oppressing and oppressed constitutes the essence of imperialism. The forms and methods of imperialism, however, have changed considerably since the Second World War. (Klaus Arnecke and Stefan Engel, Neo-colonialism and the Changes in the National Liberation Struggle, p. 68) The imperialists take advantage of the economic and political weakness of the former colonies and semi-colonies in order to restore their influence. Willi Dickhut wrote in his book, State-Monopoly Capitalism in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), about the new method of neo-colonialism: Through neo-colonialism, the developing countries become “open” to plunder by the imperialist countries. The developing countries fall into dependence and acquire the character of semi-colonies. The imperialists increase capital export to these countries to further deepen their influence. This lets the proletariat grow and gain strength, on the one hand; on the other hand, it weakens the ruling national bourgeoisie in these countries. Through the economic dependence they become more and more politically dependent, to the point that the ruling forces of these countries become puppets of imperialism. The competition between the monopolies reflects in the power struggle between the various factions of the puppets. (Vol. II, p. 375) The imperialist countries do not display any particular scruples in their The Marxist-Leninist

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neo-colonial exploitation and oppression: economic blackmail, diplomatic interference, use of agents, subversion going as far as overthrow of governments, dependence through military training programs and sale of weapons, also interference by force — all this belongs to the instruments of neo-colonial rule. THE CRISIS OF NEO-COLONIALISM In the 1980s, a deep crisis of neo-colonialism developed. World trade shrank and investments in the developing countries dropped dramatically. Many developing countries could service their debts only in a limited way or not at all, with the consequence of a sharpening international debt crisis. This had significant repercussions on the finance of the imperialist countries. The imperialist answer to the crisis of neo-colonialism was the policy of neo-liberalism with its propaganda of unrestricted flow of capital, privatisation, deregulation and a changed role of the state. The governments of the neocolonially dependent countries were to guarantee the international monopoly free trade in goods and services, a free flow of capital and the freedom to invest. The book, Neo-colonialism and the Changes in the National Liberation Struggle, comments this: Since the beginning of the nineties, the imperialists and their puppets in the dependent countries have been promising the masses the big change through an economic policy of so-called neoliberalism. The term “liberalism” conveys the illusion of free competition, of free development of economic forces. Its tru content, however, consists in the liquidation of competition in the dependent countries and in the endeavour to integrate their economies ever more fully in the international production and distribution of multinational corporations. (p. 271; emphasis added) The economic expansion of the international monopolies could only succeed if the masses in the neo-colonially dependent countries were won for this policy. The masses were rightly outraged about corruption, the overblown state apparatus, many forms of bureaucratic harassment, hyperinflation, technological backwardness and the inefficiency of the state-owned enterprises as well as the oppressive tax burden. Populist politicians like Manem in Argentina or Fujimori in Peru demagogically too up this criticism and — with the slogan of neo-liberalism — temporarily succeeded in creating a mood of going forward, by which they were able to win elections and tackle the neoliberal project. The “Brandy Plan”, devised by the former US Treasury Secretary Brady in 1989, undertook to centrally steer the policy of neo-liberalism in the interest of international finance capital. The book Argentinien — Leben, Sehnsucht und Kampf am Rio De la Plata (Argentina — Life, Longing and Struggle on the Rio de la Plata) explained this as follows: 88

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The Brady Plan was imposed on more than 60 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America for the purpose of “re-scheduling” their debts. This plan was the beginning of a turn in the economic policy towards the dependent countries. To repay their debts, the developing countries’ national resources were to be sold to the highest bidder on the international finance market. This means debts are changed into equity participation by the international monopoly capital. The capital of the developing countries is drastically devalued, allowing the multinational corporations to by up factories, stocks of raw materials and agricultural projects dirt-cheap and put the central sector of these countries’ national economies under the direct control of international monopoly capital. Stefan Engel, Argentinien: Leben, Sehnsucht und Kampf an Rio de la Plata, S. 108) Neo-liberalism created decisive prerequisite for the reorganisation of international production in the neo-colonial countries. It subjugated the national economies of the neo-colonial countries to the international process of the production and reproduction of the international monopolies. In the process it demonstrated a single-mindedness and unscrupulousness the eclipsed everything that had been practiced by neo-colonialism in the past. S ELLOUT

OF THE

C HOICEST P RICES

OF

N ATIONAL E CONOMIES

TO THE

INTERNATIONAL MONOPOLIES

Since the middle of the 1980s, the most important method for subjugation has been the privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Peter Rösler, the deputy managing director of the Ibero-American Association, summed up in a dossier for the foreign trade portal iXPOS in 2001: The results of privatisation in Latin America are absolutely impressive: the sale of more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises during the past ten years yielded revenues totalling about US$150 billion. (Peter Rösler, “Ausländische Direktin-vesstitionen in Lateinamerika” [Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America], www.exposlde, March 29, 2002) In the countries at which the spearhead of the privatisation offensive was directed, the state-owned enterprises’ share of the gross national product dropped drastically: in Bolivia from 16.65 percent in 1980 to 5.22 percent in 1997, in Brazil from 10.81 percent in 1992 to 5.90 percent in 1996, in Chile from 17 percent in 1985 to 6.79 percent in 1996, and in Peru from 19.59 percent in 1983 to 3.1 percent in 1997. Another focus of privatisation was in the former CMEA countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Expressing satisfaction, a “Top Information Leaflet for Business” praised the development in Bulgaria: Under the Kostov government, the reform forces brought Bulgaria a The Marxist-Leninist

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structural reform in 1997 encompassing all spheres. The privatisation of industry, trade and services was accelerated. A currency council was established and the Bulgarian Lev firmly linked with the Deutsche Mark. The government succeeded in achieving a rapid political and economic stabilisation and a speedy renewal of legislation with an eye to the desired EU membership…. Four fifths of the industrial assets could be privatised. (East-West-Institute at the University of Koblenz-Landau [ed.], “Bulgaria Top Information Leaflet for Business”, No. 3, 2002) The privatisation and sell-out of state-owned enterprises to the international monopolies reveal what is the core of the reorganisation of international production in the neo-colonial countries. The extent of this sellout is expressed by the gigantic growth of foreign direct investment. The international monopolies increased their investments in these countries from US$115 billion in 1980 to US$1,2.6 billion in 2000, that is by more than tenfold. The massive penetration of the international monopolies into the process of the production and reproduction of the neo-colonially dependent countries triggered a structural crisis there, whose consequences above all the working class and the broad masses had to bear. It destroyed to a great extent the industrial base, so far so it did not fit in with the structures of the globally organised system of production of the international monopolies. The delegate of the CPI(ML) New Democracy gave a report at the Seventh International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations in the fall of 2001 about the consequences of this process for India: In the industrial sector, already 4 lakh (400,000) of industries are closed or locked out, rendering millions of workers jobless. Their trade union rights are curtailed. Due to the dictated policies of the World Bank, privatisation is taking place rapidly….. Already 40 million unemployed workers are registered in employment exchanges. Thus, the unemployed army is increasing day by day sharpening the contradiction between the workers and the bourgeoisie. (Country Report India, 2001) In the August 1998, the Peruvian magazine Eureka analysed the destruction of jobs in important sectors of the Peruvian economy: • Mining: of the former 75,000 miners, there are only 32,000 still employed. • Fish processing: of the 35,000 workers in the former 21 fish factories, there are only 400 to 500 left. • In the harbour, there used to be 4,898 workers with unlimited contracts and 5,300 fixed-term workers. After privatisation there remained 1.070 workers. • Petro Peru had 11,300 employees in 1990; after the company was privatised and broken up, there were only 1,600 left. 90

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• Construction: of the former 300,000 employees about 60 percent are unemployed. (Source: Eureka, publication of the Centre for Social Research, AMARU, Lima, Peru, No. 2, August 1998) The business journalist Harald Stück analysed in 1996 which prime pieces of the economy interest the international monopolies most: Affected are mainly the economic sectors petrochemicals, telecommunications, water, gas and electricity production, banks, the steel industry, transport, harbour and mining. (Harald Stück, “Privatisierung in Lateinamerika, Die Rolle der deutschen Industrie” [Privatisation in Latin America: The Role of German Industry], Matices, No. 2, winter 1996/97) In fact, direct investment rose sharply in the course of the 1990s in these sectors in particular, for instance in Latin America fro US$65.124 billion to US$237.156 billion, which was an increase of 264 percent. In the Central and Eastern European countries, such investments even rose nine-fold in the period between the first and the second halves of the 1990s; in East Asia/Pacific by 246 percent. In Europe/Central Asia, too, there was an eleven-fold increase to US$76.8 billion. To make this sell-out profitable for the international monopolies, the IMF and the World Bank frequently demanded price increase for water, energy and other services before they granted these countries the re-scheduling of their debts and new credits. Not only economic measures, but also political and military interference are used by the international monopolies to assert their claim to dominance. At the Seventh International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations, the delegate from Bangladesh reported: Very recently the US government demanded that our air space, land and sea ports be allowed to be used by the US army if necessary in order to fight Afghanistan, which is far away from Bangladesh. Government and all the bourgeois parties gladly agreed to it…. Us interference is very open in our country. For example, the US ambassador openly proposed before our national election what should be the program of the first one hundred days of the newly elected government. The ambassador had the audacity to demand that political parties should include her proposals in their election manifesto, and the major bourgeois parties met the ambassador and agreed to her proposal. The government of Bangladesh has nearly completed a contract with a US company to lease out land for 198 years to construct a new seaport by the side of our old port… Our gas fields have already been handed over to several US an done British and one Irish company on terms highly detrimental to our national interest. (Country Report Bangladesh, 2001) The Marxist-Leninist

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Table 54 Investments in sectors of the infrastructure with private participation (in millions of US dollars) Latin America/ Caribbean

East Europe CEE South Middle Sub Asia/ Central Countries1 Asia East/North Saharan Pacific Asia Africa Africa

Telecommunications 1990-1994 32954

9434

1995-2000 99165 Change in percent

2988

838

46365 52508

41791

12131 6729

10681

392

1583

1299

1348

5602

1724

1990-1994 13026

16698 2174

1456

3909

3132

139

1995-2000 82102

46980 18448

9404

16181 7794

4092

Change in percent

181

546

314

149

2846

—

49

201

3120

118

586

Energy

530

749

Transport 1990-1994 14634

10095 1089

1089

127

1995-2000 43105

35946 258

2533

1714 1220

1937

Change in percent

25 6

199

133

1251

—

3869

1990-1994 4510

4023

16

16

—

—

24

1995-2000 12784

9902

2578

1596

216

4106

1595

Chage in percent

146

16009

9872

—

—

6544

195

Water and sanitation

184

1

Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Hungary, Russia, Czech Republic, Romania, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova. Source: World Development Indicators 2002 The imperialist appropriation of the means for serving the masses’ basic needs and of the natural resources characterises most clearly the establishment 92

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of the all-round rule of the international monopolies over the whole society in the neo-colonial countries. THE STRUGGLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONOPOLIES FOR DIRECT CONTROL OVER RAW MATERIALS Safeguarding the raw material base is the primary interest of the international monopolies. After the collapse of the old colonial regimes, the control over raw material regions passed to the countries that had become independent. At first, the international monopolies adopted a policy of beating down the prices for raw materials and increasing the prices for industrial goods, both measures carried out at the expense of the developing countries. This price gap resulted in a considerable increase in debt mainly in those countries where raw material export was the most important or even decisive source of income. In 1998, for example, the proceeds from mineral oil made up 97.7 percent of Nigeria’s export revenues, 95 percent of Kuwait’s, 90 percent each of Libya’s and Saudi Arabia’s, 85 percent of Iran’s and 72 percent of Venezuela’s. Guinea depends to more than 70 percent on the export of bauxite, Jamaica to more than 50 percent. Zambia receives more than 80 percent of its export revenues from copper, Chile 30 percent. According to a survey by the UN development organisation, UNCTAD, as many as 83 developing countries obtain 50 percent of their export earning from only tow or three raw materials (mining and/or agriculture). But this dependence did not alter the fact that the neo-colonial countries continued to have the direct control over their raw materials. In the eyes of the international monopolies, this was an element of uncertainty. In reference to mineral oil — the world’s most important energy raw material with a 40 percent share of primary energy consumption — a study of the German Federal Institute for Geo-science and Raw Material Research expressed clearly what they are most afraid of: A reason for concern is the fact that almost two thirds of the world’s reserves are concentrated in only five countries of the Middle East, with around three fourth under the control of OPEC. (Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, Hanover [ed], Commodity Top News, No. 13 of January 2001) In the 1990s, a large number of mines in neo-colonial countries were privatised, as envisaged by the Brandy Plan. The international monopolies had the state property transferred to them and, in return, redeemed debts of the developing countries. Between 1987 and 1998, in the sector of non-ferrous and steel-refining metals there were 176 cases of privatisation, takeovers and mergers worldwide worth a total of US$53.6 billion. In gold mining, a domain of Anglo-American, in the same period there were 182 mergers, takeovers and cases of privatisation involving capital totalling US$39.9 billion. The systematic The Marxist-Leninist

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acquisition of enterprises exploiting raw materials led to the concentration of the world market shares for iron ore in the hands of just a few corporations in 2000. Among the 500 large international monopolies in 2001, BHP Billiton held rank 281, Anglo-American rank 341, and Ruhrkohle AG rank 365. Table 55 World market shares of non-ferrous metals Non-ferrous metals

No. of corporations

World market shares in %

Copper Niobium Tantalum Titanium Vanadium

6 3 2 4 3

50 100 75 561 92 1

Share refers to “Western world” Source: DIW-Wochenbericht, No. 3, 2000 The monopolies also subjugated the international trade in agricultural products. Purchase and sale of agricultural raw materials were concentrated in the hands of three to six of the largest international monopolies. Table 56 Market power of multinational corporations in agriculture Concentration of the international trade in agricultural products (Share of three to six of the largest international corporations in the worldwide trade in these products) Product

Share of world export of agricultural product in %

Wheat

85-90

Maize (cron)

