War is one of the worst scourges which afflict the peoples. It is the working masses who pay for war preparations, who bear the consequences of war and who shed their blood.
With imperialism came world wars, which technical developments make more and more murderous.
To fight disease one must know its symptoms, its development, its nature and, above all, its causes, so as to decide upon means to fight it at any time and to get rid of it once and for all.
It is imperialism which is the cause of wars. As long as imperialism exists there remains the possibility of a war of one kind or another breaking out. It is impossible to abolish wars without abolishing classes and establishing socialism.
This indisputable fact constitutes one of the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism, and it has been thoroughly confirmed by experience. The great mass of the people in the world are convinced of it. It is because we know the defects of the capitalist system and of imperialism, that, as supporters of socialist revolution and as Communists, we fight it.
The achievement of our final aim will mean that, together with the abolition of the exploitation of man by man and of all forms of oppression, humanity will be freed from wars once and for all.
In repeating, with Lenin, that war is not inevitable, we mean that the masses must not accept it passively as the result of a supernatural force and as the consequence of inescapable fate. We also mean by this that we are organizing our actions from now on with the aim of eliminating the very root of war, which is imperialism.
In the daily struggles between the oppressed and their oppressors, we decide our tactical aims with a view to defeating the plans of capital and safeguarding the interests of the working masses, so as to prepare the working class ideologically, organizationally and materially to carry out its historical mission – the socialist revolution.
On this basis, we make a distinction between just wars and unjust wars.
We support civil wars waged by the exploited against capital, and national-liberation wars of colonialized peoples against colonialist imperialism. These wars are the counter-measure to the permanent aggression of the exploiters.
We fight against the aggressive wars of imperialism and against the export of counter-revolution.
The maintenance and consolidation of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems are aims which can be realized. Today it is possible to avert world war, thanks to the strength of the world socialist camp, the struggles of the revolutionary movements for national liberation, the actions of the working class and the great masses of the people, and the fight of all the peace forces opposing imperialism undermined by its contradictions.
The realization of this aim implies constant vigilance on the part of all peoples with respect to imperialism’s aggressive intrigues, the strengthening of unity of action of all the peace forces, the unity of the world socialist camp, and the maintenance of its defensive strength at a level capable of discouraging aggression. To prevent aggression, it is also necessary to be prepared to counter it.
We are convinced that the peace forces can impose the complete and total banning and destruction of nuclear weapons, thus dealing a real blow at imperialism, at its aggressive potential and at its blackmail, as well as at the revisionists who use the same blackmail procedure against the socialist countries and all the peoples of the world.
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For our country, the main objectives of the current struggle against the war danger and imperialism’s aggressive plots are thus clearly determined as:
– denunciation of imperialism’s aggressive plots;
– support for the statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, dated July 31, 1963 seeking the complete, thorough, total and resolute prohibition and destruction of nuclear weapons;
– adoption of real steps for international detente, notably:
– the signing of a peace treaty with the German Democratic Republic;
– recognition of the People’s Republic of China and of the German Democratic Republic;
– approval of the Rapacki plan for a denuclearized zone in Europe;
– in the context of the fight for withdrawal from NATO, repudiation of allegiance to this pact’s aggressive policy and rejection of its consequences;
– no foreign bases, arms or atomic air force wing in Belgium;
– no increase in the length of military service;
– a 10,000 million [Belgian francs] reduction in military expenses;
– no participation in NATO forces;
– solidarity with the peoples who are victims of aggression, support for anti-imperialist revolutionary movements.
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What is the revisionists’ attitude to the threat of an imperialist war of aggression?
In place of a Marxist-Leninist analysis and aims which they disown and disapprove of – they substitute views which are not conceived in terms of class struggle or of anti-imperialist struggle. They tend to lull the workers’ vigilance and even condemn it. In place of a policy of the widest possible alliances of the peace forces to take action against the threats of aggressive war by the imperialists, they substitute the subordination of the people’s forces to imperialism’s manoeuvres and designs.
Thermonuclear blackmail is an essential element of their policy and “theories.”
Thermonuclear hell for the “bad ones” who do not want to kneel before imperialism, and the paradise of “a world without war and without arms” – at a time when imperialism still exists – for those who agree to submit to perpetual slavery: this is their catechism.
There is no “world without war and without arms” so long as imperialism exists. Arms and means of repression constitute an essential element of the state. This instrument of class domination is indispensable to capital both for maintaining its regime of the exploitation of man by man against the workers of each country and for ensuring colonialist and neo-colonialist super-exploitation against the oppressed peoples.
Instead of denouncing imperialism, and particularly U.S. imperialism, the main force of aggression and war in the world, the revisionists chatter about “extremists,” and “madmen,” so as to cause confusion.
But facts demonstrate that the “madmen” and the “extremists” are one of the forces which make up imperialism, which it does not neglect to make use of, when convenient, as bogies or as shock troops.
Events show that at the present time these “extremists” and these “madmen” support, in effect, the same policy as American imperialism and the revisionists as is shown by the adhesion of West Germany, of Franco, and of the Government of Thailand, etc. ... to the Moscow treaty.
The revisionists claim that history is made by this or that “individual” and that the fate of humanity depends on the “wisdom” of these “great men” and principally on those of imperialism. They thus deny that the great masses of the people are the creators of history, and that class struggle is the motive force of historical development.
For them it is not the October Revolution which constitutes a turning-point in human history but the “Camp David” talks.
“Eisenhower is a herald of peace.” “Kennedy plays a key role in the struggle for peace,” so the modern revisionists claim.
According to them the world must bow down before the injunctions coming from the collaboration of the revisionist Khrushchov and of Kennedy, who represents the principal force of aggression and of war in the world.
