(original) (raw)

ISML WEB VERSION Augsut 2000
ISSUE NUMBER 5;
First published in print form 1999

INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE MARXIST-LENINIST
ISSUE 5; 1999

TABLE Of CONTENTS

Founding Editorial Principles of "International Struggle Marxist-Leninist".............p 1
Addresses for Correspondence .................................................................................p 4
The Proletariat in Britain (W Bland, for the Communist League) .............................p 5
Letter from Open Polemic to ISML ..........................................................................p 21
Prospect for the Future Multanimous Party (Open Polemic) ....................................p 24
Hari Kumar replies to Open Polemic ........................................................................p 31
Enver Hoxha Refuted
(Reprint of article by N. Sanmugathasan; Ceylon Communist Party) ......................p 49
On the Role of the Party of Labour of Albania and Enver Hoxha
in the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism.
(P Kessel, for CEMOPI) ..........................................................................................p 68
Statement upon the War of Aggression of the NATO and USA
(members of ISML) .................................................................................................p 80
Expulsion of CEMOPI from the Marxist-Leninist List
P Kessel, for CEMOPI) .........................................................................................p 83

Founding Editorial Principles of "International Struggle - Marxist-Leninist"

1. We proudly uphold the following points of Marxist-Leninist principles, and believe that they form the minimum, agreed basis to unite ALL who call themselves Marxist-Leninist for the purpose of bringing out an international theoretical, political and revolutionary journal:

a) defence and a consistent and proud acknowledgement of Marxism-Leninism

b) defence and a consistent upright acknowledgement of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin's thoughts and works

c) determined theoretical and practical struggle against revisionism and revisionists of Marxism-Leninism and its revolutionary political theory

d) upholding the revolutionary road to socialism, and not the so called "peaceful road"

e) recognition of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat to first achieve and then to maintain socialism; and then to advance towards communism until its complete establishment

f) full support of the right of nations to self-determination including secession

g) upholding and spreading the philosophy of dialectic and historical materialism and the revolutionary policy inside the working people's movement; against the philosophy of idealism

h) abhorrence and complete rejection, and determined struggle against all forms of racism and sexism

2. It is important that the journal involve all groups who consider themselves Marxist-Leninist. For that reason the Editorial Board will try and contact all the Marxist-Leninist groups, organisations and parties who accept the Founding Principles of clause 1. The Editorial Board has the task to inform them about the journal and to encourage them to take part in its production and circulation, and to attend the next conference. This conference can be attended by more than one organisation from those countries where the Marxist-Leninist Party has not yet been re-constructed.

3. Until an open debate has achieved the clarity and the principled agreement that is required by the international Marxist-Leninist movement, no new, principled and meaningful Communist International can be formed. That is why a prominent section of "International Struggle" will be devoted to "Discussion and Reply".

The editors will be scrupulously fair to all points of view that conform to clause 1. That is to say, we guarantee ALL Marxist-Leninists will be able to have a written and printed reply, either on the basis of their own, or, on their party's, or group's behalf.

Moreover, the editors are mandated to ensure that a scientific, non-sectarian debate proceeds on MARXIST-LENINIST lines. That is, a debate that is conducted on principled and factual lines, and eschews personality attacks, or character assassination.

4. The editors are aware that the road towards the Marxist-Leninist International cannot be covered on the theoretical level only, so they want to emphasise the importance of the establishment of communist parties and groups in order to organise the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and reactionary forces. They want also to emphasise the importance of the exchange of political and organisational experiences between the world revolutionaries and communists.

5. The only views that will not be tolerated in the journal are those that are openly anti-Marxist-Leninist. They include openly racist, bourgeois, revisionist and Trotskyite views. Only one exception to this will be permitted: where the editors take a joint decision that such an article, carries a valuable lesson to the Marxist-Leninist movement, and needs exposing by printing. Such cases will always be appended with a covering Editorial.

6. The editors number 5, including a Chief Editor. The current Editorial Board has been decided by a democratic election. Their mandate is for 2 years, by which time a new Conference will be held. At this Conference all decisions, elections and functions can be re-discussed. All groups will carry one vote at the forthcoming conference (December 1999). Elections will be held for a new Editorial Board.

7. The language of "INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE - Marxist-Leninist" is currently English. This is purely a practical consideration at this time. At this stage, participating parties will have their own responsibility to translate the journal into their own other, significant languages. With further consolidation of our strength, we will later be able to assist this translation process.

8. Donations are required for the journal; but these do not confer any editorial privilege.

9. We are fully agreed that a new Marxist-Leninist Communist International is urgently needed. As LINES OF DEMARCATION are drawn, we wish to assist at the right time, in the formation of such a single, truly united Marxist-Leninist Communist International.

We request Marxist-Leninists the world over to participate in this journal. We ask that views be forwarded to a member of the Editorial Board at the addresses below. We further ask, that these submissions be both in paper form, and if possible, computer disc form (IBM compatible). Of course, if the latter is impossible then we will accept articles in only a written form.

Addresses for Correspondence

A Serafini, Casella Postale 741, 50132 - Firenze, Italia

H Kumar, PO Box 8905 991, King Street West, Hamilton, Ontario 18S 5R5, Canada; e-mail: hari.kumar@sympatico.ca

Communist League, PO Box 24, Leeds LS8 1UU, UK

P Kessel, CEMOPI, 4 Rue d'Arcole, 72000, Le Mans, France; e-mail: cemopi@wanadoo.fr

Progressive Documentation and Information Centre for Turkey, PO Box 13068, Tottenham, London N15 4ZF, UK; tel: 0181-533-0377; Fax: 0181-525-1846; e-mail: Mlkptur@aol.com

The Proletariat in Britain

Introduction

The concept of social class as: " . . . a division or order of society according to status" (1) -
is a very ancient one, the English word 'class' being derived from the Latin 'classis', meaning each of the " . . . ancient divisions of the Roman people" (2).
Servius Tullius, king of Rome in the 6th century BC, organised a classification system:
" . . . which divided citizens into five classes according to wealth" (3).

The Marxist-Leninist Definition of Class

Marxist-Leninists accept the concept of social class put forward above, but hold that a person's social class is determined not by the amount of his wealth, but by the source of his income as determined by his relation to labour and to the means of production:

"Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation . . . to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of their share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different place they occupy in a definite system of social economy"(4) To Marxist-Leninists, therefore, the class to which a person belongs is determined by objective reality, not by anyone's opinion. On the basis of the above definition, Marxist-Leninists distinguish three basic classes in 19th century Britain: "There are three great social groups, whose members . . . . live on wages, profit and ground rent respectively"(5). These three basic classes are:
1) the proletariat or working class;
2) the bourgeoisie or capitalist class; and
3) the landlord class, respectively.

The Landlord Class

Marxist-Leninists define the landlord class as that class which owns land and derives its income from rent on that land:

"Land becomes . . . personified . . . gets on its hind legs to demand . . . its share of the product created with its help . . . rent"(6). With the development of capitalist society, however, the landlord class progressively loses its importance, and a new class emerges -- the petty bourgeoisie.
Thus in developed capitalist society like Britain, there are still three basic classes, but these are now:

1) the proletariat or working class;
2) the petty bourgeoisie; and
3) the bourgeoisie or capitalist class:

"Every capitalist country . . . is basically divided into three main forces: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat" (7). The Bourgeoisie

The English word ' bourgeoisie' is derived from the French word 'bourgeoisie', meaning:

" . . .the trading middle class" (8), as distinct from the landlord class. Marxist-Leninists define the bourgeoisie or capitalist class as " . . . the class of modern capitalist, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour"(9). The capitalist class includes persons whose remuneration comes nominally in the form of a (relatively high) salary, but who serve the capitalist class in high administrative posts (e.g., the directors of large companies, judges, the heads of the armed forces and civil service): "The latter group contains sections of the population who belong to the big bourgeoisie, all the rentiers (living on income from capital and real estate . . . ), then part of the intelligentsia, the high military and civil officials, etc."(10). It includes also the dependents of these persons.

The Proletariat

The English word 'proletariat' is derived from the Latin word 'proles', meaning 'offspring', since according to Roman law a proletarian served the state " . . .not with his property, but only with his offspring" (11). Marxist-Leninist define the proletariat as:

" . . . the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live" (12),
as
" . . . That class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour and does not draw profit from any kind of capital . . . .The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class" (13). This is not essentially different from the dictionary definition of 'proletariat' as: " . . .that class of the community which is dependent on daily labour for subsistence, and has no reserve of capital" (14). It must be noted that Engels declares that: " . . .the proletariat . . . .is in a word the working class"(15), so that any attempt to present the working class as something different from the proletariat is not in accordance with Marxism-Leninism. It must be noted that Marx also speaks of the lumpenproletariat, which he differentiates from the industrial proletariat: "The lumpenproletariat . . . form a mass strictly differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu (folk without fire and without faith, i.e., a rabble)" (16). However, Marx characterises the lumpenproletariat as part of the proletariat. Speaking of the Mobile Guards, recruited for 'the most part' from the lumpenproletariat, he says that " . . . .the Paris proletariat was confronted with an army drawn from its own midst" (17). In modern society, ". . .the proletariat is the only really revolutionary class" (18), so that, in producing the proletariat, the bourgeoisie produces: " . . . its own grave-diggers" (19) which will carry through the socialist revolution under the leadership of the urban industrial workers: "Quite a definite class, namely, the urban and industrial workers in general, is able to lead the whole mass of toilers and the exploited in the struggle for the overthrow of the yoke of capital" (20) led in turn by a Marxist-Leninist Party: "The Party is the political leader of the working class" (21). The Middle Class

The term 'middle class' is used by Marxists -- including Marx and Engels themselves -- in two different ways. Firstly, in the historical sense:

" . . . .in the sense of . . . the French word 'bourgeoisie' . . .that possessing class which is differentiated from the so-called aristocracy" (22). Secondly, when speaking of modern capitalist society, with the meaning of 'petty bourgeoisie', discussed in the next section.

The Petty Bourgeoisie

Between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat stands the petty bourgeoisie:

"In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeoisie has been formed" (23). The English term 'petty bourgeoisie' is an anglicisation of the French term 'petite bourgeoisie', meaning 'little bourgeoisie'. Marxist-Leninists define the petty bourgeoisie as a class which owns or rents small means of production, which it operates largely without employing wage labour, but often with the assistance of members of their family: "A petty bourgeois is the owner of small property" (24). As a worker, the petty bourgeois has interest in common with proletariat; as owner or lessees of means of production, however, he has interests in common with the bourgeoisie. In other words, the petty bourgeoisie has a divided allegiance towards the two decisive classes in capitalist society, the petty bourgeois: " . . .is cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is a capitalist; as labourer, he is his own wage-labourer"(25),
and consequently petty bourgeois
" . . .are for ever vacillating between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie" (26). This divided allegiance between the two decisive classes in modern capitalist society also applies to a section of employed persons -- those who are involved in superintendence and the lower levels of management, e.g., foremen, charge-hands, departmental managers etc. These employees have a supervisory function, a function to ensure that the workers produce a maximum or surplus value for the employer. Thus, on the one hand such persons are exploited workers, with interests in common with the proletariat (from which they are largely drawn); on the other hand, their position as agents of the management in supervising the efficient exploitation of their fellow employees gives them interests in common with the bourgeoisie: "An industrial army of workers under the command of a capitalist requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and sergeants (foremen, over lookers) who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist" (27).

"The labour of supervision and management . . .has a double nature. On the one hand, all labour in which many individuals cooperate necessarily requires a commanding will to coordinate and unify the process . . . . On the other hand . . . . this supervision work necessarily arises in all modes of production based on the antithesis between the labourer . . .and the owner of the means of production" (28).

Because of this divided allegiance, which corresponds to that of the petty bourgeoisie proper, Marxist-Leninists place such employees (and their dependents) in the petty bourgeoisie. For the same reason, Marxist-Leninists also place persons employed in the coercive forces of the capitalist state -- the army and police -- (and their dependents) outside the proletariat.

The Peasantry

The English word 'peasant' is derived from the Latin 'pagus', meaning a "country district" (29), and is defined as:

" . . .one who lives in the country and works on the land" (30). If 'work' is taken to include entrepreneurship, this definition includes the rich peasant who lives primarily be exploiting wage labour, but excludes the landlord, since, even if he lives in the country, he does not work on the land but derives his income from ground rent. The peasantry do not form a social class, but consist of a number of classes which live in the country and work on the land: "It is best to distinguish the rich, middle and the poor peasants" (31) The peasantry is made up of:
Firstly, rich peasants or rural capitalists, who employ labour, that is, who exploit poor peasants: "One of the main features of the rich peasants is that they hire farm-hands and day labourers. Like the landlords, the rich peasants also live on the labour of others. . . . They try to squeeze as much work as they can out of their farm-hands, and pay them as little as possible" (32). Sometimes, rich peasants are called: 'kulaks', a word derived from the Russian 'kulak', originally meaning a " . . tight-fisted person" (33). Secondly, the middle peasants or rural petty bourgeoisie, who own or rent land, but who do not employ labour, working the land with the aid of their families: "Only in good years and under particularly favourable conditions is the independent husbandry of this type of peasant sufficient to maintain him and for that reason his position is a very unstable one. In the majority of cases the middle peasant cannot make ends meet without resorting to loans to be repaid by labour, etc., without seeking subsidiary earnings on the side, which partly also consist of selling labour power, etc." (34). A middle peasant who works part-time for an employer is called a semi-proletarian: "A one-horse peasant, like a horseless one, keeps himself alive only with the help of a job. But what does this word ' job' mean? It means that the one-horse peasant has ceased to be an independent farmer and has become a hireling, a proletarian. That is why such peasants are described as semi-proletarians" (35).

Thirdly, the poor peasants, who Marx called:

" . . .the rural proletariat"(36).
The poor peasant:
" . . .has become quite propertyless. He is a proletarian. He lives . . . not by the land, not by his farm, but by working for wages . . . " (37). 'Neo-Marxism'

Revisionism is:

" . . .a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism" (38). In other words, a revisionist poses as a Marxist, but in fact puts forwards a political line which objectively serves the interests of a bourgeoisie: "The revisionists spearheaded their struggle mainly against Marxism-Leninism . . . . and replaced this theory with an opportunist, counter-revolutionary theory in the service of the bourgeoisie and imperialism"(39). Despite all the torrents of propaganda levelled against it, Marxism-Leninism still retains enormous prestige among working people all over the world. It is for this reason that many modern revisionists call themselves 'Neo-Marxists', claiming that they are not revising Marxism-Leninism, but merely bringing it up to date.

In general, Neo-Marxists pay their loudest tributes to Marx's early writings, before he became a Marxist. Neo-Marxism is essentially a product of the worst kind of university lecturer, who equates obscurantism with intellectualism. Even sympathetic sociologists speak of:

". . . the extreme difficulty of language characteristic of much of Western Marxism of the twentieth century" (40). But, of course, obscure language has great advantages for pseudo-scientists, making it easier to claim, when challenged, the challenger has misunderstood what has been said.

Much Neo-Marxism is an eclectic hotchpotch of Marxism and idealist philosophy, giving it, it is claimed, a 'spiritual aspect' which was lacking in the original. A typical example of a Neo-Marxist is the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who writes:

"I believe in the general scheme provided by Marx" (41),
"but" -- and it is a big but -- it must be Marxism liberated from:
" . . .the old guard of mummified Stalinists" (42), and, according to Sartre, this 'liberation' is to be effected by merging it with the existentialism of the Danish idealist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard! : "Kierkegaard and Marx . . . institute themselves . . . .as our future" (43). However, this paper is concerned only with revisionist theories of class, which, in general, narrow and restrict the Marxist-Leninist definition of the proletariat. While they may thus still present the proletariat as 'the gravedigger of capitalism', it becomes a gravedigger equipped with a teaspoon!

The Unemployed

Some Neo-Marxists exclude the unemployed from the proletariat on the grounds that people who are not working cannot be considered members of the working class! But on this absurd basis, a worker would cease to be a member of the working class when he finishes work each day. Marx explicitly characterises the unemployed, who he calls the:

" . . .industrial reserve army" (44),
as " . . . .a relative surplus-population among the working class' (45),
and speaks of:
" . . . .the working class (now actively reinforced by its entire reserve army)" (46). Clearly, therefore, according to Marxism-Leninism, the unemployed form part of the proletariat.

