The founders of PLP broke with the CP over the questions associated with modern revisionism; i.e. how the CP revised Marxism-Leninism in order to make itself more acceptable to the U.S. ruling class. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) broke with the Soviet CP over the same question, the Sino-Soviet dispute, which dominated the politics of the sixties, inspired the founding of PLP, nurtured it, and guaranteed its growth. The CCP declared “Our position on revisionism is simple: one, we are against it, two, we are not afraid of it.” The PLP leadership learned only the first half of this slogan. They soon learned to fear revisionism even more than they hated it. The dangers of revisionism were real enough. The tragic events of Indonesia were a case in point. Closer to home was the sad degeneration of the CPUSA. PLP observed the phenomenon of revisionism in ail its evil and began to fear its contagion. PL’ers went to such lengths to separate themselves from revisionism that they were too far removed from the struggle to do battle with revisionism.
PLP withdrew from the anti-war committees because these were dominated by revisionists. And PLP began to see “revisionists” in Vietnam as a greater evil than the U.S. aggressors. “Everyone can see how bad the U.S. is,” they mistakenly argued “but our job is to expose the enemy within.” The concentrated PL attack on the Vietnamese, the anti-war committees, all liberal opponents of the war, even though the criticisms were sometimes correct, though often not, led inexorably to PL’s withdrawal from the anti-war movement: The withdrawal was not inevitable. By trying to defend an incorrect line in the midst of mass movements the Party could have learned to correct its errors. The PL leadership refused to put its politics to such a test. It was, on the one hand, over-confident of the correctness of its line, and on the other hand, feared that a member would fall prey to what it considered “revisionism,” that is not putting primary value on the attack on the Vietnamese. Fear and overestimation of revisionism led to retreat from the mass antiwar movement.
In the early sixties PLP developed a line supporting “revolutionary nationalism;” this seemed more left than the CP which considered any Black movement to the left of M.L. King as “ultra-left.” However, in essence the line of “revolutionary nationalism” was in contradiction to the Marxist slogan of “Workers of all countries, Unite.” PL’s alliances with “revolutionary nationalists” like LeRoi Jones never developed, however, and PL soon reconsidered its position. Correct criticism of nationalists gave way to hatred and hatred to overriding fear. And fear of nationalism led PL to blast the student Black Liberation Movement, which was led at least in part by nationalists, and to downgrade the importance of the Black rebellions after 1966, which PL suspected may have been infiltrated by nationalists. Finally came the shameful attacks on the BPP and PLP’s own Harlem club, for suspected nationalist deviations. Fear and overestimation, of Black nationalism led to retreat from the mass BLM.
The student movement of the sixties was based on support of the anti-war movement and the BLM. When the student movement could not be won to PL’s fear of revisionist domination of the antiwar movement and nationalist domination of the BLM, PLP retreated from the mass student movement.
Finally fears arose about revisionism within the PLP and how PL cadre might succumb to revisionism in the trade union movement. Thus it was necessary to eschew all ties with union leaders, even down to the shop steward level. PL members had to abandon union positions, and caucuses within the unions, engaging instead in anarchist exemplary actions in order to maintain the purity of their principles. Thus fears of revisionism developing within PLP led to retreat from the T-U movement.
“Road to Revolution III” sounded a theoretical justification for the four retreats, which up until then each had been justified in turn as another victory in Milt Rosen’s solitary battle to “turn the Party toward the working class.” The document was also the definitive break with the CCP, and developed out of the conviction that revisionism had swallowed up the CCP. Therefore we should briefly trace PL’s relations with China before going into “Road to Revolution III” (RTR III) in more depth.
PL’s relations with China were always one step short of fraternal. The Chinese subscribed to 2,000 copies of Challenge and invited leading PL figures to travel to China. In addition there were meetings with Chinese and Albanian representatives. But the CCP never reprinted any PL documents as they had done with their more closely fraternal parties, such as the ones in Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Brazil, India. PL, however, was more or less the official Maoist organization in the U.S. during the period 1964-1969. As such, PLP gained the great prestige that came from being associated so closely with the CCP and Mao-Tse-Tung. And PLP circulated the red-book of Mao’s thoughts and PL’s literature often abounded in quotations from Mao or stories reprinted from the Chinese press.
But there were irritations as early as 1967 when the PL leadership became privately upset that the CCP did not follow PL’s anti-Vietnam line. At a 1967 NC discussion of the Cultural Revolution Rosen was critical of the Red Guard for breaking with democratic-centralism and suspicious of the leadership in China for not asserting greater authority in the Party. The CCP’s repudiation of Liu-Shao-Chi’s book, How to be a Good Communist was likewise received poorly since PLP had used the book extensively in internal study groups. The “Cult of Mao” was also criticized at this NC meeting, even though the PL V. 6, No. 4 was replete with ostentatious Mao quotations and the cult of Milt Rosen was flourishing in at least some quarters of PLP.[89] The NC discussion missed the historical essence of the mighty class battles then being fought in China and amounted to unself-critical carping over the weaknesses. Yet the PL leadership was prepared to begin more serious criticism of China in 1968-1969, when they became more aware that the battle in China was for state power. Almost alone among U.S. left groups (Save some “Leftist” Trotskyite sects) PLP was coming to the conclusion that the Chinese Left had lost, that Mao was fronting for the Right or at least the Right of Center and without really knowing anything about what was going on in China the PL leadership openly sympathized with the “anarchists” and the “ultra-left” that had, according to press reports, been put down militarily in certain Chinese provinces.
To make this kind of break for PLP would have required considerable courage had not the Chinese on their part displayed increasing coolness to PL in the 1968-1969 period. The CCP had never appreciated PLP’s “making more profound” their line of drawing a clear line of demarcation with revisionism. When PL attacked the Vietnamese for negotiating and for accepting Soviet aid the CCP was not of a mind to follow suit. The CCP was intent on avoiding a break with Vietnam and found PL’s escalating verbal abuse of the front-line fighters in Vietnam distasteful and helpful neither to China’s relations with Vietnam nor to China’s image as the bulwark of support for the national liberation movement. Nor did the Chinese ever see the point in PLP’s abandonment of the anti-war movement and much to Rosen’s irritation, they continued to hail the mass anti-war demonstrations even though they were led by PL’s enemies. The CCP took much the same tack with regard to PL’s withdrawal from the BLM. This was symbolized by the presence of PL’s enemy, Robert Williams, in China even though PL had warned the CCP many times that he was probably an agent.[90] Apparently the CCP was aware of PL’s sectarian habits and didn’t trust this cry of “wolf,” even though true in this case.
