Nineteen fifty-six is commonly held to be the turning point in world communism, the date at which the majority of Communist Parties throughout the world began, through the promptings of Khrushchev, to turn their backs on the working class and make an open turn to revisionism. “Comrade Khrushchev”, as he was then called even by his opponents, launched the denunciation of Stalin, the revisionist theses on “peaceful coexistence” and “peaceful transition to socialism”? and eventually the even more markedly revisionist lines on the “party of the whole people” and “state of the whole people”. It was the adoption of such overtly revisionist lines that forced the CP China and Party of Labor of Albania to begin, at first privately and then publicly, to criticize the CPSU’s revisionism. And, as the private negotiations and public polemics proved unable to resolve the differences, the struggle led to an open split in the international movement. On the one side stood the CPSU and almost every Communist Party in the world, bound together by their common dedication to modern revisionism; and on the other stood the CP China and the PL Albania, as the sole defenders of Marxism-Leninism. In the twenty year period that followed, the revisionist CP’s developed into direct social props of imperialism, the Soviet Union became a social-imperialist superpower, and, to oppose this consolidation of revisionism, a new ’anti-revisionist communist movement’ began to emerge worldwide under the leadership of the CPC and PLA.
This general view of the split in communism has, through simple re-petition over the last twenty years, gained the status of an “objective truth”. As to instances of modern revisionist lines prior to 1956, the CPC and PLA polemics cite the development of Browderism in the CPUSA and Titoism in Yugoslavia, but these are portrayed as having only a very minor role as compared to Khrushchev’s speech at the XX Congress CPSU and the maneuvers of the Russians during the 1960 Moscow Conference. Thus the dating of the split in communism at 1956 is the basic content of the polemical works of the CPC and PLA against modern revisionism, and has been adopted by almost every new ’anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist’ organization and party as the gospel truth.
The quest ion of when and in what form modern revisionism arose is of such crucial importance to our movement since, firstly, it is impossible to wage a consistent and principled struggle against modern revisionism unless its roots are fully exposed; and since, secondly , the attitude that Marxist-Leninists take towards the activity of the CP ’s and international movement prior to 1956 fully reflects the r understanding of the objective tasks and content of the new communist workers’ Party we must build. Those who wish to treat the question of revisionism and the tasks before our movement intelligently must therefore take nothing for granted, but must, as Lenin teaches us, treat these experiences critically and test them independently.
One thing or another. Either modern revisionism did, as is commonly held, come of age in 1956; in which case the task of the new Marxist-Leninist movement is simply to draw on the heritage of the world movement prior to 1956 and ’reconstitute’ a new Communist Party on the line of those that existed worldwide before the middle 1950’s. This view is supported by the polemics of the CPC and PLA against the CPSU, by their concentration on Khrushchev as the main instigator of revisionist lines and by the almost total lack of analysis or criticism of the world movement before the XX Congress. It is further supported by the stands taken by the new “ML” organizations in the US towards the history of the CPUSA; that is, by those who describe the old CP as being “generally revolutionary” until it was ’deceived and misled’ by Khrushchev in 1956 or by those who hold that it was revolutionary until 1956. As to the world movement, almost ’everyone’ agrees that the Comintern issued nothing but correct verdicts, and that if particular CP’s fell into opportunism prior to 1956, it was only through ’misapplication’ of the CI directives. As to the role of Stalin or other prominent figures of the international movement, both the CPC and PLA had initial criticisms of “certain serious errors” Stalin had committed “at certain times”, but these criticisms have never been elaborated in full nor in any way directly associated with the events of the XX Congress. Thus the net result of this view is that the main content of the world movement up to the middle 1950’s was Marxist-Leninist, the general line of the Communist International up to its dissolution was correct, the activity of the CP’s largely principled and in line with the objective interests of the working class, that the overturning of this harmonious state of affairs was primarily the accomplishment of N. Khrushchev, and that our task, the task of Marxist-Leninists around the world, is now to build Communist Parties in every country in line with the CP’s of the 1930’s and 1950’s.