Non-productive Workers

Other Neo-Marxists exclude from the proletariat all workers engaged in unproductive labour. Certainly, Marx differentiated productive from unproductive labour, defining the former as labour:

" . . .which creates a surplus value"(47). On this basis, the Greek revisionist Nicos Poulantzas excludes unproductive workers from the proletariat, which, he claims, is: ". . . .not defined by wage-labour, . . . . but by productive labour" (48). Poulantzas therefore assigns unproductive workers to a: " . . .new petty bourgeoisie" (49). Consequently, according to Poulantzas, " . . .wage earners in commerce, advertising, accounting, banking and insurance . . . do not form part of the working class" (50),
and " . . . .engineers and technicians do not belong to the working class" (51). However, Marx insists that: " . . . .the distinction between productive and unproductive labour has nothing to do . . . with the particular speciality of the labour" (52). For example, a teacher in a private school is engaged in productive labour since his labour produces surplus value for the proprietors of the school. But a teacher in a state school, working under identical conditions, is engaged in unproductive labour, since his labour does not create surplus value. Furthermore, many kinds of unproductive labour, such as the labour of clerical workers in a capitalist production company, " . . .while it does not create surplus value, enables him (the employer - Ed.) to appropriate surplus value, which, in effect, amounts to the same thing with respect to his capital. It is, therefore, a source of profit for him. The unpaid labour of the commercial wage-worker secures a share of this surplus value for merchant's capital" (52). Even Poulantzas himself admits that employed unproductive workers: " . . . are themselves exploited, and their wages correspond to the reproduction of their labour-power"(53). And Lenin insists that commercial workers belong to the proletariat: "The wage worker in agriculture belongs to the same class as the wage-worker in a factory or in a commercial establishment" (54). Thus, the question of whether an employee is engaged in productive or unproductive labour has no relevance to the question of whether or not he belongs to the proletariat. Indeed, as the American sociologist Erik Wright points out, " . . .in the end the procedure Poulantzas adopts makes ideology itself the decisive criterion for class" (55). The Labour Aristocracy

In developed capitalist countries,

" . . . the bourgeoisie, by plundering the colonial and weak nations, has been able to bribe the upper stratum of the proletariat with crumbs from the super-profits" (56). Super-profits are the profits of foreign investment, profits " . . . obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their home country" (57). Employees in receipt of a share of such super-profits form " . . . the 'labour aristocracy'" (58), which consists of workers " . . who have become quite petty-bourgeois in their mode of life, in their earnings and in their outlook" (59), and who function as " . . .the principal social . . support of the bourgeoisie. They are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class" (60). Already, by 1892, Engels " . . . .distinguishes between a small, privileged protected minority . . .on the one hand, and the great bulk of workers on the other" (61). It consists primarily of: " . . . .skilled men who served an apprenticeship . . . who were union men" (62).
"The engineers, the carpenters and joiners, the bricklayers, . . . . .form an aristocracy among the working class" (63).
With the development of capitalism,
" . . . .the lines of demarcation between skilled and unskilled were becoming blurred in an increasing number of trades" (64),
so that:
" . . .the growth of skilled occupations which were not learned by apprenticeship reduced the importance of this method of training, previously one of the peculiar hallmarks of the labour aristocracy" (65),
and
" . . .the growth of non-apprenticed skilled work diluted the labour aristocracy" (66). Consequently, the labour aristocracy tends to shrink in size:
"The tendency of this stratum (the labour aristocracy -- Ed.) is to shrink" (67). Some Neo-Marxists exclude the labour aristocracy from the proletariat. Thus, according to the London-based 'Finsbury Communist Association', in Britain " . . .the proletariat consists of workers on subsistence wages or below" (68). However, Lenin defines the labour aristocracy as a part of the proletariat, as " . . .certain strata of the working class" (69),
as " . . .an insignificant minority of the proletariat" (70),
as " . . . .sections of the working class in oppressing nations" (71),
as " . . .the top strata of the proletariat" (72). The Polarisation of Capitalist Society

Because of the small size of the means of production under their control, petty bourgeois are in constant danger of sinking into the proletariat: "

The lower strata of the middle class . . .sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital . . .is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population" (73).
"The working class gains recruits from the higher strata of society. . . . .A mass of petty industrialists and small rentiers are hurled down into its ranks" (74) and the old, once highly respected petty bourgeois professions become proletarianised: "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers" (75). Thus, as capitalist society develops, it becomes increasingly polarised into two basic classes -- wealthy bourgeois and poor proletarians: "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up . . .into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat" (76).
"Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, moral degradation, at the opposite pole" (77). The proletariat is " . . .a class always increasing in numbers" (78). The Size of the Working-Class in Britain

On the theoretical basis delineated above, it is possible to calculate approximately the changing size of the British working class. The working class changes in size through -- among other things -- what is termed social mobility -- movement downwards into the working class from the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, and (more rarely) movement upwards from the working class into the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. Marx points out that such upward mobility strengthens the capitalist system:

"The circumstance that a man without fortune but possessing energy, solidity, ability and business acumen may become a capitalist . . .is greatly admired by apologists of the capitalist system. Although this circumstance continually brings an unwelcome number of new soldiers of fortune . . . .into competition with the already existing individual capitalists, it also reinforces the supremacy of capital itself, expands its base and enables it to recruit ever new forces for itself out of the substratum of society. . . . The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of a ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule" (79). However, the development of modern monopoly capitalism facilitates downward social mobility, while rendering upward social mobility more difficult: "The path to senior management via a technical career . . . is being increasingly eclipsed by the direct recruitment of graduates as management trainees" (80). The official statistics below relate to Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) in 1951 and 1991 respectively:

1951:

1. Population: 1951: 48,854 thousands (100%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1956; London; 1956; p. 7).

2. Occupied population: 1951: 22,578 thousand (46.2%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1956; London; 1956; p. 14).

3. Unoccupied population: 1951: 26,276 thousand (53.8%); (calculated from 1 & 2 above).

4. Employers and self-employed: 1951: 1,584 thousand (3.2%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1956; London; 1956; p. 14).

5. Managers, etc.: 1951: 748 thousands (1.5%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1956; London; 1956; p. 15).

6. Foremen, supervisors, etc.: 1951: 812 thousand (1.6%0; (Census 1951: England and Wales: Occupational Tables; London; 1953; p. 2-21); (Census 1951: Scotland: Volume 4: Occupations and Industries'; London; 1954; p. 2-16).

7. Armed Forces: 1951: 827 thousand (1.7%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1956'; London; 1956; p. 103).

8. Police: 1951: 70 thousand (0.1%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1956; London; 1956; p. 64).

1991:

1. Population: 1991: 56,207 thousand (100%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1995; London; 1995; p. 4).

2. Occupied population: 1991; 27,815 thousand (49.5%); (Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1995, London; 1995; p. 102).

3. Unoccupied population: 1991: 28,392 thousand (50.5%); (calculated from 1 and 2 above).

4. Employers and self-employed: 1991: 3,078 thousand (5.5%); (1991 Census: Economic Activity: Great Britain', Volume 1; London; 1994; p. 190).

5. Managers, etc.: 1991: 3,031 thousand* (5.4%); ( 1991 Census Report for Great Britain (Part 2); London; 1993; p. 188).

6. Foremen, supervisors, etc.: 1991: 988 thousand* (1.8%); ( 1991 Census Report for Great Britain (Part 2); London; 1993; p. 36).

7. Armed Forces: 1991: 298 thousand (0.5%); ( Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1995; London; 1995; p. 128).

8. Police: 1991: 139 thousand (0.2%); ( Annual Abstract of Statistics: 1995'; London; 1995; p. 69).

*Converted from a 10% sample figure, by multiplying by a sampling factor of 10.16. ( 1991 Census Report: Great Britain: (Part 2); London; 1993; p. 337).

On the basis of the above figures and of the analysis made in previous sections of this paper, it is possible to calculate the size of the occupied proletariat in Britain in 1951 and 1991 respectively approximately as follows:

1951 1991

Occupied population 22,578 thousand 27,815 thousand

less employers and self employed: 1,584 thousand 3,078 thousand

less managers etc.: 748 thousand 3,038 thousand

less foremen, supervisors, etc.: 812 thousand 988 thousand

less armed forces: 827 thousand 298 thousand

less police: 70 thousand 139 thousand

less total: 4,041 thousand 7,534 thousand

This gives figures for the size of the occupied proletariat of 18,537 thousand (1951) and 20, 281 thousand (1991), figures which represent 82.5% and 72.9% (1991) of the occupied population.

If we assume that the proletarian portion of the unoccupied population is the same as in the occupied population, this gives us figures for the unoccupied proletariat of 21, 573 thousand (1951) and 20,698 thousand (1991).
Finally, this gives us figures for the total British proletariat of 40,110 thousand (1951) and 40,979 thousand (1991), which represent 82.1% (1951) and 72.1% (1991) of the total population.

References

1. Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 3; Oxford; 1989; p. 279.
2. Charles T. Onions (Ed.): The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology; Oxford; 1985; p. 1803.
3. New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 10; Chicago; 1994; p. 455.
4. Vladimir I. Lenin: A Great Beginning, in: Collected Works, Volume 29; London; 1974; p. 421.
5. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 886.
6. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 824 -25.
7. Vladimir I. Lenin: Constitutional Illusions, in: Collected Works', Volume 6; Moscow; 1964; p. 202
8. Charles T. Onions (Ed.): op. Cit.; p. 110.
9. Friedrich Engels: Note to the 1888 English Edition of: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 204.
10. Vladimir I. Lenin: The Development of Capitalism in Russia, in: Collected Works, Volume 3; Moscow; 1960; p. 504.
11. Charles T. Onions (Ed.): o. Cit.; p. 714.
12. Friedrich Engels: Note to the 1888 English Edition of: Manifesto of the Communist Party, in: Karl Marx: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 204.
13. Friedrich Engels: Principles of Communism; London; 1971; p. 5.
14. Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 12; Oxford; 1989; p. 606.
15. Friedrich Engels: op. Cit.; p. 5.
16. Karl Marx: The Class Struggles in France: 1848-50, in: Selected Works, Volume 2; London; 1943; p. 211.
17. Karl Marx: The Class Struggles in France: 1848-50, in: Selected Works, Volume 2; London; 1943; p. 211.
18. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, in: Karl Marx: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 216.
19. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: ibid.; p. 218.
20. Vladimir I. Lenin: A Great Beginning, in: Selected Works, Volume 9; London; 1984; p. 432.
21. Josef V. Stalin: The Foundations of Leninism, in: Works, Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 178.
22. Friedrich Engels: Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in England: From Personal Observation and Authentic Sources, in: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: Collected Works, Volume 4; Moscow; 1975; p. 304.
23. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, in: Karl Marx: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 321.
24. Vladimir I. Lenin: Note to: To the Rural Poor, in: Selected Works, Volume 2; London; 1944; p. 254.
25. Karl Marx: Theories of Surplus Value' Part 1; Moscow; n.d.; p. 396.
26. Josef V. Stalin: The Logic of Facts, in: Works, Volume 4; Moscow; 1953; p. 143.
27. Karl Marx: Capital: An Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 314.
28. Karl Marx: Capital: An Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 383-84.
29. Charles T. Onions (Ed.): op cit.; p. 66.
30. Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 11; Oxford; 1989. P. 420.
31. Vladimir I. Lenin: To the Rural Poor: An Explanation for the Peasants of what the Social-Democrats want (hereafter listed as Vladimir I. Lenin (1903) in: Selected Works, Volume 2; London 1944; p. 261.
32. Vladimir I. Lenin (1903): ibid.; p. 265.
33. Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 8; Oxford; 1989; p. 543
34. Vladimir I. Lenin: The Development of Capitalism un Russia, in: Selected Works, London 1; 1944; p. 235.
35. Vladimir I. Lenin (1903): op. cit.; p. 267.
36. Karl Marx: The Civil War in France; in: Selected Works, Volume 2; London; 1943; p. 507.

37. Vladimir I. Lenin (1903); op. cit.; p. 265.
38. Vladimir I. Lenin; Marxism and Revisionism, in: Selected Works Volume 11; London; 1943, p. 704.
39. Enver Hoxha: Report to the 5th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania, in: Selected Works, Volume 4; Tirana; 1982; p. 190.
40. Perry Anderson: Considerations on Western Marxism; London; 1976; p. 54
41. Jean-Paul Sartre: Between Existentialism and Marxism; London; 1974; p. 53.
42. Jean-Paul Sartre: ibid.; p. 109.
43. Jean-Paul Sartre: ibid.; p. 169.
44. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1; Moscow; 11974; p. 592.
45. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1; Moscow; 1974; p. 518.
46. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1; Moscow; 1974; p. 414.
47. Karl Marx: Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1; Moscow; n.d.; p. 45.
48. Nicos Poulantzas: Classes in Contemporary Capitalism; London; 1979; p. 94.
49. Nicos Poulantzas: ibid.; p. 290.
50. Nicos Poulantzas: ibid.; p. 211 - 212.
52. Nicos Poulantzas: ibid.; p. 250.
53. Karl Marx: Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1; Moscow; n.d.; p. 160-61.
52. Karl Marx. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3; Moscow; 1974; p. 294.
53. Nicos Poulantzas: op. cit.; p. 212.
54. Vladimir I. Lenin; The Trudoviks and Worker Democrats, in: Collected Works, Volume 18; Moscow; 1965; p. 39
55. Erik O. Wright: Class, Crisis and the State; London; 1978; p. 59.
56. Vladimir I. Lenin: Draft Programme of the RCP(B) in: Collected Works, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 104.
57.Vladimir I Lenin: Preface to the French and German Editions of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, in: Selected Works, Volume 5; London; 1935; p. 12.
58. Vladimir I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 12.
59. Vladimir I. Lenin; ibid.; p. 12.
60. Vladimir I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 12.
61. Martin Nicolaus: The Theory of the Labour Aristocracy, in: Monthly Review, Volume 21, No. 11 (April 1970); p. 92.
62. Aleksei M. Rumantsev (Ed.): The Structure of the Working Class; New Delhi; 1963. p. 81.
63. Friedrich Engels: Preface to the English Edition of: The Condition of the Working-Class in England; London; 1969; p. 31
64. Charles More: Skill and the English Working Class; London; 1980; p. 231.
65. Charles More: ibid.; p. 213.
66. Charles More: ibid.; p. 231.
67. Aleksei M. Rumyantsev: op. cit.; p. 104.
68. Finsbury Communist Association: Class and Party in Britain; London; 1966; p. 4.
69. Vladimir I. Lenin: Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, in: Selected Works, Volume 5; London; 1935; p. 134.
70. Vladimir I. Lenin: The Collapse of the Second International, in: Selected Works, Volume 5; London; 1935; p.183.
71. Vladimir I. Lenin: A Caricature of Marxism and "Imperialist Economism", in: Selected Works, Volume 5; London; 1935; p. 291.
72. Vladimir I. Lenin: How the Bourgeoisie utilises Renegades, in: Collected Works, Volume 30; Moscow; 1965; p. 34.
73. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, in: Karl Marx: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 213.
74. Karl Marx: Wage-Labour and Capital, in: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 280.
75. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, in: Karl Marx: Selected Works. Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 208.
76. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party. In: Karl Marx: Selected Works, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 205-206.
77. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 604.
78. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1; Moscow; 1959; p. 715.
79. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3; London; 1974; p. 600- 01.
80. Bob Carter: Capitalism, Class Conflicts and the New Middle Class; London 1985; p. 102-03.

Bibliography
ANDERSON, Perry: 'Considerations on Western Marxism'; London; 1976.
CARTER, Bob: 'Capitalism, Class Conflict and the New Middle Class'; London; 1985
FINSBURY COMMUNIST ASSOCIATION: 'Class and Party in Britain'; London; 1966.
MORE, Charles: 'Skill and the English Working Class'; London; 1966.
ONIONS, Charles T (Ed.): 'The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology'; Oxford; 1985
POULANTZAS, Nicos: 'Classes in Contemporary Capitalism'; London; 1979.
RUMYANTSEV, Aleksei M. (Ed.): 'The Structure of the Working Class'; New Delhi; 1963
SARTRE, Jean-Paul: 'Between Existentialism and Marxism'; London; 1974.
WRIGHT, Erik O.: 'Class, Crisis and the State'; London; 1978.
ENGELS, Friedrich: 'Principles of Communism'.
: 'The Condition of the Working Class in England'.
HOXHA, Enver: 'Selected Works'.
LENIN, Vladimir I.: Selected Works
: Collected Works'
MARX, Karl: 'Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'
: Selected Works.
: Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1.
: & ENGELS, Friedrich: Collected Works.
Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1956 & 1995.
Census 1951: England and Wales; Occupational Tables.
Census 1951: Scotland, Volume 4: Occupations and Industries.
1991 Census; Economic Activity: Great Britain, Volume 1.
1991 Census Report for Great Britain (Part 2).
Monthly Review
New Encyclopaedia Britannica; Chicago; 1994.
Oxford English Dictionary' Oxford; 1989.
(Bill Bland, for the Communist League) UK.

Letter from Open Polemic to ISML

(The submission by Open Polemic to the December 1997 Conference of ISML was omitted in error from ISML 4 , Conference Report, and is duly reprinted below, with apologies - Ed.)

In Hari Kumar's overview of the Second Conference of International Struggle/Marxist-Leninist, which was attended by Open Polemic in a non voting capacity, he claims that: "An attempt was made by Open Polemic of the UK, to avoid the formation of a platform such as ISML, founded on notions of democratic centralism. This was based on the argument that democratic centralism was the cloak under which revisionism triumphed and subverted the communist revolution. This argument is summarised in their paper - which we reprint here - and came under repeated fire throughout the conference, especially from a comrade from Partisan (UK) and by Alliance (Canada & USA). In addition the principle put to Open Polemic that the dividing line between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists is the support of Stalin, was rejected by Open Polemic. Since then, Open Polemic has re-printed some articles from the Conference".

Firstly, it is necessary to point out that you have not reprinted our three page paper, 'Prospect for the Future Multanimous Party', several copies of which were submitted prior to the Conference and which, in the absence of any arrangements on your part, was also distributed by OP delegates to the other delegates. You did however find space to print Open Polemic's very short critique of the voluntarist idealism contained in the ISML's Founding Editorial Principles. In fact, this was not a paper submitted to the conference. It was taken, presumably by Hari Kumar, from our publication, OP Prospect No.1, of October 97. In addition, this short critique does not, in any way, as claimed by Kumar, summarise Open Polemic's views on democratic centralism.

We are most concerned that, without any reason being given, the Editorial Board should take the decision not to reprint Open Polemic's paper, particularly as your founding principles state that: "Until an open debate has achieved the clarity and principled agreement that is required by the International Marxist-Leninist movement, no new, principled and meaningful Communist International can be formed. That is why a prominent section of "International Struggle" will be devoted to "Discussion and Reply". Our paper was used to develop the general thrust of our delegates arguments at the conference, and it included a summary of Open Polemic's particular, outright support for the party principle of democratic centralism. The first paragraph of this summary reads: "There can be no dispute that the communist party must be multanimous or many-minded in its democracy. Neither can there be any dispute that, to be unanimous or single-minded in its action, the membership must place itself under democratic centralist direction. The essence of the political and organisational principle of democratic centralism is multanimous democracy combined with unanimous action."

The assertion that Open Polemic argues that, "democratic centralism was the cloak under which revisionism triumphed and subverted the communist revolution" is a figment of Kumar's imagination. Nowhere in our paper, or indeed, in any of our published material does Open Polemic put forward such an argument, for it is a historical fact that revisionists essentially of the reformo-communist variety, were openly elected as majorities onto the central committees of several communist parties of the Third International'. They then utilised the normal practice of leader centralism to consolidate their position in the party. The 'anti-revisionist' minority became the new ' dissidents', with their views targeted for distortion and suppression by the new editors. They were divided among themselves and lacked any general perspective for dealing with the new objective situation, other than a hankering for the apparent certainties of the past. The 'revisionists' had no need for a cloak, they could do almost everything quite openly. So, what did come under repeated fire throughout the conference, from Open Polemic in fact, was the continuing support for the practice of leader centralism within the political and organisational structures of democratic centralism.

