Today the central, pivotal issue in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement is the question of how to fight social-chauvinism. There are two paths being put before the American proletariat: to prepare for revolution as a contingent of the forces of the world proletarian socialist revolution, or to join the U.S. imperialist war front, be part of the forces of world reaction, and cower as slavish cannon-fodder under the U.S. imperialist nuclear umbrella. The October League Klonskyites, now absurdly masquerading as the “Communist (read: Chauvinist) Party (Marxist-Leninist)”, have come out into the open as raving defenders of the U.S. imperialist fatherland. Their doctrine of “directing the main blow against the Soviet social-imperialists” is an open declaration of class treason, it is a pledge to the U.S. imperialists that the Klonskyites will be loyal soldiers for imperialism and fascism against the world revolution, it is a Klonskyite loyalty oath for the threatened inter-imperialist third world war, it is a program for splitting the proletariat and diverting it from revolution with lurid horror stories about the foreign threat. The anti-Leninist theory of “three worlds” is the theoretical basis of the national and social superpower chauvinism of the Klonskyite thesis of “directing the main blow” at the foreign threat. The theory of “three worlds” is an attempt to negate Marxism-Leninism as allegedly “outdated” by new developments, it is an open banner of replacing living, revolutionary Marxism-Leninism with dead modern revisionism. It is no accident that internationally the “three worlders” are reversing the verdict on the Titoite revisionists and trying to smuggle into the ranks of the people all the poisonous Khrushchovite, Browderite and Eurocommunist revisionist theories, such as that revolution does not apply to “advanced” capitalist society. The theory of “three worlds” prettifies the entire world system of imperialism and slavery and is especially adapted to the defense of U.S. imperialism, as it openly supports the vast U.S. colonial and neo-colonial empire, as well as U.S. domination of Western Europe and Japan, presenting U.S. colonialism, domination and hegemony as alleged “guarantees” of independence and “protection” against Soviet social-imperialism.
The U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement is split into two camps. There is the camp of those who wish to and actually do fight social-chauvinism and who work towards the re-constitution of the Marxist-Leninist Party. This camp is led by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists. And there is the camp of the social-chauvinists, the camp of the anti-Marxists hiding under the banner of sham Marxism-Leninism and “three worlds-ism” in order to deceive the proletariat and people. This camp is led by the Klonskyites, the new Browderites. The formerly hidden social-chauvinism of the opportunists has jumped out into the open in the open social-chauvinist treason of the Klonskyite camp. Everyone and every organization is being tested in the great struggle against the revisionist treachery and social-chauvinism of the Klonskyite “three worlders”. This struggle has surged forward in the past year and one half since the COUSML issued its calls “Mao Tsetung Thought or Social-Chauvinism, A Comment on the October League’s Call for ’Unity of the Marxist-Leninists’” on Sept. 1, 1976 and “U.S. Marxist-Leninists, Unite in Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism! Proletarian Revolution in the U.S. Is Our Sacred Internationalist Duty!” on March 10, 1977. This struggle is part of a fierce struggle inside the international communist movement against international revisionism and opportunism. It is Comrade Enver Hoxha who, in the difficult period following the death of the great helmsman Chairman Mao Tsetung, took up the task of leadership of the international communist movement with his historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania. Comrade Hoxha’s Report has been a great rallying point for the struggle against modern revisionism and “three worlds-ism”. Since then work has gone forward with a swing. A whole series of internationalist rallies and joint statements of Marxist-Leninist parties in Europe and Latin America has marked a new upsurge and a new unity in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. The editorial “The Theory and Practice of the Revolution” of Zeri i Popullit, organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, has further exposed the anti-Leninist and counterrevolutionary nature of the theory of “three worlds”. The true Marxist-Leninist parties the world over are gloriously marching forward. They are defying the doom and gloom of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois echo, the opportunists, and are teaching the proletariat to organize itself to lead the struggle to build a new world, to smash the old to build the new. In the present struggle, international communism is re-invigorating itself, purging itself of a number of internal enemies and conciliators of revisionism, and preparing itself and the proletariat for the glorious task of leading a new wave of revolutions in the present storm-and-stress period.
As the struggle against revisionism, social-chauvinism and “three worlds-ism” sharpened both domestically and internationally, in early 1978 the “RCP, USA” split. The turmoil in the RCP continues and deepens, but already the basic significance of the split is clear. What had happened is that for a long time the RCP has tried to stop the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism. It provides a “criticism” of the Klonskyites combined with the position that the struggle against revisionism is not really very central. On one hand, the RCP has tried to give itself the appearance of fighting the Klonskyites and of opposing, on some grounds or other, the social-chauvinist thesis of “directing the main blow at the Soviet social-imperialists”. On this grounds it even tried to claim that it was leading the struggle against social-chauvinism. But on the other hand the RCP in fact supported the main social-chauvinist theses, such as the theory of “three worlds”. The RCP tried to stop the struggle against social-chauvinism, to downplay its importance, to prevent it from growing either in depth or breadth. The RCP has taken up the corrupt spirit of compromising on principles – and it is no big secret that the RCP position that the theory of ”three worlds” is “part of”, rather than the whole, strategy for world revolution and is perhaps just a “tactic”, is in fact simply a rotten compromise between the two diametrically opposed positions of “three worlds-ism” and Marxism-Leninism. The RCP has even gone so far as to circulate slanders against the consistent anti-social-chauvinists as “dogmatists”, thus echoing the slimy attacks of the Klonskyites on the Marxist-Leninists as “Trotskyites”, “metaphysicians” and “dogmatists”. The RCP refuses to recognize the revolutionary authority of the international communist movement and of Comrade Enver Hoxha, close comrade-in-arms of Comrade Mao Tsetung and leader of the international communist movement.