Either this, or, as is not at all commonly held, modern revisionism was rotten ripe long before Mr. Khrushchev came along, in which case we must question the entire struggle against modern revisionism as it has been waged to date, the new ’anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist movement’ that has been based upon it, and how it came about that a struggle against revisionism has been conducted without a proper foundation in principle. This view is supported only by the facts, and it remains to be seen just how many of the new “Marxist-Leninist” forces worldwide will prove to have the wherewithall in principle to accept and build a consistent and truly Marxist-Leninist movement upon it. But it should be clear to anyone who has seriously considered the ’sudden’ turn of the entire world movement to revisionism, and in particular the recent turn of the CPC to the Right, that there was a fundamental departure from Marxist-Leninist principles in the vast majority of CP’s long before the CPSU gave that turn an official stamp of approval in 1956. It would be at best childish naivete and at worst a covert defence of modern revisionism, to believe that it took only a few speeches by N. Khrushchev to turn the world movement on its head and that prior to his arrival the world revolution was proceeding apace. No. We cannot build a durable and principled communist movement on a foundation of such opportunist naivete. What is most needed now is the ability to confront the facts head-on and raise high the principles of Marxism-Leninism that have been buried under 40 years of unbridled opportunism.
The general conclusions we have reached, and which we will be elaborating in forthcoming polemics and articles, are as follows:
The original split in socialism during WW I which laid the basis for the creation of the Third International marked a decisive break between the political independence of the revolutionary proletariat in the form of Marxism-Leninism, and the opportunist striving of the petty bourgeoisie, in the form of Social-Democracy. The duplicity inherent in Social-Democracy prior to that split, i.e. its existence as bloc of petty bourgeois opportunism and proletarian Marxism, had been a consistent target of Lenin’s criticism throughout his political life. What Lenin had persistently exposed during his struggle against the revisionists and Economists of Social-Democracy, that is, that the opportunists were socialists only in name, and betrayers of the working class in deed was fully affirmed by the outbreak of the war. The overwhelming proportion of Social-Democratic Parties sided with their own bourgeoisie during the war, and thus led the workers in each country into a mutual slaughter for the benefit of the imperialists. Only the Bolshevik Party issued the call to turn the imperialist war into a civil war against the world’s bourgeoisie. Social-Democracy thereafter became synonymous with open betrayal of the working class, with slavish reformism hidden behind ’socialist’ phrases, with defence of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary proletariat, with bourgeois pacifism and bourgeois national chauvinism. The Third International thus demanded of the communists who were breaking with Social-Democracy that they form Communist Parties that were truly communist in both word and deed, that they wage a consistent and ruthless struggle against all opportunism, against every attempt to divert the working class from its revolutionary line of march. The Communist International was to be qualitatively different from the two that preceded it in that it would be the international organization of the revolutionary proletariat alone, and not a bloc of the petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat. In structure, it was based on democratic centralism, with binding discipline on all Sections, as the World Party of the Proletariat. Thus the split in socialism severed the communists of every country from the hypocrisy and duplicity of Social-Democracy, and laid the basis for the organized political independence of the world’s working class.
In the period between the Comintern’s formation and the early 19301s the CPSU(B), under Stalin’s leadership, waged a consistent struggle against the various attempts to turn the CPSU(B) and the Comintern onto an opportunist path. This struggle was successful to extent that it resulted in the ouster of the main proponents of opportunist lines: Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Radek, the Rights in Germany, Lovestone in the US, and others. But, as is demonstrated by the history of every Party, the CP’s were still far from fulfilling the standards the principles of admission to the CI had placed upon them. Where Lenin’s Terms of Admission required comprehensive agitation and propaganda on a day to day basis, the CP’s had for the most part failed to produce propagandists capable of anything but stock catch-phrases. Where what was demanded was a decisive break with opportunists and Centrists, many Parties had spent the entire 1920’s with opportunists at their head. Where what was essential was a dual apparatus for both legal and illegal work and the ability to go rapidly from one to the other, in most Parties a durably illegal apparatus was simply lacking. Where Lenin had insisted on consistent work in the armed forces, stating that failure to fulfill this work “... would be tantamount to a betrayal of their revolutionary duty and incompatible with membership in the Third International”, few Parties had taken even the first steps towards such work. The same failure was prevalent in work among the semi-proletariat and lower petty bourgeoisie. The principles of the Comintern demanded that the Parties base themselves in the proletariat, to penetrate the reformist unions, and to create factory cells as the basic organizational unit of the Party, and yet the vast majority of Parties had not, by the early 1930’s, taken these essential steps in their mass work. The Comintern had not yet, in short, reached the stature of the principles that guided it, but was, like the Parties that composed it, still struggling to make those principles a palpable fact. The Communist International was not, as the Trotskyites would have it, betrayed during this period; it was simply struggling for its life. But it would amount to belittling our present tasks if we were to ’overlook’ the real condition of the CP’s and Comintern at that time, or to think that we should not be so ’critical’ or exacting in our estimation of the movement’s past. We make no apologies for anyone. The criteria we place upon the early CP’s and the CI is precisely the criteria we should place upon ourselves, and the shortcomings they suffered are precisely those that we must at all costs overcome.