We fail to understand what Kumar means by Open Polemic attempting, "to avoid the formation of a platform such as ISML, founded on notions of democratic centralism". In particular, we haven't a clue as to what he means by "notions" of democratic centralism and we would further remind him, firstly, that the ISML is already formed as a platform and, secondly, that the ISML does not even list support for the Marxist-Leninist principle of democratic centralism as one of its founding principles. However, we regard democratic centralism as the political and organisational principle of the communist party and, therefore, not an appropriate political and organisational principle for any communist united front; as soon as a communist united front adopts the principle of democratic centralism, it effectively establishes itself as a communist party.

The "dividing line between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists" is not, as Hari Kumar contends, support for Stalin. Support for the thoughts and works' of any outstanding personality, from Marx to Mao, Hoxha and after, can only be in accordance with the past, present and future validity of their thoughts and works. The dividing line is theoretical and must be dealt with as such. As Open Polemic pointed out in its paper: "Revisionism is politically and organisationally manifested within the working class movement by the trends of anarcho-communism on the left and reformo-communism on the right and by the various conjunctions of both of these trends.

With their many varieties identifying as communist or revolutionary socialist, the general characteristic of these trends is that their support for Marxism is accompanied by opposition to Leninism on the crucial questions of party and state....

...Being the closest to scientific communism, there are those within these revisionist trends who not only uphold the component parts of scientific communism, they also support such defining, fundamental principles for communist parties as democratic centralism, proletarian internationalism and the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

However, the distinguishing feature of these protagonists is that they do not support the most defining, fundamental principle of scientific communism today, the principle of the leading role of the party prior to and within the dictatorship of the proletariat."

It would be interesting to know who would remain with ISML if this principle concerning the leading role of the party was included in Clause 1 of its Founding Editorial Principles. Perhaps Hari Kumar himself might also tell us just where he stands on this question.

(Open Polemic).

Prospect for the Future Multanimous Party

By Open Polemic, UK

Scientific communism was founded on the philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism. This philosophy was crucially instrumental in revealing the appropriation of surplus value in the political economy of capitalism and the struggle of classes in history. In this knowledge, the proletariat is recognised objectively as the emancipatory, revolutionary class carrying the historic potential for settling accounts with the various, national bourgeoisie. By establishing its own revolutionary, international dictatorship as the means to dispossess the entire, international capitalist class, the proletariat, through its own self-emancipation under socialism will open the way for the emancipation of all humanity in the future society of communism.

Elaborated by Marx and Engels and later by Lenin, the ideology of scientific communism in its continuing development has been denoted, for the greater part of this century, by the term Marxism-Leninism. Crucial to its even further development is the political and organisational struggle for the self-organisation of advanced workers into an international of communist parties, into the collective leadership that can enable the proletariat to realise its historic potential.

To meet the responsibilities of leadership, all communist parties based on the ideology of scientific communism have to conduct a struggle against their subversion by the ideology of anarchism, which is revolutionary in its opposition to the capitalist state, and by the ideology of reformism, which is reactionary in its support for the capitalist state. Both of these ideologies, standing together in opposition to the concept of the socialist state in transition from capitalism to the higher phase of communism, are the main source of revisionist influence within scientific communism.

Revisionism and Dogmatism

Revisionism is an expression of reactionary activity, dogmatism an expression of revolutionary idleness. Whereas revisionism rejects scientific communism in the guise of developing it under changed conditions, dogmatism undermines it by clinging to the past in the face of changed conditions. A twin source of ideological confusion and theoretical disorder in the communist movement, revisionism and dogmatism are bonded together by the constant response of the one to the other. Revisionism is politically and organisationally manifested within the working class movement by the trends of anarcho-communism on the left and reformo-communism on the right and by the various conjunctions of both these trends.

With their many varieties identifying as communist or revolutionary socialist, the general characteristic of these trends it that their support for Marxism is accompanied by opposition to Leninism on the crucial question of party and state. Consequently, their political postulations are developed primarily around opposition to the theory and practice of particular communist leaders in countries where the building of a nation state of socialism has been proclaimed and, correspondingly, around specific interpretations of past history.

Being the closest to scientific communism, there are those within these revisionist trends who not only uphold the component parts of scientific communism, they also support such defining, fundamental principles for communist parties as democratic centralism, proletarian internationalism, and the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

However, the distinguishing feature of these protagonists is that they do not support the most defining, fundamental principle of scientific communism today, the principle of the leading role of the party both prior to and within the dictatorship of the proletariat. Consequently, the upholding of this fundamental principle must underpin the struggle against revisionism.

In supporting Leninism on the question of party and state, dogmatism is manifested today by a variety of political postulations which are developed primarily around support for the theory and practice of communist leaders in countries where the building of a nation state of socialism has been proclaimed and, correspondingly, around specific interpretations of past history.

In their sectarian claims to be the sole upholders of 'Marxism-Leninism' and in their dismissive exclusion of others who do not conform to their particular, historically specific interpretations, the dogmatists objectively strengthen revisionism. They collectively form a major impediment to advancing open polemic and to rapprochement and unity around the ideology of scientific communism.

Without a determined and successful struggle against dogmatism within scientific communism revisionism will undoubtedly maintain its ascendancy in the working class movement. Overcoming the former is the condition for defeating the latter. To overcome dogmatism, it is firstly necessary for all those who adhere to the fundamentals of scientific communism to critically and creatively participate in open polemic.

Centralism and Democratic Centralism

There can be no dispute that the communist party must be multanimous or many minded in its democracy. Neither can there be any doubt that, to be unanimous or single-minded in its action, the membership must place itself under centralist direction. The essence of the political and organisational principle of democratic centralism is multanimous democracy combined with unanimous action.

Learning from the experience of Marx and Engels, democratic centralism was elaborated by Lenin and eventually agreed as a principle of party political organisation at the unity congress in 1906 of the old RSDLP composed of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

In July 1917, at the first congress of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), it was agreed that the party should be built upon the principle of democratic centralism and subsequently this principle was incorporated as a condition of membership of the Third International at its founding in 1919.

Centralism is a political and organisational practice involving the voluntary subordination of the party membership to a party centre that is composed of a self-appointed leadership which formulates the party programme and leads the party into action. The multanimous democracy of the centralist party resides in the leadership.

Democratic centralism is a political and organisational principle in which the party centre is the congress of delegates which formulates the party programme by majority decisions and elects a central leadership to lead the party into action. The multanimous democracy of the democratic centralist party, contrary to the centralist party, resides in the membership.

Whereas the practice of centralism is necessary for communist parties operating under oppressive regimes and in emergency situations, the principle of democratic centralism is essential for communist parties operating in conditions of relative stability and legality.

The Practice of Leader Centralism

Following the October revolution, for over three years the multanimous democracy of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) took the form of various factions, that is, of groups with the full right to their own political organisation and publications. However, the detrimental affect on conduct and discipline of this libertarian multanimity, in reality, the organisation of parties within the party, was such that by the 1921 Congress, on the insistence of Lenin, it was deemed necessary to ban factions

The banning of factions, however, was not carried through to its logical conclusion for Lenin's faction still maintained its dominance on the central committee which, being granted special rights in the elaboration and presentation of programme and having control of the party press, constituted a crucial vantage point for any faction.

Without any alternative multanimous form of democracy to that of libertarian factionalism and with the democratic formulations of the membership being confined to the basic, mobilising units, the membership in general became reliant upon the programme formulated by the dominant faction in the leadership and compliant to its demands, while opposition factions resorted to clandestine methods to try and gain the vantage point of the central committee. This was the essence of the practice of leader centralism, of centralism operating in the guise of democratic centralism.

With the RSDLP setting the precedent, leader centralism became the political and organisational practice of other communist parties, not only of those inside but also those outside the Third International.

Upheld to this day by both revisionists and dogmatists alike, the leader centralist party, despite its ideological class origins, inevitably reproduces the characteristics of bourgeois democracy. Its covert factionalism is compressed into a schema of ruling majority and opposition minority. The disciplined observance of majority decisions by all minority views is translated into the subordination of the minority to the majority and taking sides in certain conditions inevitably means choosing between revisionism and dogmatism.

Although it is historically redundant, leader centralism still remains the practice of innumerable, vanguardist parties and is still upheld by countless, vanguardist sects.

There is no leader centralist party in this qualitatively new period of ideological confusion and theoretical disorder which can act as the centre for communist unity and rapprochement around the ideology of scientific communism. Of even greater importance is that the leader centralist party cannot meet the future political and organisational needs of the advanced
workers.

The Multanimous Party

For the party of scientific communism democratic centralism is the political and organisational expression of the unity of theory and practice. This is realised in the multanimous elaboration of programme and its unanimous advancement. It is through this process that the party is able to develop its scientific yet partisan participation in the class struggle. Although, necessarily, it is politically organised through centralism, the communist party's unanimous action is essentially a measure of its democratic multanimity.

Multanimous means having a many sided mind. For the party of scientific communism this means having a multanimous democratic life which not only allows various collectives composed of the like-minded to formulate theoretical or programmatic postulations, it also ensures equality of opportunity between such collectives to present their postulations to the party.

Equality of opportunity conflicts with the practice of leader centralism in which the dominant, like-minded collective within the leadership has special opportunities in the formulation and presentation of its postulations to the party. It is due to this practice that the leader centralist party constantly suffers from factions locked in a struggle to gain special, vantage point of the leadership.

In denying the constitutional rights of members to form like-minded collectives, the leader centralist party not only stultifies the multanimous, scientific elaboration of theory and its associated, unanimous practice, it constantly instigates the formation of clandestine factions.

There is now no future for the parties that uphold the principle of democratic centralism while practising leader centralism. These parties must be superseded by a united party which is fully multanimous in its democracy, by a party which allows the formation of like-minded collectives, by a party which denies special opportunities to the dominant faction in the leadership to formulate and present its theory and programme. Yet, at the same time, such a party must stand opposed to any return to the libertarianism of factions with full rights to their own political organisation, that is, to the libertarianism of parties within the party.

Ideological Foundations for the Multanimous Communist Party

Communist unity and rapprochement around the ideology of scientific communism demands a critical and creative process of open polemic between comrades that merges, on the basis of a common theoretical programme, into the establishment of a multanimous, democratic centralist party that adopts:

The first constitutional requirement of the future party must be to define the political and organisational distinction between theory and practice, between the party's democratic and centralist functions. The second constitutional requirement must be the right to the formation of like-minded collectives. As distinct from the unanimous, leader-centralist party, the distinguishing constitutional features of the multanimous, democratic centralist party will be:

From the above, it follows that no constitutional, elected body will have the right to formulate and present a collective view to the party other than that connected with its constitutional responsibilities.
(Open Polemic).

Hari Kumar Replies to Open Polemic

At this juncture, Hari Kumar would like to apologise to the readers of ISML for taking so many pages to deal with an organisation openly stating that Trotskyism is not outside the bounds of a principled debate. There are, however, several general matters discussed by Open Polemic that have in practice confused the way forward to a single Marxist-Leninist Party in Britain. On this basis it may be worthwhile following the events around Open Polemic for the moment.

1. An Unreserved Apology to Open Polemic for Not Printing The Correct Document

Firstly, before any theoretical and historical matters are broached, I wish to apologise to "Open Polemic" unreservedly for omitting its submission to the December 1997 ISML London Conference from the published proceedings. This was not the error of ISML as a whole, but mine as Chief Editor alone.

Open Polemic commented as follows: "It is necessary to point out that you have not reprinted our three page paper, 'Prospect for the Future Multanimous Party', several copies of which were submitted prior to the Conference and which, in the absence of any arrangements on your part, was also distributed by OP delegates to the other delegates. You did however find space to print Open Polemic's very short critique of the voluntarist idealism contained in the ISML's Founding Editorial Principles. In fact, this was not a paper submitted to the conference. It was taken, presumably by Hari Kumar, from our publication, OP Prospect No.1, of October 97. In addition, this short critique does not, in any way, as claimed by Kumar, summarise Open Polemic's views on democratic centralism." (Letter From Open Polemic to ISML; November 1998).

This omitted document is published above in full, and ISML trusts that it now adequately summarises Open Polemic on democratic centralism. Perhaps "Open Polemic" will allow that this omission was in fact a genuine oversight as it most certainly was. Indeed none of the editorial members had a copy of this document after the conference. We feel obliged to point out that all conference delegates(including Open Polemic) were specifically invited to display printed materials on the tables provided and to talk to the groups present. Nevertheless, I offer an unreserved apology on the part of myself and ISML for this error.

2. On Other Objections Raised In The Letter from Open Polemic to ISML On Hari Kumar's Overview. On Democratic Centralism & Leader Centralism

Having dealt with this error we move to the substantive issues to hand. It can now bee seen that Open Polemic's views makes Hari Kumar's case quite cogently. Open Polemic took issue with the summary of the London Conference, written by Hari Kumar, as follows: "The assertion that Open Polemic argues that, 'democratic centralism was the cloak under which revisionism triumphed and subverted the communist revolution' is a figment of Kumar's imagination. Nowhere in our paper, or indeed, in any of our published material does Open Polemic put forward such an argument, for it is a historical fact that revisionists essentially of the reformo-communist variety, were openly elected as majorities onto the central committees of several communist parties of the Third International. They then utilised the normal practice of leader centralism to consolidate their position in the party". (Open Polemic, Letter to ISML).

Since Hari Kumar always regretted his complete lack of "imagination", he thanks Open Polemic for their generous attribution. However, his own recollection is that the verbal formulations offered to the floor of the London conference by Open Polemic stated that the success of revisionism stemmed from democratic centralism. Perhaps whether or not this was a flight of imagination might be tested by what is now published on behalf of Open Polemic? The following phrase confirms that Kumar did correctly interpret their intention, for Open Polemic argues that a perversion (sorry - Kumar's "unimaginative" paraphrase) of democratic centralism took place, into something Open Polemic calls "leader centralism". Open Polemic then asserts boldly that: "It is a historical fact that revisionists, essentially of the reformo-communist variety, were openly elected as majorities onto the central committees of several communist parties of the Third International. They then utilised the normal practice of leader centralism to consolidate their position in the party". (Open Polemic, Letter to ISML).

But of course! How "subtly different" that is from Kumar's paraphrase: "Open Polemic .. argue... that democratic centralism was the cloak under which revisionism triumphed and subverted the communist revolution...". Kumar mourns his recently bestowed but swiftly removed "imagination". Being un-subtle, Kumar stands by that paraphrase as an acceptable summary of Open Polemic's viewpoint. Perhaps Open Polemic will show Kumar his errors in identifying the two given phrases? Perhaps Kumar's error was in seeing the need for a "cloak", since Open Polemic go on to state: "The revisionists had no need for a cloak, they could do almost everything quite openly."

So "revisionists" had open sway within the CPSU(B) and were able to do almost anything "quite openly"? Let us "imaginatively" add the word "effortlessly"! Perhaps Open Polemic has not read of the fierce and protracted debates in the CPSU(B)? Where Marxists-Leninists led by Lenin and Stalin waged ideological class war against various brands of hidden revisionists upon any number of issues, from Chinese revolutionary strategy and tactics, through the means of collectivisation and the possibility of socialism etc . Alliance strongly rejects Open Polemic's view as nonsense. Of course if you choose to ignore great swathes of history, it is easy to dismiss the need for revisionists to use a "cloak". In fact we argue that Open Polemic are intent on donning a cloak - to lay siege to Leninist notions of party organisation and democratic centralism without actually saying that is what they intend! Their first step is to identify Lenin as a "Leader Centralist".

