"intransigent struggle against the paper tiger of imperialism" has given way to "liberal reforms", perestroika and "market economy", it is interesting to review the roots of this conflict and look again at the basic themes in the Sino-Soviet polemics of the 1960s and 1970s, which led to a deep split in the world communist movement.
LIVIO MAITAN
HE DIFFERENCES between the
T
Chinese and Soviet leaderships first emerged in 1957, at the time of the
Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow. They sharpened in the following years, culminating in a total break in relations in 1963-64. After that, the polemics continued unabated, but the criticisms raised by the Chinese leadership, even before Mao's death, began to develop in a new direction.
At the beginning the Chinese criticized the Soviets on four main points — the conception of peaceful coexistence, the consequences of a future war, the attitude towards the anti-colonial revolution and the conception of the peaceful and parliamentary road to socialism.
Starting from its 20th congress in 1956 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) put forward the idea of the "noninevitability" of war. Subsequently, more and more stress was put on peaceful coexIstence, and Khrushchev in particular theorized the possibility of a compromise with American imperialism. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while not rejecting the coexistence, insisted on the idea that war is inherent in capitalism and that imperialism had not changed, and could not change, its nature.
In fact American imperialism had not changed its policies and continued to prepare for military conflicts. In the second place, while the Soviets put the emphasis on the "fatal consequences" of a possible nuclear conflict, the Chinese struck a different note — a war would allow a new and decisive advance for the revolution, with the "rapid destruction of the imperialist monsters"
### Disagreement over
"peaceful road"
Thirdly, the Chinese accused the Soviets of sacrificing active support for the colonial revolution on the altar of detente. This divergence expressed itself, for example, in their respective attitudes towards the Algerian revolution. While China recognized the provisional government, the USSR did not, and expressed its support for the policy pursued by General de Gaulle. What is more, the Chinese, unlike the Soviets, made criticisms of certain leaders of the national bourgeoisie and, on the theoretical level, defended the idea of the uninterrupted revolution, referring to Lenin.
It is true that they sometimes they combined the "uninterrupted revolution" and revolution by stages. Nonetheless, they most often put the emphasis on the action of the working class and peasant masses, independent of bourgeois leaderships, and, in some cases, even against them.
The fourth difference was that the Chinese expressed their disagreement with the idea adopted by the CPSU after 1956 of the possibility of a peaceful and parliamentary road to socialism. The most systematic presentation of this critique appeared ie 5 December 1962 in an article attacking the
CHINA opportunist policies of Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party
As the polemic developed and became increasingly bitter, despite some periods of temporary calm, the Chinese came to put forward new themes, and the conflict became increasingly one between two states in areas of major importance. From the summer of 1960 the Soviet Union began pulling out its experts, and moved towards breaking off economic relations, which could only be extremely harmful to
This went hand in hand with polemics on different economic alternatives. The Soviet Union criticized the idea of the Maoist leadership that China could rely on its own forces, and extolled the international division of labour in the "socialist camp". A "nuclear shield" for the whole "socialist camp"
In fact, while the Chinese were by no means free from autarchic errors, it is also true that Moscow demanded that the development of other "socialist" countries, including China, be subordinated to its own needs. In 1963 a polemic broke out concerning the signing of the Moscow Treaty on the halting of nuclear testing in the atmosphere, at sea and in space, with China refusing to sign. It should be added that an unwritten clause of this treaty involved an undertaking by the Soviet Union not to deliver nuclear arms and secrets to China. This was a violation of the agreement between China and the USSR made in 1957.
Moscow's argument, which was repeated by its partisans throughout the world, was that the USSR was the nuclear shield for the whole of the "socialist camp". The
Chinese rejected this "theory," implied recognition of the hegemony of
Moscow over all workers states and thus the power of the Soviet bureaucracy to take all the major decisions by itself. involving the relations between the two states. The culminating point came in
March 1969, when border incidents on the
Ossuri river led to armed confrontations between these two erstwhile "brother"
Quite quickly, thanks as much to the prestige of a recent revolution as to growing doubts about Moscow's policies, the
Chinese positions won a very broad audience in the ranks of certain Communist parties and anti-imperialist movements.