The turning point in the development of the world movement, and the point at which we mark the initial split in international communism, was the VII Congress of the Comintern in 1935. Prior to this point, the CP’s had, despite their inability to launch comprehensive communist work, at least avoided becoming stuck around consolidated opportunist lines. They represented a developing communist movement in its early stages, before it had learned to stand fully on its own. Its backbone was the CPSU(B) and in particular Stalin. What the VII Congress brought was the abandonment of the struggle to keep the communist movement on an independent and principled path, and, in the face of the development of fascism and the likelihood of imperialist war, the wholesale adoption of Social-Democratic theses on the tasks of the international proletariat.
Where the VI Congress in 1928 had adopted a principled line for preparation for imperialist war, for turning the coming war into a civil war for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the capitalistically developed countries, for waging a ruthless struggle against the Social-Democratic social-fascists who would attempt to tie the working class to a reformist and social-pacifist ’resistance’ to the bourgeoisie, and so on the VII Congress adopted exactly the opposite line. G. Dimitrov, the chief architect of modern revisionism, directed the Comintern’s move towards open collaboration with Social-Democracy under the call for the United Front. For CP’s that were already infested with Right opportunist tendencies, that lacked a firm foundation in Marxist-Leninist principles, that lacked systematic mass work and organized penetration of the working class, such an open appeal to the Right met little resistance. The political content of Dimitrov’s United Front was: the ’post- ponement’ of the socialist revolution in favor of the ’fight against fascism’; the subordination of all revolutionary tasks to the struggle for immediate reforms; the ’fusion’ of the interests of the proletariat with the narrow strivings of the petty bourgeoisie; the Social-Democratic distinction between the aggressive fascists and the ’peace-loving’ bourgeois-democratic imperialist powers; the definition of an ’aggressor’ in imperialist war; the introduction of social-pacifism and social-chauvinism as ’proper’ stances for communists; the portrayal of the working class as the “best defender of national interests and national independence”; and so on, in short, the entire stock-in-trade that Social-Democracy had been propagating within the working class since WW I. Dimitrov further proposed the establishment of a new, single proletarian party,an embodiment of the ’unity’ of Social-Democrats and Communists that was being achieved through the United Front. This new party was to be based, not on the clear guiding principles established by Lenin to shape the CP’s of the III international, but simply on five formal points of unity that any exposed S-D worth his salt would have ’adhered’ to. The most fundamentally revisionist ’error’ of Dimitrov’s line was the classic Social-Democratic striving to, under the plea of “changed conditions”, reduce the tasks of the working class movement to reformist and bourgeois-democratic issues.
The Implementation of the United Front policy by the various CP’s, and in particular the CPUSA and CP France, was not at all a “misapplication” of Dimitrov’s line, but its direct fulfillment. When the CP cadre began their Party meetings with the Star Spangled Banner, or when M. Thorez donned the French tricolor for special occasions, this was. precisely the expression in practice of what Dimitrov had advocated in theory. The enthusiasm for this revisionist turn was supplemented by the sudden influx into the ranks of the CP’s of ’ex-’ Social-Democrats, who, having had their own opportunist apparatus, parliamentary positions, S-D Party bureaucracy, comfortable trade union jobs, and so on, taken away by the fascists, and having been so badly exposed before the working class, sought refuge in the Right turn of international communism. G. Dimitrov was, of course, careful to show that the ’new tactical orientation’ was not, after all, a capitulation to Social-Democracy, but that quite the opposite, it was the Social-Democrats who had come to the Left. The change in line only ’appeared’ to be Right opportunist, but was in reality, according to Dimitrov, only “genuine revolutionary realism”. What little opposition there was was rejected outright as “sectarian ’sticking to principle’”, and with the prestige of the Comintern behind it, such a charge carried considerable weight. As far as we know, there was no concerted or principled opposition to the new line within the entire international movement.