In brief, RCP has served the role of providing a more militant cover for “three worlds-ism” and social-chauvinism in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement than the raving Klonskyite defenders of the superpower fatherland. Open social-chauvinism in the Klonskyite form is too disgusting. A “militant” organization of “fighters” is needed by the opportunists, an organization that will have more left-sounding slogans, while keeping the activists from looking into and repudiating revisionism. That is the significance of the path of compromise and conciliation with revisionism and “three worlds-ism”. As Comrade Lenin pointed out in mid-1915 in the struggle against the Klonskyites of World War I, “It was, therefore, a profound historical truth that the opportunist ’Monitor’ pointed out in the conservative Preussische Jarbucher when he said it would be bad for the opportunists (i.e. the bourgeoisie) if present-day Social-Democracy (’Monitor’ is referring to the social-chauvinist German Social-Democratic Party of the Second International – ed.) were to swing to the right – because in that case the workers would desert it. The opportunists (and the bourgeoisie) need the party as it is today, a party combining the Right and the Left wings and officially represented by Kautsky, who will be able to reconcile everything in the work by means of smooth, ’thoroughly Marxist’ phrases. In word, socialism and the revolutionary spirit for the people, the masses, the workers; in deed, Sudekum-ism, (i.e. Klonskyism, defense of the imperialist fatherland– ed.) adhering to the bourgeoisie in any grave crisis.” (Collected Works, Vol. 21, “The Collapse of the Second International”, p. 249)
The split in the RCP is a sign of the bankruptcy of this policy of attempting to steer a “third road”, to apply the policy of the “golden mean” in the struggle between social-chauvinism and Marxism-Leninism, between imperialism and socialism. There can be no middle ground on the questions of principle, on defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, on resolute opposition to revisionism, “three worlds-ism”, social-chauvinism and opportunism of all types. As Comrade Enver Hoxha teaches, “Revisionism is synonymous with splits, lack of unity, chauvinism and anarchy”. (Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, Ch. VI, p. 218) There are only two stable positions. Either for the imperialist bourgeoisie, for a social-chauvinist capitulation to the imperialist butchers hidden under “dialectical” turns of speech. Or for the proletariat, for Marxism-Leninism, for the development of the movement of the class-conscious proletariat, which gathers around itself all the oppressed and exploited masses, for revolution. There is no “third road” in between. The RCP fancied itself the “independent” Marxist-Leninists, with their “criticisms” of both the world of Marxism-Leninism, of Comrade Stalin, of the Communist International, and in private of Comrade Enver Hoxha, and their “criticism” of the world of imperialism and slavery, of Klonskyism .and the social-chauvinists. The RCP was not and is not against “three worlds”, but for a different kind of “three worlds” than that of the Klonskyites, for a “three worlds” cleaned up and prettified in order to stop the struggle of Marxism-Leninism against ”three worlds-ism”. Thus the RCP thought itself independent of either Marxism-Leninism or revisionism and superior to both. On this basis, the RCP wanted to compromise with opportunism and they regard it as a mere “middle” phenomena which should be united with. The RCP sought to conciliate international opportunism, but international opportunism split the RCP anyway. The split in the RCP proves that the petty-bourgeois dream of “independence” from the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and social-chauvinism is just an illusion. Once more it has been proved that at the crucial moment one flimsy open social-chauvinist and revisionist is more powerful than one hundred mealy-mouthed conciliators and Kautskyites. This is because the open social-chauvinists have the direct backing of the bourgeoisie and the militarists as well as that of international opportunism. Today international opportunism and its bourgeois masters are starting to pull in their promissory notes, and the conciliators who have lived off their tolerance are in complete disarray. The only power capable of withstanding the bourgeoisie and international opportunism and revisionism is the proletariat and the Marxist-Leninist Party.
Naturally, true to the RCP’s role as a damper on and dis-organizer of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, both sides of the RCP split are still trying to divert attention from the fundamental issues of the struggle against social-chauvinism. The split has not changed the fundamental position of the RCP on this question. The RCP conducted its split on every other possible pretext. It is very significant that in the January issue of RCP’s organ Revolution, the RCP denounces the new filthy Klonskyite call for “unity” (with the war-mongering bourgeoisie) by calling the OL every name in the book – except social-chauvinist. The RCP raises all sorts of issues, big or small, somewhat relevant or totally irrelevant, but neglects to deal with the fundamental social-chauvinist thesis of “directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism” and of course does not deal with the anti-Leninist theory of “three worlds”, which it shares with OL. This article refers to an earlier article in the May 1977 issue of Revolution entitled “Has Two Aspects” and “OL’s Draft ’Program’: Trite And Wrong”. That article too denounced OL for everything under the sun except social-chauvinism and steers clear of denouncing the “main blow against Soviet social-imperialism”. The article denounces directing the “main blow” against this and that and even manages to negate the Marxist-Leninist teachings on fighting revisionism and on the direction of the main blow, but fails to denounce the crucial counter-revolutionary thesis of “directing the main blow” at the foreign threat.