In the first period of the conflict, the
Chinese Communist Party was supported by the most important Asian Communist parties (in Vietnam, North Korea, Indonesia, Japan, and by the left CP in India, where a split took place). In Eastern
Europe, the Albanian CP took the Beijing • line for a period, before adopting an independent position, condemning both Soviet International Viewpoint #165 • June 12, 1989 and Chinese "revisionism".
The other Eastern European parties, with the obvious exception of Yugoslavia, took the Moscow line, along with the overwhelming majority of the other Communist parties in capitalist Europe and Latin America (the Cuban CP has always been a distinct current). Splits took place in some
— the most important in capitalist Europe was in Belgium. Aside from this small groups adhering to Maoism were formed, but they did not gain any real influence.
Maoist movements and organization — usually without official ties with Beijing — were formed, above all at the end of the 1960s, under the influence of the "cultural revolution" (in Italy, the Spanish state, Portugal, West Germany, Peru, Colombia, Morocco, Turkey and so on). For years, Maoism had a direct and considerable influence on other Asian CPs apart from those already mentioned, such as the Thai CP and the Philippine CP. Even today, Maoism retains an influence, even if much reduced, on certain currents.
At the time, our movement expressed its agreement with a series of criticisms made by the Chinese, without toning down our fundamental differences with them, as we tried to get to grips with the real reasons behind the conflict. The conflict was never one between bureaucrats and revolutionaries. It was a conflict between two bureaucratic leaderships, with different origins and which found themselves in different
Finding a modus vivendi with imperialism
On the Soviet side the bureaucratic layer had had decades to consolidate its position, it enjoyed great power status and had achieved an economic level incomparably higher than China. Its main interests were to find a modus vivendi with imperialism that would enable it to avoid dangerous explosions at the international level, somewhat reduce military costs and make economic concessions to the masses at home.
It directed its foreign aid efforts towards the national bourgeoisies of the Third World, even at the expense of China. It envisaged competition with the capitalist countries as an economic competition. In those optimistic times it talked of catching up and overtaking the most industrialized countries in 15 or 20 years. This perspective was the core of Khrushchevism.
The Chinese leaders, whose power was the product of a very recent revolution, stood at the head of an economically very backward state. They were subject to many threats, attacks and forms of pressure from imperialism, which had not yet resigned itself to accepting the historic fact of the Chinese revolution. There was no way they could reasonably put their money on victory in economic competition in the short term.
They decided therefore that their best defence would be the eruption of other revolutionary struggles, above all in the countries under imperialist domination. Furthermore, China, however backward was too powerful to accept Moscow's heg emony without baulking, just as, at crucial moments during their revolution, they did not follow Stalin's advice when he sug gested to Mao that he hold back from launching the struggle for power and look for a compromise with the Kuomintang
USSR characterized as
"social-imperialist"
Throughout the "cultural revolution" (1966-69), the CCP intensified its attacks on the CPSU. From then on, the leitmotif was not only that of the revisionism of Moscow's ideology and political orientation. Now, the Soviet leaders were accused of having restored capitalism in the USSR, which was henceforth characterized as a "social-imperialist" country.
The start of the 1970s saw a turn in the direction of Chinese foreign policy. Under the pressure of its efforts to crush the struggle of the Vietnamese people by a barbarous war, the imperialist leadership of the United States made a wrenching turn in its Asia policy. An essential aspect of that revision was the recognition of the accomplished fact of the Chinese revolution and thus the establishment of normal relations with Beijing, hoping, among oth er things, to make the most of the Sino-Soviet conflict. President Nixon's visit to China was the most spectacular expression of this "new course"
Even before that visit, the Chinese leaders openly supported the Pakistani dictators, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, who suppressed every popular movement, and they refused any solidarity to the independence struggle of the people of Bangladesh. They also supported the government of Sri Lanka, at a time when it was massacring thousands of young rebels. At the same time they had praised the bourgeois governments of Western Europe on the grounds that the Common Market was an instrument of opposition to American imperialism. The turnaround in Washington pushed them further in the same direction.