The VII Congress marked the split of the communist movement worldwide, but it was in fact a split entirely to the benefit of the modern revisionists. The future of the world movement rested solely, as it had during WW I, with those who despite the turn of all and sundry to opportunism continued to uphold Marxist-Leninist principles in the defence of the objective interests of the proletariat. But while this burden had been shouldered by Lenin during the split in socialism, no one undertook to shoulder it either during or after the split in communism. The VII Congress thus marks the decline of the world movement as a whole. With no organized defence of Marxism-Leninism, no open ^and resolute struggle against the subordination of communist tasks to Social-Democracy, no persistent attempt to organize the struggle against this betrayal, no preparation of the working class for internationalist tactics in imperialist war, there began a severe rupture between communism and the working class worldwide. Thus alongside old revisionism in the form of Social-Democracy there arose modern revisionism in the form of revisionist CP’s and a bankrupt III International. In theory, the connection between the two was established by the direct adoption by the Comintern of open Social-Democratic theses on bourgeois democracy, fascism and imperialist war; the difference being that the Social-Democrats were content to call themselves ’Marxists’, whereas the modern revisionists called themselves ’Marxist-Leninists’. Organizationally, the continuity between the two was maintained through the influx of Social-Democrats and bourgeois-liberal elements into the CP’s from 1935 onward. The stark opportunism usually associated with the CPUSA and CP France during the United Front period was the logical outcome of Dimitrov’s line, and was the sum and substance of the activity of the vast majority of the CP’s throughout the middle 19301 s to the present. All that the XX Congress CPSU brought about was the further ’creative application of Marxism-Leninism’, the ’summing up’ and elaboration of the line that had been laid down twenty years before.
The period between 1935 and 1939 saw the further degeneration of the CP’s, the formation of United Front blocs with the ’non-aggressive’ imperialist bourgeoisie, massive catering to the narrow interests and ambitions of the entire petty bourgeoisie, the development of open social-chauvinism and bourgeois pacifism, and the turn of the Soviet Union to bourgeois diplomacy. While the various non-aggression treaties the USSR established were necessary and valid in principle for the Soviet Union’s defence, the mutual defence treaties such as the Franco-Soviet agreement signed by Litvinov were direct violations of Marxist-Leninist principles. The Franco-Soviet pact obliged the dictatorship of the proletariat to come to the military defence of an imperialist power should the latter be attacked by another imperialist power, i.e. Germany. It thus formally bound the USSR to enter an imperialist war on behalf of one of the imperialist coalitions. Likewise the formal agreements the USSR established with the Allies during the war, in which American and British imperialists were portrayed as ’defenders of democracy and national independence’, ’forces of peace’ and so on, represented an outright betrayal of the revolutionary interests of the working class worldwide. Stalin bears the bulk of responsibility for this attempt to deceive the workers as to the true nature of the war, since up to the middle 19301s he had been the most steadfast defender of the workers’ interests and thus had gained the confidence of the workers throughout the world. We are at a loss to explain the turn of even the most proven Marxist-Leninists towards open social-chauvinism; but we are less concerned with the individual psychology of opportunism than with its objective effect on the course of the world movement. Even with the weaknesses of the CP’s during the 1920’s and early 1930’s, even with the massive losses suffered by the CP Germany with the rise of fascism, it would have still been possible and was in fact absolutely necessary to uphold the political independence of the international working class throughout the period leading up to and during the war. But that political independence, expressed in the principles of Marxism-Leninism, was simply abandoned in the service of ’genuine revolutionary realism’. Thus the bond between the proletarian dictatorship and the internationalist policy of the world’s working class was broken and this led to the destruction of both.
The period between 1939 and 1941 saw the failure of the United Front policy of winning a stable ’alliance’ between the ’democratic’ bloc of imperialist powers and the USSR. Litvinov’s appeals to the American, British and French bourgeoisie were met with the ’democratic’ and ’peace-loving’ Munich concessions, and the United Front Against Fascism was for the moment simply dropped in favor of social-pacifism and half-hearted calls to turn imperialist war into civil war. The CP’s had not in fact been undertaking the day to day work absolutely essential to turn the contradictions presented by an imperialist war to the advantage of the proletariat, and the few calls issued for civil war were in fact only formal gestures. Much more devotion was displayed in issuing the simple calls for ’peace1. It was as if Lenin had never written a word.