85-90

Sugar

60

Coffee

85-90

Rice

70

Cocoa bean

85

Tea

80

Bananas

70-75

Timber

90

Cotton

85-90

Hides and skins

25

Tobacco

85-90

Natural rubber

70-75

Jute and jute products

85-90

Source: Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry on “Globalisation of the World Economy – Challenges and Answers” 94

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The neo-liberal policies organised the transition from indirect to direct control of the resources by the international monopolies. No longer content with controlling the raw material markets, they now also took charge of extraction and trading. In a way, this meant a return to the old method of colonialism — but on a new basis. The control of raw material sources and production facilities lies directly in the hands of the imperialist powers and their monopolies. New is only that the neo-colonies possess political independence, formally at least. For outward appearance, the governments bear the political responsibility; behind this façade, however, the international monopolies hold sway. So the novelty is a comprehensive system of deception and manipulation. That fact that, in reality, the international monopolies determines the policy of the neo-colonial countries is covered up to avoid an open confrontation with the working class and the broad masses and to retard the anti-imperialist liberation struggle. The more the masses see through this system of deception and manipulation and understand the imperialist essence of the new relations of exploitation, the more the class struggle in the neo-colonial countries and the struggle for national and social liberation will turn directly against the organs of international finance capital. Then these masses will fight under the leadership of the international working class to overcome the imperialist world system. THE

EXPANSION OF WORLD TRADE AND THE INTERNATIONAL INTRODUCTION OF

MONOPOLY PRICES

The international monopolies let the production facilities acquired in the neo-colonial countries produce mainly for export. On the other hand, the forced takeover of trade barriers was used to flood the markets with imported goods. Trade monopolies like Wal-Mart destroyed the national food markets and monopolised the supply of food to the population — initially at dumping prices, but after eliminating the competitors, at monopoly prices. Willi dickhut commented: A consequence of the monopoly price noticeable to everyone is the tremendous upward trend of prices which is characteristic of the economic life of all the highly developed capitalist countries. Lenin already mentioned “the rise in the cost of living ….. due to the growth of capitalist monopolies” (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 459). (Economic Development and Class Struggle, Part II) The cost of living rose particularly in the countries to which the most capital flowed during the reorganisation of international production. In Brazil the price index climbed to 1,741 times the 1992 level in 2001. In Argentina it rose between 1990 and 1995 fourfold, in Mexico between 1990 and 2001 by a factor of 5.7, in South Korea by more than two thirds, in Chile and South Africa by a factor of 1.5. In Indonesia the price index almost quadrupled over this The Marxist-Leninist

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period, in the Philippines it increased by a factor of 2.5. In Peru it even rose by a factor of 25.8. Not that this tremendous increase in the cost of living was just an ugly side effect of the reorganisation of international production, it was rather a deliberately pursued policy to make the markets especially of the industrially more developed of the developing countries attractive for investments of the international monopolies. An often dramatic curtailment of buying power was imposed upon the masses, frequently combined with a complete change in their previous life circumstances. Table 57 Cost of living index Cost of living index in countries receiving the most capital in the course of the reorganisation of international production (index 1995 = 100) Country

1990 1995 1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

Brazil

0.11

100

111.1

119.9 124.5 138.6 157.7

Argentina

24.7

100

100.2 100.7 101.6 100.4 99.5

98.4

Mexico

44.5

100

134.4 162.1 187.9 219.1 239.9

255.1

Chile

52.2

100

107.4 113.9 119.8 123.8 128.5

133.1

Peru

5.5

100

111.0

142.1

South Korea

74.0

100

105.0 109.6 117.9 118.8

121.5

126.5

Indonesia

65.3

100

107.9 114.6 181.6 218.8 217.7

253.0

Malaysia

—

100

103.5 106.3 111.9 115.0

—

Thailand

79.0

100

105.8 111.4 120.1 120.6 122.4

124.4

Philippines

58.2

100

108.3 115.4 126.6 135.1 140.9

149.5

Taiwan

81.9

100

103.1 104.2 106.1 106.4 107.8

107.8

India

60.7

100

109.0 116.8 132.3 138.4 144.0

149.4

Czech Republic

91.72 100

108.9 118.1 130.7 133.5 138.7

145.2

Hungary

32.3

100

123.6 146.2 167.2 183.9 201.9

220.2

Poland

—

100

119.9

137.7 153.7 164.9 181.6

191.5

South Africa

58.6

100

107.4 116.6 124.6 131.1 138.1

146.0

Egypt

56.0

100

107.2 112.1 116.1 122.2 125.6

—

121.2 129.8 134.3 139.4

116.7

2001 1714.1

1 Figure for 1992 2 Figure for 1994 Sources: Statistiches Jahrbuch für das Ausland; OECD 96

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Monopoly prices can only be obtained if the monopolies do in fact control the internal market, i.e., competition has been eliminated. The monopoly prices in the developing countries are a sure sign that international monopolies have established their rule over the national markets. Willi Dickhut wrote: As long as he can maintain his monopoly, that is, as long as he can prevent the “inflow” of outside capital into his sphere, he can, by the method of fixing a high monopoly price, gain profit that goes beyond the average profit, in brief, he can gain monopoly profit. However, the same thing happens if several capitalists take joint measures to keep away competition …. Therefore, the monopoly price is predatory price determined not by economic laws but by the rapacity of the monopolies. The monopoly capitalists use their monopoly for excessive price increase and for wilful exploitation of the customers dependent on them. (ibid). To push through monopoly prices, in certain countries like Peru and Argentina, or also in Thailand, South Korea and in Philippines, the national currency was directly linked to the imperialist currency, the dollar or euro. In March 2000 Ecuador replaced its previous national currency, the Sucre, by the dollar. The reason cited were loss of confidence in the local currency, continued high inflation, and the hope of easier access to international technology and international know-how. A broadcast on Deutschlandfunk radio on April 28, 2002, clearly pointed out the real beneficiaries of “dollarization” in Ecuador: Ecuadorian monetary policy now is formulated in the USA …. Dollarization is good probably for those companies that invest here themselves. That is to say, that invests a dollar in machines and the like. They now, of course, no longer face the risk of losing that dollar due to inflation. Foreign firms have indeed invested more in Ecuador since dollarization, albeit on a low level and mainly in the ecologically controversial heavy oil pipeline OCP. (Kerstin Fischer and Johannes Beck, “Aus Argentinien nichts gelernt? Dollarization in Ecuador” [No Lessons Learned From Argentina? Dollarization in Ecuador], manuscript of broadcast, pp. 3 and 4) HARBINGERS OF FUTURE BREAKDOWNS OF NEO-COLONIALISM The Asian crisis of 1997-98 was chiefly triggered off by the conduct of big European and Japanese banks. Hardest hit by the crisis were Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Since more attractive loan transactions were not to be had in Europe and Japan, the banks had veritably swamped these five countries with credits, the sum of which rose from $6.1 billion in 1993 to $40.6 billion in 1997, i.e., more than six-fold. Economist Jörg Huffschmid commented: Prospect of high profit, stable exchange rates, and unimpeded movement of capital — these were the constellations that emerged in the Asian The Marxist-Leninist

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countries, partly developing on their own, partly created at the insistence of third parties, and that made these countries the ideal haven for frustrated capital from the metropolises…. The weakness of the Asian finance sector, criticised by the IMF, if anything was that it led itself be drawn in and took these credits — and then had to somehow put them to further use in the country. Since a sufficient number of sound investment projects were not available, the funds simply went to unsound projects, and a considerable part just circulated in the finance sector. The result was a meteoric rise in stock prices. (Politische Ökonomie de Finanzärkte, p. 181) The speculation also accelerated the general price rise. Asian goods became more expensive and were thus harder to sell in the world market. Exports declined relative to imports. The export proceeds now no longer sufficed to repay the loans. Compounding the situation was the linkage to the US dollar of the currencies of Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia. When exchange rate of the dollar rose in relation to most other currencies in 1995, the exchange rates of the Asian currencies pegged to the dollar increased accordingly. This further raised the world market prices of the goods from these countries. At the beginning of 1997 the international banks and currency dealers became convinced that the Asian currencies in question were overvalued. For this reason, linking with the US dollar had to be abandoned and the currencies devaluated. The national governments resisted devaluation at first, selling foreign currency, for they knew that devaluation would make the repayment of the loans, denominated in US dollar, must more difficult and that it would be the death of many companies. But the foreign exchange reserves were limited. In early July 1997 the Thai government had to give up the fight and unlinked its currency from the dollar. Just two weeks later Malaysia followed, and a month later Indonesia. Many banks and enterprises were imperilled, and the prices of stocks from these countries took a nosedive. After reverting to flexible exchange rated the East Asian currencies lost substantial value by the spring of 1998. the devaluation relative to the US dollar came to about 50 percent in Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and Philippines, and even 84 percent in Indonesia. This called international currency speculation into action, which had banked on the devaluation of the Asian currencies. International banks instantly withdrew US$32.3 billion in loans — and the economies of the countries concerned collapsed forthwith. Jörg Huffschmid aptly commented: The prosperity one had worked hard to gain for many years was gone within a few weeks. Strictly speaking, it was not destroyed but transformed into debts: to the IMF, to Western governments and Western enterprises. (ibid, p182) 98

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This devaluation expropriated a large part the wealth of entire countries, and that on a previously unknown scale. The ones who suffered most from the consequences of this financial speculation were the broad masses. Their hardearned money, their savings all of the sudden were worth less. The IMF estimated that, due to the crisis, poverty doubled in Indonesia and rose by 75 percent in Thailand and South Korea. In these three countries alone, at least 22 million people were thrust into misery, suffered hunger, were made homeless and threatened in their very existence. The international monopolies took advantage of the situation to buy up enterprises in these countries at give away prices and so carry on their policy of the reorganisation of international production at the expense of these countries yet more aggressively. In 1998 the crisis spread to Russia, and in 1998-1999 to the entire Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguary), ruining millions of people there too. Brazil managed at first to pass on the effects of the economic crisis to Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. The devaluation of the Brazilian currency cheapened the production of Brazil’s exports, and the neighbouring countries suddenly lost their ability to compete. This plunged them into deep economic crises. But that provided only temporary respite to Brazil before Brazil too was afflicted by a deep economic crisis. ARGENTINA’S ROAD TO NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY The breakdown of Argentina was a lesson in the future developments of neo-colonialism. International finance capital quickly and fully subjugated one of the industrially most highly developed countries of Latin America. The stock of foreign direct investments increased from US$6.6 billion in 1985 to US$73.1 billion in 2000. This put Argentina at the top of the neo-colonially dependent countries, second only to Brazil, Mexico and Singapore. Most of Argentina’s 20 biggest monopoly groups are in the possession or under the control of international monopolies from other countries. In 2000, according to the analyses of the Argentinean Marxist-Leninist scientist Carlos Echagüe, these were • • • • • • • • •

Repsol YPF, petroleum: Spain Techint, steel: formally Argentina, but in reality Italy Telefónica: telephone, television: Spain Carrefour, supermarkets: France Telcom: Italy and France Disco/Americanos, supermarkets: Netherlands/Argentina Péres Companc, foods: Argentina ENDESA, electricity: Spain SHELL, oil: Netherlands/United Kingdom

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• • • • • • • • • • •

Clarin, mass media: Russia/Argentina Cargill, agriculture: USA Ford, automobiles: USA Philip Morris, tobacco/foods: USA Macri, conglomerate: Argentina Esso, oil: USA Fiat, automobile: Italy Coca Cola, foods: USA Renault, automobiles: France Volkswagen, automobiles: Germany Arcor, foods: Argentina

The chemical and petrochemical industry and the oil refineries in Argentina officially are 80 percent foreign-owned, but in reality almost wholly in foreign hands. Sixty percent of the food industry and entire automobile industry belong to foreign corporations. Even the iron and steel industry, thought to be entirely national, is dominated in reality by Russian and Italian capital. DECEPTIVE HOPES IN PRIVATISATION POLICY The sell-out of the Argentine economy to foreign monopolies did not immediately meet with the resistance of the masses, even though it entailed bankruptcies and massive job destruction from the start. The reason was that the proceeds of privatisation temporarily took the strain off the state budget. For a short while it appeared as though the debt could be gotten under control. Wages also rose for a time. In the book, Argentinien — Leben, Sehnsucht und Kampf am Rio de la Plata we read: Many Argentinean working people pinned great hopes on Menem. In fact when Menem took office the average monthly wage rose. In 1989 they were $175. in the first quarter of 1990 they increased to $190, in the second quarter to $271, in the third quarter to $349 and in November/December 1990 even to $490. Naturally this wage increase was accompanied a depreciation of the dollar. But at any rate the real wage rose. (p.100) Argentina’s growing indebtedness was indeed slowed between 1990 and 1993. In 1993 it even temporarily declined a bit, but then rose again sharply after 1994 and soon reached new dimensions. Between 1993 and 2000 the amount that had to be put up for annual debt service nearly quintupled: from US$5.9 billion to the record level of US$27.3 billion. In spite of this, overall indebtedness more than doubled, from US$64.7 billion to US$146.2 billion. The illusory hopes of gaining prosperity from the sell-out of national wealth to the international monopolies were dashed after just a few years. For the credits of the IMF and World Bank, interest and principal had to be paid, but at 100