The ideological outcome of this evolution was the adoption of the "three worlds" theory. This theory was first sketched out by Mao himself in 1974 and was given a more systematic form in 1977. According to this theory, it was no longer useful to counterpose the category of the "socialist camp" to that of the capitalist camp. It had become necessary to recognize the new global reality, that of the emergence of three worlds - the "imperialist superpowers", the USSR and the United States; the socialist countries and the nations oppressed by imperialism (the camp in which China belonged); and those under-
CCP vs CPSU:
Polemic and
June 12, 1989 • #165 International Viewpoint counter-polemic developed countries which found themselves between the two.
It was also necessary to make a distinction between the two superpowers. It was the Soviet Union that was "the most ferocious imperialism and the most dangerous source of world war." This justified all the overtures made by Beijing towards the United States and the capitalist countries of Western Europe, which were also threatened in the first place by "Soviet social imperialism". It followed that the struggle against war was to be conducted by a united front of the "socialist countries", of the world proletariat, the "third world" countries, and those of the "second world", while rejecting any "appeasement" of Moscow's "social-imperialism". Political twists and turns of the bureaucracy
This Chinese turnaround gave rise to a series of positions that were completely counter to the interests of the workers' and anti-imperialist movement in various regions of the world. Let us recall some examples:
• After General Pinochet's coup d'état in Chile in September 1973, the Chinese leaders, rather than joining in the international protests, hurried to exploit the margins for manoeuvre that they thought the fall of Salvador Allende offered for weakening the position of the principal enemy, the USSR.
• They did not hesitate to support General Numeiri when he massacred trade unionists and Communists in Sudan.
• They maintained friendly relations with the Shah of Iran.
• They flirted with conservative, not to say reactionary, bourgeois politicians of the "second world" such as the Italian Fanfani, Sá Carneiro in Portugal or Strauss in West Germany.
What is more, the Chinese leadership were extremely cautious with regard to big mass struggles in countries such as Italy or the Spanish state. In 1975, when the revolutionary wave was at its highest point in Portugal, it was busy denouncing the supposed manoeuvres of Soviet social imperialism in that country!
Only a decade later all these "theories" of the 1970s were explicitly abandoned and the Soviet Union was once more a "socialist" country. This confirmed that the sole function of the "theories" put forward successively by the bureaucratic leaderships was to justify, after the fact, the political twists and turns of the ruling bureaucracy. * three decades of the Sino-Soviet dispute. Below we are republishing just some of the quotations summarizing the positions of the two Communist parties on the principal points of disagreement. DOCUMENTS Peaceful coexistence
"THE SOVIET UNION and all the socialist countries have opened up for humanity the road for a social development without war on the basis of peaceful collaboration. The conflict between the two systems must and can be resolved by peaceful means.... Coexistence is something real, flowing from the existing world situation of human society....Several well-known personalities, and in the first place President Eisenhower, want to find ways of reinforcing peace." (USSR: N. Khrushchev, speech to the Supreme Soviet, October 31, 1959.)
***
"LENIN taught us that in the imperialist epoch, the source of war is the imperialist system. Imperialist war is the continuation of its policies of aggression and enslavement. In times of peace, the exploitation and oppression by the imperialists of their own peoples, and their domination and pillage of the colonies and semi-colonies and the rivalry between the monopoly capitalists of different countries lead to new wars. For the imperialists peace is no more than an interval between two wars. They make use of the interval to build up their armaments and prepare for the next war. Recently, certain representative figures in the leading group in the United States have been making noises about peace and are posing as pacifists. But numerous facts show that, while juggling with peace, Eisenhower and his group have been making active preparations for war. They have never renounced their policy of war.