The VII Congress marked the initial split in communism, the breaking of the entire world movement loose from its moorings in Marxist-Leninist principle, and the period of decline of the Communist International. The real outbreak of the war in 1941 marked its total collapse. Where formerly reformism, opportunism, social-pacifism and social-chauvinism had stood side by side, depending on the particular course of the pre-war United Front policy, the opening up of the war opened up the leading role for social-chauvinism, ultra-opportunism, as the guiding line for the domestic policy of the vast majority of CP’s. National defence and independence, the preservation of bourgeois-democratic imperialism over fascist imperialism, the rallying of the proletariat behind the catch-word of ’peace and democracy’, became the order of the day. This was precisely the situation that the VI Congress of the Comintern had foreseen in relation to Social-Democratic maneuvers during a war, when the CI advised the CP’s to wage a consistent struggle against every attempt to rally the workers to their own bourgeoisie under the guise of the ’fight against fascism’. And yet our “ML” Social-Democrats proved not only equal to the II International, but far ’superior’ in leading the proletariat to slaughter.
There were, objectively, two tasks confronting the international working class during the imperialist war: to render every possible aid to the defence of the Soviet Union; and to organize for proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. The communist movements in the colonies and semi-colonies had the objective task of making good use of the contradictions presented by the war to break their countries from the imperialist world system. Where it would have been entirely possible in principle for the USSR to make limited military agreements with one or another of the imperialist blocs for its own defense, it would have also been mandatory in principle that the nature and content of such agreements be fully explained to the world’s working class and that there be not the slightest deception as to the true aims of the imperialists. What actually occurred was just the opposite. Instead of full exposure of the role of the Allied imperialists, the Communist International, including its leading spokesmen Dimitrov and Stalin, attempted to hide the imperialist nature of the war behind bourgeois-democratic catch-phrases. Instead of exposing the mutual responsibility for imperialist war shared by all, even the most ’democratic’, imperialists, the Comintern portrayed the war as the responsibility of the Axis imperialists alone. Instead of exposing the sole ambition of all the imperialists involved, i.e. to rally the workers as cannon fodder for a new redivision of the world, the Comintern cast the Allied imperialists in the role of ’defenders of democracy’. It was not for his own amusement that Lenin wrote that the opportunists are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves. But what with the “changed conditions”, our “ML” opportunists were of course in no mood for sobering words from Lenin.
The formal dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 amounted to nothing more than planting the carcass of proletarian internationalism lest it offend the new ’allies’ won during the war. The signatories to its dissolution conveniently ’forgot’ that, unlike the 1st International, the Comintern was not simply a transitional form of organization leading to some higher form; it was in fact the highest form of organization of the world proletariat, the World Party. Thus its dissolution, no matter under what excuse, amounted to nothing less than the liquidation of the political independence of the international working class, the voluntary capitulation by the CI leadership to world imperialism. Such formal liquidationism is the logical consequence of every consistent break with Marxist-Leninist principle. The liquidation of the Comintern was “proper and timely” only from the standpoint of the interests of the bourgeoisie and those who cater to and serve the bourgeoisie.
From that point onward, everything was a foregone conclusion. What we are most familiar with in the history of the CPUSA, its crass opportunism during the United Front period, its strikebreaking and bourgeois jingoism during WWII, the development of Browderism, the liquidation of the Party, its reconstitution on an equally revisionist basis, and so on is the direct outcome of the opportunist tendencies fostered by the Cl’s program from 1934-35 on. Titoism is likewise the true child of the International’s turn to revisionism, the only difference being that Tito showed more opportunist ’independence’ in elaborating his own individual road to consolidated revisionism. And Khrushchev just put the icing on the cake. It was this prolonged cultivation of Right opportunism in all of the world’s CP’s for some twenty years that explains the ’sudden’ and easy turn of the vast majority of Parties to Khruschev’s line in 1956-60. It represented in a ’higher’ theory what the majority of Parties had been doing in practice all along.