But it was PL’s insistence on the necessity to attack Vietnam for negotiating that the break with China came. In early 1969 two PL NSC members went to China and had an 8-hour meeting with a top Politburo member who at this meeting professed himself and the CCP in agreement with PL on all points except that of the negotiations in Vietnam.[91] The meeting was friendly but the PL’ers gamely pressed their point. Six months later in Paris PL representatives were told by Chinese diplomats in no uncertain terms: change the PL anti-Vietnam line, or else.[92] In early 1970 a short shooting war broke out between China and the USSR. In a lengthy editorial Challenge lectured the CCP against negotiating with the USSR on this issue. The Chinese expressed no appreciation for PL’s advice and were soon warning fraternal contacts to stay away from PLP.[93] The once warm CCP-PLP relations became now totally hostile, although the CCP never bothered to publicly attack PLP; PLP was free to pursue its own road to international isolation. Inner-party discussions on the right-wing trend in China had begun in late 1969 and culminated at an expanded NC in December, 1970 that approved “Road to Revolution III,” which had been authored mainly by Jake Rosen and Milt Rosen.[94]
In a nutshell “Road to Revolution III” (RTR III) is a counterrevolutionary anarchist document which totally negates the concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat and revolutionary strategy developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. In RTR III PLP was so bold as to declare that they were correcting Marxism-Leninism (ML) and they declared specifically where and what ways Marx and Lenin and Stalin erred. When criticized that this was revisionism, PLP immodestly declared that they were developing Marxism-Leninism just as Lenin developed Marxism and Stalin and Mao developed Marxism-Leninism. Of course most major opponents of Marxism from Kautsky to Khrushchev said the same thing as PLP. Now it’s true that Engels, Lenin, and Stalin added and developed a great deal to the theory of Marx. But they never REVISED Marxism. They built upon the foundation Marx bequeathed them. Never in the writings of these three is there a statement that they were changing anything of Marx, because they kept the foundations intact. The method of these men was to develop Marxism by highlighting aspects of Marx’s theory and adding to it. The PLP method was to declare Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin wrong in this or that and then put forth a new utterly untested version. There was no respect for the 100 years of development of Marxism. Moreover, PL’s “development” of Marxism-Leninism was never original but bore uncanny resemblance to the revisionists of an earlier time who had been fought by Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin.
RTR III attacks three key aspects of the Bolshevik strategy: the strategy of united front, the Bolshevik land program and the Bolshevik program on national minorities.
In the last case RTR III claims that Lenin made unnecessary concessions to nationalism:
“As we have shown above, he held the view that the free, “democratic” development of capitalism in countries where such struggles took place represented the essential first stage on the road to socialism. Nowhere in the world, however, has a fight for more or “better” capitalism led either directly or indirectly to socialism. What difference does it make to workers and peasants that their oppressors call themselves capitalists or “communists” if a national “liberation” movement can achieve liberation only for local bosses?”
• • •
“Another problem with Lenin’s strategy is that it presupposes an impotent, deaf-dumb-blind and stupid national bourgeoisie (and a perpetually sleeping imperialism.)”[95]
The false content of this charge was largely dealt with above (See above Chapters 2 and 3). This aspect of the RTR III line had been operating in PLP for some time and provided the theoretical justification for the retreats from the anti-war movement and the BLM. RTR III merely logically carries this one step further and blames Lenin as well as the Vietnamese and supporters of the BLM. In the sixties socialism was set back in Indonesia, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam and elsewhere.
RTR III sees that the problem was a sell-out by the local national bourgeoisie. There is some truth here, but to abstain from these struggles would have only confirmed the national bourgeois leadership of these wars and would have put the communists in objective alliance with imperialism (which is what happened to the French CP in Algeria.) PL’s line of attacking national liberation leads to social-patriotism (Socialism in words, patriotism in essence) and conforms most closely to the wishes of the imperialist bosses. The truth, as Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, S. Yemen, Algeria, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau convincingly prove today, is that national liberation does provide a dramatic and sharp improvement in the lives of the workers and peasants and if communists want to go further toward socialism they have to have been involved in the struggle for national liberation. This is scientific socialism that deals with the real world. Only Utopian socialists pretend to see no difference in the workers’ standard of living between Batista’s Cuba or Castro’s Cuba, Portuguese Angola or the Angola of the MPLA, French Algeria or independent Algeria, Thieu’s Vietnam or the Vietnam of today. Yet that is the exact meaning of the PLP statement that it makes no difference “to workers and peasants that their oppressors call themselves capitalists or ’communists’.” Only communists who support the national liberation struggle 100% will have footing among the people to go on to the fight for socialism.
It is the Utopian socialists who are “impotent, deaf-dumb-blind and stupid.” Even with their limited outlook the national bourgeoisie can see what the Utopians cannot. The national bourgeoisie knows it has to make concessions to the working class in order to unite with them in common struggle against imperialism. Important reforms are conceded to the workers in the course of struggle. This does not negate the inevitable class struggle between the national bourgeoisie and the workers. It merely demonstrates that temporarily, and under certain conditions, the struggle of the people of an oppressed nation versus imperialism takes precedence over the struggle of the workers versus the national bourgeoisie. As for imperialism the communist strategy does not assume perpetual sleep, but on the contrary assumes that against an awake, alert imperialism all forces that can be united must be mobilized.
On the land question RTR III says the peasants should have been won to socialism directly and opposed the Bolshevik strategy of dividing the land up among the peasants:
“Despite the fact that all social-democrats considered that large scale farming was a necessary part of socialism and that Lenin repeatedly argued that dividing up the land was only ’the most consistent clearing of the way for capitalism’ and the ’strivings of the most radical of the bourgeoisie,’ the Bolshevik revolution based itself precisely on this division... The result of all this was that never were the Bolsheviks able to introduce the Paris Commune type state they desired to introduce. How could they when the peasants were not committed to socialism?...