"The peace desired by American imperialism is a peaceful domination of the globe by the United States. Neither
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CHINA IT WOULD BE tedious to reproduce in full the thousands of pages of polemics, letters and invective between the two "fraternal" parties in the
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CHINA Eisenhower today nor Dulles [Eisenhower's secretary of state] in the past made any attempt to hide the real meaning of their so-called 'peace with justice'. The object of this peace is to eliminate socialism, to prevent revolution, and to force the peoples of the world to submit to oppression and exploitation by the American monopoly capitalists." (China: The Red Flag, April 1, 1960.) The "uninterrupted revolution"
"LENIN brilliantly applied and developed the Marxist idea of an uninterrupted revolution, considering it a fundamental guiding principle of the proletarian revolution. Lenin explained that the proletariat must win leadership of the bourgeois democratic revolution and without interruption transform the bourgeois democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. Lenin later specified that the socialist revolution is not the final goal, and that it was necessary to continue to advance in order to accomplish the transition to the higher stage of communism." (China: Lu TingYi, Hsinhua News Agency, April 23,
***
"THE PROLETARIAT must unite with the bourgeoisie in its support to national movements, but must firmly oppose its compromises, capitulations and opposition to the revolution and to the people. Measures must be taken to prevent the national bourgeoisie from monopolizing the results of revolution and establishing a bourgeois dictatorship. The national struggle and the class struggle are reciprocally connected in the oppressed nations. It is only when the national struggle ends in victory that it is possible to speak of liberation for the oppressed classes, and it oppressed classes is a reality that a thoroughgoing national liberation is
"That is why the proletariat of the oppressed nationalities must not only play an active role in the national liberation movement, but also stand in the front line in the struggle and seek to become the leading force. The proletariat must oppose the installation of a bourgeois dictatorship, exert itself to form a democratic popular dictatorship, lead the revolution in a way that leads to socialism and completely suppresses national and class inequality." (China: The People's Daily, July 25, 1963.)
***
"IN THEIR discussions with the delegations of the Communist parties in the liberated countries, and in their International Viewpoint #165 • June 12, 1989 speeches and comments at international conferences, the Chinese representatives speak only of the need to launch the armed struggle in these countries.... The Marxist-Leninists have always supported armed uprisings against the colonialist overlords and against tyrannies. They have always supported the wars of liberation of the oppressed peoples and will continue to do so. But they are always opposed to a schematic tactic based on the use of one form of struggle, without taking account of the concrete conditions. Such a tactic is all the more disastrous in the present situation in that in numerous countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America national governments have come to power that pursue an anti-imperialist line.
"In such a situation, it is doubly damaging to put forward the slogan of armed struggle as the universal solution. It disorients the national liberation forces and holds them back from the struggle against imperialism. Is it not senseless to say that the task facing the workers of Algeria, of Ghana, of Mali and certain other countries is armed insurrection? The final result of such a policy is to support the reactionaries who wish to overturn the governments that exist in these countries. Furthermore the attempt to realize this objective can only do harm in countries such as Indonesia and Ceylon." (USSR: Suslov in Pravda, April 3, 1964) The peaceful road
"WE MUST participate in parliamentary struggles, but without any illusions in the bourgeois parliamentary system. Why? Because as long machine of the bourgeois warlords and bureaucrats remains in place, parliament will always be a mere decoration on the bourgeois dictatorship, even if the party of the working class has a parliamentary majority or becomes the strongest party in parliament.