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the same time the country was bereft of major sources of income following the sale of the state-owned enterprises. The international monopolies made ever greater demands on the infrastructure, demanded government investments, but did not even dream of paying taxes in Argentina to strengthen the state. On the contrary, the state treasury was increasingly plundered. Linkage of the Argentine Peso to the US dollar could not save the country either. In 1991 economics minister Domingo Cavallo boasted that this would give his country “at least six decades of stability”. But with the economic crisis, Argentina encountered growing difficulty repaying the loans. Thereupon the IMF in December 2001 stopped the disbursement of already pledged credits. Loans could still be obtained on the international capital markets, but there Argentina had to pay a 40 percent risk premium. When the government leaked out its intension to discontinue the linkage of the Peso to the US dollar, a mass run on the banks occurred on November 30, 2001. Justifiably, savers feared the drastic devaluation of their savings. On that day alone over US$2 billion were withdrawn from accounts. On December 1, 2001, the government curtailed the rights of savers to draw on their bank deposits, which gave rise to enraged protests particularly from the petty-bourgeois intermediate strata. On December 5 the IMF announced that Argentina could not expect to get any further loans and that the previously agreed loan of US$1.26 billion would not be paid out. This was designed to force the government to lop $4 billion off its budget, but that exacerbated the protests, of course. A new general strike took place on December 19, 2001, which led to the national popular rebellion called the Argentinazo. On December 20, 2001, President De la Rua had to resign. On January 1, 2002, Eduardo Duhalde was instated as President. The US government demanded that the new government present a credible economic program before US funds could again flow to Argentina. As first measures, therefore, the linkage of the peso to the dallor was in fact annulled and the government was granted extensive powers to combat the economic crisis. But that did not help either. In May 2002 the peso had to be devalued by 70 percent, which heated up inflation and further reduced the income of the masses. These developments evidenced the close interaction between debt crisis and economic crisis. Both crises deepened, and when the imperialist countries, with the help of the IMF passed on their own economic problems to Argentina, a hopeless situation arose there. By June, mass unemployment reached the official level of 30 percent, and the prices of food rose 50 percent. REPERCUSSIONS ON INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CAPITAL In the first quarter of 2002, the production of goods in Argentina fell by 20.1 percent, construction activity by 46.1 percent. Every tenth employee lost The Marxist-Leninist

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his or her job in 2001. Private consumption declined 21 percent. Argentina experienced the deepest economic crisis in its history. Of Argentina’s 36 million inhabitants, almost 15 million had to subsist below the poverty level. This had repercussions on the international monopolies. In the first seven months of 2002 the automobile industry cut back output by 45 percent. Argentine production was exported to 80 percent in the past, mainly to Mexico and Brazil. The peso devaluation did benefit exports, but due to the world economic crisis the international markets had shrunk too. In 1998 Volkswagen, Daimler Chrysler, Ford, GM, Renault, PeugeotCitröen, Fiat and Toyota still employed 27,000 blue and white-collared workers in Argentina; in August 2002 it was only a little less than 15,000 — and more than 5,000 of them were temporarily laid off. Other sectors were heavily affected too. The oil company Repsol YPF had to take losses of almost a billion US dollar, France Telecom and the Spanish Telefónica, both stakeholders in Telecom Argentina, reported losses of US$318 million and US$328 million in their annual financial statements. Banks and financial institutions experienced massive setbacks because of the losses from “peso-ization”, the decline in the value of government bonds, and as a consequence of default due to mass unemployment and pauperisation. Foreign banks held a market share of 73 percent in Argentina in 2000; it has just been 15 percent in 1994. they “mastered” the crisis by writing off the losses and thus destroying capital. Table 58 Write-offs and valuation adjustments of international banks for losses in Argentina (in millions of US dollars) Bank

Year 2001

Citigroup/USA

2200

Banco Santander Central Hispano/Spain

1200

Fleet Boston Financial Corporation/USA

1100

Banco Bilbao/Spain

947

Crédit Agricole/France

934

Intesa BCI/Italy

661

Source: Die Welt of April 26, 2002, and January 31, 2003 The IMF demanded the privatisation by Argentina of the last state-owned banks, including the National Bank. This would give the international monopolies direct access to 20 million hectares of land for which these banks have extended mortgage loans. 102

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At the end of 2002, one year after the cessation of debt servicing, no new agreement had been reached yet between the government of Argentina and the IMF; merely the deferral of due payments had been conceded. The measures demanded by the IMF, which boiled down to still more drastic plundering of the Argentine working people, could not be implemented at that time — so strongly had the mass resistance shaken the state apparatus. THE NEO-LIBERAL POLICY DISASTER MAKES THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES A FOCAL POINT OF THE INTERNATIONAL CLASS STRUGGLE

Neo-liberalism started out claiming to be able to resolve the crisis of neocolonialism. But the balance of ten years of neo-liberal policies has been devastating. The budget and debt crises could be dampened only for a time, then broke out anew and all the more violently. Admittedly, there were shortrum company formation and job creating drives, but the complete subjection of the economies of the dependent countries to the international monopolies destroyed the national industries and ended in catastrophic mass unemployment and mass poverty. And new President could raise the hopes of the masses only for a short period; then they turned out to be true vassals of the imperialists, subordinated their countries to the dictates of IMF and World Bank and gave up any remnant of national independence and sovereignty. Neo-colonialism slid into a new crisis, deeper and more comprehensive than that at the beginning of the4 9980s. This crisis operates on the basis of the reorganisation of international production and, above all, affects all sides of the entire system of world economy, all the way to the imperialist centres. Mass struggles develop exactly around central issues of neo-liberal policies. The bourgeois weekly Die Zeit reported about struggles over water in South Africa, Argentina, Ghana, Paraguay, India, Canada and Bolivia which successfully targeted the international energy monopolies: The UN has long been warning that in future wars would no longer be waged for scarce oil but for scarce water; in Porto Alegre one meets people who already fight out such wars today. They come from Bolivia and Argentina, from Ghana and India, from the USA and Paraguay. They fight against the privatisation of water supply in their countries and communities. In Cochabamba, the third largest city of Bolivia, in the spring of 2000 the municipal water company was sold to the US corporation Bechtel. Here, too, prices rose drastically. Here, too, resistance formed. Mass protests occurred, the police responded with teargas, rubber projectiles and finally live ammunition. The government declared martial law. Unionists and community spokesmen were arrested and banished. According to Amnesty International, five people died in this war over water, which lasted several weeks. In the end the “Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life” The Marxist-Leninist

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won out. (Toralf Staud, “More Important Than Oil”, in: Die Zeit of February 3, 2002). One effect of the neo-liberal policies which is important for the future is the extreme weakening of the state apparatuses in the neo-colonially dependent and oppressed countries. The class contradictions intensify, in the Latin American countries a transnational revolutionary ferment is developing, but the state and military machines are hardly able anymore to act against this movement. A Bolivian Marxist-Leninist summed up the ‘water rebellion”: The success of this struggle was an enormous encouragement to the masses in Bolivia. It became evident: neo-liberalism is not an all-powerful force! …. The masses are beginning to recover from the defeat of the past years, they have lost their fear of the government. The international monopolies fear this. (Rote Fahne, No. 45, 2000) The strength of the mass movements and the weakness of the neo-colonial states also explains the increasing militarisation of the relations between developing countries and imperialist countries. More and more often the imperialists find themselves forced to maintain a military presence in the neocolonial and semi-colonial countries in order to sustain the relations of power and exploitation. This tendency is an expression of the aggravated crisis of neo-colonialism. The crisis of neo-liberalism made the class struggle in the neo-colonially exploited and oppressed countries a focal point of the international class struggle. ●

[From “Twilight of the Gods – Götterdämmerung over the “New World Order”, by Stefan Engel]

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On Internationalism and Nationalism K.N. Ramachandran THE International Situation and Our Task (Draft document for the All India Special Conference) points out that the dissolution of the Comintern “should be seen as a strategic error in this background. Lack of an international leadership on the part of world proletariat at this critical juncture led to severe setbacks in scientifically evaluating the laws of motion of finance capital and putting forward the concrete programme of action against imperialism in its neo-colonial phase. The dissolution of the Comintern in the name of defending “fatherland” and for the success of the anti-fascist front, in fact, did immense harm to the world proletariat as it denied the decisive role of the communist party and the Communist International, the only weapons before the working class and oppressed people in their fight against capital and imperialist domination. In brief, in juxtaposing the defence of Soviet Union against the interests of the international socialism and relegating the latter to the background, the international proletariat lost an authoritative organisation to lead the world people against the neo-colonisation process unleashed by US led imperialism in the post WW II phase”. To make this point more clear an analysis of the approach of Soviet Union and China vis-à-vis this dissolution and their approach towards the inter-relation between nationalism and proletarian internationalism is necessary. Lenin had put forward a well defined Marxist approach towards bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism, distinguishing them from each other. Explaining this aspect it is stated in the 1997 international document: “Lenin’s approach to this subject itself was different. What is hidden in these two basically different positions is the basic class difference between the bourgeois chauvinism of the social imperialism and proletarian internationalism. Lenin saw the contradiction between socialist bloc and imperialism, between labour and capital, and between national liberation struggles and imperialism not as isolated ones. On the contrary he saw them as a single whole. For Lenin the proletarian internationalism and the national interest of Soviet Union were not in contradiction. For, Russian state was not an exploiting, bourgeois state as it was till the revolution, but a proletarian state which has taken up the goal of world revolution, its basis itself is international interests of revolution; bourgeois chauvinism is alien to it and belong to its enemy category. Instead of this comprehensive proletarian approach put forward by Lenin, the bourgeois mechanical materialism and sectarianism which got strengthened within the international working class movement in the later period led to seeing the subject isolated, separated from each other as the bourgeoisie always do.” (On International Developments The Marxist-Leninist

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and Tasks of Marxist-Leninist Parties, see The Marxist-Leninist, July 2009) Explaining this aspect Mao wrote: “It is an era in which the world capitalist front has collapsed in one part of the globe (one-sixth of the world) and has fully revealed its decadence everywhere else, in which the remaining capitalist parts cannot survive without relying more than ever on the colonies and semi-colonies, in which a socialist state has been established and has proclaimed its readiness to give active support to the liberation movement of all colonies and semi-colonies, and in which the proletariat of the capitalist countries is steadily freeing itself from the socialimperialist influence of the social-democratic parties and has proclaimed its support for the liberation movement in the colonies and semi-colonies. In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism, i.e., against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist, world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. “ (Mao, On New Democracy, Vol. II) The CPC’s letter on General Line in connection with the Great Debate of 1963 which later became the General Line of the world revolutionary Marxism, in general repeatedly stress upon this Leninist approach. It sums up the revolutionary principles of 1957 Moscow Declaration and 1960 Moscow statement as follows : “Workers of all countries unite, workers of world, unite with the oppressed people and oppressed nations; oppose imperialism and reaction in all countries; strive for world peace, national liberation, people’s democracy, and socialism; consolidate and expand the socialist camp; bring the proletarian world revolution step by step to complete victory; and establish a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without exploitation of may by man”. How was this Marxist-Leninist approach towards the relation between nationalism and proletarian internationalism, between building socialism in a country where the proletariat and its allies have succeeded to capture political power and fulfilling the tasks of proletarian internationalism was applied in practice in Soviet Union and in China under the leadership of the CPSU and CPC calls for a close examination in the context of the severe setbacks suffered by the ICM. SOVIET EXPERIENCE Exposing and uncompromisingly struggling against the social democratic line of Kautsky and company who opposed the revolutionary socialist transformation initiated in Soviet Union and the pseudo-internationalist approach of Trotsky which was later put forward as the concept of ‘permanent 106

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revolution’, Lenin always stressed that Soviet Union should remain as the revolutionary base area of World Proletarian Socialist Revolution. It is in line with this proletarian internationalist approach Lenin gave leadership to reorganize the Second International as Third or Communist International in 1919, struggled against all hues of social democracy and sectarian views in the then existing workers’ parties of Europe and North America in order to give them a revolutionary orientation, put forward the Colonial Thesis calling for completing the tasks of national liberation and bourgeois democratic revolution in the Afro-Asian-Latin American countries subjected to colonial domination under the working class leadership and develop the theory and practice of revolutionary Marxism in all spheres. Even when calling for launching the New Economic Policy (NEP) immediately after the October Revolution to recover the Soviet Union from the disastrous consequences of World War I, from the sabotages by the bourgeois elements and from the economic blockade and aggression launched by the combined imperialist forces, Lenin emphasized that it is only a tactical step to overcome present difficulties and to save the revolution in order to leap forward in coming days. Lenin was not mincing words in his support to the national liberation movements in colonial, semi-colonial and dependent countries and in calling for the proletarian revolutions in the imperialist countries. In continuation to these, in Colonial Thesis Lenin pointed out the determining contradiction in the then concrete situation, and explained the relationship between the Soviet system’s victory over world capitalism and the Soviet movements of various countries along with the advancement of all national liberation movements as follows: “The world political situation has now placed the dictatorship of the proletariat on the order of the day. World political developments are of necessity concentrated on a single focus, the struggle of the world bourgeoisie against the Soviet Russian Republic, around which are inevitably grouped, on the other hand, the Soviet movements of the advanced workers in all countries, and on the other all the national liberation movements in the colonies and among the oppressed nationalities, who are learning from bitter experience that their only salvation lies in the Soviet system’s victory over world capitalism”. This contradiction between world imperialism and socialist system was not seen by Lenin as the contradiction between Soviet Union and US alone as the Khrushchevites interpreted it in a very narrow, chauvinistic sense later. LENIN ATTACKS THE SLOGAN OF ‘DEFENCE OF FATHERLAND’ Declaring that the collapse of the Second International is the Collapse of opportunism, Lenin said: “The question of the fatherland — we shall reply to the opportunists — cannot be posed without due consideration of the concrete historical nature of the present war. This is an imperialist war, i.e., it is being waged at a time of the highest development of capitalism, a time of its The Marxist-Leninist

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approaching end. The working class must first “constitute itself within the nation”, the Communist Manifesto declares, emphasising the limits and conditions of our recognition of nationality and fatherland as essential forms of the bourgeois system, and, consequently, of the bourgeois fatherland. The opportunists distort that truth by extending to the period of the end of capitalism that which was true of the period of its rise. With reference to the former period and to the tasks of the proletariat in its struggle to destroy, not feudalism but capitalism, the Communist Manifesto gives a clear and precise formula: “The workingmen have no country.” One can well understand why the opportunists are so afraid to accept this socialist proposition, afraid even, in most cases, openly to reckon with it. The socialist movement cannot triumph within the old framework of the fatherland. It creates new and superior forms of human society, in which the legitimate needs and progressive aspirations of the working masses of each nationality will, for the first time, be met through international unity, provided existing national partitions are removed. To the present-day bourgeoisie’s attempts to divide and disunite them by means of hypocritical appeals for the “defence of the fatherland” the class-conscious workers will reply with ever new and persevering efforts to unite the workers of various nations in the struggle to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie of all nations. “The bourgeoisie is duping the masses by disguising imperialist rapine with the old ideology of a “national war”. This deceit is being shown up by the proletariat, which has brought forward its slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. This was the slogan of the Stuttgart and Basle resolutions, which had in mind, not war in general, but precisely the present war and spoke, not of “defence of the fatherland”, but of “hastening the downfall of capitalism”, of utilising the war-created crisis for this purpose, and of the example provided by the Paris Commune. The latter was an instance of a war of nations being turned into a civil war...... “Down with mawkishly sanctimonious and fatuous appeals for “peace at any price”! Let us raise high the banner of civil war! Imperialism sets at hazard the fate of European culture: this war will soon be followed by others, unless there are a series of successful revolutions. The story about this being the “last war” is a hollow and dangerous fabrication, a piece of philistine “mythology”. The proletarian banner of civil war will rally together, not only hundreds of thousands of class-conscious workers but millions of semi-proletarians and petty bourgeois, now deceived by chauvinism, but whom the horrors of war will not only intimidate and depress, but also enlighten, teach, arouse, organise, steel and prepare for the war against the bourgeoisie of their “own” country and “foreign” countries. And this will take place, if not today, then tomorrow, if not during the war, then after it, if not in this war then in the next one. “The Second International is dead, overcome by opportunism. Down with opportunism, and long live the Third International, purged not only of “turncoats”, but of opportunism as well. 108