3. Open Polemic And "Leader Centralism" ? On Kronstadt And All That

Open Polemic argue in effect, that the party operated in the Soviet Union up till the death of Stalin - not under principles of "democratic centralism" - but under something they call "leader centralism". And who in fact instituted "leader centralism" - presumably one of the revisionists? Well actually, according to Open Polemic, it was no less than Lenin himself:

"Following the October revolution, for over three years the ... democracy of the SDLP (Bolsheviks) took the form of various factions, that is, of groups with the full right to their own political organisation and publications. However, the detrimental affect on conduct and discipline of this libertarian multanimity, in reality, the organisation of parties within the party, was such that by the 1921 Congress, on the insistence of Lenin, it was deemed necessary to ban factions. The banning of factions, however, was not carried through to its logical conclusion for Lenin's faction still maintained its dominance on the central committee which, being granted special rights in the elaboration and presentation of programme and having control of the party press, constituted a crucial vantage point for any faction... the membership in general became reliant upon the programme formulated by the dominant faction in the leadership and compliant to its demands, while opposition factions resorted to clandestine methods to try and gain the vantage point of the central committee. This was the essence of the practice of leader centralism, of centralism operating in the guise of democratic centralism." (See Open Polemic's Conference submission). It is absolutely clear, therefore, that Open Polemic regard Lenin as having been a "Leader Centralist". In this sort of statement and analysis Open Polemic do not differ one whit from those like Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes etc . The set of simultaneous equations being set before us are: "Leadership = usurpation of power = power hungry = Bolsheviks = Lenin = Stalin = massacres etc".
QED - Bravo! Again we are forced to conclude that Kumar simply lacks imagination. It is true that Open Polemic professes (continually!) to uphold democratic centralism: "However, we regard democratic centralism as the political and organisational principle of the communist party". (Open Polemic Letter to ISML). In reality though, we argue that the logic of their entire argument, is to disembowel the Leninist understanding of democratic centralism in favour of some vaporous "multanimity". So Open Polemic argues against the adherence to the idea of democratic centralism amongst the present day Marxist-Leninist remnants. They try to claim the "moral high ground" by pompously and "dialectically" calling for the relaxation of the democratic centralism: "The vanguardist organisations today exhibit a discipline inherited from decades of democratic-centralist practice, so much so that each of them form part of what has became an insurmountable barrier to the formation of single vanguard party. The paradox is clear. The more insistent the vanguardist organisations are in upholding democratic centralism, the further we all stand from a democratic-centralist structured revolutionary vanguard. Thus, in order to dissipate the paradox, Open Polemic is forced to call for the relaxation of the democratic centralism in the vanguardist organisations as a prerequisite to its comprehensive implementation at a future date."
("End Vanguardism - Organise the Vanguard"; OP number 6; nd; London; p.4). As to the matter of whether such extraordinary times as "today", "demand" suspension of democratic centralist norms of party building, Lenin was quite pungent: "It is ridiculous to plead different circumstances and a change of periods: the building of a fighting organisation and the conduct of political agitation are essential under any "drab, peaceful" circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a "declining revolutionary spirit"; moreover it is precisely in such periods and under such circumstances that work of this kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form the organisation in times of explosion and outbursts."
(Lenin; "Where to Begin?"; Volume 5; Collected Works; Moscow; p. 18). In addressing the need for a "release from democratic centralism" - Open Polemic equates vanguardism with factionalism. Thus the equation goes well beyond the philosophy of vanguards and simply means that any platform is essentially a form of "vanguard". "In the circumstances of today, "Vanguardism" is in reality a form of factionalism composed of a variety of factions, some with influence in the working class, some with some influence and some with even less. Each of these 'vanguards' has its own individual programmes and discipline and all of them are striving to be recognised by the working class in preference to the other factions. In essence: Vanguards with programmes are, factions with platforms".
(OP, Issue 4; nd; London; "Editorial, Platforms & Programmes"; p.2). It is clear that the whole notion of leadership of the Open Polemic is to deny the role of leaderships - to in effect become "tail-ist". To endorse their rejection of Leninist norms of organisational practice in groups today, Open Polemic foist an extraordinary straw man upon us - pretending that Leninist practice entails the following caricature: "As Marxists we seek to impose ourselves onto the stage of human affairs, acting to influence the class struggle to the limits of what the objective conditions will allow. Clearly though, if we are to act in the revolutionary interest, there has to be a subjective way of determining what actions best accord to that revolutionary interest. (History has pronounced clearly enough that the whim of this or that "great leader" is wholly insufficient.) Having acted in unity in the "revolutionary interest", there again needs to be a revolutionary method of modifying correcting and even jettisoning aspects of our programme in the harsh light of practice. Open Polemic contends that nothing .. equals or betters democratic centralism for this purpose."
(End Vanguardism - Organise the Vanguard; Open Polemic, number 6; nd; London; p.4). A lot of such high-falutin "stuff" is crammed into the erudite articles by Open Polemic. But there is a lot that is plainly wrong with just this one single arrogant paragraph. Since when did Marxists say that there "has to be a subjective way of determining what actions best accord to that revolutionary interest."? Surely that is the test of "practice"? As Marx put it in his 'Theses On Feuerbach': "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth ie. the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which isolates itself from practice is a purely scholastic question".
(Marx , 'Theses On Feuerbach'; In "The German Ideology" by Marx & Engels; Moscow; 1976; p. 618). And since when did Marxists profess to believe that: "the whim of this or that "great leader" is wholly sufficient" ? Is Open Polemic perhaps confusing Lenin and Stalin with Hitler and Mussolini? All this erudition ends with a pious declaration on behalf of democratic centralism. Then what exactly makes the Open Polemic repudiate its functioning in 1921? Why are they unable to accept that the "test of practice" showed that the factionalism had threatened the viability of the party and indeed had been partially responsible for the attempted Kronstadt mutiny? of Lenin? Because ultimately Open polemic support the Kronstadt Rebellion; ultimately they support the attempts by Trotsky to split the party just before the Tenth Party Congress of March 8th 1921. Trotsky was "proposing methods of sheer compulsion, of dictation" to deal with the Fifth All-Russian Trade Union Conference of November 1920 using the "dubious slogans of "tightening the screws" and "shaking up the trade unions" instead of "methods of persuasion". (History of the CPSU(B); Moscow; 1939; p.252).

We cannot discuss each event here in detail. Thus we will simply cite the special resolution on "party Unity" from Lenin that was adopted by the 10th Party Congress:

"Even before the discussion on the trade unions, certain signs of factionalism had been present in the Party, viz, the formation of groups with separate platforms, striving to a certain degree to segregate and create their own group discipline. All class conscious workers must clearly realize the perniciousness and impermissibility of factionalism of any kind, for in practice factionalism inevitably results in weakening team work. At the same time it inevitably leads to intensified and repeated attempts by the enemies of the Party , who have fastened onto it because it is the governing party to widen the cleavage (in the Party) and to use it for counter-revolutionary purposes... The way the enemies of the proletariat take advantage of every deviation from the thoroughly consistent Communist line was most strikingly shown in the case of the Kronstadt mutiny, when the bourgeoisie counter-revolutionaries and White guards in all countries of the world immediately expressed their readiness to accept even the slogans of the Soviet system, if only they might thereby secure the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and when the Socialist Revolutionaries and the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries in general resorted in Kronstadt to slogans calling for an insurrection against the Soviet Government of Russia ostensibly in the interest of Soviet power. These facts show that the White guards strive , and are able to disguise themselves as Communists, and even as people "more left" than the Communists, solely for weakening and overthrowing the bulwark of the proletarian revolution."
(History of the CPSU(B); Moscow; 1939; p.252). This hidden belief of Open Polemic (ie. that the Kronstadt mutiny was correct) is quite consistent with their refusal to come out against Trotskyism.

4. The Aim of Open Polemic Is To Delay The Start of Serious Party Building

It seems that objectively it cannot be denied that whatever the "subjective intent" - the "objective reality" is that the convolutions of Open Polemic simply serve to prevaricate and delay the start of serious work in party building. As if we have all the decades in the world! For Open Polemic constantly aims to put off to a tenuous later date the actual building of a party. For they can only offer a mechanical contrast between the first task and the later task of building the party:

"In a period of theoretical and organisational disorder, the first task, before the formation of a united party is to unite the most advanced elements of the class in theoretical and practical work."
("The Central Demarcation for Marxist-Leninists"; OP Issue 11; March 1995; ISSN 0969-4617.p.3). But all this is an artificial separation, as can be seen if the history of Iskra is seriously examined. Constantly Open Polemic insists that it is not tyring to set up a party. And indeed we believe that. We argue that they are inhibiting the formation of a party by confusing the most advanced sections of the class about the need for democratic centralism. They build (at a time when ideological clarity upon major dividing lines are needed) - paper mountains with "constitutional Principles for Democratic Centralism"; and pretty looking and complex flow diagrams that include such nonsense as "limited elected tenure on all directing bodies"(see "Against Leader Centralism For Democratic Centralism"; nd; supplement to OP issue 3). The "abstract" formula of Open Polemic is to proclaim: "The Leading role of the Party - but no leaders please!" And certainly not for more than one term!" This general strategy of delaying the party formation - is flanked by that from yet other revisionists like Harpal Brar, who argue that in fact there is a party already - simply join en mass the social-democratic formation of Mr. Arthur Scargill and voilà - we have party!

5. Are There Dividing Lines In the Movement? Open Polemic Upon Stalin And Trotsky

Open Polemic claims it is anxious to obtain demarcation lines. But is that the case? Tail-ism, with which Open Polemic stands accused, results in a refusal to take a principled stand on an issue. At the conference, and in the overview Hari Kumar put it to Open Polemic that they should accept that a major dividing line today for those calling themselves Marxist-Leninist was the attitude to Stalin. At the conference, representatives of Open Polemic forthrightly rejected this, presenting this as a naive concept. Perhaps this could not have been purely Kumar's imagination as they write this also:

"The 'dividing line between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists' is not, as Hari Kumar contends, support for Stalin. Support for the thoughts and works of any outstanding personality, from Marx to Mao, Hoxha and after, can only be in accordance with the past, present and future validity of their thoughts and works. The dividing line is theoretical and must be dealt with as such." (see above letter). Well, I am not entirely sure what "in accordance with the past, present and future validity of their thoughts and works" actually means, but it certainly sounds profound! And it certainly does reject Stalin as a dividing line. No doubt that puts into some perspective the refusal by Open Polemic to credit Trotsky with being a counter-revolutionary. As the article "Open Polemic and Democratic Centralism" (Communist League, OP number 12, March 1996; ISSN 0969-4617) makes clear, the Open Polemic refused to accept the view expressed by Ted Hankin and others that Trotskyism was "disruptive": "We the undersigned think that a productive discussion that takes place within the parameters of Marxism-Leninism is vitally important. By definition we place Trotskyism outside of the framework of ML. The only role that the Trotskyists can play in such a discussion is one of disruption".
(Ted Hankins' testament to "Open Polemic editorial Board; cited CL in OP Number 12 March 1996; p. 18.) Elsewhere Open Polemic vigorously defend Trotsky's role, offering against "Partisan" another grouping - the hoary line of Trotsky's participation in the Bolshevik revolution in 1917: "We are surprised that Partisan (UK) should now .. demand (of OP) . that we .. declare 'Trotskyism' to be a utopian ideology and the enemy of ML.... it is .. a matter of historical fact that Trotsky did not theorise against the conception of the uneven economic and political development of capitalism and it is also a matter of historical fact that he participated in a particular 'Victory of socialism' , that is, in the initial overthrow of the ruling capitalist class in Russia."
(OP, "Letter to Partisan; p. 4; OP Issue 10; June 1994. ISSN 0969-4617). Lest Open Polemic attempt to mis-cite us, we do not deny the "historical fact" that Trotsky "participated" in the Bolshevik Revolution. Of course, neither did Stalin try to deny Trotsky's importance as the President of the Petrograd Soviet of the Revolutionary Military Committee: "I am far from denying that Trotsky's undoubtedly important role in the uprising.... It cannot be denied that Trotsky fought well in the period of October... but Trotsky was not the only one who fought well in the period of October. Even people like the Left Social-Revolutionaries who then stood side by side with the Bolsheviks, also fought well." (J.V. Stalin: "Trotskyism or Leninism" In: "Works" Volume 6; Moscow; 1953; p. 342; 344). But the total view of Trotsky's career has to take into account his opposition to Lenin and the Bolsheviks on just about every major policy and struggle, and then the struggle against the construction of socialism in the USSR and the launching of a factional secret struggle against the Russian state. A full reckoning must take into account events such as Trotsky's vicious anti-Bolshevik behaviour early on; his support for the "peace slogan" of Nashe Slovo (as Lenin said: "Phrase lovers ... like Trotsky (see no.105 of the "Nashe Slovo") defend in opposition to us, the peace slogan" (Lenin: "The 'Peace' Slogan Appraised"; Collected Works; Volume 18: London; nd; p.262); Trotsky's watering down of the Zimmerwald rejection of the inter- imperialist First World War and Trotsky's attacks upon the "revolutionary defeatism" line of Lenin; Trotsky's centrist position upon the rights of nations to self determination (described by Lenin as: "The Kautskyists hypocritically recognise self-determination - in Russia this is the road taken by Trotsky and Martov. In words, both declare that they are in favour of self-determination as Kautsky does.. but in practice? Trotsky emerges in his customary eclecticism.... The prevailing hypocrisy remains unexposed . . namely the attitude to be adopted towards the nation that is oppressed by "my" nation... A Russian Social-Democrat who "recognises self determination of nations.... without fighting for freedom of secession for the nations oppressed by tsarism is really an imperialist and lackey of tsarism," (Lenin, "The Discussion on Self Determination Summed Up"; In 'Collected Works'; Volume 19; 1942; p.305); Trotsky's conciliationism with social-chauvinism ("Trotsky ...as always entirely disagrees with the social chauvinists in principle, but agrees with them in everything in practice."..(Lenin: "State of Affairs Within Russian Social Democracy"; ibid; p.205-6); Trotsky's disagreement with the strategy of the April Theses of Lenin and his later vain-glorious and false claim that the Bolsheviks had "come round to his theory of the Permanent Revolution"; Trotsky on the eve of the revolution, obstructed fusion of elements outside the Bolsheviks such as the "Inter-Regional Organisation" (Mezhrayopntsi): Lenin's notes: "Trotsky who took the floor out of turn immediately after me:... I cannot call myself a Bolshevik.. We cannot be asked to recognise Bolshevism... the old factional name is undesirable.. "Lenin Miscellany; Volume 4; Moscow; 1925; p.303); Trotsky organised a demand that in July 1917, Lenin allow himself to be arrested instead of going into hiding; Trotsky insisted upon assisting the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionary Deputies in the Petrograd Soviet, who were in a marked minority as the masses had gone to the Bolsheviks, into leading presidium positions against Lenin's viewpoint; Trotsky insisted upon trying to delay the insurrection on grounds of "Soviet constitutionalism" arguing that insurrection should not be proclaimed by the Party; Lenin saw Trotsky's line as either - and he left the question open - "absolute idiocy" or "complete betrayal", and he attacked it up to the moment of insurrection itself; Trotsky's false insistence upon the theory of permanent revolution as being correct and substantiated by the failure of the Chinese Revolution which he blamed on Stalin, who had in fact been trying to get the Communist Party of China into the correct position; Trotsky's attacks upon the actual construction of socialism in the USSR on the false premise that "socialism in One Country" was impossible; Trotsky's attempts to create secret factions and organise disruption of the USSR - both while he was still in the USSR and after from outside when he was in exile (See "Trotsky Against The Bolsheviks"in 2 Parts; Communist League; 1975). (Note from 2000 edition: See this on Web pages Alliance).

Quotes from Open Polemic abundantly confirm their view of the Stalin-Lenin disputes with Trotsky as irrelevant. Perhaps Open Polemic incline to see Trotsky as an under-rated Marxist-Leninist. But even supporters of Open Polemic such as Pauline Rowe seem to agree. Rowe fully accepts and uses (we hope correctly) neologisms like "multanimity". She admits: "There is much in Open Polemic's proposals for a more "democratic" democratic centralism , which is reminiscent of Trotsky." Whether Rowe is a member or not of Open Polemic is not entirely clear to us, but irrespective of that, the sense of her following statement is precisely what is demanded by Open Polemic:

"Democratic centralism is one answer. Different viewpoints can be tolerated in a party on the understanding that when the democratic debate has finished and the vote is taken that all will support the result like disciplined comrades even if they are unhappy with it. Democratic centralism offers ways of choosing a position of endorsing one rather than another of the competing viewpoints. In contrast "multanimity" by relation to the historical divide works on the understanding that neither side of the third/fourth international split will be officially endorsed. A multanimous party will not declare itself Stalinist, Maoist or Trotskyite. There will be no requirement that all members should sell "The Revolution Betrayed" or attend the celebrations of Stalin's birthday."
("Splits & Multanimity" Rowe P, p.12; March 1996; number 12; ISSN 0969-4617) Is it necessary to point out how this completely throws away the theory and weapons of the workers all for a cheap line about "Stalin's birthday"! Instead of cheap lines, we will 'unimaginatively' show that the matter of demarcation lines is not either trivial, nor is it in any sort of mechanical opposition to the building of a party.

6. On How Clarity Has Been Historically Reached In The International Movement

ISML has been quite unequivocal in the view that at this confusing juncture, there is a vital need for some ideological clearing of the decks. Unless one has a very naive view of how this can occur, there will definitely need to be some splits. As we stated at the outset:

"At a critical stage in the development of the Russian Communist movement, Comrade Lenin called for "LINES OF DEMARCATION"... "We declare that before we can unite and in order that we may unite we MUST first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation as Iskra demands," (Works Vol 5; Moscow 1977; p.367; cited by ISML In "Statement To All Marxist-Leninists, and Comrades of the World"). Of course this process will require clear and firm debates that have at least a short term end-point. Not the interminable vacillations of those like Open Polemic who refuse to take any position on any historical matter (such as the roles of Lenin and Trotsky for instance) whatsoever. The agenda of those who agree with ISML, will require the distinction between sectarianism and a clean and clear demarcation to be recognised and not obfuscated as the Open Polemic does: "In the present historical period that has been opened, sectarianism is paradoxically being strengthened, both politically and organisationally in the form of sectarianism of competing vanguardist organisations across the revolutionary movement. Sectarian Vanguardism, our new infantile disorder is very simply, sectarianism organised into 'vanguards'.
(Open Polemic, "Sectarianism - The Main Enemy". p. 2-3; Issue 9; ISSN 0969 - 4617; nd). Under the guise of rejecting "sectarianism" Open Polemic un-principledly wishes to wash "whiter than white" and "remove all stains" from all brands of opportunists. In fact the proposal of Open Polemic is that all previous lines of demarcation have become somehow irrelevant because they are part and parcel of what they call "sectarianism". And it is further pretended that this is exactly the agenda that Lenin and Iskra-ites followed in the Russian period of organisational confusion and theoretical disorder. Of course, Open Polemic is a trifle strained in various footnotes, as they praise Iskra "giving space in the columns .. to a polemic between comrades in and around that party", while they also have to note "the advancement of Iskra's own particular position" and Iskra's "centralised control of a self-appointed editorial team led by Lenin"; (Ibid; p. 3). Open Polemic offers only a distorted account of what the period was really undergoing in terms of the Bolshevik party formation and demarcation. Can it be true that Open Polemic is unaware that prior to the writing of "What is To Be Done", that for a proposed Unity meeting, Iskra put forward stringent criteria as a basis for any "unity": "Accepting the basic principles of scientific socialism and actions in solidarity with international Social-Democracy we reject all attempts to introduce opportunism into the class struggle of the proletariat, attempts that find expression in so-called Economism, Bernsteinism, Milleradism etc".
(Lenin "The 'Unity' Conference" ; In Volume 5 Collected Works; Ibid; p. 226; See also "What is to be Done?" p.523 Ibid)' Of course it is not surprising that "What is To Be Done" is prefaced by Lenin's quotation of Lassalle to Marx: "Party struggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof a party's weakness is its diffuseness and the blurring of a clear demarcation; a party becomes stronger by purging itself" (Letter Lassalle to Marx of June 24th, 1852; cited in Lenin, "What is To be Done?" Volume 5; Ibid; p. 347). All these facts are not only ignored by Open Polemic and its adherents such as P. Rowe, they are distorted. So Rowe for instance claims that nothing is revealed about the split in the Russian party, by the later degeneration of the Mensheviks (Rowe p.12; Issue 12 March 1996). Open Polemic distorts the history of Trotsky and of Lenin's view of Iskra's party building role.