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The revolutionary action of the working class of the capitalist countries and the national-liberation movement of the oppressed peoples in weakening imperialism and in dealing it decisive blows makes, by this very fact, an inestimable contribution to the struggle against the danger of aggressive wars.
The revisionists, however, oppose revolutionary struggle more and more openly under the pretext of not irritating imperialism and not provoking it.
Their counter-revolutionary policy signifies class collaboration on an international scale and in each capitalist country. It demands the subordination of peoples oppressed by colonialism, both new and old, to this collaboration.
The peoples who want to liberate themselves are accused of “racism.” And so, because the oppressors, the men of finance capital, are usually whites, they would forbid the oppressed blacks or yellows, and whites as well, to fight for their liberation.
It is a scandalous slander to charge the victim with the crimes of the aggressor and of the oppressor.
In the last analysis on what “ideology” do the revisionists base their policy of collaboration between the working class and the labouring masses on the one side, and trusts and monopolies on the other?
Their “solidarity” in the developed industrial countries is solidarity with capitalism; their “defence of the centres of modern civilization” is in reality participation in aggression and oppression by imperialist “civilization.”
It is an attempt to associate the working class of the imperialist countries with the policy of colonial plunder.
What is this but “racial chauvinism” which is rapidly becoming racism, pure and simple.
But the evidence of the class struggle which breaks out again and again makes nonsense of these miserable attempts at diversion by the revisionists.
To this shameful degeneration we oppose proletarian internationalism, the fraternal solidarity of all the exploited, of all the oppressed, of every continent, of every land, and of every colour.
This fighting solidarity will defeat imperialism, that colossus with feet of clay, that paper tiger.
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Instead of the Leninist concept of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems, they recommend peaceful coexistence between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressed and the oppressors, between capital and labour and between colonialism and colonized peoples.
They practise “peaceful collaboration” with imperialism, they betray the masses and demobilize them.
On October 13, 1960, Jean Blume, National Secretary of the Belgian Communist Party, expounded the revisionist ideology still more clearly.
“Peaceful coexistence is a modern conception of the life of the world and of human evolution.
“It is to the working class and to its thinkers that one must look to discover a truly civilized way to solve conflicts, a truly popular and democratic new method of struggle for the transformation of society and of the world: peaceful coexistence.”
On November 3, 1960, when the colonialist terror was raging in the Congo, the revisionist Political Bureau published a resolution under the title “The Congo, Peace and Economic Expansion,” which said:
“If this situation is lost, one will be able to see in the Congo impatient reactions, desperate attempts to control by isolated acts of violence essentially political problems which can and must be settled through the normal functioning of institutions and level-headed negotiations between political groups.”
This was to slander in advance the Congolese people’s resistance to aggression and to demand that they submit to “the normal functioning of institutions,” which were colonialist and neo-colonialist!
For the same reasons revisionism is also opposed to the development of the struggle of the working class for its immediate claims and in defence of democratic liberties.
Notable evidence of these anti-militant aims and the restraining action of the revisionist Political Bureau was given:
– during the great strike of December 1960 to January 1961;
– with regard to “the fiscal reform,” the “social programme” and the anti-strike laws;
– in everything which concerns the wage struggle, holidays with pay, a shorter working day and federalism.
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The revisionists reject the Marxist-Leninist concept of the class nature of the state; the Yugoslav theses, the thesis of the 10th Congress of the Italian Communist Party and that of the 14th Congress of the Belgian Communist Party are particularly significant in this respect.
They need this revisionism, this revision of Marxism, to carry out the basic renunciation, that is, to give up the struggle for a socialist revolution.
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Khrushchov’s spokesmen in Belgium show very concretely that the revisionists’ so-called pacifism is an obstacle to effective struggle against the warlike intrigues of imperialism.
They have abandoned all the concrete objectives of the struggle against the war danger such as, for example:
– the total prohibition and the destruction of nuclear armaments;
– the evacuation of foreign bases in Belgium;
– the reduction of military expenditure by 10,000 million [Belgian francs];
– the struggle against the aggressive NATO pact. They laud the Moscow agreement favouring underground nuclear tests.
Their one and only objective in the present circumstances is the signing of a “pact of non-aggression” between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries, an empty objective, if it is not accompanied by concrete actions, and which is destined solely to create a diversion.
The demagogy of the revisionists’ peace aligns itself with Kennedy’s “strategy of peace,” this “American peace” which has been very clearly exposed by the President of the United States in his speech of June 10, 1963, as:
– thermonuclear blackmail;
– the strengthening of colonialist and neo-colonialist bondage by increased intervention by American imperialism;
– the division and weakening of the socialist camp and the international communist movement.
The danger of war has been made greater, as the revisionists themselves ought to admit. This is in large measure the result of their policy of capitulation before imperialism and of collaboration with it.
This is why it is necessary to strengthen action against the aggressive intrigues of imperialism by denouncing the manoeuvres of the revisionists.
The revisionists, who have nothing but good words and praise for the representatives of imperialism, overflow with hatred for those who lead a consistent struggle against imperialism and against the danger of war.
They impudently accuse us of being “belligerent.” According to them, one shouldn’t fight the causes of disease but the doctor.
They now in no way fall short of Spaak who, in 1938 called those who were denouncing Hitler belligerent, and who, in 1947 demanded a sacred union against what he called the “aggressive plans” of the Soviet Union.
Today Spaak, whose role and policies have not changed, is, moreover, the confidant of Khrushchov from whom he transmits information to NATO of which he was the Secretary-General.
Revisionism means capitulation to imperialism and leads to collaboration with it. This was clearly shown by the events in the Caribbean last autumn, by the Sino-Indian border conflict and by the recent Moscow agreement favouring underground nuclear tests by the United States.