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“The Second International did its share of useful preparatory work in preliminarily organising the proletarian masses during the long, “peaceful” period of the most brutal capitalist slavery and most rapid capitalist progress in the last third of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. To the Third International falls the task of organising the proletarian forces for a revolutionary onslaught against the capitalist governments, for civil war against the bourgeoisie of all countries for the capture of political power, for the triumph of socialism!” Though it was during the years of the World War I that Lenin wrote these words and led the revolutionary practice based on them, his call that the working class should raise themselves from bourgeois nationalist positions based defence of fatherland like slogans and direct their struggles for a higher form of society is of universal importance and was relevant even during the years of World War II. The correctness or otherwise of raising of defence of fatherland slogan and dissolution of Comintern by the Soviet leadership should be analysed based on Lenin’s teachings. FROM ANTI-FASCIST UNITED FRONT TO COMINTERN’S DISSOLUTION Though the World War I was fought for re-division of the world among the imperialist powers, it did not lead to resolution of this problem. On the contrary, the defeat of the Germany-led imperialist powers and imposition of UK-US dictates over them only led to aggravation of the inter-imperialist contradiction. Combined with the fall out of the outbreak of the unprecedentedly sharp economic crisis in the imperialist countries in 1930s, these countries, especially Germany and Italy went under fascist rule throwing up a new and most serious challenge to the proletarian revolutionary movements and the national liberation struggles. It was by analysing the new situation that the 7th Congress of the Comintern in 1935 called on the ICM to build a powerful antifascist movement at international level. The Resolution of the Seventh Comintern Congress on Fascism, Working Class Unity and the Tasks of the Comintern stated: “The Communists, while fighting also against the illusion that war can be eliminated while the capitalist system still exists, are exerting and will exert every effort to prevent war. Should a new imperialist world war break out, despite all efforts of the working class to prevent it, the communists will strive to lead the opponents of war, organised in the struggle for peace, to the struggle for the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war against the fascist instigators of war, against the bourgeoisie, for the overthrow of capitalism…. “At the present historical juncture, when on one-sixth part of the globe the Soviet Union defends socialism and peace for all humanity, the most vital interests of the workers and toilers of all countries demand that in pursuing the policy of the working class, in waging the struggle for peace, the struggle The Marxist-Leninist

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against imperialist war before and after the outbreak of hostilities, the defence of the Soviet Union must be considered paramount “If the commencement of a counter-revolutionary war forces the Soviet Union to set the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in motion for the defence of socialism, the communists will call upon all toilers to work, with all the means at their disposal and at any price, for the victory of the Red Army over the armies of the imperialists.” In order to carry out the anti-fascist tasks in the context of a fascist aggression on USSR and in order to wipe out the fascist forces, explaining the need for strengthening of the Communist Parties, the Resolution stated: “The Congress emphasises with particular stress that only the further all-round consolidation of the communist parties themselves, the development of their initiative, the carrying out of a policy based on Marxist-Leninist principles, and the application of correct flexible tactics, which take into account the concrete situation and the alignment of class forces, can ensure the mobilisation of the widest masses of toilers for the united struggle against fascism, against capitalism.” The Comintern’s call for building the Anti-Fascist United Front was well explained in the 1935 Resolution as a part of the General Line of the ICM in the concrete situation when fascism emerged and posed grave threat not only to the national liberation movements and to the socialist forces led by Soviet Union but even to the bourgeois democratic institutions. So far as it was limited to the needs of the situation during the World War II, even the tactical alliance forged by the Soviet Union with the imperialist powers, US, UK and France, against the fascist axis forces of Germany, Italy and Japan after the fascists attacked on it was a positive step. But the weakness in the approach towards implementing the Comintern’s call started surfacing soon when the Soviet leadership started to turn this tactical step into a strategic one. The division of the imperialist camp in to the fascist axis forces and the allied forces of US, UK and France had taken place basically on the question of re-division of the world between them. Both were pursuing imperialist policies and had colluded for many years in opposing the national liberation movements and socialist forces led by Soviet Union. Both blocs had their own blue-prints about the post-WW II situation. Both were opposed to Comintern and calling for its dissolution. And the US-UK forces had put forward the Atlantic Charter in 1941 in order to dominate the post-WW II situation through new forms of hegemony and plunder. Even after forging alliance with the Soviet Union, the US-UK forces had delayed opening of the promised second battle front against the fascist forces indefinitely. As far as the US-UK forces were concerned they scrupulously limited the alliance with Soviet Union to tactical level and utilised all possibilities to gain initiative over Soviet Union. In spite of all these facts, 110

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that the Soviet leadership was influenced by the weakness of considering the tactical alliance increasingly as a strategic one was a serious error. This erroneous approach started with the approach of focussing entirely on ‘defence of fatherland’ even when Lenin had severely condemned this approach pursued by the social democrats during WW I leading to the collapse of the Second International. Soon after forging the alliance with the US-UKFrench powers, the decision of the Soviet leadership to sign the Atlantic Charter showed that it did not recognise its counter-revolutionary character. When US organised the Brettenwood Agreements in 1944 leading to the formation of IMF and World Bank as another step towards transforming the colonial phase of plunder to neo-colonial phase, the gravity of the challenge posed against the ICM by the US-led imperialist forces through this step was again not recognised. It led to Soviet Union joining IMF and World Bank later. And the decision to dissolve Comintern in 1943 in the name of strengthening the Anti-Fascist United Front was the most crucial decision which turned out as a serious compromise. This error was compounded when the promised reorganisation of the Communist International in the 1943 dissolution statement was never taken up. The dropping of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US imperialism in August 1945 even when the total rout of the fascist axis forces was abundantly clear with the victorious march of the Soviet Red Army to Berlin, with the liberation of the East European countries, with the surrender of Mussolini and Hiterite forces and with Japan agreeing to surrender was an arrogant declaration of Cold War against the socialist camp led by Soviet Union and of the launching of neo-colonisation at global level by the imperialist camp under US leadership. When this consolidation of the imperialist camp and its launching of neo-colonisation which is more sinister and pernicious than the old colonialism challenging the growing socialist camp, the national liberation forces and the world proletariat, oppressed peoples and nations was taking place, in spite of mentioning about the necessity for combating imperialist challenges in the central organ of the Cominform, For Lasting Peace and For People’s Democracy, the Soviet leadership and Cominform in the main failed to come forward to deepen the ideological and political struggle against imperialism and its lackeys. On the contrary Soviet Union signed the Potsdam and later Yalta agreements with the US-led forces which led to a compromise determining the areas of influence of both sides in Europe. Whether such a ‘line of control’ shall help the world Proletarian Socialist Revolution was not given any serious consideration. This compromise led to Soviet Union calling on the Communist Parties in Western Europe, especially in France, which had led powerful guerrilla struggle against the Nazi occupying forces, to surrender arms. Only because of these agreements and Soviet Union failing to extend support, the revolution in Greece on the verge of victory failed. As a result of these agreements, in the The Marxist-Leninist

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absence of a Communist International to extend solidarity to the revolutionary movements which were fighting against new pernicious offensive of the USled imperialist forces and in the atmosphere of a compromising situation created, the rightist trends started getting strengthened in the Communist Parties of Europe. Though Yugoslavia under Titoist leadership which had started openly collaborating with the imperialist powers was expelled from Cominform, as a result of the failure to develop ideological and political understanding about the Cold War and neo-colonial offensive launched by the US-led imperialist camp, the rightist trend in Europe went on getting strengthened. In West Asia and North Africa, which had already become the main region of petroleum production, and which had become strategically crucial for the imperialist camp, following the WW II national liberation movements and Communist Parties were getting strengthened. Anti-imperialist movements were coming to dominance along with leftist, radical political forces. In this atmosphere, it was a well calculated conspiratorial move of the imperialist camp to impose Israel, a Zionist state, on the soil of Palestine. Israel was an imperialist outpost in West Asia to sabotage the national liberation movements and to help tightening of the imperialist stranglehold over this strategic region. Without recognising the gravity of this imperialist move Soviet Union recognised Israel, even though formation of it was contrary to the Leninist teachings on nationality question which Stalin had well explained in 1920s. This compromise by the Soviet Union with the imperialist camp started causing immense harm to the Arab people’s national liberation movements. On the whole in the post WW II situation, in spite of these weaknesses, the East Wind of socialist countries and national liberation movements had become so powerful that they looked like prevailing over the West Wind of imperialism and its lackeys internationally. It was by recognising this fact that right from the time of the WW II itself the think-tanks of US imperialism had started developing its strategy and tactics to combat this mortal challenge by launching the neo-colonial offensive. What was required from the side of the socialist forces, especially Soviet Union which was looked upon as the undisputed leader of the ICM was a serious initiative to develop the understanding about the new imperialist offensive through neo-colonialism, reorganisation of the Communist International according to the needs of the concrete conditions then and an uncompromising struggle against the US-led imperialist camp and its lackeys, with a clear cut proletarian internationalist approach. But when US-led imperialist camp launched the United Nations Organisation (UN) to consolidate the so-called ‘de-colonised’ or ‘newly independent’ countries around the imperialist countries, without recognising the long term perspective of imperialists, Soviet Union became part of it. Even when North Korea was attacked under UN flag by US imperialism this mistake was not rectified. The need for organising and developing a parallel UN against 112

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the US-led UN was never even thought of. All these developments show that in continuation to the ‘defence of the fatherland’ approach of the WW II years, Soviet Union continued to give priority to its own preservation even by making serious compromises with the imperialist camp. These policies amounted to subordinating proletarian internationalism to nationalist needs of protecting Soviet Union. It can be seen that it was this weakness which was getting manifested more and more during and after WW II years which weakened the Bolshevik positions and created a favourable situation for the capitalist roaders led by Khrushchev to usurp power and to put forward the ‘theory of three peacefuls’, or ‘theory of peaceful co-existence and competition with imperialism and peaceful transition to socialism’ in the 22nd Congress of CPSU. WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA In the course of Chinese revolution, it is a fact that some of the advises given by the Comintern leadership without correct cognizance of the concrete conditions including the balance of forces in China had caused harm to the revolutionary movement there. Based on these experiences the CPC had endorsed the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. But that it also failed to take the initiative to influence the ICM for reorganising the Communist International according to the demands of the new situation cannot be ignored. It should be seen in the light of the earlier quoted approach of Lenin who worked hard for a new international immediately following the collapse of the Second International in 1913-14 period. In spite of it, the Proposal Concerning the General Line of the ICM put forward by the CPC in 1963 as part of the Great Debate launched against the revisionist line of Khrushchev which had come to dominate Soviet Union and the summing up of the positions of the 1957 Moscow Statement and 1960 Moscow Communiqué as already quoted were major contributions to the ICM. This General Line along with the Nine Comments published by the CPC then had provided a necessary foundation to reorganise the Communist International. If this reorganisation was taken up, it would have provided tremendous enthusiasm and support to the newly emerging Marxist-Leninist parties around the world to develop their revolutionary line according to the concrete conditions in their own countries and to march forward. But neither any effort was made to develop the ideological, political understanding about imperialism and its neo-colonial offensive based on Leninist positions and in continuation to the explanations provided in the Great Debate documents, nor to reorganise the Communist International. As a result, all the newly emerging Marxist-Leninist parties started upholding whatever is said and done by the CPC blindly. This mechanical approach led all of them to become victims of whichever line was coming into dominance in the CPC during the period of intense inner-party struggle in it. The Marxist-Leninist

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CONSEQUENCES OF THE INNER-PARTY STRUGGLE WITHIN CPC As Mao explained later, the ‘theory of productive forces’ had come to dominance during the Eighth Congress of the CPC in 1956 against the MarxistLeninist teachings on the tasks during the socialist transformation period. Like the revisionist line which had come to dominate the CPSU, the advocates of this capitalist road in China also had no perspective about reorganising the Communist International. They were actually against it. In 1961 even in an article of Chou Enlai, though he was not part of the capitalist roaders, the necessity for reorganising the Communist International was questioned. In this situation, though the Proposal Concerning the General Line of the ICM and documents explaining its various aspects were published in 1963, as the struggle against the capitalist roaders had become the central agenda, the question of rebuilding the Communist International was not even a subject of serious discussion. The international contacts of the CPC were limited to visits of the newly emerged ML parties and leaders of the ‘third world’ countries. Even when the Chinese arguments on the border dispute with India in the main were correct, the border war with India, and later the border skirmishes with Soviet Union when the ideological struggle between them had become fierce had started manifesting the influence of nationalism superseding the proletarian internationalism, adversely affecting the ideological struggle then going on. The ‘left’ sectarian line started exerting its influence in the CPC with the publication of the “Long Live the Victory of People’s War” in 1965 by Lin Biao calling for a mechanical application of the line of the ‘protracted people’s war’ that was practiced in China during the liberation struggle all over the world irrespective of the concrete conditions of other countries. In 1969, in the Ninth Congress of the CPC this line came to dominance within it replacing the Leninist concept of the present era as that of imperialism and proletarian revolution with the concept of an era of total collapse of imperialism and world-wide victory of socialism. Like Khrushchev, Lin Biao also under estimated the strength of the imperialist forces. But contrary to the former’s line of class collaboration and compromise with imperialism, Lin Biao called for a ‘left’ adventurist line of surrounding the ‘cities’, that is the imperialist countries, with the ‘countryside’, that is, the national liberation movements. In spite of it Lin Biao did not call for reorganising the Communist International. On the contrary, his internationalism was limited to mechanical bowing down of all the ML parties to this adventurist line. Within this approach what was concealed was an overdose of nationalism. Though the socialist roaders were apparently in control in the Tenth Congress of the CPC in 1973, a thorough rectification of the line adopted in the Ninth Congress was not taken up. Besides as a result of the damage caused by his adventurist, sectarian line, as soon as Lin Biao was overthrown in 1971, the 114