7. The Purpose Of Open Polemic - Abstract Abstractionism

To finally convince us that they are real and concrete Marxists, not only do they ply us with paper diagrams of party organisation, they recite dialectics to us. Or is it dialectics? Open Polemic throws around a few casual, but characteristically high sounding references "abstractly":

"In philosophical terms, abstraction is central to the methodology of dialectical and historical materialism so when Open Polemic insist on the need for abstraction, it is not posing abstract knowledge against concrete knowledge.. Theoretical development proceeds from the sensual concrete as perceived by contemplation.. progresses to the abstract and then to the mental concrete as determined by scientific investigation..... In this process the mental concrete on becoming absorbed into our understanding becomes itself the new sensual concede from which we can again advance our understanding of the material world. For us today the sensual concept is the collective political understanding derived from decades of communist revolutionary struggle. Abstraction is therefore necessary if we are to move from this sensual concreteness to the mental concrete, the validity of which we must constantly prove in the process of practice, for practice is the criterion by which the true scientific nature of any abstraction is judged."
(Open Polemic, "The Central Demarcation for Marxist-Leninists" p.2; Issue 11; March 1995). Wow! Real Marxist talk here, eh? Perhaps they have come across 'Theses on Feuerbach' after all. But hold on... is Open Polemic really saying that "For us today the sensual concept is the collective political understanding derived from decades of communist revolutionary struggle."? What music! Then they surely must admit that the battle between Lenin and Stalin on the one hand and Trotsky on the other are not mere Sound and Light shows! Surely that battle must have been part of the "the collective political understanding derived from decades of communist revolutionary struggle." ?? But no, that is not what Open Polemic means. It seems that the Open Polemic's paean of praise to an obscure abstraction is similar to that of previous obscurantists: " Jacques le Bonhomme strives to "get rid as quickly as possible" of empirical history, stand facts on their heads, causes material history to be produced by ideal history.... Thus the history of Greece from the time of Pericles inclusively is reduced to a struggle of abstractions: reason, spirit, heart, worldliness etc. These are the Greek parties. In this ghostly world, which is presented as the Greek world, allegorical persons such as Madame Purity of Heart "machinate""
( "The German Ideology", Marx & Engels; Moscow; 1976; p. 149). For the abstractions of 'reason, spirit etc' - merely substitute 'leader centrism' and the unfathomable 'multanimity' - and you have Open Polemic. They try to avoid reality- just as the idealists do: "For the idealist, thetheoretical abstractions of real events, their ideal signs, arereality; real events are merely "signs that the old world is going to its doom".... the doctrine is in every sense sedative."
(Marx & Engels; "The German Ideology" Ibid; p. 568).
And finally they substitute for real history abstractions that bear no relation to the real world:
"Where speculation ends where real life starts, there consequently begins real life, positive science, the expounding of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty phrases about consciousness and real knowledge has to take their place. When the reality is described, a self-sufficient philosophy loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which are derived from the observation of the historical development of men. These abstractions in themselves, divorced from real history, have no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material,... but they by no means afford a recipe or schema... On the contrary the difficulties begin only when one sets about the examination and arrangement of the material...... The removal of these difficulties is governed by premises ... which only the study of the actual life-process and the activity of the individuals of each epoch will make evident."
("The German Ideology", Marx & Engels; Moscow; 1976; p.43). But are we too harsh? What about this quotation they cite from Lenin? They obviously really know what they are talking about if they can quote Lenin on this matter, and a quote from an obscure work and not at all one of the more common quotes. Anyway Lenin says: "It is the Marxist method to abstract a thing from its wider context provided that abstraction does not become a substitute for the thing in its dialectical complexity... Lenin insisted that: 'The abstraction of matter of a law of nature, the abstraction of value etc in short all scientific (correct, serious not absurd) abstraction reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely'
(Cited Vol 38; p.171; Lenin Collected Works). The only reason that we will not let Open Polemic get away with this "wizardry", is not for the sake of nit-picking. Although we have already shown on the main grounds (at least we think so) that their arguments on party building are errant nonsense, this philosophical cream-topping is very illustrative of their pseudo-intellectual approach. This all tends to further confuse and disarm opposition. Thus we must notice (it is most unfortunate!) that the quote from Lenin cited above simply omits the first sentence, which goes: "Essentially Hegel is completely right as opposed to Kant. Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract provided it is correct (NB - and Kant, like all philosophers speaks of correct thought) does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it."
(Lenin: Conspectus of Hegel's Science of Logic; In Philosophical Notebooks Volume 38; Moscow; 1961; p.171). We argue that this greatly changes the entire flavour of the quotation. For according to Lenin, if the first step is not "correct" (Lenin's emphasis above), then all else in the transition from concrete to abstract is lost, is it not? So, if the first step is that lines of demarcation are either irrelevant or inapplicable (or what, Open Polemic?) between Trotskyism and Leninism, then any subsequent abstract steps in party building are likely to be somewhat bewildering.
As Lenin says on Aristotle's criticisms of Pythagoras and Plato's Idealism: "Primitive idealism: the universal concept, idea, is a particular being. This appears wild, monstrously (more accurately childishly) stupid. But is not modern idealism Kant, Hegel, the idea of God of the same nature (absolutelyof the same nature)? Tables chairs and the ideas of table and chairs; the world and the idea of the world (God); the dichotomy of human knowledge and the possibility of idealism (= religion) are given already in the first elementary abstraction... The approach of the (human) mind to a particular thing the taking of a copy (= concept ) of it is not a simple immediate act, a dead mirroring, but one which is complex, split into two, zig-zag-like, which includes in it the possibility of flight from life; more than that: the possibility of the transformation (moreover an unnoticeable transformation, of which man is unaware) of the abstract concept idea, into a fantasy (in the final analysis = God). For even in the simplest generalisation, in the most elementary general idea ("table" in general) there is a certain bit of fantasy." (Lenin's emphasises)
(Lenin: Conspectus of Aristotle's Metaphysics; Volume 38 Collected Works; Ibid; p. 370). What is all this from Lenin other than a warning about the dangers of "abstract abstractionism", of making a fetish of the "abstract"? Open Polemic are too clever by half ; they think that if they throw a bit of "dialectic" sand in the air, we will disavow the need to distinguish between Trotsky and Lenin. Do they need to be reminded of the fairy story of the king's new clothes? Unimaginative people see only the waving hand and the dust, while the dialectic fails to cloak their nakedness.

8. Open Polemic's Challenge to ISML

Having shown that the line of Open Polemic upon both democratic centralism and the history of the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Stalin is somewhat 'revisionist', I should now assess the Challenge of Open Polemic to ISML. They state in their letter:

"We fail to understand what Kumar means by Open Polemic attempting "to avoid the formation of a platform such as ISML, founded on notions of democratic centralism". In particular, we haven't a clue as to what he means by "notions" of democratic centralism and we would further remind him, firstly, that the ISML is already formed as a platform and, secondly, that the ISML does not even list support for the Marxist-Leninist principle of democratic centralism as one of its founding principles. ...However, the distinguishing feature of these protagonists is that they do not support the most defining, fundamental principle of scientific communism today, the principle of the leading role of the party prior to and within the dictatorship of the proletariat.... It would be interesting to know who would remain with ISML if this principle concerning the leading role of the party was included in Clause 1 of its Founding Editorial Principles. Perhaps Hari Kumar himself might also tell us just where he stands on this question." Unfortunately this is all sophistry, with the exception that ISML is indeed already formed as a platform. Perhaps Open Polemic thought that Hari Kumar had forgotten this point. Open Polemic does know Kumar's views on "democratic centralism". Along with many others, Open Polemic heard at the Conference Kumar argue for the leading role of the Party based upon the principle of a full and open discussion till the point of a decision, and then unbending external unanimity on the matter until and when there might have been an internal change in the line, following principled debate within the party.

Furthermore, upon theISML Founding Principles:
Firstlyit is true that "the leading role of the party" is not listed as such.
Secondly under point (e) we do write:"recognition of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat to first achieve and then to maintain socialism.." This might be thought by many to encompass the leading role of the party. Indeed it seems that even Open Polemic makes such a connection since it states them to be jointly as one:

"OPEN POLEMIC CRITERIA: OP supports the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism as applied to revolutionary parties. It defines these fundamentals as the political and organisational principle of democratic centralism, the principal of the leading role of the party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the principles of proletarian internationalism. However it recognises the need for these fundamentals to be subject to assessment and elaboration".
(Cited OP, page 9. Issue 4; nd.). Furthermore, if Open Polemic wish to join with ISML in its programme and formally ask that this point on "the leading role of the party" be considered as a crucial additional component, then surely the next conference would do so.

In Conclusion

Lest we be continually told we do not take Open Polemic's views seriously, we have tried to address their most central concerns. We in fact do take them seriously, as very confusing and dangerously eloquent and subtle champions of obfuscation. Open Polemic says that:

"Revisionism is politically and organisationally manifested within the working class movement by the trends of anarcho-communism on the left and reformo-communism on the right and by the various conjunctions of both of these trends. With their many varieties identifying as communist or revolutionary socialist, the general characteristic of these trends is that their support for Marxism is accompanied by opposition to Leninism on the crucial questions of party and state.." We believe than that Open Polemic describes itself very well above. The whole of the corpus of Open Polemic strikes us a very clever ploy.

(Hari Kumar).

Enver Hoxha Refuted

(The following article by N. Sanmugathasan, General Secretary, Ceylon Communist Party, was originally published in 'A World to Win' magazine. It is reprinted here in order to stimulate the debate on the role of Enver Hoxha and the Albanian struggle against revisionism. A contrasting viewpoint by Patrick Kessel on behalf of CEMOPI follows.)

From its very origin, Marxism has been internationalist in its form and content. That is why Marx and Engels ended their famous Communist Manifesto in 1848 with the stirring call: 'Workers of the World, Unite!' They also went on to give organisational form to this concept by forming the International Working Men's Association, which has come to be known as the First International. It was this organisation that was responsible for spreading the seeds of Marxism among the advanced workers of Europe and North America.

When the heavy hand of repression fell on Europe, after the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, and made impossible the functioning of the International from Europe, its headquarters was shifted to North America, where it died a natural death. After the death of Marx, the Second International was formed under the leadership of Engels. This was the period of the emergence of the mass socialist and labour parties in Europe many of whom exist to this day.

Engels did not live to see its degeneration to bourgeois opportunism at the beginning of the First World War. Lenin waged a titanic struggle against the revisionist leaders of the Second International, Kautsky and Bernstein, who had now claimed the mantle of Marx and Engels as leaders of the strongest social democratic party that of Germany.

The success of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the end of the First World War completed the exposure of the opportunism of the leadership of the Second International. Lenin painstakingly gathered together what was good in the old International and in 1919, in Moscow, was formed his Third International, which, despite many shortcomings and mistakes, was to play the historical role in establishing mass communist parties in most parts of the world. Certain compromises forced on it by various reasons mainly, the need to facilitate the entry of local communist parties into national anti-fascist coalitions which included even non-proletarian forces led to its dissolution in 1943.

The correctness and wisdom of this decision continues to be a source of controversy. What is perhaps more difficult to understand is the failure to re-establish the unity of the international communist movement in an organisational form at the end of the Second World War. It is true that the Cominform played a role as a centre for a brief period. But it was not an international body, and its role was limited.

The death of Stalin and the usurpations of power by the Khrushchovite revisionists in the Soviet Party and State struck a deadly blow at the monolithic unity of the international communist movement which had been built up under Stalin. Besides, the ideological rift between Marxism-Leninism and Modern Revisionism completely sundered both the organisational and ideological unity of the international communist movement. New Marxist-Leninist parties that repudiated Khrushchovite revisionism sprung up everywhere. They looked for leadership to the glorious Communist Party of China, led by Comrade Mao Tsetung, which had remained steadfast in its defence of Marxism-Leninism and had launched polemical battles in its defence.

Perhaps this was the most opportune time to revive the Communist International. But the opportunity was not taken. The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party seem to have considered that the time was not yet ripe for such a venture, and confined themselves to bilateral exchanges between parties. Their later practice of recognising more than one party in a country as Marxist-Leninist did not help unity of Marxist-Leninist forces on the national level. Instead, it proved to be divisive. For its part, the Party of Labour of Albania recognised only one party in a country as Marxist-Leninist. But it had no clear-cut or principled norms.

The only opportunity that delegates from Marxist-Leninist parties and groups got to meet each other was at national congresses of the Parties of China and Albania. In respect to China, that opportunity, too, ceased with the 9th Congress, when the Chinese Communist Party ceased its practice of inviting fraternal delegates from other parties to its congress. It also discontinued the practice of sending its delegates to Congresses of other fraternal parties. No official explanation has been given for these actions.

Perhaps, the absence of an international forum for Marxist-Leninists was felt most when, immediately following the death of Mao, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party slid into the slime of modern revisionism and put forward the utterly revisionist theory of the 'Three Worlds' as a strategic weapon for the international communist movement.

Undoubtedly, a large number of Marxist-Leninist parties and groups - and, foremost, the Party of Labour of Albania - came forward to denounce the revisionist theory of the Three Worlds. But, instead of uniting these forces firmly and posing a formidable front to both Soviet and Chinese revisionism, the Party of Labour of Albania further disunited these forces by dragging still further in the mud the flag of Mao Tsetung Thought, which had been flung into the mud by the Chinese revisionists. The Albanian Party had the chance of picking up the banner of Mao Tsetung Thought from the mud into which the Chinese revisionists had thrown it and to unite all the genuine Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries round that banner. Instead, they chose to do the opposite. Using the influence of their State power, they subverted a number of undoubtedly revolutionary forces into the false position of opposing Mao Tsetung Thought and led them into the political wilderness where they are floundering.

Why did the Albanian Party do this! This will probably remain an enigma. But the magnitude of their treason can only be understood if one realises the magnificent potential that existed in 1977 and that was not tapped because of the disruption by the Albanian Party.

But, it is our duty to rebut the false theories of the Albanian Party. Because, today, the defence of Mao Tsetung Thought has become the central task of all Marxist-Leninists. For, the defence of Mao Tsetung Thought is nothing short of the defence of Marxism-Leninism because Mao Tsetung Thought is a further development of Marxism-Leninism. Whoever rejects Mao Tsetung Thought is rejecting Marxism-Leninism. Herein lies the importance about the debate on Mao Tsetung Thought.

What disconcerts anyone in this debate with the Albanian Party is their dishonesty. Writing at the end of his foreward to his Reflections on China, in May 1979, Enver Hoxha says that the 7th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania "made a thorough analysis of the anti-Marxist stand and counter-revolutionary actions of the Chinese revisionist leadership", without excluding Mao's responsibility for the situation created.This is just not true. The present writer was present at the 7th Congress in 1976 and never heard a word against Mao Tsetung. On the contrary, in his report to the 7th Congress, Enver Hoxha referred to Mao not only as a great Marxist-Leninist, but also as a great friend of the Albanian people. It is there in the report. Lies cannot be tolerated in any polemic.

Enver Hoxha is trying to trace the origins of the revisionism of the present Chinese leadership back to Mao. He seems to ignore the fact that Teng Hsiao-ping has reversed all the correct decisions of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and is seeking to erase the entire period of Mao's leadership of the Chinese Party as a bad dream. Even the rehabilitation of Liu Shao-chi, whose denunciation as a capitalist-roader by Mao has the approval of Enver Hoxha (in his book Reflections on China), has not woken up Enver Hoxha to face realities. Perhaps, only the expected open denunciation of Mao by the next Congress of the Chinese Party alone can completely expose the political bankruptcy of Enver Hoxha. Surely, it must be clear even to the meanest intellect that if Teng Hsiao-ping's revisionism springs from Mao, Teng could not be so venomously opposed to Mao and everything he stood for.

Enver Hoxha accuses Mao of being an idealist and a metaphysicist. But, in fact, it is Enver who is guilty of that charge. Let us illustrate this by the way he approaches the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which is, perhaps, one of the greatest revolutionary events that has ever happened. In calling this great event as being neither great, nor proletarian nor cultural nor a revolution, Enver Hoxha displays not merely total ignorance of what the revolution is all about, but also displays his mechanical, metaphysical attitude.

From the angle from which he approaches this great event, he sees the great Chinese Communist Party with its constitution and an elected Central Committee which should decide everything and give leadership. There can be no place for turmoil or what he calls 'chaos'. This is precisely how Liu Shao-chi also approached the question. He thought he was sitting pretty because he knew that he commanded a majority inside the Central Committee. He also further envisaged that, as a good communist, Mao would have to first raise his differences inside his Central Committee where Liu Shao-chi was confident of victory. He little thought that Mao would go over the head of the Central Committee and appeal to the masses outside with his famous slogan: 'Bombard the Headquarters'. Whoever heard of a communist appealing to the masses to overthrow the leadership of the Party or, that part of it which had gone revisionist.

But this was what Mao precisely did. He was not inhibited by mechanical rules or by metaphysical thinking. He thought dialectically and acted to preserve the dictatorship of the proletariat from those capitalist readers who had seized power in the superstructure. To follow rules would have been to court sure disaster. Besides, Mao had immense confidence in the masses. He knew that they could make mistakes. But he also knew that, fundamentally, they would act correctly, under proper and revolutionary leadership. That is why he was not afraid of 'stirring' up trouble.

But Enver Hoxha cannot understand this. Therefore, he describes this great revolution in which literally millions participated, as a palace putsch on an all-China scale. This is indeed a naive description.

If Mao had to go outside the Party leadership and appeal to the people and thus give a personal leadership to the Cultural Revolution, it was because the leadership of the Party was riddled with revisionists and capitalist readers. Mao had no other alternatives if he wanted to safeguard the Party and keep China from changing colour.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is an example of how to carry on class struggle under conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China, to prevent China from changing colour and going down the path of capitalist restoration, and to preserve China as a base for world revolution.