“The reason for this abandonment of the country-side was a mechanical, deterministic one. As Lenin put it, the peasants neither need nor desire the abolition of capitalism. Capitalism is to the peasant what socialism is to the proletarian. This is all wrong.
“First, why is the proletarian the ’only consistently revolutionary class?’ According to Marx it is because, whether or not he realizes it, his social problems cannot be solved short of socialism. Does not history prove that this is also true for the peasant? The experience of every single land reform without exception proves that the peasant cannot overcome his social problems short of the collectivization of the land, which is to say socialism.”[96]
The land question is not as important today as it was formerly because the semi-feudal big estates are becoming imperialist factories in the fields. But for the Bolsheviks solving the land question was crucial. It was the only way to survive the Civil War. The destruction of the Russian feudal aristocracy and capitalist landed gentry was best achieved by dividing the land among the peasants. It was important in itself to destroy the material base of the enemy classes. But in addition the Bolsheviks gained a footing among the peasants precisely by means of their land policy, which they put to even better use later in leading a mass movement among the peasants to collectivize the farms. RTR III's analysis that dividing up the land led only to the growth of capitalist consciousness among the peasants is belied by the historic collectivization movement which followed within ten years. The truth is that by leading the land reform movement the Bolsheviks gained political credit as well as peasant cadre. These circumstances made it materially possible to begin the political struggle to win the poor and middle peasants to socialism. This political struggle bore fruit with the collectivization.
In this last quote RTR III directly contradicts the Communist Manifesto which states that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class because: “The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry: the proletariat is its special and essential product.” RTR III, on the other hand, says that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class because its problems can only be solved under socialism and says this should be true for peasants too. Here RTR III openly replaces Marx’s SCIENTIFIC, OBJECTIVE statement with a subjective idealist statement and is the clearest possible sign of PLP’s departure from scientific socialism to pre-Marxian Utopian socialism. Marx’s clear-cut statement tells us why Marxists have always treated the workers and peasants from different perspectives and why these two classes must be approached with different programs – one class is the most essential product of capitalism, the other is dying out under capitalism.
The thinking behind the RTR III attack on the Bolshevik United Front Policy had been current within PLP since the retreat from the Trade-Union Movement. But by crystalizing their anarchist thinking the PL leadership locked themselves into a permanent no-win strategy. Referring to the Bolsheviks RTR III says:
“In the course of conducting revolutionary struggle, prior to the seizure of power, the revolutionary party makes a wrong analysis of the bourgeoisie, falsely divides the bourgeoisie into a ’left’ and a ’right’ camp, calls for an alliance with the ’left,’ certain privileges, such as immunity from expropriation, etc.
“This alliance is maintained after the revolution, and the privileges granted to the ’good’ wing of the bourgeoisie are expanded. The rationale is that the party and the masses are too weak politically, economically, administratively, and ideologically for the revolution to survive without the active collaboration of ’friendly’ bourgeois forces...
“Revolutionaries view the united front exclusively or primarily as an alliance between themselves and the ’better’ section of the bourgeoisie. Thus, the front unites around a bourgeois-nationalist line as opposed to a revolutionary line for the dictatorship of the workers. As part of this deal, communists make the biggest concession of all by renouncing the struggle to win the masses to a socialist program.”[97]
Of course PL’s interpretation of Lenin’s “rationale” had nothing in common with what Lenin actually said:
“To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies) – is that not ridiculous in the extreme? Is it not like making a difficult ascent of an unexplored and hitherto inaccessible mountain and refusing in advance ever to move in zigzags, ever to retrace one’s steps, or ever to abandon a course once selected, and to try others? And yet people so immature and inexperienced (if youth were the explanation it would not be so bad; young people are preordained to talk such nonsense for a certain period) have met with support – whether direct or indirect, open or covert, whole or partial, it does not matter – from some members of the Communist Party of Holland.
“After the first socialist revolution of the proletariat, and the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in some country, the proletariat of that country remains for a long time weaker than the bourgeoisie, simply because of the latter’s extensive international links, and also because of the spontaneous and continuous restoration and regeneration of capitalism and the bourgeoisie by the small commodity producers of the country which has overthrown the bourgeoisie. The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skillful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied, political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.”[98]
The RTR III quotations around “’left’ bourgeoisie” or “’better’ bourgeoisie” are dishonest since neither Lenin or the Bolsheviks ever used those terms. The real question is how the proletarian Party takes advantage of the complex revolutionary situation when many Parties are in the field.
The mass line changes and the united front around the mass line changes with changing objective conditions. The Bolsheviks never put aside the goal of proletarian state power. During the revolutionary year of 1917 the mass line changed frequently but the Bolsheviks were always mindful of their destiny to head the proletarian dictatorship. This was their dual responsibility, which they fulfilled. Thus while, on the one hand, the Bolsheviks put forward the mass line, “Bread, Land and Peace” at the very same time Lenin wrote State and Revolution which was the clearest Marxist exposition of the concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat. How was this “renouncing the struggle to win the masses to a socialist program.” Only single-minded anarchists cannot understand that a communist Party can and MUST do both these things at once. Anarchists are only capable of simple sloganeering and are not able to think of gaining leadership of the workers’ mass movement, which necessarily involves mass reform demands as well as complex and changing alliances. Nor are they capable of a scientific exposition of the dictatorship of proletariat, such as State and Revolution. The anarchists renounce “the struggle to win the masses to a socialist program,” because their sectarian purist strategy necessitates that they keep themselves so distant from the masses and so far from the center of the struggle for power.
There were quite a number of anarchists, considerably more numerous and more capable than PLP, in the field in Russia in 1917. They had the RTR III line, or better: RTR III has rediscovered their line. The question the authors of RTR III should have pondered is what became of the Russian anarchists? Why did they prove themselves so irrelevant to the masses during the Revolution of 1917?