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rightist line started dominating in the CPC and in Chinese state apparatus. At a time when a threat of Soviet invasion of the nuclear centres of China was being discussed, the Chinese government went for ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ and the visit of US state secretary Kissinger followed by US president Nixon’s visit in 1972 when the US imperialists were intensifying their aggression against North Vietnam, bombing even areas very near to Chinese border. Once again the USled imperialist were arrogantly declaring that they are not ready for any sort of compromise. Once again it was the socialist China which started compromising like Soviet Union earlier, providing opportunity for US to utilise the contradiction between China and Soviet Union, thereby weakening the support both the countries had pledged to Vietnamese people. This weakness of counter posing nationalism against proletarian internationalist approach and making the latter increasingly weak led almost to the obliteration of the fundamental contradiction between imperialism and socialism and projecting “the awakening and growth of the third world is a major event in contemporary international relations”, as Chou Enlai did in his report to the Tenth Congress. It should be remembered that this analysis was made and Deng Tsiaoping who was reinstated made his UN speech in 1974 which marked the attempt of the capitalist roaders to smuggle in the classcollaborationist ‘theory of three worlds’ when contrary to what Deng said then, and in spite of the advance of the national liberation movements in Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchia, under the neo-colonial offensive the Latin American countries were falling in debt trap. More and more Afro-Asian countries were coming under increasing control of IMF-World Bank and MNCs. There was no attempt to recognise the neo-colonial plunder getting intensified day by day under imperialist capital-market control. The contradiction with the Soviet social imperialism was also taken by the Chinese government to the level of compromising with the US supported forces in Angola and Mozambique who were trying to sabotage the national liberation movements there supported by Soviet Union. There was no noteworthy attempt to develop the ideological-political understanding about the neo-colonial strategy and tactics of the imperialist camp and to combat it. While US imperialism and Soviet social imperialism were contending and colluding for world domination, there was a tendency in China of compromising with the former, by depicting the latter as the principal enemy. The proletarian internationalist approach was becoming weaker while nationalist tendencies were gaining strength. An analysis of the experiences of the two decades from the 1956 Eighth Congress of the CPC shows that in spite of the Great Debate against Soviet revisionist line, in spite of the contributions of the Cultural Revolution, and in spite of the great strides in socialist construction, the innerparty struggle went on intensifying with first the rightist trend, then the ‘left’ trend and once again the rightist trend coming to domination, continuously The Marxist-Leninist

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weakening the proletarian internationalist approach. It is these weaknesses which provided a favourable atmosphere for the capitalist roaders to usurp power as soon as Mao died and to degenerate China in to capitalist path. CHALLENGES BEFORE THE ICM TODAY During the last five decades the ICM is reduced from a position of great strength to a very weak one today. In this situation, any analysis which states that so long as Stalin was there everything was OK in Soviet Union or as long as Mao was leading everything was OK in China will be mechanical. It will amount to overlooking the fierce class struggle which was continuing under the dictatorship of proletariat there and in other socialist countries, overlooking the inevitable inner-party struggle taking place in a communist party as a reflection of the class struggle going on in the society. Failure to grasp this has led almost all the communist parties formed under the guidance of Comintern and a large number of Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations that have emerged in the 1960s and their splinter groups to metaphysical positions abandoning the essence of dialectical materialist approach. With the emergence of the capitalist system which was “recreating the world in its own image”, the internationalisation of production and the internationalisation of the class struggle also started intensifying. That is why Marx and Engels called in The Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the World, Untie”. They declared that working class has no nation, and they launched the First International, which was reorganised as the Second International taking the experience of the Paris Commune after a brief gap. Continuing the basic understanding, immediately after the collapse of the Second International Lenin envisaged its reorganisation and soon put it in to practice following the victory of October Revolution. After the great contributions made by the Communist International, after its dissolution in 1943, if it is not reorganised even after more than 66 years, it is not due to any temporary aberration. It is basically due to the basic weakness of the ICM to recognise the cardinal importance of proletarian internationalism, as a result of the nationalist thinking superseding the proletarian internationalist spirit. It was this cardinal weakness, this fundamental error which played the most important role in leading the socialist countries to capitalist restoration and such a large number of communist parties and groups to social democratic degeneration or to the anarchist path. The challenge before the ICM is to recognise this weakness, develop the Leninist teachings on imperialism to recognise and to combat it in its neocolonial phase, to uphold proletarian internationalist positions uncompromisingly, and to march toward reorganising the Communist International according to the present concrete conditions, firmly declaring that socialism is the only alternative to imperialism. ●

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On Mode of Production in India Observer The Naxalbari peasant uprising led by Communist Revolutionaries, and the formation of CPI(ML) in 1969 rejecting the Khrushchevite revisionist path and putting forward a programmatic approach for advancing the New Democratic Revolution (NDR) were momentous developments in the history of Indian communist movement as well as of our country in general. The rejection of Khrushchevite concepts of peaceful co-existence and peaceful competition with the imperialist system and peaceful transition to socialism, and the revisionist-reformist line pursued by the CPI-CPI(M) leaderships, and upholding the revolutionary path of NDR along with countrywide revolutionary struggles gave a new impetus to the Communist movement. In continuation to great Telengana and Tebhaga and other glorious movements led by the undivided CPI, Naxalbari enthused the toiling masses all over the country. When we are evaluating the experience of the last three decades and the present situation, it is becoming all the more clear that, in spite of all the setbacks and splits suffered by the Naxalbari movement, only around its basic positions a polarisation of all the Communist forces all over the country and building up a united and countrywide anti-imperialist, anti-state movement is possible, the intensifying neo-colonial slavery and growing fascist threats can be effectively countered. But for realising this, the revolutionary forces should be strengthened at both ideological-political and organisational planes. That is, by rectifying present shortcomings the ideological-political line should be developed based on the Third International and 1963 Great Debate positions and as a continuation of the position of the undivided Communist movement and of 1970 programme. Also, by settling accounts with the sectarian approaches the party should be reorganised and class/mass organisations built up based on Bolshevik lines. The decision of the 1997 Fourth All India Conference of CPI(ML) Red Flag was an important step forward in this direction. The amended Programme adopted by this Conference has given a qualitatively developed orientation to the mode of production debate taking place in thes country by rectifying the earlier erroneous approach towards feudalism in the 1970 Programme. The 1997 amended Programme states: “16. Even five decades after the transfer of power semi-feudal, pre-capitalist relations still continue in vast areas of the country. Along with this, under the new economic policies land accumulation is promoted for agri-business, for integrating the agrarian sector to international market. A new rich peasant class emerging from continuing state policies including the new economic policies are serving imperialist The Marxist-Leninist

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interests. The number of agricultural workers is swelling with the devastation of landless and poor, and even a section of middle peasants. The removal of subsidies and increasing cost of agricultural inputs have also further sharpened the contradictions in this sector.” Following this it is stated: “So the basic task of Indian revolution is to overthrow the rule of comprador bourgeoisbureaucratic bourgeois-landlord classes serving imperialism”. This Programmatic approach is further explained in the approach paper adopted by the CRC “On Organising Agricultural Workers and Peasant Movement” (see Red Flag, September 1997 issue) as follows: “As a result of opening the agrarian sector to international market in more and more areas, significant changes are taking place in this sector. Capitalist relations are getting strengthened. But this is not leading to the development of independent capitalist relations, to the ever increasing agricultural bourgeoisies or rich peasants becoming national bourgeois in character, or to India becoming a capitalist country as some of the petty-bourgeois trends try to explain. On the contrary, what is happening is that the agrarian sector has also come under increasing hegemony of the imperialist forces. Whatever self-reliance was existing is also disappearing. The agrarian sector is also reduced to an appendage of the imperialist industrial trade interests. It is reduced to a source of resources for the imperialist capital. “The rich peasant or agricultural bourgeois class which is getting richer and more powerful under increasing neo-colonisation is in the main closely linked with and serving the interests of imperialism. While this class along with the MNCs are reaping huge profits, the agricultural workers are getting increasingly pauperised, the poor and marginal peasants are mostly loosing out and getting transformed into agricultural workers, and even a section of middle peasants are also getting reduced to marginal peasants. This has intensified the contradictions between the agricultural workers, poor and middle peasants and a section of rich peasants having patriotic and democratic outlook on the one hand, and the rich peasants and landlords who are increasingly becoming comprador in character and the Indian state led by comprador bourgeoisbureaucratic bourgeois-big landlord classes serving imperialist interests on the other hand”. These long quotes are given here to show that following two decades long studies and practice linked to these studies the Fourth Conference has basically changed the 1970 position which stated that “the contradiction between feudalism and broad masses of people is the principal contradiction, the resolution of which will lead to the resolution of all other contradictions” and that “feudalism serves as the social base of imperialism”. While this position helped to reduce the target of NDR to feudalism simplistically, and to evolve a tactical line based on the “line of annihilation of the class enemies”, it went against all the teachings and experiences of the Third International and those 118

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of all the Communist Parties, including the CPC and undivided CPI, built up under the guidance of Third International. It refused to see the changes that had started taking place in the pre-capitalist relations existing in the country during the colonial period itself, and later during the post-colonial period at a faster pace. Along with this it refused to recognise the inter-relation and interpenetration of all the major contradictions and one-sidedly emphasised the contradiction with feudalism. The latter aspect is already discussed in detail in the article “On the Question of Principal Contradiction” (see Red Flag, AprilJune 1998). Here we are focusing on the former aspect which asserted that feudalism is the social base for the domination of imperialism, that still feudal or semi-feudal relations are the predominant trend in India, and that capitalist development is not at all a significant trend here. In the years following the 9th Congress of CPC held in 1969, when sectarianism dominated the entire approach towards the strategy and tactics of the newly emerging ML parties including CPI(ML), one can understand the taking up of such an erroneous approach towards feudalism and the so-called predominance of feudal, semi-feudal relations, and categorisation of Indian society as semi-feudal. But in the concrete conditions of today, when still more significant and fast changes have further transformed the agrarian scene, when all productive and service sectors in all the countries under imperialist domination are brought under ever-expanding globalisation, and when all the ML organisations are claiming that they have settled accounts with the sectarian past, if the same old approach towards feudalism and the mode of production is maintained by these ML organisations, it should be a matter of great concern. It is the responsibility of the ML forces to develop a healthy ideological polemics focussing on this vital question as a part of overall struggle to develop the ideological-political line. MODE OF PRODUCTION DEBATE IN THE 1970S In the early 1970s after the formation of the CPI(ML) there were three well-defined positions on mode of production in India among the broad spectrum of the forces who are termed as ‘left’. A small section including RSP, SUCI like forces continued to argue that with the transfer of power in 1947 the bourgeois democratic revolution is completed and India became a capitalist country with the Indian state transformed to a bourgeois democratic state. The CPI and CPI(M) took the position that capitalism is the growing trend though the democratic revolution is still not completed. According to CPI the dominant bourgeois class including the emerging bourgeoisie in the agricultural sector are national bourgeois in character. It also envisaged the completion of the socalled ‘national democratic revolution’ under the leadership of this ‘national bourgeoisie’. The CPI(M) with the characterisation of big bourgeois-big landlord classes as the ruling classes also emphasised growing capitalist relations and termed the big bourgeoisie as having dual-character, national as well as collaborating with imperialism. Both were violently opposed to the stand of The Marxist-Leninist

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the CPI(ML) that this big bourgeoisie in India is comprador in character, and both in effect rejected the increasing imperialist domiantion. In the characterisation of the mode of production in India, in the course of rejecting the positions that India is capitalist, or that capitalist relations are the growing trend and that they have become the predominant trend in the agrarian sector, CPI(ML) forces went to the other extreme by analysing that feudal, semi-feudal relations are dominating, and that feudalism remains the socialbase for imperialist domination. CPI(ML) Programme of 1970 as pointed out earlier also analysed that the contradiction between feudalism and broad masses of people is the principal contradiction, the resolution of which will lead to resolution of all other major contradictions. It was in these circumstances a debate on mode of production in India was initiated and carried forward by some of the well-known left economic scholars during 1970-78 in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) which is now collected and edited by Utsa Patnaik in a Sameeksha Trust publication titled “Agrarian Relations and Accumulation: the Mode of Production Debate in India”. Starting by an article by Ashok Rudra based on his studies in Punjab, it was an inquiry into whether the capitalist relations are developing in agrarian sector, whether it is a growing trend, and if so its character. One important feature of this debate was that all the participants in the discussion rejected the position that India is an independent capitalist country. All the studies revealed that it is a basically erroneous stand totally contradicting the concrete analysis of the concrete situation. Replying to Ashok Rudra’s 1970 stand (which he has amended later) on Indian agrarian scene, Utsa Patnaik in her 1971 rejoinder wrote: “A new class of capitalist farmer is emerging: this is a phenomenon common to every region, insofar as every area has been subject to the same forces – albeit operating with varying intensity – of an expanding market and enhanced profitability of agricultural production. The rate at which capitalist development is occurring varies widely in different regions depending on many historical and current circumstances; it may be near zero in some, but the reality of the process cannot be denied. “The development of the capitalist form of organisation must be looked at as a historical process, not as a once-for-all event. The capitalist does not suddenly appear out the blue as a clearly defined ‘pure’ socio-economic type, he develops within the pre-existing non-capitalist economic structure…..” She concluded: “….. analysis of the agrarian structure today and particularly of its class nature, is bedevilled by the prevalence of pre-conceived formulae, e.g., that the dominant relations of production are ‘semi-feudal’. In fact the post-colonial structure with its inter action of developing capitalism with pre-capitalist organisation is a great deal more complex than can be summed 120

