First Published: The Forge, Vol. 3, No. 15, August 11, 1978
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
On July 29 the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania issued a letter full of vicious slander against the People’s Republic of China. The letter came after China had been compelled to suspend its agreements of economic aid to Albania because of hostile actions on the Albanian leadership’s part.
The sixty-page text, Letter of the CC of the Party of Labour and the Government of Albania to the CC of the Communist Party and the Government of China, repeats all of the Kremlin’s base and lying accusations against China.
The document accuses China of “perpetrating arbitrary and brutal acts of a superpower” (p. 58), and of seeking “hegemony”; of being a capitalist country as the “state power (is) dominated by bourgeois and revisionist elements.” (p. 38). It claims that the Communist Party of China long ago ceased being a Marxist-Leninist party because “there were pro-Khrushchevites, pro-Americans, opportunists and revolutionaries in the leadership” (p. 43). It even goes so far as to attack Chairman Mao and the late Premier Chou En-lai in name, calling the latter “counter-revolutionary” (p. 38).
In the editorial in the last issue of The Forge, we pointed out that since its VIIth Congress in 1976, the PLA has expounded a series of erroneous positions on the international situation, which oppose the theory of three worlds calling it “anti-Marxist”, “revisionist”, etc.
The PLA denies that the USSR is the rising superpower and the more dangerous of the two. They refuse to admit that Soviet-American rivalry will inevitably result in war, maintaining that the main characteristic of relations between the superpowers is their collusion. Furthermore, they deny that the third world is the main force in the struggle against hegemony.
The Albanian document doesn’t merely repeat the same old charges regarding the theory of three worlds. It goes much further: “The theory of ’three worlds’ is a smokescreen to hide China’s ambition for hegemony over what it calls the ’third world’” (p. 46). What’s more, “...the theory of ’three worlds’ instigates world war” (p. 49).
China a superpower? Compare it to the real superpowers, the USA and especially the USSR, the rising superpower. These two countries have military bases all over the world. On the other hand, you won’t find one Chinese soldier stationed abroad.And what about those military fleets on alert coming from the Pacific that sail the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans? Do they fly Soviet, American or Chinese colours? The answer is obvious.
Who is it that organizes coup d’etats in third world countries like Yemen, Afghanistan and Chile?
Did China drop millions of tons of bombs on Kampuchea? Did China provide the fascist Ethiopian army with tanks to smash the Eritrean people? Or course not.
By drawing people’s attention to the so-called “third superpower”, Albanian leaders are trying to make us forget about social-imperialism’s dirty work throughout the world. They open the way for the Soviet Union to move out and satisfy its voracious appetite.
As Lenin said, “imperialism is war”. The superpower’s contention over the redivision of the world will inevitably lead to war. China warns us of this inevitable danger and calls out to the peoples of the world to prepare for it in order to avoid as much useless suffering as possible.
China is against war. It advocates total disarmament, beginning with the superpowers, as Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Huang Hua said at the UN on May 29, 1978.
By accusing China of provoking a world war and “displaying unusual zeal to interfere in the affairs of the Balkans, to mix up the cards and to kindle the fire of war in this very sensitive area of Europe” (p. 39), the Albanian leaders are throwing a smokescreen around social-imperialism’s actions in the Balkans. The Soviets not the Chinese are the ones who have hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed in this “sensitive” zone, who carry out large scale military manoeuvres to intimidate countries like Yugoslavia and Greece and who are plotting coup d’etats to destabilize the region. The PLA is weakening the peoples of the world in their fight against social-imperialism and the real instigators of war.
In its spirit and its wording, the Albanian document repeats the slander Soviet revisionists have been heaping on China since 1963. We have only to make the comparison with the following passage written by a Soviet hack claiming that China is hoping for “escalation of local conflicts into major military conflagrations between the United States and the USSR – two nuclear powers – to clear the way for domination of the world by China” (The Third World in Peking’s Policy, Devendra Kaushik, Novosti Press, p. 49).
In fact, the PLA has already attacked Mao Tsetung Thought by calling his theory of three worlds “opportunist” and “revisionist”, etc.
But the recent attacks are a thousand times more virulent. On the great revolutionary period of new democracy led by Mao Tsetung, which ended triumphantly with the 1949 socialist revolution, the PLA says: “The great ideas of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Marxist-Leninist ideology were not properly made the example for, the pillar and the compass of, the Communist Party of China” (p. 35)
This is how the document summarizes 30 years of glorious struggle waged by the Chinese people and the CPC under the leadership of Chairman Mao Tsetung. On the Great Cultural Revolution initiated by Chairman Mao the letter says that it was nothing but “struggle for power between factions, persons and groups holding various non-Marxist-Leninist views” (p. 35)
That is the Albanian leaders’ opinion of the CPC’s great struggle to preserve and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in China, a struggle that proved the correctness of Chairman Mao’s theory on the continuation of class struggle under socialism.
According to the Albanian leaders, the CPC is not Marxist-Leninist. The Cultural Revolution was “not led by a genuine party of the working class which should strive for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. (p. 36,)
You’d think these were the words of Soviet revisionists who have always thought that the Cultural Revolution was “the most obvious example of the Maoists rejection of the leading role of the working class and its party”...” (Maoism Unmasked, Moscow, p. 29)
These lines expose the real positions of the PLA. Up until now it had put up a front of defending Mao Tsetung Thought claiming that it only attacked the present leadership of the CPC and comrade Hua Kuofeng. But now it is clearly insinuating that the CPC never was a communist party and that comrade Mao never was a Marxist-Leninist leader.
The PLA is attacking Mao Tsetung Thought and Chairman Mao who played the key role in the struggle against modern revisionism. In so doing, the PLA is rendering a great service to modern revisionism and social-imperialism.
It is regrettable that the PLA, which contributed to the struggle against modern revisionism, is now attacking great socialist China side by side with the USSR. The Albanian leaders are trying to use “left” “ultra-revolutionary” verbiage to hide their right opportunist positions.
But their line of conciliation with social-imperialism is being increasingly exposed. It is nothing but a slick cover-up for the Soviet social-imperialists’ world-wide offensive.