Naturally if the Bolsheviks seized power by means of “renouncing the struggle to win the masses to a socialist program” or as Milt Rosen put it in the discussion around RTR III “Revisionism begins with the seizure of power,”[99] things could only go from bad to worse. RTR III continues its analysis with the familiar anarchist attack on the New Economic Policy (NEP) of Lenin:
“The Soviet party repeatedly contended that without the NEP, the economy – and hence socialism – were doomed. But the real failure began to materialize when communists were placed in the impossibly contradictory position of building capitalism. Profits and therefore exploitation were allowed. High living was tolerated. The equalitarianism that Lenin had admired in the Paris Commune and that he had called an indispensable aspect of socialism in State and Revolution never truly came into being. A well-heeled bourgeoisie with a toehold in the state apparatus and economy could not fail to begin penetrating the party, if not bodily at first, at least ideologically.”[100]
Aside from the slanders about “high living” the implication here is: better to let the economy collapse than take the admittedly backward step that NEP implied. In the discussions around RTR III it was actually stated that it would have been better to let the people starve than introduce NEP.[101] In this statement the leadership of PLP conceded the economic necessity for NEP. But could the Bolsheviks or any Party have retained state power in the midst of collapse and starvation without trying wholeheartedly to reverse the economic catastrophe? Impossible!! It has never happened and never will. Thus the political necessity of NEP follows if the goal is to retain workers’ power. This is not the goal of those who believe that “revisionism starts with the seizure of power.” The Bolsheviks, however, knew that by retaining their hold on the dictatorship even while retreating they, at least, had a chance of containing the bourgeois penetration and reversing it in time. This is precisely what occurred. And later the historical responsibility fell to Stalin to end the Bolshevik retreat around NEP when material conditions permitted, to recapture the positions the bourgeoisie had won and to lead the successful struggle to build socialism in the USSR.
But RTR III ignores this historic struggle and borrows heavily from the rusty Trotskyite arsenal to attack Stalin: “Over the years Stalin leadership committed wholesale errors:
“1. Making concessions to the old Russian ruling class.
2. Introduction of material incentives instead of political-moral incentives.
3. Relying on nationalism to defeat the Nazis – thus making the policy of the international working class subservient to the interests of the Soviet Union. So, nationalism triumphed over internationalism.
4. This policy lead the Soviets into alliances with the international ruling class. This was most evident during the war against the Nazis. U.S., British, some French and other bosses were pictured as progressive forces.
5. Democratic centralism, which is the only system of revolutionary organization, was reduced to arbitrary centralism. Friends were not distinguished from enemies. Thus, many good revolutionaries were killed by the Stalin leadership because they might have had differences. Many counter-revolutionaries who should have been put down were able to slip through because of these abuses.
6. Probably the most important error Stalin and others made was not winning masses of people to Marxism-Leninism. So an elite held power without much participation by workers and peasants. Socialism was for the party leaders. The masses were only involved in carrying out this or that policy.”[102]
Let’s look at this “gem” point-by-point:
Point One: “Making concessions to the old Russian ruling class.” There is a hasty sloppiness in this formulation. The old Russian ruling class, the nobility and the big capitalists, as well as their political representatives from Miliyukov to Kerensky, were physically liquidated or driven into exile, never to return. Concessions were made to the petty-bourgeoisie, the rich peasants, the small traders and the small manufacturers, as well as engineers, managers, administrators, officers, teachers and the like. This class was never part of the old ruling structure in Tzarist Russia and in the main sided with the working class as against the counter-revolution during the Civil War.
If the help of this middle sector was useful in the Civil War it was absolutely essential in the period of economic reconstruction. Furthermore, the stringent measures of the war-time period could not continue in peace-time. Concessions were necessary in the NEP period to gain the cooperation of this middle section in order to avoid famine. The concessions were ended once the economy was functioning again and the threat of starvation passed.
Point Two: Once again sloppy formulations in RTR Ill’s unseemly haste to attack the Bolsheviks. Neither Stalin nor Lenin introduced material incentives. These were a product of the capitalist era and, indeed, were present since the dawn of commodity production. For better than 1,000 years the Russian people were acquainted with material incentives. Lenin and Stalin’s task was to lay the basis for ending this historical dependence. If the anarchists were capable of looking at history in a materialist fashion they would understand the difficulties and complexity in abolishing economic relations that took more than 1,000 years to develop.
But anarchists are idealists. They believe it was in the capacity of a man like Stalin to abolish all at once with a stroke of the pen material incentives. Anarchists believe in wish fulfillment: Because material incentives were not abolished it had to be because Stalin “committed wholesale mistakes.” It is not for the idealist to consider that perhaps objective conditions were not ripe.
In fact the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, under Stalin’s leadership, shows that political-moral incentives gained steady ground against material incentives during the whole period. At times, to be sure, depending on objective need, the Party relied on material incentives to get a particular job done, because building a modern economy and a productive capacity capable of eliminating scarcity is a pre-condition to 100% reliance on political incentives. Even so, the great leap forward in Soviet history, the collectivization movement, the Five-Year Plans, the Stakhanovite Movement, World War II were accomplished by mainly relying on the political understanding of the working class. In all these great battles an historically increasing reliance on political incentives as opposed to material incentives was clearly evident. And every visitor to the Soviet Union in the thirties testified to that fact.
That is why the statement that the USSR relied on “nationalism” to defeat the Nazis (Points Three and Four) has to rank as one of history’s biggest lies. When the Nazis invaded the USSR they had all the advantages of manpower, tanks, airplanes, experienced military leadership, guns, supplies, technology and industrial backup. The Nazi advantage was between 2-1 and 8-1 in all categories. It was the morale of the Soviet soldier, Soviet partisan and Soviet worker that stopped the Nazi blitz and turned the tide. Was this higher morale due to the fact that the Russians were more nationalistic than the Germans? Even to pose the question is ludicrous. If nationalism was all that was involved in morale then the Germans would have won the war hands down. For in no nation was more highly developed than in Nazi Germany, nationalistic spirit.