It was called a Cultural Revolution because it was in the cultural front that both the revisionists and the revolutionaries fired their first shots. Like the role of the Petofi Club in the Hungarian counter-revolution in 1956, cultural activities played a big role in the attempt of the revisionists in China to put the clock back. Besides, the whole revolution was about the question of capturing and influencing men's minds, to create a new kind of socialist man, devoid of selfishness and the lust for personal power and grandeur.

The Cultural Revolution was no hoax, as Enver Hoxha claims. Nor did it liquidate the Communist Party of China. It only demolished its bourgeois headquarters, that part of its leadership that had gone revisionist. In its place, it introduced new blood. Of course, there was chaos. Every revolution produces a certain amount of chaos. That is inevitable. That is why Mao said that revolution was not a dinner party. It was an attempt by one class to overthrow another. Destruction always precedes construction.

That Mao and the revolutionaries did not achieve all the aims they set out to achieve by means of the Cultural Revolution is true. This was because, half-way through the revolution, acting on the pretext that the revolution had gone too far to the left, certain leaders like Chou En-lai succeeded in rehabilitating people dethroned by the Cultural Revolution. That this could not be prevented represented the weakness of the social classes represented by Mao and the revolutionaries.

Enver Hoxha objects to the role of the youth in the Cultural Revolution. Why the youth? Why not the proletariat? he asks forgetting that the Albanian Party, itself, called upon the youth to build their railways and to terrace their mountainsides. The youth is not a class by itself. They come from different classes. But they have the common trait of being idealistic, self-sacrificing and willing to change society. Therefore, they can play a vanguard role which means taking the lead in marching in the forefront of the ranks.

But this does not mean that the working class youth were not in the forefront of the Cultural Revolution. Youth from the working class and the peasantry formed the bulk of the Red Guards even though there were small sections of workers who were opposed to the Revolution. Let us not forget that the driving force of the January Storm in Shanghai one of the outstanding pace-setting events of the Cultural Revolution - was the organisations of revolutionary workers in Shanghai, led by Chang Chun-chiao and his comrades.

One of the most serious political charges made by Enver Hoxha against Mao is that the latter had repudiated the Marxist conception of the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution, and instead, assigned that role to the peasantry. This is both an incorrect and unsubstantiable charge which can be easily answered. Throughout his theoretical writings Mao has always stressed the leading role of the proletariat and has referred to the peasantry as the main force. He has never deviated from this position.

In his very first essay in Volume I of his Selected Works, answering the questions: 'Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?', he has stated in his 'Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society' "The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat". In his essay on the May 4th Movement, he has stated: "It is impossible to accomplish the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution without these basic revolutionary forces and without the leadership of the working class". He has further analysed in detail this question in his essay: 'On the Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party'. Therein, he states, "The Chinese proletariat is the basic motive force of the Chinese Revolution. Unless it is led by the proletariat, the Chinese Revolution cannot possibly succeed". He has returned to this position several times in his writings. In practice, too, he has given prominence to the organisation of workers, e.g., those of the Anyuan coal mines.

But Enver Hoxha resorts to a dishonest trick. He quotes two sentences from Mao's famous: 'Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan' in an attempt to prove that Mao had said that all other 'political parties and forces must submit to the peasantry and its views'. This is what Mao said in that celebrated report: "Millions of peasants will rise like a mighty storm, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back", and, "they will put to the test every revolutionary party and group, every revolutionary, so that they accept their views or reject them".

Mao wrote this essay not to urge the hegemonic role of the peasantry in the Chinese Revolution, but to urge the then leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to give leadership to the already emerging peasant movement in the countryside. It must be pointed out that the then leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was only interested in the alliance with the national bourgeoisie and neglected the task of forging the worker-peasant alliance. Mao correctly wanted this policy changed. He wanted a proper appreciation of the role of the peasantry, which formed between 80 to 30% of the population, as the main force of the Chinese revolution. He declared that "without the poor peasants there would he no revolution". He never argued for the hegemonic role of the peasantry in the revolution.

Enver Hoxha further cites the thesis about the 'revolutionary villages' and that the 'countryside must encircle the city' as proof that Mao had elevated the peasantry to the position of the leading role. But what did Mao mean! As far as we could understand it, Mao pointed out that in the semi-colonial countries of the present time, the forces of the enemy were superior to the initially inferior forces of the people and that the enemy forces were concentrated in the cities -e.g., the headquarters of the government, the military, the police, the radio, the railway, the postal department, etc. were all in the cities.

In such a situation, the enemy forces were, at the beginning, superior to the initially weaker people's forces. In such a context, Mao suggested that it would be folly to hit our heads against the stone wall of the enemies' superior might. Instead, he suggested that the people should move away, as far as possible, from the enemies' centers of power. In countries like China where the majority of the people lived outside the cities, this would mean going among the people, organizing them and building up revolutionary bases within which a people's army could be built and trained. This would change a disadvantage into an advantage and would oblige the enemy to send his forces in search of the people's forces. In such an event the enemy should be lured deep among the people and destroyed by using the tactic of pitting ten against one. The people's army will learn and grow in actual combat with the enemy till a qualitative change is reached when the people's forces would have become superior to the forces of the enemy. This is the theory known as protracted guerrilla warfare. When the people's forces had become superior to those of the enemy it would then be possible to surround the cities and finally liberate them.

This was the brilliant military strategy and tactics worked out by Mao in the course of guiding the Chinese revolution. By no means does it negate the leading role of the proletariat or allocate such a role to the peasantry. The leading role of the proletariat is realized through the proletarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism and as expressed through the Communist Party. It does not mean that the proletariat should numerically be the superior force or that all actions must originate or take place in the cities. This is so because, in an undeveloped and big country like China, the proletariat is numerically weak, while the vast countryside gives ample room for the people's forces to maneuver. Neither do these tactics mean doing no work or less work in the cities. In the conditions of illegality that prevailed in pre-revolutionary China, Mao has said that in the enemy-occupied Kuomintang areas their policy should be to have well selected cadres working underground for a long period, to accumulate strength and bide our time.

Besides, when we consider the practice of the Chinese Revolution, we find that the greater number of the forces that formed the first Workers and Peasants Red Army which Mao led to the Ching Kang mountains in 1927 were composed of coal miners from Anyuan among whom Mao had worked earlier. Nevertheless, Mao did not offer this tactic as a universal solution to all countries. On September 25th, 1956, in a talk with the representatives of some Latin American Communist Parties, he had said that the Chinese experience in this connection may not be applicable to many of their countries, though it can serve for their reference. He begged to advise them not to transplant Chinese experience mechanically.

Comrade Mao Tsetung is also being criticised by Enver Hoxha for alleged non-Marxist conceptions about the two stages of the democratic revolution and the Socialist revolution. None are so blind as those who have eyes and yet do not see. Comrade Mao Tsetung has explained his point of view in several of his writings. The most important one of these is his article 'On New Democracy' He has pointed out: "The Chinese revolution is a continuation of the October Revolution and part of the world proletarian-socialist revolution. The Chinese revolution must take two steps. First the new democratic revolution and then the socialist revolution. These are two essentially different revolutionary processes which are at once distinct and interrelated. The second process, or the socialist revolution, can be carried through only after the first process, or the revolution of a bourgeois democratic character, has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution".

Thus it is quite clear that Mao had no misconceptions about the existence of a Chinese wall between the democratic and socialist revolutions. He has stressed this when he said, "It is correct and fits in with the Marxist theory of development to say that of the two revolutionary stages the first provides the conditions for the second and that the two must be consecutive without an intervening stage of bourgeois dictatorship. It is however a Utopian view, unacceptable to true revolutionaries, that the democratic revolution has not its specific task to be accomplished during a definite period of time, and that this task can be merged and carried out simultaneously with what is of necessity a future task, i.e., the socialist task, thus accomplishing both at one stroke".

Thus Comrade Mao Tsetung has clearly stated that the democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. This naturally means that during two different stages of the revolution, the working class will have different allies. Specifically, Comrade Mao Tsetung said that, during the democratic stage of the revolution, it would be possible both to unite and struggle with the national bourgeoisie which has a dual nature. On the one hand it has contradictions with foreign imperialism and domestic bureaucratic capitalism. On the other hand, it has contradictions with the working class and the peasantry. Consequently it has a dual nature in the Chinese people's democratic revolution.

Mao has pointed out,

"From this dual nature of the national bourgeoisie, we can conclude that at a certain period and under certain circumstances, it can take part in revolution against imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and warlordism, and it can become a part of the revolutionary forces. But at other times, it may serve the big bourgeoisie by assisting the counterrevolutionary forces". This view about the temporary alliance between the working class and the national bourgeoisie had earlier been stated by both Lenin and Stalin. In his 'Preliminary Draft of the Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions' Lenin has said, "The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in colonial and backward countries, but must not merge with it, and must unconditionally preserve the independence of the proletarian movement, even in its most rudimentary form". In his 'Chinese Revolution and the Tasks of the Communist International' Stalin has concluded that an alliance with the national bourgeoisie was permissible.

Mao was aware of the need for vigilance and of the need to both unite with and struggle with the national bourgeoisie. He has said:

"The people have a strong State apparatus in their hands, and they do not fear rebellion on the part of the national bourgeoisie". This is somewhat similar to the sentiments voiced by Lenin when he introduced the New Economic Policy. He said, "There is nothing dangerous to the proletarian State in this so long as the proletariat keeps political power firmly in its hands, so long as it keeps transport and big industry firmly in its hands". Enver Hoxha denies that such a situation existed in China after the democratic revolution, but apart from making a categorical statement, he does not adduce any facts to justify the statement. But it is well known that even in the first years of People's China big banks and big industrial and commercial enterprises were state owned and that enterprises such as banks, railways and airlines were operated by the state. Besides, the most important arm of the state machinery, the People's Liberation Army, was exclusively under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Neither was Mao unmindful of the necessity for the class struggle even after the revolution. In 1957, he said,

"In China, although in the main socialist transformation has been completed with respect to the system of ownership, and although the large scale and turbulent class struggles of the masses characteristic of the previous revolutionary periods have in the main come to an end, there are still remnants of the overthrown landlord and comprador classes, there is still a bourgeoisie, and the remoulding of the petty bourgeoisie has just started. The class struggle is by no means over". Earlier in 1952 he had said, "With the overthrow of the landlord class and the bureaucrat-capitalist class, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie has become the principal contradiction in China; therefore the national bourgeoisie should no longer be described as an intermediate class". The democratic stage of the revolution in China lasted for about seven years. By 1956 privately owned industrial and commercial enterprises had been converted into joint state-private enterprises and the co-operative transformation of agriculture and handicrafts had taken place. Sections of the bourgeoisie had become administrative personnel in joint state-private enterprises and were being transformed from exploiters into working people living by their own labour. But they still got a fixed rate of interest on their capital in the joint enterprises. That is, they had not yet cut themselves loose from the roots of exploitation. Clearly, the class contradiction had not been completely resolved and was not to be resolved for some more years to come. It was only during the Cultural Revolution that the Red Guards forced the cancellation of the payment of interest to the national bourgeoisie. This was China's specific method of limiting, restricting and transforming the national bourgeoisie.

Every party in different countries will have to apply different methods in overcoming the contradictions that always arise as society proceeds further and further on the socialist path. The methods each party uses would differ from country to country. The degree of resistance encountered by the Bolsheviks in Russia from the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes was very great. They had to take harsh measures to eliminate such resistance. They were entirely justified in doing so. In China, too, counter-revolutionaries were eliminated. But, in China, Mao advocated using two different methods under the people's democratic dictatorship, one dictatorial and the other democratic, to resolve the two types of contradictions which differ in nature - those between ourselves and the enemy, and those among the people. In his article 'On the People's Democratic Dictatorship' written in 1949 and also published in the Cominform Journal, Mao had explained that:

"The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship". This method of using persuasion and not compulsion to resolve contradictions among the people may sound non-Marxist to some people. But it is a cardinal principle of Marxism that when working among the masses Communists must use the democratic method of persuasion and education, and never resort to commandism or force. This method was particularly successful in its application to China as gauged by the fact that when, during the Korean War, the Americans raced up to the banks of the Yalu river, there was not a single Chinese traitor to be found. This contrasts with the situation in Hungary at the time of the counter-revolution in 1956.

Enver Hoxha also finds fault with the theory of contradictions, as outlined by Mao, whereby he asserts that the law of contradictions, i.e., the law of the unity of the opposites, is the most basic law of materialist dialectics and that all other laws spring from it. It would need more space and time than we have at our disposal to reply to all these criticisms.

We will confine ourselves to re-stating what we think are the basic principles of the law of contradiction in things, as enunciated by Mao. Contradiction is universal; contradictions express themselves in a particular form; of all the contradictions there is always a principal contradiction and also a principal aspect of the contradiction which plays the leading role in resolving the contradiction; all aspects of contradiction have identity as well as opposition, and under certain circumstances, can exchange places (identity is temporary and relative while opposition is absolute); finally, among contradictions there are antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions and they must be handled properly without permitting non-antagonistic contradictions to turn into antagonistic contradictions.

It is the same fundamental failure to understand the theory of contradiction in things that makes Enver Hoxha criticise Mao's views on the two-line theory. According to Enver Hoxha, a party can have only one line and therefore it was un-Marxist to conceive of the existence of two lines inside the party. But what Mao was referring to was the universality of contradiction, i.e., that contradictions exist in everything; even in thought, in parties and even inside an individual. It is correct that at a particular point of time, a party or an individual can and should speak with only one voice. But formulation of that one voice is always the result of the bitter conflict between two contradictory points of view. It is this conflict of contradictions, even in thought, that pushes things forward. In this sense, there have always been two lines inside a party or even an individual. It is on the basis of the contradiction between these two lines, between what is right and what is wrong, that development and progress takes place. To deny this is to deny Marxist dialectics.

Similarly, there is a failure to understand the dialectical principle of the unity of opposites between opposite aspects of a contradiction and that, under certain conditions, opposites can change places. Under capitalism, the working class and the bourgeoisie are two contradictory aspects of the same contradiction. They are opposed to each other and this opposition is absolute. But there is also an aspect of unity between the two, i.e., one cannot exist without the other. And, under certain circumstances, i.e., as a result of revolution, the working class and the bourgeoisie can exchange places. That is, the working class, from being a class that is ruled, can become the ruling class, while the bourgeoisie, from being the ruling class, would become the class that is ruled.

Enver Hoxha also criticises the method used by Mao to deal with counter-revolutionaries and contradictory forces among the people. While admitting that the proletariat had no choice but to finish off the bourgeoisie in Russia which was a counter-revolutionary class, Mao pointed out that there was a slightly different situation in China. By 1956, the bulk of the counter-revolutionaries had been cleared out. Therefore, while still advocating harsh treatment against counter-revolutionaries and other enemies of the people, he advocated a different method of democratic persuasion and remoulding through labour for other enemies. He said that too many people should not be shot and that there must be a limit even to the number of people arrested, and that whenever mistakes are discovered they must be corrected. This policy was advocated because of the large number of petty bourgeoisie in China and of the necessity of winning over all non-working class sections of the people (other than the feudal landlords and the big bourgeoisie) to the side of the working class.

Similarly the theory of 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend' was put forward in order to encourage struggle between contending schools of thought among the people, but under the supervision of the Communist Party. Mao held that it would be wrong to suppress wrong ideas among the people by administrative actions. Instead he held that such wrong ideas should be allowed to come out into the open and face competition and struggle. He had no doubt that the correct ideas would triumph because socialism was in an advantageous position in the ideological struggle. The basic power of the state was in the hands of the working people led by the proletariat. The Communist Party was strong and its prestige high. Therefore the only method of ideological struggle should be painstaking reasoning and not crude coercion.

This campaign to 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom' was an ideological struggle against poisonous weeds and for the supremacy of Marxism in the cultural field. The opportunity was used by the rightists to call for Western-style democracy. There were even ugly incidents, like people being beaten up. As Mao said, 'Only when poisonous weeds are allowed to sprout from the soil can they be uprooted. A fierce counterattack was launched against the bourgeois rightists who had jumped out and exposed themselves and they were beaten back. Some of them were punished and dubbed as rightists, one of the five groups who were considered black in Chinese society. This decision was reversed only after Teng returned to power. The same is true with regard to Mao's policy of permitting all the classes that had participated in the democratic revolution to share in the government after the revolution. This was a peculiar feature which obtained in China as the result of a section of the urban bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie allying themselves with the workers in the revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism. This was a historical fact. But such a policy was carried out on the basis of the leadership of the Communist Party and the acceptance by the other parties of the transition to socialism. But this long term co-existence and mutual supervision of the Communist Party and the democratic parties is not to the liking of Enver Hoxha.

He forgets that even after the October Revolution in Russia, there were two parties in the government the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist- Revolutionaries. The alliance with the latter was broken up only after they rose up in revolt against the Bolsheviks. Even in Albania, there exists even today the Democratic Front.

It is useful in this connection to note that this idea of remoulding and re-educating other classes dates back to Lenin. He said in 'Left Wing Communism',

"Classes have remained and will remain everywhere for years after the conquest of power by the proletariat...The abolition of classes means not only driving out the landlords and capitalists - that we accomplished with comparative ease - it also means abolishing the small commodity producers [whom he considered engender capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale], and they cannot be driven back, or crushed; we must live in harmony with them; they can (and must) be remoulded and re-educated only by very prolonged, slow, continuous organisational work". Thus, Mao's policy, is by no means an expression of his liberalism.

Enver Hoxha refers to the Criticisms of the leadership of the Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung by Stalin and the Comintern. These criticisms apparently refer to the failure by Mao to implement the principles of Marxism-Leninism consistently on the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution, proletarian internationalism, strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle, etc. We have already dealt with some of these points.