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up in a single unqualified phrase. Not least important is the immensely uneven development of different regions, which is inevitable, given the vase size of the country. It is necessary to analyse this complex reality concretely and not evade the job by falling back on convenient formulae. Secondly, to recognise and analyse the reality of limited capitalist development which is taking place today is very different, in my view, from putting forward the thesis that anything like a successful capitalist transformation of Indian agriculture is at all possible. On the contrary, it is necessary to analyse the nature of the capitalist development now taking place, precisely to identify its limits. People who profess to be more interested in the ‘red revolution’ than in the ‘green revolution’ tend, quite incorrectly, to regard the recognition of the fact of limited capitalist development as identical with a conceptual shelving of the ‘red’ revolution in favour of the ‘green’. Hence, their eagerness to deny the reality of the process taking place. The causality of such misconceived radicalism is concrete analysis. (emphasis added). In his rejoinder Ashok Rudra, while agreeing that changes have taken place, argued that “they are largely of a quantitative order, within the framework of the production relations and class structure as has been existing from before. The emergence of a new class would imply that the transformation of quantity into quality has taken place”. Yes, such a transformation is yet to take place, but the fact that capitalist relations were developing could not be denied. Participating in this debate Paresh Chattopadhyay wrote: “….. After asserting that “peasant industry, in spite of its incomparatively tiny establishments and low productivity of labour, its primitive technique and small number of wage workers, is capitalism” Lenin observed that the Narodniks “cannot grasp the point that capital is a certain relation between people, a relation which remains the same whether the categories under comparison are at a higher or lower level of development”. The fact is that, capital and wage labour always go together, they are inseparable. As Marx showed “wage labour and capital are two forms constituting, at different moments, one form and stand and fall together” (Grundrisse). The problem with his intervention was that he could not differentiate the development of capitalism in Western Europe and North America from its development in Tsarist Russia, or later in the colonial and post-colonial conditions in a country like India. So he could not contribute to the debate and jumped to mechanical conclusions. It is to be correctly analysed how Marx’s and Lenin’s analysis is operating in a country under imperialist domination. In response to his arguments Utsa Patnaik replied: “Marx applied a particular method of historical materialism to a systematic analysis, in particular, of the genesis and development of the capitalist mode of production in the concrete historical experience of West Europe. Marx’s model (as elaborated in Capital) uses abstractions of feudalism to establish at the theoretical level the The Marxist-Leninist

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laws of movement of the capitalist mode once it has emerged out of the contradictions of feudalism. In my view, our task is to apply the Marxist method to the concrete historical experience of India. This experience is a highly specific one: namely, the subjugation of a country with pre-capitalist mode of production by a capitalist power. Therefore, we cannot simply take over in a mechanical fashion the propositions proven or demonstrated to hold for the classical ‘model’ of Marx and assume that they hold in the historically specific situation of a colonised country. We must rather try to apply the Marxist method to the specific data of Indian experience. (The starting point of such an attempt has to be a theory of imperialism)”. According to her what happened was that an interaction took place between the externally introduced juridical forms and property relations – which however modified in their application, were in their basis and origin bourgeois – and the existing pre-capitalist production relations. We can concur with this argument to a great extent. This point becomes clearer when Utsa Patnaik later added: “India never saw an integrated development of capitalist production relations and generalised commodity production, out of the internal contradictions of its pre-capitalist mode. Whatever the possibility which might have existed for such a independent integrated development, it was made historically irrelevant by imperialism. We find that generalised commodity production was imposed from outside in the process of imperialist exploitation itself. India was forced to enter the network of world capitalist exchange relations: its pre-capitalist economy was broken up and a fair section of the peasantry was pauperised into landlessness. From this position Utsa Patnaik attacked Andre Gunder Frank type of positions, namely, all countries dominated by imperialism entered the network of world capitalist exchange relationships (and also thereby experienced generalised commodity production to a greater or lesser degree). Therefore all these countries are ‘capitalist’. Therefore the only possible immediate programme of a revolutionary political party in each of these countries must be socialist revolution. It failed to distinguish between capital in the sphere of exchange and capital in the sphere of production and therefore the implicit assumption that the first always implies the second. In other words, this school reduced the relation between the imperialist countries and the countries under imperialist domination to one of unequal exchange between the centre and periphery. This dependency theory led all those who came under its influence to basically erroneous positions. These discussions lead us to the conclusions that capitalism as a trend started appearing in the agricultural scene from the colonial days, particularly during the imperialist epoch of the colonial period roughly beginning with the latter half of the 19th century itself. It was happening when imperialism was smothering the indigenous enterprises and subjugating the country. But as Lenin 122

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said, “the export of capital greatly accelerated the development of capitalism in the countries to which it is exported” and that “capitalism is growing with the greatest rapidity in the colonies”. So however truncated in character, capitalist relations started developing during colonial days itself because of the very nature of imperialism. This process was well explained by Marx and Engels in the oft-quoted passage of The Communist Manifesto as follows: “All old established national industries have been destroyed or are being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw materials, but raw materials drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants satisfied by the production of the country, we find we find new wants requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands. We have universal inter-dependence of nations. All nations, on pains of extinction (are compelled) to adopt the bourgeois mode of production: it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image”. Presently when globalisation has reached unprecedented levels, it is not at all difficult to see how correct was this great observation. To analyse that society remained stagnant with pre-capitalist relations of production during the colonial and post colonial periods, and to conclude that capitalist relations are not developing under imperialist domination during these periods according to the concrete conditions of each country will be going against the Marxist teachings, and the concrete developments in all Asian, African, Latin American countries. ON COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL M ODES OF PRODUCTION Participating in this debate Hamza Alavi stated (1975): “The colonial regime transformed the existing feudal mode of localised production and localised appropriation by a complete transformation of the agrarian economy in the second half of the 19th century, when railway and steamships were to carry raw materials like cotton, indigo, jute and other commodities, which were now to be grown by Indian farmers, to England. That was against the background of destruction of Indian industry and the pauperisation of the artisans who went to swell the ranks of the destitute on the land. Instead of a local exchange between Indian artisans and Indian agriculturists, the produce of the agriculture was to be carried to distant shores and manufactured goods were to be imported. The Indian economy was disarticulated and subordinated to colonialism. Its elements were no longer integrated internally and directly but only by virtue of the separate ties of its different segments with the metropolitan economy. It was no longer a feudal mode of production. It had already been transformed into a colonial mode of production. Generalised commodity production in the colony did not have the same character as that in the imperialist centre itself because of that disarticulation as pointed out by Samar Amin. It was a The Marxist-Leninist

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disarticulated generalised commodity production – precisely, a colonial form of deformed, generalised, commodity production. “Further, unlike the feudal mode of production that had preceded it, the colonial mode of production was no longer one of simple reproduction, but one of extended reproduction. But here again its disformity arising from the colonial status should be seen. The result of the internal disarticulation of the colonial economy, and the extraction of the surplus by the colonial power meant that the extended reproduction could not be realised within the economy of colony but could be realised only through the imperialist centre. The surplus value extracted from the colony went to support capital accumulation at the centre and to raise the organic composition of capital (i.e., higher capital intensity of investment) at the centre while destituting the colonial economy.” Thus according to Hamza Alvi the colonial form was a deformed extended reproduction. The historical process of development of the colonial mode of production is further explained by Hamza Alvi: “Colonial conquest not only displaced the crumbling power of the Mughal Empire and set up the colonial state. It also transformed the structure of power at the local level, concomitantly with the creation of ‘bourgeois landed property’ whereby land became the property of the zamindar, dispossessing the cultivator. Whereas before the change, he peasant sharecropper was unfree and the surplus was extracted from him by the zamindar by virtue of the jurisdiction and coercive force that he directly exercised over him, now it was to be on a new basis. The ‘petty sovereignties’ of the zamindars were abolished under new colonial dispensation that separated political power, now vested in the colonial state, from the economic power of the zamindars. The latter who were ‘landlords’ now became ‘landonwers’. On the surface, their relationships with their sharecroppers do not appear to be very different from what they were before. An empiricist reading of history could easily lead one to suppose that this was unchanged. But the basis of that relationship was fundamentally altered. The peasant was now legally free to leave his zamindar. But being dispossessed, he could have no access to the means of his livelihood without turning to the landowner for whom he now worked out of economic compulsion, ‘freely’. The peasant became a seller of labour power due to his dispossession.” So it can be concluded that as a consequence of a series of changes implemented by the colonial state social relations of production in the agricultural sector started getting transformed. The pre-colonial feudal structure stated dissolved, the peasants were separated from the means of production and livelihood, land, which became property in the hands of landowners, their localised structures of power having been dissolved and incorporated into the structure of colonial state. Economic compulsion was substituted in place of direct political compulsion to draw a surplus from the ‘free’ labour. Based on 124

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these arguments Hamza Alvi proceeded to establish that a peripheral capitalist economy started developing during the colonial phase itself through a long process – which he has explained in the following way: Indian cotton and silk textile industries as well as other industries based on domestic production were destroyed in the early phase of colonisation. With the development of railways and a general improvement in the means of transport and communication Indian agriculture was progressively turned towards the production of crops for the metropolitan markets, especially cotton, jute and indigo; some crops such as tea were produced in plantations owned by colonialists. Elsewhere, peasants started producing food crops as cash crops to feed not only the newly emerging towns as bases of colonial trade, but also the peasants in other areas who had turned into production of export crops. Thus the old pattern of localised production started getting broken and production of commodities for an international market as well as for an expanding domestic market was taken up in hand. Likewise, with the progressive destruction of local manufacturing production, a market was established for imports from England. Thus there was a movement towards generalised commodity production. But, as was stated earlier, this was a form of generalised commodity production that was not giving rise to independent capitalist development but was specific to peripheral capitalism, the circuit of commodity circulation being completed via the link with the metropolis, through exports and imports. The surplus extracted by colonial capital, likewise, created a form of extended reproduction of capital which was generated in the colony, but accumulated by the colonialists. In his analysis of the manner in which the rise of capitalism was caused ‘disintegration of the peasantry’, Lenin did identify two aspects of the process which provides leads into the problem and illuminates the contemporary processes too which are visible in peripheral capitalist societies. He recognised, first, according to Hamza Alvi, the effects of the impact of capitalism in breaking down the self-sufficiency of the peasant economy and drawing them increasingly into the circuit of generalised commodity production generated by the capitalist economy, and secondly, on the increasing migration of the peasant who, as a consequence of the disintegration of peasant economy, had to look for outside employment to supplement the bankrupt farm economy and to subsidise the livelihood of those depended on it. According to Hamza Alvi, many contemporary writers like Bernstein (1977) has concluded that ‘peasant have to be located in their relations with capital and the state, in other words, within ‘capitalist relations of production’ mediated through forms of household production which are a site of a struggle for effective possession and control between the producers and capital/state”. All these leads in the direction that in the aftermath of the impact of the colonial capital and the transformation that follows in the colonial and later in post-colonial decades, the peasant economies The Marxist-Leninist

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have ceased to be ‘pre-capitalist’. While some old forms are still persisting, the underlying structural basis is transformed, according to Hamza Alvi. But it is capitalist development of a specific character that distinguishes it from that in metropolitan societies or in the imperialist centres – one that does not allow forces of production in these societies to grow rapidly as in classical capitalism. This is capitalist development under imperialist domination. Under liberalisation/globalisation this capitalist development in the agrarian sector is integrating this sector more and more to international market system under the domination of imperialist capital and MNCs through the class of big landowners who are becoming predominantly comprador agricultural bourgeoisie. ON FEUDAL AND CAPITALIST M ODE OF PRODUCTION In the mode of production debate there is a major trend that still analyses the agrarian sector as still dominated by pre-capitalist or semi-feudal relationships. A Bhaduri (EPW, 1973) has explained the basic features of semifeudalism as: “(1) An extensive non-legalised share-cropping system, (2) Perpetual indebtedness of the small tenants, (3) (Rural exploiters) operating both as landowners and lenders to the small tenants and (4) Tenants having incomplete access to the market.” According to the critique of Jairus Banaji (EPW, 1977), Bhaduri describes a system of production in which the power of money is clearly of fundamental importance; the small producer who may, for example, be a sharecropper, is ‘indebted’ to his landlord, who extorts surplus labour from him on the basis of a relationship that is fundamentally one of economic dependence. The ‘consumption loans’ through which the small producer is bound to his landlord-moneylender, form advances for the reproduction of his labour power. The small producers bear no direct relationship to the market, because his landlord-moneylender intervenes in the process of reproduction to realise the surplus labour extorted from his on the market. Even accepting that such an ‘ideal’ concept of semi-feudalism existed once, can one state based on both macro and micro studies that such a system is dominating the rural scene today? Besides, as Ashok Rudra explains (EPW, 1978), it will be fallacious to treat institutions like share-cropping or tenancy, money lending, attached labour, etc. only as expression of feudal relations of production. It is true that similar institutions have functioned in pre-capitalist social formations and have acted as fetters to the development of capitalist forces and relations of production. But there is no justification to treat them as unchangeable or unadoptable to new conditions. First let us take the case of tenancy. A. Rudra explains: “As long as the owner of the land is a pure rentier who takes no interest in production decision and does not perform any entrepreneurial functions and who uses up the rent for purposes of consumption or unproductive investment, the tenancy could be 126