The net result of the betrayal of the Comintern has been an historical cleavage between communism and the world’s working class lasting some 4O years. This cleavage has had such profound effects internationally, has so deformed the proletarian movements in the advanced capitalist countries, has so obscured the clear .guiding principles established by Lenin throughout his lifetime and by Stalin up to his turn to social-chauvinism, has resulted in such an open disgrace of communism before the working class, and has allowed for such a massive outbreak of ultra-opportunist and petty bourgeois “ML” tendencies worldwide, that even the most principled elements who have survived it have proven inconsistent in their struggle to overcome it. The break between the CPC and PLA against the open revisionism of the CPSU in 1956-60 represented, not a split between consistent Marxism-Leninism and opportunism, but rather the breaking away of a portion of an already revisionist movement from the process of its further consolidation. The polemics waged by the CPC and PLA did not attack modern revisionism at its root, did not question the conduct of the world movement prior to 1956, did not expose in principle the basis from which Khrushchev and the majority of CP’s were operating, did not call for the reconstitution of the Communist International and the setting of the world movement on a consistent internationalist footing, in short, did not lay bare the entire development and continuity of modern revisionism and thus were not themselves based on a firm and definite foundation of principle. Just the opposite. Both the CPC and PLA themselves had bourgeois elements ’right in the Party’, and those who, like Mao Tse Tung and Enver Hoxha, were striving towards Marxist-Leninist principles had to wage a struggle on two fronts. The situation had so degenerated by the time of the 1960 Moscow Conference that even the most principled elements within the CPC and PLA thought that the ’differences’ between themselves and the CPSU could be cleared up in one or two sessions, that “Comrade Khrushchev” would surely see the light, and that failing that, surely the world Parties would come to the defence of Marxist-Leninist principles. Anyone who has carefully studied the initial polemics against modern revisionism is immediately struck by the incredible naivete displayed both by the CPC and PLA. We have no doubt that many of the articles were penned by Rights within the Chinese and Albanian Parties, who waged the struggle ’against’ the CPSU!s revisionism only in order to protect their own. But even those written from a relatively principled standpoint reveal, either through omissions or inconsistencies, that their authors had simply lost track of what had occurred in the world movement for the previous twenty-plus years.
This will, of course, appear as nothing but ’blasphemy’ to those political enfants terrible who amuse themselves playing at “ML” politics who prefer opportunist fairytales to the stark truth, and who in the end could g.ve a fig for the ’ultimate aim’. It is no small wonder that so many of the new “ML” organizations that have declared themselves within the past five years choose to simply ignore or idealize the history of world movement prior to N. Khrushchev’s appearance. The new “ML” movement that has emerged in almost every country has, like every new communist movement in history, a petty bourgeois social basis, and it is only ’natural’ that in its early stages the bulk of the new movement will express, not the conscientious striving of sections of the intelligentsia towards Marxism-Leninism, but simply the spontaneous opportunist striving of petty bourgeois elements to fulfill their narrow interests under the umbrella of the working class. When this spontaneous striving of the radicalized petty bourgeoisie encounters a proletarian movement already devastated by revisionism, nothing is so simple than, to carve a place for oneself and one’s reformist ambitions than by declaring oneself an ’anti-revisionist’ defender of the working class, Thus the lack of enthusiasm for waging a truly consistent and penetrating struggle against modern revisionism, the failure to take up a consistent exposure of the CPUSA and its earlier history, the wholesale adoption of United Front tactics towards the petty bourgeoisie, the unwillingness to take an active part in the struggle against the Rights within the CPC and PLA, the refusal to truly support the Lefts and set ever higher tasks for our new movement, the unprincipled and factional ’polemics’ between the various “ML” opportunists, the general rejection of assuming the serious responsibilities that Marxism-Leninism places upon us, and so on, that characterizes the vast majority of new “ML” parties and organizations internationally. Such are the fruits of the VII Congress and the consequences of failing to take the struggle against modern revisionism to its roots.
The tasks of those who wish to overcome this state of affairs should be clear. We must build everything from the bottom up. The most principled elements within the CPC and PLA can provide leadership only to the extent that they themselves broaden and deepen the struggle against revisionism, oust the Rights from their Parties, and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat in their countries into the pillars of a new and truly international Marxist-Leninist movement. But thus far this has not been the case, and the recent move by the Rights within the CPC fully demonstrates the outcome of this failure. Those who are content to let the world movement spontaneously ’evolve’ on its own, who make no concerted effort to combat opportunist trends wherever they may arise, who refuse to take responsibility for resolving the burning questions put to us by the history of the world movement, who rely upon wretched diplomacy and ’non-interference’ in matters of vital concern to our movement, such people are not Marxist-Leninists but stupid amateurs and opportunists. Our “ML” opportunists may please themselves with their nitwitted catch-phrases and wiseacring over the ’struggle against modern revisionism’, but class conscious workers will know immediately what to make of this struggle ’against’ revisionism which is bound hand and foot with all the opportunist tactics the overt revisionists themselves employ. The struggle to build a new Marxist-Leninist Party is inseparable from the struggle against the entire spectrum of modern revisionist tendencies, and for this to be done it is absolutely necessary that we expose the full course of its development. It is difficult, as Lenin wrote, to maintain a consistent and principled standpoint in times of war or crisis, and in the end, few are able to. But it should be clear that the future of our movement now rests with those few, whether in the PLA the CPC or amongst the new Marxist-Leninist forces worldwide, who steadfastly adhere to principle and who break the 40 years long silence with a battle cry.