The difference between the high Soviet morale and the lesser German morale was that the Soviet soldier, partisan and worker fought and labored FOR HIS CLASS INTEREST, FOR SOCIALISM AND HE KNEW IT. The Germans fought for the interest of Krupp and even the most nationalistic Nazi deep down must have suspected this. Were the millions of Soviet partisans fighting for nationalism against the invader merely because he was a foreigner or were they fighting for socialism? If you say nationalism, then please explain why no German Nazi partisan units were formed when the USSR and the US invaded Germany in 1945. Guerrilla War on the scale that existed in the Soviet Union, Albania, China, Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, Philippines, France and Italy requires more than nationalism for success. Even if nationalist forms were overemphasized in some cases (Yugoslavia and Italy), the overwhelming majority of the cadre and the rank and file saw themselves fighting for socialism, for their class interests. That is why only communists had the ability to organize serious anti-fascist guerrilla struggle during World War II. That is why in every nation the guerrilla bands that fought the Nazis on a purely nationalist anti-German basis could not last and at best degenerated into brigands. This occurred with the Chetniks in Yugoslavia, the Home Army in Poland, with the nationalist guerrillas in Greece, Italy, and elsewhere.
During World War II the Soviet leadership called for “the defense of the fatherland.” Here the Trotskyites rush in thinking they have found some big nationalist deviation of Stalin’s. But Lenin had, long ago, explained the class content of the terms:
“We are and have been defencists since October 25, 1917, we champion the defence of the fatherland ever since that day. That is because we have shown by deeds that we have broken away from imperialism. We have denounced and published the filthy, bloodstained treaties of the imperialist plotters. We have overthrown our own bourgeoisie. We have given freedom to the peoples we formerly oppressed. We have given land to the people and introduced workers’ control. We are in favour of defending the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.”[103]
The diplomatic deals that the Soviet state entered into with various imperialist powers were in the main necessary. A serious study of the objective conditions of the time would prove that the non-Aggression Pact with Germany of 1939 was essential to the survival of the workers’ state. A similar study would show that most of the agreements with the Anglo-U.S. leaders were likewise essential. If communists think that in some particular agreement (Yalta is a possibility) the USSR gave away too much or that they were unnecessarily polite to the imperialists this conclusion has to be based on a study of the objective conditions.
But the Trotskyites and anarchists are opposed to agreements of any kind with the imperialists and their type of thinking would have doomed the Soviet Union from the start. It is obligatory for communists to take every advantage of inter-imperialist contradictions, not to advance the interests of one or the other imperialist groups but to advance the interests of world revolution. This was clear aim of Soviet World War II strategy as the results show. The results of Soviet strategy during World War II (and their diplomacy was a crucial element in that strategy) were:
(1) The crushing defeat of world fascism, that, had it triumphed, would have destroyed the labor movement and put working conditions back to the era of feudalism.
(2) Preparing the objective conditions for the socialist Revolution in China, Albania, Korea, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia.
(3) A huge growth in numbers (tripling or quadrupling pre-war strength) of the International Communist Movement around the world.
(4) Marxism-Leninism became the most popular world-wide mode of thought. U.N. surveys in the post-war period showed books by Marx and Lenin outselling the Bible.
There were unquestionably serious weaknesses as well as strengths in the post-war Communist Movement. But Soviet World War II strategy had contributed more strengths than weaknesses. The policy of diplomatic compromises that Stalin entered into was proven correct.
Point Five: Coming from PLP the charge that Stalin reduced democratic centralism to arbitrary centralism is absolutely hypocritical (See in the next chapter how PLP reduced democratic centralism to arbitrary centralism). In fact it is clearly contrary to the expressed feelings of Milt Rosen, who stated on a number of occasions that one of Stalin’s errors was that “he should have killed more.”[104] Rosen dedicated his 1975 San Francisco speech to Stalin “because he killed more of them than anyone else.”[105] (If that is the best thing to be said about Stalin then the fundamentally anti-Stalin outlook of Rosen comes through in this hypocritical dedication.) Point Five was opportunistically thrown in RTR III to satisfy the more consistent Trotskyites in the PL leadership in 1971.
The truth is that there were errors made in the USSR that it tended to replace democratic centralism with arbitrary centralism, although never anywhere near to the extent that this occurred in PLP. These errors occurred from 1935-1945. The objective conditions of the time, i.e.: the Trotskyite campaign of assassination of top Soviet cadre (Among the large number of cadres murdered by the Trotsky-directed terrorists were Kirov, Mezheninsky, and Maxim Gorky, the world-famous writer.) followed by the life and death struggle with the Nazi military machine (As Franco pointed out the fascists were always preceeded by a Fifth Column in this period.) made these errors of the Stalin leadership understandable, but not excusable. One of the lessons communist leaders have to learn from the Soviet experience is that the broadest possible proletarian democracy is fundamental to the preservation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And preservation of democracy is most valuable when it is objectively most difficult, in particular in wartime. Of course the RTR III authors had no intentions of drawing such lessons as we shall see.
Point Six: This is another anti-Stalin lie. Millions of workers and peasants were deeply involved in the leadership of sharp political struggles against the kulaks during the collectivization, against the capitalist-minded factory managers during the Stakhanovism campaign, against fascism during the whole period 1933-1935. Moreover, there was very widespread Marxist education and study. At the factory level there was intensive atheist agitation, detailed discussion of the Five-Year Plans, full discussion of the 1936 Constitution and sharp debate with Trotskyism.
That the Soviets could have done more and done it better is indisputable. The Chinese Cultural Revolution opened up new vistas in making Marxism-Leninism the property of the broad masses. But RTR III is completely off base with its elitism charge. Even veteran anti-communist professors would not repeat such utter nonsense. The RTR III analysis of the Bolshevik strategy and tactics and of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR was not new but a rehash of old anti-Stalin or anti-Lenin slanders. The RTR III “new” analysis was familiar Utopian Socialism, Anarchism and Trotskyism. The view of RTR III is totally false and served only to justify PLP’s isolation and retreat from the U.S. mass movement.
Next RTR III trained its anti-Marxist guns on China. PLP took advantage of the development of an opportunist foreign policy in China that was becoming increasingly obvious in 1970-1971 and made some novel developments in anarchist “theory,” if it can be called such.
Their first “discovery” was the on-again, off-again dictatorship of the proletariat in China. They claimed the dictatorship of the proletariat ended in 1960 then was restored during the Cultural Revolution and then lost again. The first difficulty with this rather unique view was that the only major change in China’s leadership in the 1959-1960 period was the purge of the notoriously pro-Khrushchev Defense Minister, Peng-Teh-Huai. The ending of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR in 1953-1956 was accompanied by the death of Stalin, the murder of Beria and others and a military coup, led by Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Marshall Zhukov, which forced the purge of 2/3 of the Soviet Central Committee, including all of Stalin’s closest associates.