The RCP split also shows that the neo-revisionist style and method of Party-building cannot construct an organization capable of fighting social-chauvinism. The emergence of open social-chauvinism in the form of the Klonskyite thesis of “directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism” is not an accident. It is the inevitable result and culmination of the long corrosion of opportunism inside the Marxist-Leninist movement. The “New Left” leaders of the negative line inside the youth and student movement of the 60’s carried over their opportunism and revisionism into the Marxist-Leninist movement in the form of neo-revisionism, the adaptation of “New Leftism” to an outward show of Marxist-Leninist formulae. The main neo-revisionist organizations were the Revolutionary Union (now the “RCP, USA”) and the October League (with the “Communist” League, now “CLP, USNA”, representing neo-revisionism from the “left”). The neo-revisionists waged war on the Party concept and negated the Party by counterposing building the Party to building the mass movement. They denied the struggle against revisionism and opportunism under the pseudo-theory that the “ultra-left was the main danger” and they promoted their fanatical ultra-right dogmatism under the pretext of struggle against “left dogmatism”. They had a flabby conciliatory attitude to the state machine and to fascism and never understood the relation of democracy to revolution, oscillating between liberalism and imperialist economism. In their hands Marxism-Leninism was turned into a set of dry scholastic formulae and cut-and-dried schemes and they hid their revisionism under the idealist anti-revisionist method of making the repudiation of revisionism hang on some pet phrases or sectarian formulations. They were always social-chauvinist to the core.
The struggle against social-chauvinism does not just lie in the repudiation of a phrase here or a formulation there. It is a struggle for a revolutionary style and method of work, a struggle to re-constitute the Party, a struggle to re-enunciate the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism on the whole range of questions of revolution, it is a struggle to organize the proletariat. Neo-revisionism is going bankrupt. First the Klonskyite ravings in support of U.S. imperialism and now the RCP split and RCP’s inability to fight social-chauvinism are vivid exposures of neo-revisionism, symptoms of its bankruptcy. Today the struggle against social-chauvinism is pushing the neo-revisionist poison out of the ranks of the Marxist-Leninists. A great movement forward is developing. It is a new movement for the unity of all revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, a unity sabotaged for so long by neo-revisionism. It is a movement to sum up the rich historical lessons of the revolutionary struggles of the 60’s and 70’s. It is a movement to come under the revolutionary authority of the international communist movement, of Marxism-Leninism, and of Comrade Enver Hoxha. It is a great historical movement for revolution and against revisionism. The split in the RCP has set the short-sighted OL social chauvinists to gloating. They are trying to demoralize the revolutionary Marxists. But the Klonskyites are only whistling in the wind. Actually the split in the RCP is simply a symptom of the sharpening of the struggle against social-chauvinism, a struggle that is leading to the political isolation of the Klonskyites and to the revolutionary unity of the proletariat. Some other organizations have also split or are in the process of doing so. Most likely, the RCP split ushers in a period of turmoil and realignment and more splits, both in the RCP and elsewhere, will follow. The year 1977 was marked by the existence of a whole group of organizations, sects and others who tried to conciliate the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism. All sorts of dubious elements tried to save the basic essence of Klonskyism by throwing stones at Klonsky himself and promoting “Klonskyism without Klonsky”. There were the theses of “three worlds but not Klonsky’s three worlds”, “main blow but not Klonsky’s main blow”, “opportunism and revisionism but not Klonsky’s opportunism and revisionism”. 1978 is already marked by the beginning of the disintegration of this sham opposition to social-chauvinism. A new fresh wind is blowing, scattering the chaff before it. It is a time to emancipate the mind and make a radical rupture with the heavy weight of the dead traditions and errors of the past. The two poles are clearer. Either Klonskyism and revisionism on one pole. Or Marxism-Leninism and opposition to all forms of revisionism and opportunism on the other. Revolution itself diagnosed part of the fatal illness corroding the entire RCP from within when it wrote in January 1978 that “Those who would like to embrace only one aspect of the CP(ML)’s revisionism will find that it comes in a package – if you take one bite you will be forced to swallow and choke on all of it”. The sharper the struggle, the more radical the rupture with the past. As our gallant fraternal comrades of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) declared in their historic Third Congress in 1977, the Congress of the victory of Marxism in Canada, “No antagonism, no progress!” The collapse of the illusions of “independent” Marxism-Leninism, of “golden mean” Marxism-Leninism, can only clear the way forward to the re-constitution of the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party of the American proletariat, a Party that is being reborn in the midst of fierce class struggle against both the monopoly capitalist enemy and the opportunist and social-chauvinist class traitors.