It is true that there were differences between the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party. But it must be admitted that in almost all the issues, Mao was proved right and Stalin, to his credit, was one of the first to admit it. There was of course no difference between the two sides about the character of the revolution, which both considered to be bourgeois democratic, and about the key role of the peasantry and agrarian revolution, and the fact that armed revolution was the only solution for revolution in China. For his part, Mao considered the USSR as the homeland of the international proletariat and correctly understood the historic importance of the October Revolution and its global impact. But there were differences on the question of strategy and tactics of the Chinese Revolution.

Between 1927 and 1935, through the respective lines of Li Li-san and Wang Ming, the Comintern influence was felt on such issues as the simultaneous capturing of power in the cities, the necessity to resort to positional warfare instead of guerrilla warfare, and the refusal to build rural revolutionary bases. In fact, the Long March had to be launched as a method of escaping from the fifth encirclement campaign of Chiang Kai-shek. Today Albanian comrades (in discussion with ourParty delegation that visited Albania in April 1979) have taken to belittling the Long March and are asserting that it would have been better if the Red Army had given battle where it was and saved such tremendous losses. One need hardly add, that had such a policy been adopted, there would have been no revolution, no party and no Mao. The Albanians also belittle the Tsunyi Conference which elected Mao to power in 1935 as being unrepresentative. One wonders whether they expected a fully fledged legal and representative Congress to be held in the midst of one of the most hotly contested civil wars in the world.

At the end of the Second World War, too, Stalin had his differences with the Chinese Communists. He doubted their ability to win in an all-out civil war against Chiang Kai-shek (who was being backed by U.S. imperialism) and maintained relationships with Chiang Kai-shek even during the civil war. But, Stalin was gracious enough to say that he had been glad to have been proved wrong. Despite these mistakes, there is no doubt that Mao considered Stalin to be a great Marxist-Leninist and that fundamentally he was correct. Besides, Mao did not blame the Comintern and its representatives in China for the mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party. He blamed those Chinese Communists who tried to blindly follow the Soviet pattern without paying attention to the peculiar characteristics of the national situation in China.

And, unkindest cut of all, Enver Hoxha suggests that the Chinese Communists' stand against Soviet revisionism was not dictated from correct, principled, Marxist-Leninist positions. This is not merely unkind but also completely untrue. Not only had Mao correctly understood Khrushchov's revisionism as far back as 1956, but it was under his leadership that the Chinese Party initiated the great polemics with the publication of 'Long Live Leninism' in 1960. These polemics, which consisted of several letters to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and to certain other revisionist parties of Western Europe, were brilliant for the clarity of thought and depth of argument. They schooled a whole generation of Marxist-Leninists all over the world in revolutionary principles and styles of work. To deny this today is to fly in the face of facts.

Albanians would now have us believe that Mao was always pro-American, or that he shifted his positions continuously. They told our delegation that, during the Second World War, there was in America a Chiang Kai-shek lobby and a Mao lobby. It is true that there were differences of opinion among the American ruling class as to who should be supported in the common fight against Japanese fascism. Chiang! or Mao! There were honest Americans who wanted support given to the Chinese Communists because they were the only forces genuinely fighting the Japanese, not the Kuomintang under Chiang. This does not mean that Mao was a pro-American.

His attitude to U.S. imperialism has been unambiguous and consistent. During the Second World War, when Japanese fascism became the main enemy of China, he used the contradictions between Japanese fascism and U.S. imperialism and stood for an alliance with the latter. But, no sooner had the war against fascism ended and U.S. imperialism replaced Japanese fascism as the main enemy of China by supporting Chiang Kai-shek in his civil war against the communists, he characterised U.S. imperialism as the main enemy which had to be defeated before China could be liberated. And, defeat it he did!

In the years following, nobody could doubt the anti-U.S. imperialist bona fides of Mao when he sent the Chinese volunteers across into Korea to stem the U.S. led invasion of that country, and when he gave unqualified support to the peoples of Indochina struggling against U.S. imperialism and, in fact, to all peoples struggling for their independence. His famous 1970 statement, calling for the unity of all forces opposed to U.S. imperialism and its running dogs, still rings in our ears.

But, by this time, a new clement had entered the international situation. With its brutal occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Soviet revisionism signaled its development as a social imperialist power. A new imperialism has been born and Mao took note of the change in the relation of forces. There afterwards, he was to bracket Soviet social imperialism along with U.S. imperialism as the twin enemies of mankind. This was the position to which he stuck to the last when, for the last time he presided over the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China held from August 24th to 28th, 1973.

The Report adopted at this Congress contains this excellent formulation: "Therefore, on the international front, our Party must uphold proletarian internationalism, uphold the Party's consistent policies, strengthen our unity with the proletariat and the oppressed people and nations of the whole world and with all countries subjected to imperialist aggression, subversion, interference, control or bullying, and form the broadest united front against imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, and in particular, against the hegemonism of the two superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR. We must unite with all genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations the world over, and carry the struggle against modern revisionism through to the end".

It is useful to note that there is not even a hint of the theory of the Three Worlds to be found in this report. It is also absolutely slanderous for the Albanians to state now that Mao, at any stage, characterised Soviet imperialism as the main enemy and, therefore, called for an understanding or an alliance with U.S. imperialism. This is a monstrosity born out of Teng's mind and has nothing to do with Mao.

Thus we vehemently repudiate the thesis that the anti-Marxist-Leninist Theory of the Three Worlds was a product of Mao Tsetung Thought. There is no evidence whatever to support such a possibility. Comrade Mao Tsetung is a leader who has expressed his point of view on almost all conceivable subjects that came within his purview. The fact that the apologists for the Theory of the Three Worlds cannot dig up a single quotation from Mao in support of this absurd theory is sufficient proof that he never did advocate the unity of the second and third world against the first world; or, worse still, advocate the unity of the second and third world along with one part of the first world against the other half.

The favourite technique used by Enver Hoxha, right throughout his book, is to attribute to Mao views that are not his and then to proceed to demolish them. This is a most dishonest method of debate.

It is unfortunate that we have to spend so much time and space refuting Enver Hoxha. But this, in itself, is an education in Marxism-Leninism Just as the international debate between Marxism-Leninism and Modern Revisionism became a school for all Marxist-Leninists, so today the principled defence of Mao Tsetung Thought constitutes an education in Marxism-Leninism. The international communist movement must and will unite itself over again and forge ahead towards victory. But that unity must be a principled unity - a unity between revolutionaries who base themselves on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
(N. Sanmugathasan).

On The Role of the Party of Labour of Albania and of Enver Hoxha in the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism

_As a determined area of the division of work, the philosophy of each epoch supposes a determined intellectual documentation, that has been transmitted to it by the philosophies having preceded it and from which it proceeds. And this is why it happens, that countries lagging behind in the economic field may nevertheless play first violin in philosophy._Fr. ENGELS, Letter to Conrad Schmidt, October 20th, 1890

I

THE CRIME OF IGNORANCE

During the VIIthCongress of the Party of Labour of Albania in November 1976, between the official sessions, Jacques Jurquet, leader of the PCMLF, proposed to Ramiz Alia that to the emblematic figures of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin be joined that of Enver Hoxha. This was of course a provocation, which was sharply rejected. In his Report Enver Hoxha denounced the "theory of the three worlds" openly expressed in 1974, that is to say before the death of Mao Zedong, by Deng Xiaoping1.

In France - amongst many other countries - it was the portrait of Mao Zedong that was displayed by many parties and organizations that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist. It was placed after that of Stalin, and increasingly in replacement of that of Stalin. This little war of effigies may seem puerile. It has however an evident practical use, that of putting forward a membership which though not being of religious nature adopts religious forms, claims to trace a demarcation and in fact traces this demarcation. The boundaries of the latter, of course, can only be fuzzy. While some are popularizing the image of the precursors or leaders of a party, it may turn out that the purpose is to cover themselves by a reference in order to conduct a policy contradictory to the teachings of the one whom they claim to take as a model. This is a policy fairly well known, a practice common to all regimes. This practice precisely renounces to examining the theoretical and political works of the one whom one praises.

Images may be distorted ones, being either praised or spurned for any good or bad reasons related to propaganda. Sustained by active publicity they have a chance, if one may say so, to survive some time, while being turned over or used according to more or less avowables objectives. Besides this - and here is the object of this short text - there are men and parties that, since at first sight they haven't had an international stature, are somehow repelled out of the field of history. That is, of all the histories and (what imports most to us here) of our history, which is that of communism and of the men and women who have struggled at the price of their lives for the destruction of the capitalist mode of production, for the emancipation of humanity, so that it be finally liberated from its chains.

In this sense we have a historical responsibility, which is the responsability to preserve the memory of the part played by the Party of Labour of Albania and its First Secretary Enver Hoxha. In fact, a double responsibility, because it does not only concern the memory : the struggle initiated by the PLA against modern revisionism is not finished off. It continues in conditions even more difficult today. The foundations of the struggle we claim to fight against modern revisionism appear in the history of the PLA, and the teachings that we can derive from this past struggle will enable us to continue and develop our own struggle.

There is a major risk, and this is why it seems essential to us to reconsider the question, and to reconsider it again and again : the risk of oblivion. Given, among others factors, the acceleration of history - at least a sensation of acceleration - from one generation to the other, whole sections of history are precisely evaporating. Who today, simply observing the present situation in Albania, would be able to conceive by himself the part played by the Party of this country on an international level in the defense of Marxism, of Leninism, during more than three decades, from the 50s to the 80s ?

The extreme brevity of the period is not a criterion ; the decomposition of the parties that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist, to take socialist Albania as a référence, is not a criterion either. The same is true, of course, as for the very decomposition of the revisionist parties like that of the ex-USSR. It is evident that our conception of the world, based on Marxism and Leninism, does not depend on the ups and the downs that stand out as landmarks of the struggle between communism and capitalism.

During all historical periods, and mainly in periods of ebb-tide, whether they may be considered as transitory or not, the important is to ensure the continuity of the relay. No one who today claims to politically assure the continuity of revolutionary Marxism, can ignore the contribution of the PLA and Enver Hoxha, contribution that constitutes an arm for the present and the future. Like any arm this one can rust. Our duty is to preserve it, to enrich it under the conditions of the new period that we approach just now and that begins to take form.

The oblivion can have, if one may say so, a natural cause : the extreme weakness of the international communist Marxist-Leninist movement. It can equally be favored by the renegades, not to mention the parties and organizations that share the points of view and the theses denounced by the Party of Labour of Albania, wether they are avowed revisionists or not. In a more veiled manner can be expressed criticisms, reticences, hesitations that have specific practices and geographical environments as a basis. The result is the same, namely having a limited political view and sacrificing the essential.

A temptation for militants who have not lived through the different periods that have to be dealt with - from the death of Stalin in 1953 to the 80s - or who have lived through only some of these periods, is to enter this history backwards, starting from the current situation. Yet it is necessary to deal with it in the context prevailing then. Let us keep away from all retrospective illusions.

II

A LONG STRUGGLE : 1942-1978

The struggle of the Party of Labour of Albania and Enver Hoxha against modern revisionism spans over a long historical period. It can be divided in several stages :

1. Initially the context was characterized by the denounciation of Yugoslavia lead by Tito, which was undertaken by the PLA in conjunction with all the other communist parties from 1948 on, and even from 1942 on, as far as the PLA (CPA at that time) alone is concerned.
2. From 1953 after the death of Stalin until the XXth Congress of the CPSU in 1956.

3. From the end of 1956 until the Meeting of the 81 Communist and Labour Parties at Moscow in November 1960.

4. From December 1960 up to Khrushchev's public attacks against the PLA at the XXIIthCongress of the CPSU in 1962.

5. From 1962 to July 1978 (the public rupture of the PLA with the Chinese Communist Party).

1

It is necessary at this point to underline that this struggle had a double aspect : internal and external. Before the PLA publicly adopted a definite position against Khrushchev and the leaders of the CPSU, the struggle had been circumscribed to relationships from Party to Party. By what had leaked out about disagreements, later turning into divergences, it was however possible to perceive that they concerned the way to qualify Yugoslavia and the relations from Party to Party between the CPSU and the CLY. In fact the Yugoslav question has served as a line of demarcation. The fluctuations of the CPSU and equally of the CCP2 have in some sense served as a revealing factor and have strengthened the vigilance of the PLA that for its part, despite Soviet pressures, has never hesitated to denounce the Yugoslav regime as anti-Marxist3.

Even more important, of course, has been Khrushchev's Report, termed secret, at the XXthCongress of the CPSU in February 1956, that is, the denounciation of Stalin, as well as the Soviet theses concerning especially the question of war and peace, the putting forward of different ways to achieve socialism, the peaceful transition to socialism, the attenuation of class struggle in the period of construction of socialism. In fact the CPSU intended to promote a general line for the International Communist Movement, a line based on the peaceful coexistence and the establishment of new relationships with the US. The fruitition of all this was to be facilitated by the reconciliation of the USSR with Yugoslavia and its theses.

The grave presumptions the PLA could have in the aftermath of Khrushchev's journey to Belgrade in July 1955, were thus found justified. They were confirmed in 1955 and in 1956 by the different attempts inside Albania to destabilize the Party as well as at the time of Gomulka's return to Poland and the counter-revolutionary insurrection in Hungary.

The positions defended by the PLA were sufficiently explicit in 1956, to cause Tito to personally attack Enver Hoxha in a speech pronounced at Pula on November, 19th. An article of Zëri i Popullit of November, 23rd, having as a basis some theses by Enver Hoxha, replied to Tito4.

By the end of 1956 the PLA was placed in a contradictory situation : the necessity to oppose Khrushchev's revisionist theses, while preserving the unity of the international communist movement face to the world-wide reaction. It had to resist to pressures exercized by the CPSU, yet without envisaging a rupture. Indeed it then seemed possible that Khrushchev and his theses be combatted victoriously inside the USSR. Another factor was important, that of the deserved prestige which the USSR enjoyed inside the Party and inside Albania, wether it concerned the October Revolution, the part played by Lenin and Stalin, the victories of the Red Army over the Germany of Hitler. Divergences were examined at the Politburo of the PLA even before1956, but they could not yet be expressed inside the Party, inside the working class and the labouring masses.

2

It was only in 1960, after the attempt of condemning the CCP undertaken at Bucarest by the Khrushchev group (scheming that the delegation of the PLA to Bucarest made fail), that the Central Committee of the PLA resolved upon putting its divergences before the Communist and Labour Parties during the Meeting at Moscow in November. Already before the end of the year the basic organizations of the PLA were informed by a Letter of the Central Committee about "the attitude adopted by the Party of Labour of Albania in the struggle against modern revisionism5".

A first step was carried out. The divergences were exposed before the whole of the Communist Parties - and so they were obliged to adopt a definite position - and before the whole Party of Labour of Albania. Nevertheless the divergences still remained inside the framework of the International Communist Movement. A year later, at the tribune of the XXIIth Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev publicly attacked the PLA. The rupture was consummated. And the Popular Republic of Albania isolated, at least in Europe.

For Albania the material consequences of the rupture were grave - is it necessary to emphasize it ? - as early as at the end of the year 1960. From a political point of view, with respect to the other Communist Parties, this rupture had little effect, wether speaking of the Parties in power in the Popular Democracies, or of the Parties existing in capitalist, imperialist countries. As for these latter ones, the denounciation of Stalin in 1956 had raised some problems, but the theses of the Khrushchev group encouraged the polycentrism put immediately forward by Togliatti, the idea of the peaceful and specific way of passing to socialism in each country. Modern revisionism could develop freely and vigorously, particularly in Europe, at the very time when the war - then conducted by America - in Vietnam and many other anti-imperialist conflicts referring or not to communism were going on.

3

As for China, it had taken a particular path in 1955 at Bandung, in presenting itself as the leader of the Third World6. Relations had been established with the PLA at the VIIIth Congress of the CCP (September 1956), where a delegation of the PLA conducted by Enver Hoxha was present. The divergences between China and the USSR as well as the CPSU had been indicated in a text issued in 1960, Long Live Leninism !. From December 15th, 1962 to March 8th, 1963, as the divergences amplified, the CCP published seven articles in order to reply to the attacks of which it was the object. Finally, in reply to the letter of the CC of the CPUS of March 30th, 1963 there was the text known as the "Letter in Twenty-Five Points" that was to be followed by eight other texts questionning the positions of the CPUS, of the Parties of Yugoslavia, Italy, France ..., published in foreign languages in the different issues of Peking Review.

It was in these circumstances that the PLA was rejoined by the CCP. For easily explicable reasons the part of the CCP and Mao Zedong resulted in occulting the one played by the PLA and Enver Hoxha. From now on the rupture with the revisionism of Moscow became all the more easy in so far as China, the Chinese revolution, the part played by Mao had been popularized. Moreover, against Khrushchev the CCP defended Stalin. Two great countries and two great Parties making a stand one against the other with Marxism-Leninism as a reference : the first, the USSR, claimed to have a modern lecture of it, while the second was accused of dogmatism for referring to ancient principles, outdated in an allegedly "new era", that of peaceful coexistence.

As for Albania and its Party, they continued their struggle, strengthened to a certain extent by the fact that in defending Peking against Moscow, those who rejected the Khrushchevian theses (including and perhaps most of all the condemnation of Stalin) were brought to defend Tirana.

However, the rupture with respect to modern revisionism was extremely limited and concerned only a minority of militants of the old Parties7. Some of these militants were susceptible to the reference to Stalin, others had been engaged with respect to the national liberation wars, others lastly rejected the theses of Moscow on the peaceful road to socialism, etc..

In fact the rupture mainly implicated young intellectuals, and the new parties, the new organizations, that were formed in this beginning of the 60s, being in general deprived of bonds with the proletariat and the working class, were excessively weak and played no political part at all in the capitalist countries where they were created.

4

Peking, Tirana - the two capitals both received delegations of these new parties and organizations founded from 1963 on. The ideological coherence between the CCP and the PLA was not questionned, while very soon divergences between the two Parties began to appear. And some of these divergences were public as early as 1965 : in France, for example, during the presidential election that opposed De Gaulle and François Mitterrand, where one organization resolved to vote for De Gaulle in the name of his anti-americanism emphasized by_Peking Review_.