The second difficulty with the RTR III view of capitalism restored to China in 1960 was the great anti-Revisionist polemics of 1963-1965. As we noted above this great ideological struggle caused a tremendous forward thrust for the world revolutionary movement, including the founding of PL itself. This great modern contribution to Marxism-Leninism could only have been the product of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The RTR III wiseacres, however, have an answer for this:
“At no time did the CCP question any of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism as it had always interpreted it, especially its compromises with nationalism and united-fronts alliances with secondary imperialists against “the main enemy.
“Moreover, throughout the period of bitter back and forth polemics, the Chinese continued to maintain effective unity of action with the Soviet Union in delivering arms to Vietnam over the Chinese railroads. At no time did the Chinese engage in public polemics against Soviet aid...
“The anti-Soviet polemics were necessary in order to defend that body of ideas which corresponded to the class interests of the bourgeois class. Had the Chinese leaders gone along with the Khrushchevite ideology they would have been exposed before the masses and would have lost the ’Left’ cover under which capitalist counter-revolution is most likely to succeed.”[106]
So the RTR III detectives, who in another context rail mightily against the conspiratorial view of history, have sniffed out a very clever Chinese plot. The anti-revisionist polemics (the polemics were never “anti-Soviet”) you see, were only a smokescreen to hide the counter-revolutionary restoration of capitalism. The PL leadership could have carried this reasoning worthy of Perry Mason, one step further and “discovered” that Lenin wrote State and Revolution and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky as a “’Left’ cover” to hide his “counter-revolutionary” intentions of introducing NEP.
“At no time did the CCP question any of the tenets of Marxism- Leninism, as it had always interpreted them...” This is a strange formulation. At best it is proof that PLP and the CCP interpreted Marxism differently, not that China is capitalist. But the more likely meaning is the oft-repeated PL nonsense that revisionism means not going along with PLP’s notions on how to revise the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism.
The CCP allowed Soviet arms to go to Vietnam over Chinese railways. Here is the crux of the question, as far as PL is concerned. The CCP was revisionist because they aided Vietnam against U.S. imperialism; China was capitalist because they allowed arms to pass through Chinese railroads to the frontline liberation fighters. The test for a revolutionary in the eyes of the anarchists was to what lengths a Party would go in order to sabotage the Vietnamese struggle against U.S. imperialism. No wonder, PLP saw itself as the only revolutionary Party in the world. This concept of an on-again, off-again dictatorship is, of course, nonsense and reflects PL’s anarchist view of the state. The working class held power in China in the whole period in question. During that time China was the main support of working class revolutionary movements and national liberation movements around the world. China after 1953 was the number one enemy of U.S. imperialism and in the CCP were found many of the chief defenders and developers of Marxist-Leninist theory.
For PL to concede socialism ever existed in China at all was difficult and clearly some passages in RTR III throw doubt in this direction:
“Throughout the period of revolutionary struggle in the countryside, (1927-1949) the line of the CCP contained two contradictory aspects: on the one hand there was a ’poor-peasant’ class struggle line directed against both the landlords and the capitalist rich-peasants and calling for collective forms of landholding; on the other hand, there was a ’rich-peasant’ new-democratic class collaborationist line directed solely against the most important landlords and the Japanese imperialists and advocating partial reliance on local capitalists.”[107]
There were not two contradictory lines; there was the mass line and the Party’s line. The inability of the anarchists to even comprehend the most elementary concept of a mass line is clear in this passage. The mass line changes, depending on objective conditions, and this leads to a relatively broad or relatively narrow united front. But the Party retained the goal of workers’ power. In fact the broader the united front the better chances for propagandizing communism on a broad level. During the United Front Period with Chiang-Kai-Shek millions of Chinese workers and peasants were trained by the CCP in Marxism-Leninism.
But this contradiction, mass line and vanguard line existing and developing together, which millions of CCP cadre easily understood passes by PLP altogether. RTR III jumps to the conclusion that a united front policy necessarily means cadre not trained in socialism:
“The ideological commitment of the bulk of cadres was thus not to socialism, as a system of social relations among men, but to national economic development, which they would tend, as a result of class background and education, to conceive in capitalist terms.”
• • •
“It was, in fact, the bourgeois road that prevailed. Rather than winning the bourgeois intellectuals to communism, the Party was won over, to material incentive. This was a consequence of the new-democratic line. Having taken power without a mass force of workers and peasants won ideologically to communism and having committed itself to satisfying the immediate material aspirations of the masses, the party had to rely on bourgeois technicians to manage affairs of state and economy.”[108]
The majority of the CCP cadre were committed to socialism, but the anarchists object to their also being committed to improving the material conditions of the masses. Once again the anarchists see the struggles for reforms as precluding the struggle for socialism. But the opposite is true. Without being immersed in the struggle for reforms, without leading the struggle to improve the material conditions of the masses, socialism is just empty talk, a dream without living content. If socialism doesn’t mean being committed “to satisfying the immediate material aspirations of the masses” then what use is such socialism to the masses. The workers, and rightly so, expect socialism to produce a qualitative improvement in their lives; they have no use for anarchist dreams. In fact whenever the anarchists have achieved temporary hegemony in a revolutionary situation, the material conditions of the masses took a disastrous turn and the masses were disgusted enough with such fake socialism to allow the conservatives to return. Engels wrote about such a case in his classic study of Spanish anarchism in 1873: “The Bakuninists at Work.”
Scientific socialists are leaders of the reform struggles as well as the revolutionary struggles. It is this dual commitment, or rather the understanding of the dialectical connection between the two, that separates Marxism from anarchism Utopian socialism. As a corollary Marxism describes two stages of socialism: in the first stage, distribution of goods and services is according to work; in the second stage, communism, distribution is according to need. Marxism holds that the second stage can be reached only after the productive capacity is built up to greatly surpass needs, after the last outposts of capitalism around the world have fallen, all forms of bourgeois ideology have been finally defeated, and the differences between town and country, manual and mental labor, and between nations have disappeared. Only at this point, obviously a number of generations after the revolution, can distribution be according to need. If distribution according to need is prematurely undertaken production will fall below consumption, and a political-economic crisis will arise that will weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat and delay or even endanger altogether the advance to communism.