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regarded as a feudal institution. It is more so when there is a relation of domination and subordination between the landlord and the tenant which is extra-economic in nature. Such a relation may pervade all parts of the tenant’s private and social life. The whole village society may be dominated by a handful of neo-cultivating landlords. In such a situation the village society can be characterised as feudalistic and tenancy can be treated as part of it. But during last decades this situation has undergone major changes in vast areas. Tenancy do not occur today in many areas as an integral part of social organisation involving domination based on direct compulsion or extra economic coercion, nor does the tenancy contract necessarily involve such feudalistic features. Tenancy arrangements can be straight forward contracts between two parties. Then it can fit well into a vehicle for emerging capitalist tendencies. This is more so when the landlords takes interest in production to the extent of sharing costs and making advances to the tenant as part of cost of production. Again tenancy can be a full-fledged capitalist institution when the tenant is the dominant party and the lesser is a small landowner. It is an emerging trend in different part of the country that enterprising famers are leasing from poor small landowners. So tenancy as an institution can accommodate capitalist relations also. Then the institution of money-lending, A. Rudra points out that is has been regarded as an institution that has been an obstacle to the emergence of capitalist forces and relations of production due to its dual role. Firstly, it has been one of the ways in which capital has been diverted away from productive channels. Secondly, usury has the role of preservation of a power structure where a few rural rich maintaining a dominating control over the lives of the rural poor. Though this was the condition till few years back, it has been changing fast in recent times. Credit plays an essential part in the productive process and some part the loan taken, and increasingly a major part of it is for purpose of production. Many rich farmers who engage in money lending for whom it is neither a principal nor a subsidiary occupation give loan for consumption as well as production. So lumping together all kinds of loans to make estimates of indebtedness of the peasantry and to treat it as an indicator for showing the existence of feudalism is wrong. If this method is adopted one might confuse highly advanced areas where lot of inputs and for them loans are utilised with the areas which are still under remnants of feudal relations. In the areas of intensive cultivation extent of indebtedness of peasantry can be an index of the development of capitalist forces. Now let us turn to the criterion of non-free labour or the insufficient development of labour market as an indicator of the continued prevalence of feudalistic relations. As A. Rudra says, while interpreting lack of freedom of The Marxist-Leninist

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labourers in many studies, it is very often forgotten that for Marx a free labour market is one which is free from constraints arising out of extra-economic factors. A non-free labourer is one who is prevented by extra-economic coercive forces to sell his labour power to the maximum bidder. While analysing this, one should not forget extra-economic factors like caste, traditions, etc. which is preventing some sections from engaging in labour or some type of labour. Similarly, many of the examples cited to show lack of freedom in the labour market can take place under capitalist or any other relations of production also. Extreme destitution of landless and poor peasants and agricultural workers cannot be cited as example for feudal relations. As explained by Marx in first Volume of Capital, living conditions of industrial proletariat during the early days of capitalism was not different. The condition of unorganised workers, who are most numerous today and who live in slums or ghettos is also not different. Workers whether in rural or urban areas are now loosing even the bargaining power that existed so far due to the existence of an increasing ‘reserve army’ of unemployed. Regarding ‘bonded’ labour all studies show that in quantitative terms their number is very limited. Again if a farm servant or tenant who has taken loan from the landlord or employer may not be free to leave him, the same is applicable to one who is employed under a capitalist type farm or government enterprise also. We should recognise that all debt-relations in agrarian sector do not constitute bonded labour system. Similarly, annual farm servants are also considered by some as an indication of feudal relations. In is fallacious to say that daily contract with casual workers is capitalistic and annual or long-term contracts as feudalistic, especially when outside agriculture long-term contract is treated as perfectly normal and when long-term or permanent contracts are preferred. So by citing such institutions one cannot define a mode of production feudal or capitalistic as these institutions themselves are subject to changes and the same institution can exist under both with necessary changes. Only dependence arising out of extra-economic factor can be termed feudal. In a society where vast majority are poor and only minority are rich, and where the institutions are meant to buttress the strength of the rich, as Rudra writes, the poor cannot but be dependent on the rich in various ways. This cannot be taken as an indicator of feudal relations. From here Rudra goes to put forward certain criteria to characterise precapitalist production relations. They are, according to him, (1) surplus extracted through extra economic coercion of ‘unfree’ labour, (2) surplus appropriated directly without intervention of any market, (3) surplus dissipated in luxury consumption as well as in different unproductive investments, leaving stock of productive capital unchanged and production in a cycle of simple reproduction, 128

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and (4) technology remains unchanged. All macro and micro studies conducted by numerous agencies and institutions during the last decades in all regions show that all these conditions are fast changing and the areas under pre-capitalist or semi-feudal relations are fast decreasing. It is a decreasing trend. Now let us see the characteristics of capitalistic relations pointed out by Rudra: They are (1) surplus extracted from ‘free’ sellers of labour power in a commodity production process, (2) surplus realised exchange in a commodity exchange process, (3) surplus reinvested giving rise to a continued process of accumulation of capital and ever-expanding reproduction, (4) pursuit of profit leading to changes in the organic composition of capital and a continuous process of technological advancement. The most serious flaw in the analysis of A. Rudra here is that he only see two possible modes of production, either feudal or capitalistic. He does not bother to give cognizance to the analysis made by Hamza Alvi about colonial and post-colonial changes in the mode of production and the role of imperialism in this. If Hamza Alvi defined these capitalistic changes as peripheral, Rudra is explaining the characteristics of independent capitalist development as happened in West European countries and explained by Marx in Capital, as if it can happen in a country like India which is under intensifying neo-colonial domination following two centuries of colonial domination. Once this aspect is also seriously considered, it is not difficult to see that all the four characteristics of capitalistic relations as pointed out by Rudra are becoming more and more visible in India, of course, under the domination of imperialist capital and market system. APPROACH TOWARDS CLASS ANALYSIS IN THE RURAL AREAS Lenin discussed the following classes in the context of the European capitalist countries in 1920 in the ‘Preliminary Draft Thesis on the Agrarian Question’ presented to the Second Congress of the Comintern. 1) First, the agricultural proletariat, wage-labourers (by the year, season, or day) who obtain their livelihood by working for hire at capitalist agricultural enterprises. 2) Second, the semi-proletariat or peasants who till tiny plots of land, that is, those who obtain their livelihood partly as wage labourers and partly by working their own or rented plots of land, which provide their families only with part of their means of subsistence. 3) Third, the small peasantry, i.e., the small-scale tillers who either as owners or tenants, hold small plots of land which enable them to satisfy the needs of their families and their farms, and do not hire outside labour. 4) In the economic sense one should understand by ‘middle peasants’ The Marxist-Leninist

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those small farmers who, (i) either as owners or tenants hold plots of land that are also small, but under capitalism, are sufficient not only to provide, as a general rule, a meagre subsistence for the family and the bare minimum needed to maintain the farm, but also produce as certain surplus which, in good years at least, be converted into capital; (ii) quite frequently …. Resort to the employment of hired labour. 5) The big peasants are capitalist entrepreneurs in agriculture, who as a rule, employ several hired labourers and are connected with the ‘peasantry’ only in their low cultural level, habits of life and the manual labour they themselves perform on their farms. 6) “…. The big landowners, who, in capitalist countries, directly or through their tenant farmers, systematically exploit wage labour and the neighbouring small (and not infrequently part of the middle) peasantry, do not themselves engage in manual labour, and are in the main descended from feudal lords”. The main difference between Lenin’s characterisation of classes in Europe and of Mao Tsetung in China is that while the former analyses the classes in a region where capitalist development has taken place to a great extent, latter dealt with a semi-colonial country where imperialism had not succeeded in establishing total colonial domination and where, as a result, feudal relations were till then predominant. According to Mao’s analysis the classes in the rural areas in China were; (i) the landlords, (ii) the rich peasant, (iii) the middle peasant; (iv) the poor peasant and (v) the agricultural workers. Compared to China’s agrarian structure when Mao analysed it in the 1930s, the agrarian sector in India has undergone many changes in the colonial period itself. In the post-colonial years changes took place very fast. Under liberalisation/ globalisation these changes bringing in capitalistic relations under imperialist domination are taking place faster. The agricultural workers are increasing in strength among the agrarian classes. With the intensification of neo-colonisation, growing integration of agrarian sector with international market system and the consequent peripheral or neo-colonial form of capitalist development more and more sections of peasantry are getting pauperised and they are also getting reduced to agricultural workers. Thus the agricultural workers are the most numerous, most organised and biggest class in the agrarian sector. They get their livelihood wholly or mainly by selling their labour power. The poor and marginal peasants till tiny plots of their own land and land taken on rent and obtain part of their livelihood as wage-labourers. Under mounting pressure of liberalisation/globalisation this section, by and large, is getting reduced to the status of agricultural workers. 130

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The middle peasants own their land, or own part of their land and rent some more land. He earns his income mainly from his own or his family’s labour. But at times he has to hire some labour also. While the lower/marginal sections undergo impoverishment fast under liberalisation/globalisation and are forced to resort to even suicide as happened in large numbers recently, only a small upper section make an upward movement. All the exploiting sections in the agrarian sector can be included in the class of landlords which include the rich peasants. The growing force within this class is the comprador agricultural bourgeoisie who are through various ways connected with imperialist capital, MNCs and the market system. This is the dominant ruling class in the rural area. They employ several hired labourers and utilised modern technological equipments and facilities. CONCLUSION Peripheral, post-colonial, neo-colonial, or stunted, however one may call, it is a fact that in continuation to the efforts initiated by British imperialism during the colonial phase, in the post-colonial phase significant capitalist developments have taken place in the agrarian sector under the domination of imperialist capital and market system. As a result, through the ruling class policies the agrarian sector is also increasingly getting integrated to the international market system. MNCs are increasingly penetrating into this field also. All these developments prove the fallacy of the stand earlier taken by the ML movement in the 1970s that feudalism is the principal contradiction, the resolution of which will resolve all major contradictions and that feudalism serves as the social base for imperialist plunder. Only by rejecting this socalled ‘theory of feudalism’ or semi-feudalism, recognising the correct relation between the anti-imperialist, anti-comprador, anti-feudal struggles according to present concrete conditions, the struggle of NDR can be carried forward. A scientific analysis of the changes taking place in the rural areas will help to develop an agrarian programme, to develop the tactical line for intensifying class struggle and to concretely explain the agrarian revolution in present situation. It is in this context the Marxist-Leninist forces should take initiative to develop the debate on the mode of production and characterisation of the Indian state so that all previous erroneous, sectarian positions can be rejected, and the general line for the NDR can be developed concretely based on a scientific class analysis. ●

[The Red Flag, July-September 1998]

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HOW THE THEORY OF “PROTRACTED PEOPLE’S WAR” HAS HARMED THE MARXISTLENINIST MOVEMENT Sanjay Singhvi TODAY, almost all the Communist parties all over the world, who profess “Maoism” and many who profess “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Dze Dong Thought” state that the path of revolution that is required to be followed in all countries, which are under the domination of imperialism, including countries that are variously referred to as “semi-colonial” and “neo-colonial” is the path of “Protracted Peoples’ War”. It may be true that this phrase has today come to mean different things to different people. Some people use the term to describe what is, in essence, an application of the “foco” concept put forward by Che Guevara. Yet others use it to describe nothing more than a strategy of building up a people’s movement. Many use it as a mere slogan to testify to their “revolutionary” credentials without ever leaving their armchairs. We propose that, in all these manifestations, this term is being brutally abused and has misled the revolutionary movements all over the world and has been the cause of tremendous harm to the revolutionary movement all over the world. Till 1965, in Communist literature, the term “people’s war” was never used to describe revolution or even a strategy for revolution. It was commonly used only as a category of war – war between countries, or at least between armies. It was used to distinguish a just war from a predatory imperialist war. It was used to signify a war which had the support of the people and in which the people were enthusiastically taking part. It was never used to signify a strategy for revolution. The term was first used by Com. Lenin during the time of the First World War in the course of his polemics against Kautsky and the other class collaborationist renegades of the Second International. He first used the term in 1914 in his writing, “Positions and Tasks of the Socialist International” published in the Sotsial-Democrat No. 33 of 1st November 1914. Here, while answering the argument of the renegades that internationalism consists of the workers of one country shooting down the workers of another, allegedly in “defense of the fatherland”, he refers to the 1st World War as a “People’s war”. What he means by this term is merely that the war enjoys “popular” chauvinist support. He says: 132

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“War is no chance happening, no “sin” as is thought by Christian priests (who are no whit behind the opportunists in preaching patriotism, humanity and peace), but an inevitable stage of capitalism, just as legitimate a form of the capitalist way of life as peace is. Presentday war is a people’s war. What follows from this truth is not that we must swim with the “popular” current of chauvinism, but that the class contradictions dividing the nations continue to exist in wartime and manifest themselves in conditions of war.” Lenin goes on to clarify the meaning of People’s War in his writing “The Collapse of the Second International” published in the journal Kommunist Nos. 1-2. This was written in May-June 1915, by which time the true nature of the war as an imperialist war for colonies stood revealed. Here Lenin asserts that the 1st World War was not, then, a people’s war. While explaining how Kautsky and Plekhanov are misleading the people by comparing the present imperialist war with certain just and revolutionary wars of the earlier century (like the peasant wars in Germany) and while relying upon the Basle resolution of the Second International (where it had been resolved to oppose the present imperialist war), in his defense, he says: “The Basle resolution does not speak of a national or a people’s war — examples of which have occurred in Europe, wars that were even typical of the period of 1789-1871 — or of a revolutionary war, which Social-Democrats have never renounced, but of the present war, which is the outcome of “capitalist imperialism” and “dynastic interests”, the outcome of “the policy of conquest” pursued by both groups of belligerent powers — the Austro-German and the Anglo FrancoRussian. Plekhanov, Kautsky and Co. are flagrantly deceiving the workers by repeating the selfish lie of the bourgeoisie of all countries, which is striving with all its might to depict this imperialist and predatory war for colonies as a people’s war, a war of defence (for any side); when they seek to justify this war by citing historical examples of non-imperialist wars.” Here Lenin opposes people’s war to the present imperialist war. In any case, it is clear as crystal that Lenin is not using the term “people’s war” as a strategy for revolution but is using it to define a particular kind of war. He is using it as a category of the universal term “war” which is also used as a war between countries. Stalin also used the term “people’s war”. In his Order of the day issued on 1st May 1943, in the thick of the Second World War, he asserts that the participation of the whole of the people in the war effort on the part of the Soviet Union has made the war a “people’s war”. He says: “Comrades! The Soviet people display the greatest solicitude for their Red Army. They are ready to devote all their strength to the task of The Marxist-Leninist