One aspect was becoming outlined, namely the putting forward by the CCP of a theory still without name, only claimed as such in 1974, the theory of the three worlds. This theory resulted in raising against the two superpowers - the United States and the USSR -, a world-wide United Front formed by the proletariat together with the oppressed peoples and nations, and these nations were of any nature whatever. To make the revolution in one's own country no longer was among the questions of the day, and this meant strengthening directly or indirectly the capitalist countries, wether they were themselves imperialist or not! Once again, after the Khrushchev group, this meant conducting the international communist movement towards a policy determined by the interests of a single country.

During the same period, after the eviction of Khrushchev at the end of 1964, the CCP was going to pursue an extremely sinuous policy towards the CPSU as well as towards Yugoslavia.

In order to judge the rise of divergences between the PLA and the CCP it suffices to put face to face the presses of the two Parties. As for the PLA, it affirmed its independence face to the policy conducted by the CCP, asserting its positions without attacking those of China. With the Cultural Revolution going on, it is the very conception of the Party that was an object of divergence, while the "maoists", taking to a catastrophic flight ahead, claimed to closely copy this Cultural Revolution in western countries both against Stalin and against Lenin, against the "iron collar" of the Party. Divergences got worsened with the visit of Nixon to Peking in 1972.

These divergences - I had the opportunity to notice it in 1972 during my first journey to Tirana - were not confined to the limits of the Politburo of the PLA or its Central Committee. Still expressed in a discrete manner, their object was the journey of Nixon and the part of the army in China during the Cultural Revolution.

These signes were of course found to be confirmed, as far as I am concerned, during the VIIthCongress of the PLA in November 1976 : there was no other way than to render public these divergences. The new element was the directly questioning of the part played by Mao Zedong. This obviousness could not escape the notice of the leaders of the brother Parties invited to the Congress, that - at least some of which - had already undertaken to criticize the PLA8.

5

One thing that this brief recall shows already is that the PLA and Enver Hoxha - practically since the foundation of the Party in 1941 - have never ceased to struggle against modern revisionism, whatever were the parties that put forward new revisionist theses. This meant preserving the independence of Albania against all sorts of dangers that threatened it, not of an Albania of any indifferent nature, but of the State of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian patriotism and the bourgeois patriotism cannot of course be viewed in the same manner : the cause is either the defense of the construction of socialism or the perpetuation of national capitalism. The forms the patriotism can take may appear identical, but these two possible contents of it are of antinomic nature.

Thus it is that the putting forward by the PLA of Marxism and Leninism fatally had to be accompanied by the reject of the external pressures that by their various economic, ideological, political manifestations tended to cause the Party to deviate from the very construction, according to the norms that it had fixed, of socialism in Albania, norms that reflected the principles that had served as basis for its formation.

When considering the geographical dimensions of Albania, its economic starting point - one of the poorest countries of Europe -, hence the necessity to create a worker "know-how", it is a matter of course that this policy comprised risks. And the different ruptures fatally tended to delay, to imperil its development.

It can be said that the attempt of the PLA has been exemplary, precisely in so far as the proletarian internationalism had become a dead letter after the death of Stalin, when to the existence of the socialist camp had been substituted a quite doubtful "socialist system".

6

A historical example reduced to the status of an icon being flourished in processions would inspire only passive sentiments, adorned indeed by very beautiful colors, but inoperative. That could be conceivable if revisionism had been eradicated under all its forms - one of which is reformism -, if communism had finished to propagate throughout the whole world, if the survivals, the aftermaths of capitalism had become obsolete. Contradictions would then be of another nature, which would require others arms in order to assure that the world-wide society (that cannot be described today) continue on the road towards the total and real liberation of man.

It is hardly necessary to say that the path of this liberation, that had been opened by the Revolution of October, today runs into a great void. The acquirements conquered with such difficulty have been ruined. And the memory of this havoc weighs heavily on the brain of the living. As if the void had gobbled anything, as if nothing could be built on the field of ruins that offers itself to our eyes.

The importance of the struggle led by the Party of Labour of Albania having Enver Hoxha at its head lies in the fact, that this struggle has been carried on beyond the revisionist transformation of the USSR, beyond the Chinese experience of sinoization of Marxism-Leninism. It constitutes the final moment of the ultimate resistance, on behalf of a Party in power, against the theoretical and political regression that has characterized the end of the epoch that draws to a close, whose completion we live through, while the contours of a new epoch are outlining.

This new epoch is still characterized by the existence of capitalism and imperialism, but today in a single world. And face to this domination, the combat is conducted by dispersed chaotic forces that, when at best they appear under a same banner - that of Marxism-Leninism -, do not assign the same content to it, do obey to contradictory references.

From the epoch that draws to a close to the one that takes shape, there is not only continuity of the capitalist mode of production and of imperialism, of the different imperialists. What remains equally is revisionism that, by merging itself into the capitalist world, gradually transforms itself into simple reformism. Waving red flags does not change anything to the matter, neither does singing the International, parading with the fist lifted, or tattooing oneself with sickles and hammers ! All this is nothing else than disguises, scarecrows.

Thus it is that the struggle against modern revisionism is more than ever the question of the day. Our struggle has a basis to lean on, the work carried out by the PLA and Enver Hoxha, work that it is necessary to resume and to continue under the new conditions forming the context of this struggle. The path has been cleared and this is a solid reference which we ought to be proud of. And it is not simply a reference, but an arm that we must sharpen unceasingly.

Reserving the rest of the world to itself, the Chinese Communist Party had declared one day that Albania was the beacon of Marxism-Leninism in Europe. Similarily some African leaders refuted Marxism in so far as Marx was European. The experience of the Red Khmers, like others carried out by various armed movements in the world, demonstrates indeed up to what catastrophic absurdities these affirmations can lead.

It is more and more evident that capitalism tends to occupy the world-wide space and that even the reserving of agricultural zones takes place as well in the framework of the international division of work, that is to say, the capitalist world-wide market. It may be possible to loosen temporarilly this vice in such or such country. This would be prejudicial to the development of one imperialism among others, but would not induce that there is a threat to the latter, and even less to the system as such. It is by the coordination of these struggles with those that will have to be conducted in the imperialist countries, and under the direction of communist parties that will assume this coordination in one form or another, that it will be possible to ensure the transformation of these armed struggles into proletarian revolutions.

Marxism-Leninism - this is a conception of the world, it determines an engagement that has as ultimate object the destruction of capitalism. To this extent it has of course a world-wide vocation. Is it necessary to repeat these "common places" ! Like the one that consists in reaffirming that revolutionary struggles must have as their primary field the country itself where they develop.

In fact the struggle started and developed by the PLA against modern revisionism has had effects well beyond the frontiers of Europe, whether it be in Africa or in Latin America, and even in Asia.

Enver Hoxha used a vivid expression to describe Marxism-Leninism : to him, it was a great avenue where opened small streets, each a bit different. This difference of course cannot be in opposition to the whole, to Marxism-Leninism in its totality. This very totality indirectly unveils through the various aspects of modern revisionism, combatted and revealed all along the history of the PLA as well as in the work of comrade Enver Hoxha.

(Patrick KESSEL, in the name of the Collective of the CEMOPI)

Notes

1. In _Peking Review_n 45, 1977, can be read the following statement of Mao Zedong, made in February 1974 in the course of an interview : "In my opinion, the United States and the Soviet Union constitute the First World. The intermediary forces, like Japon, Europe and Canada, constitute the Second World. As for us, we are a part of the Third World." "The Third World has a quite numerous population. Whole Asia, except Japan, is a part of the Third World. Whole Africa belongs to the Third World, Latin America too." Politically, to the extent that the "First World" is the main ennemy, this analysis leads to uniting the capitalist countries of the "Second World" with the "Third World". In fact, this "theory" is quite anterior to 1971. See in the Bulletin International (First Series) a Summary Chronology of the "Theory of the Three Worlds" about the period 1946-1974 : n 0 (October 1977), 01 et 02, 1977, n 2, 4, 5, 1978. This is the meaning of the formulation promoted by the CCP : "Proletarians of all countries, oppressed peoples and nations, unite !"

2. See Bulletin International.

3. And this quite before the text of the CCP of September 13th, 1963, "Is Yougoslavia a socialist country ?" A courious appreciation is met with, in this text : "For sure, Yugoslavia has been a socialist country and during a certain time this country progressed on the way to socialism." (Debate on the general line of the International Communist Movement (1963-1964), Publishings in Foreign Languages, Peking, 1965, p. 189 in the French edition). Nevertheless, it is clear that what has been questioned in 1948-1949 concerned the policy followed by the Yugoslavian Party since the liberation of Yougoslavia.

4. Theses published in French in 1974, in Les communistes albanais contre le révisionnisme - De Tito à Khrouchtchev 1942-1961 - Textes et documents choisis et présentés par Patrick Kessel, UGE-10/18, pages 180-185.

5. Idem, pages 291-326.

6. See Speech of Zhou Enlai.

7. With the exception of the Communist Party of Bresil that by a vote of the majority condemned the policy of Moscow.

8. In the Franco-Albanain Friendship Association, the fraction having the overwhelming majority of the Presidency, directed by the PCMLF, in fact defended China since several years.

Statement Of Some Founding Organisational Members of ISML - Upon the War of Aggression of the NATO and USA

UPON THE US LEAD IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION IN THE BALKANS

At times of war - whether a war is declared or undeclared, Marxist-Leninists must be especially vigilant, and must not be misled by the profuse propaganda that erupts from all sides. Accordingly, the organisations/parties listed below, wish to make two main points about the current crisis in Europe. The parties listed are all represented on the editorial board of 'International Struggle Marxist-Leninist'.

FIRSTLY, we strongly condemn the barbarous war of aggression waged by the United State of America and the other NATO imperialist states. This war openly violates the United Nation Charter and indeed the NATO statutes, and rides roughshod over all the rules of International Law, against Serbia. Serbia is a sovereign state which has not made an act of overt aggression against them.

The military attack against Serbia shows once more the ferocious nature of North American and European imperialism and the true essence of NATO, which is a military instrument always well-trained to guarantee the undisputed control of the world markets to western financial capital. The rivalries of the USA and of the European imperialists have temporarily been diminished as a series of events have recently retarded and weakened the more determined and more "Eurocentrist" of the EEC capitalists. These various events, include the exposure of corruption of the Council of Ministers, the resignation in Germany of Oskar Lafontainne, and the blatant sycophancy of the Blair government in Britain to the USA. This weakening of the most determined anti-USA section of the EEC capitalist class, has facilitated the joint USA-NATO attack, at this time.

The reasons given by the USA-led NATO imperialists in order to justify their aggression are deeply hypocritical and false. The imperialists do not aim at all to "defend" and "protect" Kosova people, but in contrast, they aim to ensure for themselves a total, economic and political control of the Balkans. The easiest way for them to ensure this is to allow a continuing tension on the ground in the Balkans, to simmer into repetitive flames. This is precisely what they have done in the Balkans over the last years.

DOWN WITH USA AND EEC IMPERIALISM!

DOWN WITH NATO AGGRESSION!

Thus far, most organisations/parties who call themselves Marxist-Leninists will agree. We must however point out a second matter, which has received inadequate attention. The national liberation struggle of the Kosova people, even if at present it is not directed by communist forces, is a just struggle and must be backed by everyone who is for the Marxist-Leninist point of view and for the fundamental interests of the international proletariat. This includes the interests of the Serbian proletariat - who should heed the call of Marx and Engels to the British workers. Marx and Engels said the British workers would never gain their liberty until they actively fought for the rights of self-determination of the Irish.

The claws of modern day imperialism first raked across Kosova at the London Conference of 1912 following the defeat of the Turkish Ottoman empire. Then the imperialists "largely ignored demographic realities and ceded the vast region of Kosova to Serbia". During the Second World War, the right of the Kosova people to self-determination was recognized not only by the Communist Party of Albania but also by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. At the First Conference of the National Council of Liberation of Kosova, held at Bujan in December 1943/January 1944, a resolution was approved, this, after recognizing that Kosova was: "a region inhabited by a majority of Albanian population who aim, as they have always aimed, at unifying themselves with Albania". They declared that "the only way to be followed by the Albanian population of Kosova and of Dukajin plateau is a common struggle with the other peoples of Yugoslavia against the bloody German occupants and their serfs: this is the only way which brings to freedom, thanks to which all the peoples, and consequently the Albanian people too, will be able to decide their destiny under their right to self-determination up to secession".

Upon the basis of this resolution, the Albanian partisans united with the Yugoslav partisans in the armed struggle to free the Yugoslav soil from the Nazi occupation. But after the end of the war the revisionist leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, who brought forward a nationalist, not a Marxist-Leninist, policy, violated the commitments taken at the Conference of Bujan, didn't grant self-determination to Kosova people and kept Kosova region within the boundaries of the new Federal Yugoslavia.

During the Tito years the region has always been exploited in a colonial way, being a producer of raw materials, by the bourgeoisie of the Federation's richer regions. After the Federal Yugoslavia disintegration, the new constitution of the Serbian Republic, in force since September 1990, abolished almost entirely the administrative autonomy granted to the Kosova region by the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution. In October 1991 the Kosova Assembly - labeled "illegal" by the bourgeois and nationalist Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic organised a popular referendum on the matter of regional sovereignty. 87% of Kosova population took part in it, and 99.87% voted for Kosova sovereignty.

In reaction to the heavy, and brutal repression of the nationalist Serbian government against their repeatedly declared will for liberation, the Kosova people, during the years of the 1990s, intensified and spread their resistance up to armed struggle. The under-signed organisations/parties, express total support to the national liberation struggle of the Kosova people who, in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of self-determination for peoples, have their right to bring forward whatever strategic and tactical steps that this struggle may need; up to separation from Serbia and to the attainment of their complete national independence.

The under-signed organisations/parties, condemn the actions of the brutal Milosovic inspired aggressions aimed at de-populating and reversing the demographic reality of Kosovar-Albanian majority in Kosova. We must however point out to the Kosovar working class and peasantry, that supporting the US and NATO led imperialist bombing war in the North of the former Yugoslavia - once more ties their fate to that of the imperialists. The imperialist Treaty of London divided Albania into two, and "gave" Kosova to the Serbs. Relinquishing now their freedom struggle to imperialist USA and NATO - would lead the Kosovar people into yet another, and equally tragic blind alley. Therefore we criticise the Kosovar Liberation Army in calling for support of the NATO strikes - both before and since the start of air-strikes - as a grave mis-understanding of how to achieve real nationhood and meaningful independence.

For the Kosovar people - such calls to the NATO leadership, can only retard their main and final goal - socialism. If for the Serbian peoples it is necessary to repudiate their bourgeois leader's suppression of Kosova independence - the corollary for the Kosovar working peoples is to understand that national liberation of oppressed peoples involves a struggle against imperialism, as well as a struggle against the immediate oppressors.

TO CONCLUDE

All progressive peoples should recognise the validity of both these aspects. If only the first aspect (ie condemning NATO aggression) is adopted, this will not ensure either the future peace in the Balkans, nor will it assist any of the peoples of the Balkans whether Serbian, Bosnian, Macedonian or Kosovar to abolish capitalism and establish socialism.

DOWN WITH USA AND NATO AGGRESSION!

FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE KOSOVAR ALBANIANS!

TAKE IMPERIALIST HANDS OFF THE BALKANS!

Signed by : Lenin Committee (Italy);
Alliance Marxist-Leninist (North America);
Communist League (UK);
Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (Turkey).
Issued 10th April, 1999

Expulsion of CEMOPI from the Marxist-Leninist List

CEMOPI was recently expelled from the Marxist-Leninist List (MLL; an Internet discussion forum) for daring to state its support for the Kosova Liberation Army. So far the MLL has not yet expelled other organisations or individuals who support the KLA, but this is likely only to be a matter of time. As Alliance, another contributor to the MLL, has persistently pointed out to members of the MLL, it must view itself as a United Front, and must be prepared to engage in constructive debate in order to hammer out a principled consensus. Shrill, sectarian "holier-than-thou" cries of "CIA agent!" are no more than fatuous posturing. This serves to further emphasise the vanity of the screamer while objectively preventing progress torwards theoretical unity. We print below the response of CEMOPI to its exlcusion from the MLL.

From: cemopi@wanadoo.fr To: marxist-leninist-list@eGroups.com
Subject: Kosovo; Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 23:26:04
Comrades, and others:

We must tell you that your decision (the decision of one of your moderators) to expel CEMOPI from the MLL needs more explanation than the few words we have read from a few days on the List. Of course our experience is not the same as your experience. For example, we do not wait until 1998 to know about Kosovo. Our situation, in the heart of European imperialism and colonialist countries, in countries like France who were occupied during the Second World War, and where revisionism is dominant from the years before the Second World War, lead us to understand very directly and in concrete terms how to fight against revisionism, and not only in words. We think that we are well known by some members of the List for our fight against Maoism in the years 1977-1978, and particularly against some members of the present "Quito Group". It is an old story, of course, but we think that there are some hidden reasons for our "expulsion". Anyway, it seems very strange to us that the MLL refuses to engage in real polemic - in Lenin's sense of the word - about the national question in the concrete case of Kosovo. Our way to engage in polemic is not to accuse one, or other one, of being a KGB agent, Trostkyite or anything else. Of course, it is more easy to adopt an 'Ayatollah' position, to excommunicate. In fact you have an advantage over us, having known something of each other for a certain period of time. For example, what is "Contracorriente" ? - an organisation ? - with what political background?

You must understand that an "expulsion" from the MLL will not have the effect of reducing us to silence: the question is not to fight against 'Jim', 'Bob', 'William', 'Steve' and so on, but against specific viewpoints. This fight, for us, is not to be conducted without discussion and controversy. It is for you to consider if you can afford this kind of polemic or not.

Patrick Kessel (CEMOPI - Bulletin International)

POSTSCRIPT FOR THE WEB EDITION WRITTEN 2000;
All organisatison associated with ISML were summarily expelled in an un-principled manner from the MLL. An open letter on the MLL is at: OPEN LETTER MLL LIST.

END OF ISSUE NUMBER 5; 1999.
Originally sold $ 6.00 - 84 pages- copies still available; apply to contact addess.

BACK TO HOME PAGE ISML