The Utopian socialists and anarchists believe they can jump this first stage of socialism. And it was in defeating these idealist trends that Marx and Engels developed scientific socialism. In criticizing the CCP policies of distribution according to work RTR III advertises itself as a throwback to pre-Marxian Utopian socialism. RTR III attacks the CCP for not maintaining the more egalitarian “supply system” that marked guerilla struggle. But this argument is absurd. The supply system of guerrilla bands cannot be transposed upon a modern nation, especially one that has to vastly increase its productive forces. In the necessary struggle to increase the productive forces of a socialist country in the first stage some of the easy egalitarianism of the revolutionary days is inevitably lost. But by building up the productive forces the material basis for a permanently egalitarian society, communism, is eventually laid. The new equality of communism won’t rest on the temporary conditions of a revolutionary army sharing scarcity, but a whole society permanently sharing plenty. Thus the egalitarianism of the revolutionary clays returns but this time to stay. This process is called the negation of the negation. The PL anarchists only saw the first negation and in deep despair they lost heart and concluded China must have been capitalist since 1960. From this experience they eventually went on to declare that Marx was wrong about socialism:
“On the question of Marx’s famous slogan, ’From each according to his ability, to each according to his work,’ historical experience has shown that this is not an adequate guide to govern the development of productive forces and social relations under socialism.”[109]
And PLP goes on to declare that whoever does not agree with this major revision of Marxism is... “a revisionist.”
RTR III begins its analysis of Chinese foreign policy with the Bandung Conference of 1955. This conference was significant in two ways: (1) It was the diplomatic debut of China after being isolated by the U.S. imperialists during the Korean War. (2) It was the first Afro-Asian governmental conference that mainly concentrated its fire on U.S. imperialism. The U.S. imperialists were very upset at the time; it was the first sign that the U.S. State Department policy of “containment of communism” was coming unraveled. RTR III is also upset; the anarchists, like the U.S. imperialists, although from a different perspective, felt China’s diplomatic isolation was “not a bad thing.”
Thus in the view of the anarchists Chinese International policy was always rotten. In this they ignore China’s aid to Korea during the Korean War, their internationalist help to national liberation movements from Zanzibar to Burma to the Philippines, not to speak of their tremendous help to Vietnam, the exposure of the reactionary essence of the Indian ruling class, and their policy of helping the growth of new communist parties all over the world, including PLP. The essence of China’s diplomatic policy until 1969 was (1) proletarian internationalism and (2) within that context to take advantage of contradictions among the imperialist powers, and contradictions between imperialism and the national bourgeoisie.
There were, to be sure all along, some serious weakness in Chinese foreign relations. The uncritical love-feast that the CCP engaged in with Sukarno, at the same time the Indonesian military was preparing its fascist coup helped to cause the catastrophic losses that a great people suffered. After 1969 proletarian internationalism no longer played a serious part in Chinese foreign policy. Any force, including U.S. imperialism, with which the CCP could unite against Soviet social-imperialism, was opportunistically favored, even if this meant in some cases stabbing in the back proletarian revolutionaries (Ceylon, Bangladesh, or Burma) or national liberation movements (Angola or Zaire). Nevertheless RTR III contains no serious critique of Chinese foreign policy. Such a critique (This paper is not the place for such a critique, but one needs to be written.) would necessarily involve a careful materialist analysis of the strengths and weaknesses during the whole period. The anarchists merely use the obvious weaknesses to attack the whole idea of the Leninist policy of taking advantage of contradictions among the imperialists in order to advance socialism. The anarchists instead propose a policy of absolute diplomatic isolation. As Lenin said, such a policy would mean the socialist state “could not exist at all without flying to the moon.”[110]
There were definitely very serious weaknesses in the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. These gave rise to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, which broke out in 1966. It was a massive revolutionary effort to strengthen and develop the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the revolutionary upsurge that lasted until 1969 definite political groupings emerged, which ranged from an extreme right represented by forces who wanted to return Peng-Teh-Huai to power to ultra-left anarchists. In between were factions headed by Liu-Shao-Chi, Chou-En-Lai, the so-called “Gang of Four,” more consistent left-wingers within the Cultural Revolution Group (For example, Chen-Po-ta and Kang, Sheng or possibly Wang Li or Yao Teng-Shan) as well as local groups of various hues and groups within the military. Mao-Tse Tung, himself, worked with different of these groupings at different times. This is not the place for a detailed history of the Cultural Revolution. We will limit our discussion to PL’s analysis and how their analysis fit in with the anarchist essence of RTR III. But we should note that by early 1977 it was clear that Chou-En-Lai’s moderate Right faction had won out. Hua-Kuo-Feng, and Teng-Hsaio-Ping were allies of Chou’s during the Cultural Revolution. And since the foreign policies of China changed not a whit, and the domestic policies did not change qualitatively, with the expulsion of the “Gang of Four” it is clear that this Moderate-Right Group had already achieved hegemony by 1971, when RTR III was written. Thus somewhere in the period 1968-1970 the genuine Left had lost its hold on state power in China. Whether this genuine Left meant the “Gang of Four,” the other more consistently leftist members of the Cultural Revolution Group, the group around Mao’s “close-comrade-in-arms” Lin Piao, some combination of local Red Guard organizations, (For example, “Sheng-Wu-lien” in Hunan, “May 16” corps in Peking, “Red Flag” in Kwangtung) or some combination of the above can’t be said without a deeper study and analysis.
The PL leadership, however, was not at all cautious about making its own analysis despite the scant amount of information available in 1970. This is because they relied not on material facts, but on idealism. The PL anarchists, of course, identified as the genuine Left in China, the ultra-left anarchists.
Since the authors of RTR III knew no more about these forces other than what they had read in the press or in the various CIA-funded translation services, available in U.S. libraries, they identified the “genuine Left” in China by its policies. In particular PLP identified three policies as representative of the “genuine Left:”
(1) the policy of preventing Soviet arms from reaching Vietnam by derailing the munitions trains and seizing the weapons.