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still further increasing the military might of our Soviet land. In less than four months the peoples of the Soviet Union contributed over seven billion rubles to the Red Army Fund. This is further proof that the war against the Germans is indeed a people’s war of all the nations inhabiting the Soviet Union. The workers, collective farmers and intellectuals are working tirelessly in factory, office, transport system and collective and state farm, staunchly and bravely bearing all the privations caused by the war. But the war against the German fascist invaders demands that the Red Army should receive still more guns, tanks, aircraft, machine guns, automatic rifles, mortars, ammunition, equipment and food supplies. Hence the workers, collective farmers and the entire Soviet intelligentsia must work with redoubled energy to supply the needs of the front. All our people, and all our institutions in the rear, must work with the smoothness and precision of a well-made clock. Let us recall the behest of our great Lenin: “Since war has proved inevitable — everything for the war, and the slightest laxity or lack of energy must be punished in conformity with wartime laws.”” Here too Stalin does not use the term “people’s war” in the nature of a strategy for revolution but only as a category of war between nations. Mao talks of people’s war only in terms of actual war. He has never mentioned it in terms of a strategy for making revolution or in the nature of a “path for revolution”. He talks of people’s war during two phases of the Chinese revolution. The first phase is during the fight against the Japanese aggressors during the period from 1935 to 1945 or so. Almost inevitably, during this period, he uses the phrase “people’s war” only in the form “people’s war of resistance”. This can be seen in various writings of Mao like “Situation and Tasks in AntiJapanese War After the Fall of Shanghai and Taiyuan”. This is the outline for a report made by Com. Mao Dze Dong to a meeting of party activists in Yenan in November 1937. Here, for the first time Mao puts forward his understanding of what is a people’s war. The first four points of the report read thus: “1. We support any kind of war of resistance, even though partial, against the invasion of Japanese imperialism. For partial resistance is a step forward from non-resistance, and to a certain extent it is revolutionary in character and is a war in defence of the motherland. 2. However, a war of partial resistance by the government alone without the mass participation of the people will certainly fail, as we have already pointed out (at the meeting of Party activists in Yenan in April of this year, at the Party’s National Conference in May, and in the resolution[1] of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee 134

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in August). For it is not a national revolutionary war in the full sense, not a people’s war. 3. We stand for a national revolutionary war in the full sense, a war in which the entire people are mobilized, in other words, total resistance. For only such resistance constitutes a people’s war and can achieve the goal of defending the motherland. 4. Although the war of partial resistance advocated by the Kuomintang also constitutes a national war and is revolutionary in character to a certain extent, its revolutionary character is far from complete. Partial resistance is bound to lead to defeat in the war; it can never successfully defend the motherland....” Thus it is again clear that when talking of “people’s war” Mao is using the term to describe an actual war. One in which the Japanese imperialists, with the help of the German and Italian Fascists, had actually invaded China. In fact, in his writing “On Coalition Government” (1945) Com. Mao has stated that the People’s War of Resistance started in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of China. Thus Mao does not refer to the earlier period from 1927, though the long march had started, as a “people’s war”. Again, in the period from 1945 to 1950, Mao again used the term “people’s war” almost always only in the form of “people’s war of liberation”. In his “Address to the Preparatory Meeting of the New Political Consultative Conference” (15th June 1949) he has clearly stated that the People’s War of Liberation began in 1946. In various writings written around 1949, like “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” he has referred to the “people’s war of liberation” as going on for three years. This shows that Mao was not referring to the whole of the strategy from 1927, when the long march began as a “people’s war”. In understanding the concept of “people’s war” as put forward by Mao, it is also necessary to understand the history of the Chinese Revolution. In 1924, the Communist Party had aligned with the Kuomintang under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and had formed a common united front. Together they had led such important campaigns as the Northern Expedition. However, after the death of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the Kuomintang, under the leadership of Chian Kai-Shek undertook a purge of the party and the army. It broke relationships with the Communist party and subsequently, after the Japanese invasion in 1931, took a line of partial resistance to the Japanese. Due to all these factors, it was left to the Communist party to take the brunt of the fight for resistance to the Japanese invasion. The Communist party adopted the strategy of converting this war into a people’s war, where the whole population is mobilised to fight against the Japanese invaders. In 1937, they again entered into an alliance with the The Marxist-Leninist

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Kuomintang against the Japanese invasion. Though this alliance was fragile and suffered many setbacks because of the treachery of the Kuomintang, it lasted for the period of this war against the Japanese, that is, until the end of the 2nd World War in 1945, when the Japanese invaders were finally driven out. By this time, the Red Army was in occupation of vast areas of land. The liberated areas of China extended from Inner Mongolia in the north to Hainan island in the south and accounted for a population of 95.5 million. It was like a separate country from the Kuomintang ruled China. From the end of the 2nd World War in 1945, an attempt was made to make peace with the Kuomintang and concentrate on the progress of China. However, again the Kuomintang broke its truce and from June, 1946, the Red Army launched a second “people’s war”, the “people’s war of liberation”. As mentioned above, in this period Mao talks of the “people’s war of liberation” in many writings, but he sees it as a distinct war started in 1946. He is again referring to an actual war being fought between the Red Army and the Kuomintang army as is clear from the context of all the writings of this period. He is referring to “people’s war” as a form of warfare and not as a path of revolution. In various writings he refers to methods to be used “...in our people’s war of liberation and the agrarian revolution...” (“Cast Away Illusions Prepare for Struggle” (1949)). Similarly in “The Chinese People Have Stood Up” (1949) Mao writes, “In a little more than three years the Chinese people, led by the Chinese Communist Party, have quickly awakened and organized themselves into a nation-wide united front against imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism and their general representative, the reactionary Kuomintang government, supported the People’s War of Liberation, basically defeated the reactionary Kuomintang government, overthrown the rule of imperialism in China and restored the Political Consultative Conference.” Here he sees the revolutionary struggle of the people as supporting the People’s War of Liberation. Once again he differentiates between the revolutionary struggle of the people and the People’s War of Liberation. In “Eternal Glory to the Heroes of the People” (1949) he says, “Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the people’s war of liberation and the people’s revolution in the past three years! Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the people’s war of liberation and the people’s revolution in the past thirty years!...” Again, he differentiates between the people’s war and the people’s revolution. He makes a similar differentiation in “The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History” (1949) when he says: 136

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“Well, then, if Sun Yat-sen could learn from the Soviet people and the Soviet people are not imperialist aggressors, why can’t his successors, the Chinese who live after him, learn from the Soviet people? Why are the Chinese, Sun Yat-sen excepted, described as “dominated by the Soviet Union” and as “the fifth column of the Comintern” and “lackeys of Red imperialism” for learning the scientific world outlook and the theory of social revolution through Marxism-Leninism, linking these with China’s specific characteristics, starting the Chinese People’s War of Liberation and the great people’s revolution and founding a republic of the people’s democratic dictatorship? Can there be such superior logic anywhere in the world?” Here again he differentiates between the “People’s War of Liberation” and the “...great people’s revolution...”. In an interesting passage in “Farewell to Leighton Stuart” (1949) he describes a historical war of Chinese legend of the 8th Century as a “people’s war of that time”. This shows that he could not have meant “people’s war” to mean a strategy for revolution for semi-colonial and colonial countries. All these writings of Mao make his understanding clear. The specific historical conditions China of that time foisted a war upon the Communists there, first against the back-stabbing of the Kuomintang in 1927, then against the Japanese invaders from 1931 and finally against the Kuomintang for the liberation of China from 1945. In all these periods, it must be remembered that the Chinese Communist Party started with an army of over 50000 which had broken away from the Kuomintang in 1927. Mao says consistently that the Red Army fights the war. On the other hand, he says that the people make revolution. When the whole of the people support the war, then the nature of the war changes and becomes a “people’s war”. This cannot however mean that “war” is necessary for revolution. If, as and when, imperialism may foist a war upon the people, the Communist Party must be ready to fight it and turn it into a “people’s war”. There may also be situations when the Communist party of a certain country reaches a stage where it is capable of launching a war and defeating the ruling classes. No communist party can escape the reality that today, peaceful transition to socialism is not possible anywhere in the world. However the form of violent seizure of power may be insurrection or war or some other form. It is especially true that no writing of Mao says that “people’s war”, or indeed “war”, is the only form in which semi-colonial or neo-colonial countries can make revolution. This assertion was left for Lin Biao to make in 1966 as we shall see below. Even after 1950, Mao has used the term “people’s war” only in the sense of an actual war. He talks of the people’s war in Korea in “Order to the Chinese The Marxist-Leninist

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People’s Volunteers”. Similarly, the Central Committee of the CPC also used the term “people’s war” till 1965, only in the form of referring to an actual war. They referred to the people’s war in Algeria during the great Debate in the “General line document”. Even in 1965, in an Editorial of the People’s Daily, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the victory against Fascism, there is a reference to the “Soviet People’s War” against Fascism. In 1938 Mao wrote on his most important writings on War ca led “On Protracted War”. In this he explains why China was bound to win the war and the Japanese were bound to lose and also why the victory was not possible in a short time and that how, therefore, the war would be protracted. However, in this writing Mao conciously never used the term “people’s war” since the Communist Party was then fighting the war in alliance with the Kuomintang and other political forces. Thus, Mao has never actually used the phrase “protracted people’s war”. This however, is not the point. The point is that whether talking of “people’s war” or “protracted war” Mao was always referring to an actual war and not to a path for revolution. Then, in 1966, came Lin Biao’s writing “Long live the Victory in the People’s War”. In this he has repeatedly stated that the Chinese path of revolution is applicable to all the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. He said: “It must be emphasized that Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the establishment of rural revolutionary base areas and the encirclement of the cities from the countryside is of outstanding and universal practical importance for the present revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed nations and peoples, and particularly for the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America against imperialism and its lackeys.” In the same writing, he has stated, “Many countries and peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America are now being subjected to aggression and enslavement on a serious scale by the imperialists headed by the United States and their lackeys. The basic political and economic conditions in many of these countries have many similarities to those that prevailed in old China. As in China, the peasant question is extremely important in these regions. The peasants constitute the main force of the national-democratic revolution against the imperialists and their lackeys. In committing aggression against these countries, the imperialists usually begin by seizing the big cities and the main lines of communication, but they are unable to bring the vast countryside completely under their control. The countryside, and the countryside alone, can provide the broad areas in which the revolutionaries can manoeuvre freely. The countryside, and the countryside alone, can provide the revolutionary 138

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bases from which the revolutionaries can go forward to final victory. Precisely for this reason, Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of establishing revolutionary base areas in the rural districts and encircling the cities from the countryside is attracting more and more attention among the people in these regions.” Here, Lin Biao has wrongly analysed the situation in the former colonies as one in which “war” is inevitable and the only form of making revolution. On this basis he has gone further, and put forward that the strategy to be followed in such a revolutionary war will have to be the same as was followed in China, completely losing sight of the changes that had taken place in the world since the Chinese revolution, following on imperialism adopting the neo-colonial form of exploitation as opposed to the former colonial form of exploitation. In certain situations, even under neo-colonialism, there may be situations where war is thrust upon the people, as is the case, presently, in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, etc. In such situations, the lessons learnt during the course of the people’s war in China may well prove invaluable, though, here also the actual strategy and tactics will have to be worked out on the basis of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation. However, Lin Biao is clearly mistaken when he calls for the adoption of the Chinese path universally, particularly in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This mistaken understanding stems from his mistaken assessment of imperialism at that time which itself stems from a refusal to understand the changes that had taken place from the colonial system to the neo-colonial system. In 1966, this mistake was worse confounded with the publication of the “Red Book” otherwise known as “Quotations from Com. Mao Tse Tung”. Lin Biao was responsible for the arrangement of the quotations as well as for writing the foreword. There is a chapter in this book which is on “People’s War”. In this chapter, disembodied quotations from Mao’s writings do not make it clear that he was referring only to a strategy and tactics for war and make it seem as it he was referring to tactics and strategy for revolution. Mao never talked of “protracted people’s war”. Mao did say in “On Coalition Government” that “The Chinese people’s War of Resistance has followed a tortuous course.”. However, he never used the phrase “protracted people’s war” much less used it to describe a strategy for revolution and even less insisted that it must be the only form of making revolution in the current times, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In fact, in one of his most popular military writings, “On Protracted War”, written in 1938, Mao is careful not to refer to the war of that time as a “people’s war” since it was being fought in alliance with the Kuomintang and other political parties of China. The Marxist-Leninist

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With the popularisation of the Red Book, many ML parties all over the world took it for granted that the only path for revolution is the path of “protracted people’s war”, i.e. the establishing of rural base areas and the encirclement of the cities from the countryside. While insisting that this was the only path for revolution, many of the ML parties did not realise that they were restricting them to fighting a war as the only path for revolution. Particulary in the neo-colonial period, when there has not been any world war for such a long period, this strategy was eminently ill-suited to the situation. Thousands of the youth, drawn to this line by their eagerness to fight the right revisionist line of Khrushchov – the most dynamic and vivacious of the revolutionary youth all over the world, fell prey to this mistaken understanding. The net effect of this line was not only the waste of the youth of almost two generations, but also the divorce of the communist revolutionaries from the masses. Though, in words, this line called for “people’s war” in effect it led to communist revolutionaries trying to foment a war where none existed, merely so that they could turn it into a “people’s war”. Many of the groups which tried to foment such wars were only tiny miniscule groups which indulged more in adventurist heroics than in any real war. It became fashionable for all communist revolutionaries to organise themselves more in the form of armies than in the form of a party. This line led to the abandonment of the struggle of the workers and the trade unions to the reformists and the revisionists. It led to the decimation of the communist youth and students’ movement all over the world and to isolationist and anarchist slogans like “Boycott of elections”. To live in the delusion that they were fighting a war, such groups are even willing to abandon all democratic norms, all communist morals and decency and even the masses. For two generations now, the communist revolutionaries, under the influence of the line of “protracted people’s war” have been torn away from the masses. We have to boldly and unhesitatingly reject this line. A severe struggle will have to be waged against the many overt and covert manifestations of this line. Only a very thorough rectification will be able to bring the revolutionary movement back on the path of socialist and New Democratic Revolution. ●

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