(2) Refusal to go along with Mao’s idea of carrying on production at the same time as making the revolution.
(3) The belief that 90% of the CCP cadre were rotten and must stand aside.
Although these ideas were undoubtedly held in whole or in part by millions of activists at one point or another during the Cultural Revolution they are basically “Left in form, Right in essence.” It is not difficult to see why PLP hailed the policy of halting Soviet arms shipments to Vietnam. But is impossible to imagine a genuine—Left group choosing this means of arms procurement. At this very same time the Vietnamese were fighting the big battles that culminated in the Tet Offensive. Even Soviet weapons could kill U.S. troops, and for someone to unilaterly decide that the Vietnamese front-line fighters shouldn’t use these weapons aided only the U.S. imperialists and did absolutely nothing to fight revisionism in China, Vietnam or in the USSR.
To stop all production in a socialist state for any length of time in order to carry on a revolution can only hurt the workers and peasants. It can do the bourgeoisie or capitalist roaders no harm whatsoever. In the specific material conditions of China in 1967 a prolonged industrial shutdown could have caused a disastrous decline in food production. But PLP had already argued better to let the masses starve if the distribution system is not egalitarian, in this way the anarchists display their love for the people.
PLP’s enthusiasm for the policy of forcing 90% of the cadre to step down is at first glance not so easy to understand. PLP’s leading cadre have lifetime sinecures if they toe the line and obey Milt Rosen’s orders. But PLP had no intention of applying the lessons of the Cultural Revolution to itself, only to others. The anarchists are opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat. They do not believe in any state, even a workers’ state. The demand for 90% of the cadre to step down (In China this meant at least 10,000,000 people.) was a demand to dismantle the state apparatus altogether. The dictatorship of the proletariat would have gone under and since the anarchists had nothing to replace it except some purely local or regional committees the bourgeoisie and imperialists would have rushed into the vacuum. Mao’s dictum that 95% of the cadre are good and should be struggled with in a comradely way, and that only 5% of the cadre, for the most part senior capitalist roaders, should step aside was the only serious cadre policy consistent with maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In sum RTR III fared no better analyzing the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China than in analyzing their Bolshevik experience. The document took advantage of the obvious Rightward drift in CCP policies after 1970 in order to promote its anarchist view of the state.
PLP never inculcated serious study of M-L among the membership; therefore PL members and base were for the most part totally unequipped theoretically to recognize RTR Ill’s anarchist, Utopian socialist and Trotskyite essence. Instead what was obvious was that Kissinger and Nixon were meeting with Mao. Therefore RTR III was PL’s answer to Mao’s Red Book and from then on members who asked for study of Marxism were told: “It’s all in RTR III.” There were some PL members who were able to see that RTR III was a serious deviation from Marxism-Leninism. Bill Epton was the most important; he quit PL before the RTR III draft was written but wrote a very good critique of the RTR III’s line (See below, Chapter 10). At approximately the same time as the Epton split, but independently of him a small Party group at Davis, California also wrote a critique of the developing RTR III line. In a series of articles written in late 1970 and early 1971 the California Marxist-Leninists refuted the RTR III position on the land question, the “anarchist campaign against the dictatorship of the proletariat,” and the RTR III line against socialist diplomacy. They in addition pointed out the idealist essence of the RTR III line and showed how the psychological-individualist method of work of PLP evolved from their anarchist politics. (The articles were collected in a booklet, “The Anti-Marxist-Leninist Line of Progressive Labor” by John Ericson and Charles Loren.) They were forced out of the Party. Finally after the draft of RTR III was issued in early in 1971 a number of PL cadre resigned over the anti-Marxist deviations of PLP. Dave Davis, a PL leader in New York, wrote a long and stinging rebuttal to the idealist essence of PL’s new line. RTR III begins by saying that “A scientific evaluation of history must have as its core the study of revolutionary movements.” Davis drew the distinction between this idealist statement and historical materialism: “A scientific evaluation of history must have as its core a study of society, and its contradictions, and on this basis, a study of the revolutionary movements to resolve them.”[111] There were a number of other forces in and around PLP, including former leaders who saw the RTR III line as Trotskyist and counterrevolutionary.
A significant number of other Marxist-Leninist forces in PLP also had serious reservations about RTR III but were so disoriented by what was going on in China that they went along with the anarchism and Trotskyism in RTR III since at least PLP wasn’t meeting with Kissinger. From the nadir of isolationism, sectarianism, anarchism,Utopian socialism and Trotskyism that PLP reached with the publication of RTR III in July 1971 different small groups of Marxists within the Party waged a long, difficult, hardly ever conscious and ultimately futile struggle over the next six years to return PLP to the Marxist-Leninist path. Why this was doomed to fail has to do with the entrenchment of the leadership.
Abbreviations Used in Endnotes
EA: Eyewitness Account: Some 30 former members of PLP contributed to these accounts, including seven former NC members, at least one of whom was present at all NC meetings between April, 1965 and March, 1977. Whenever this citation is used the account has been carefully crosschecked with other witnesses.
CD: Challenge-Desafio, PL’s national newspaper.
PL: PL magazine, PL’s national theoretical magazine.
IB: PL internal bulletin.
CW: Collected works.
• • •
[89] EA
[90] EA
[91] EA
[92] EA
[93] EA
[94] EA
[95] PL, V. 8, No. 3, November, 1971, p. 61, 66.
[96] Ibid. p. 55-57.
[97] Ibid. p. 10.
[98] Left-Wing Communism, (Chapter VIII).
[99] EA
[100] PL, V. 8, No. 3, November, 1971, p. 11.
[101] EA
[102] PL, V. 8, No. 3, November, 1971, p. 12.
[103] “A Painful But Necessary Lesson,” V. 27 of Lenin’s CW.
[104] EA
[105] EA
[106] PL, V. 8, No. 3, November, 1971, p. 42, 44.
[107] Ibid, p. 27.
[108] Ibid, p. 28-29.
[109] IB, May 14, 1977, p. 110.
[110] “Strange and Monstrous” in Vol. 27 of Lenin’s CW.
[111] IB, June 3, 1971, p. 69.