"While the bourgeois state machine exists, the bourgeoisie is able at any moment, according to its interests, to dissolve parliament if necessary, or to use various open or hidden means to put a workers' party which is the majority in parliament into a minority, or to ensure that it has fewer seats even when it has won more votes than ever
"This is why it is difficult to imagine that in a bourgeois dictatorship real changes can result from votes in parliament and it is equally difficult for the proletariat to get measures adopted in parliament which will permit the peaceful transition to socialism, simply by obtaining a certain number of votes. Experiences in several capitalist countries over a long period have proved this completely, and experiences of various countries in Europe and Asia after the second world war have furnished further evidence." (China: The Red Flag, 1960.) Economic relations
"EVERYONE knows that to rely on one's own strength does not mean a closed-door policy, nor a refusal to accept outside aid. Nevertheless, during its revolution and construction, each country must rely chiefly on its own strength, and outside aid can only play an auxiliary role. In any case, the international division of labour and cooperation in production should not be used as an excuse for opposing the principle of self-reliance. This is not the essence of the controversy.
"Those who speak against us are not true adherents of internationalism, nor do they sincerely hope to increase the power of the whole socialist camp through an international division of labour and cooperation in production that meets the needs of each country to their mutual advantage. This is being used as a cover for what they are doing, which is to seek their own advantage to the detriment of others. It is a characteristic way of organizing the relations between socialist states in order to impede the efforts made by economically under-developed socialist countries to develop an independent national economy and render these countries economically dependent on them and place them under their political control." (China: Hsinhua News Agency, September 18, 1963.)
**
"THE VICTORY of the USSR in economic competition with the United States and the complete victory of the socialist system over the capitalist system will mark a turning point in history, which will exercise an ever more revolutionary influence on the workers' movement of the whole world.
"It will then be clear even to the most indecisive, that only socialism can ensure everything that is necessary to man for a happy life and they will make their choice in favour of socialism. To gain time in the economic competition with capitalism - that is the important thing today." (USSR: Khrushchev's report to the Conference of 81 Communist Parties, Problems of Peace and Socialism, January 1961.) *
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«Will the monks adopt abandoned
"ABORTION TIME-BOMB ticks away in Poland". This was the title of a report from Warsaw by Christopher Bobinski which recently appeared in the Financial Times. According to
Bobinski, "Poland's liberal abortion laws and attempts to overturn them are emerging as potentially one of the most divisive issues in the country's unprecedented parliamentary election campaign, in which Solidarnosc will be seeking to demonstrate its hold on the nation's loyalties... [This] could conceivably provide a trigger for a women's rights movement extending beyond its traditional constituency of the
POLAND norms which contradict it....The bishops note with sadness that opinions contrary not only to the divine law, but to the national interest, properly understood, are being heard in Poland"S
"The politicians now at the head of Solidarnosc become tense and they lower their voices when the subject is mentioned. The government, too, is keeping its head down on the issue....Both sides of the political establishment know that, were the issue to be allowed to get out of control, it could even threaten the present political alignment in which
Solidarnosc, backed by the Church, faces the authorities in an uneasy balance."
ZBIGNIEW KOWALEWSKI
HE LEADERS of the Polish
T
Socialist Party-Democratic Revolution (PPS-RD) have compared the recent round-table to the negotiations between Lassalle and Bismarck or the Moncloa Pact in Spain. The people around Lech Walesa state quite openly that what is involved will play a role similar to that of the Spanish pact. The character of
"national understanding"
clearer when we remember that the Catholic hierarchy considers it as an historic opportunity to "make Christian morality the basis of the social order", and specifically to bring the "divine law" to bear on their old enemy, the abortion law of April
1956, which guarantees women the right to free abortion on demand.
First, a group of experts on the family from the Episcopate worked out a draft for a law "for the legal protection of the rights of the unborn child". Then this draft was brought before the Sejm [Polish parliament] on the initiative of the parliamentary group of the Polish Catholic Social Union
(PZKS) with the support of 76 deputies (six of whom were women from every part of the "governmental coalition": the Polish
United Workers' Party (PZPR — the Communist Party); its two satellite parties
(Peasant and Democratic Parties); and the three Catholic groups. All had the support of Jan Dobraczynski, the discredited pro-
Stalinist veteran of the Catholic extreme right and president of the Patriotic Movement for National Renewal (PRON), a puppet institution of the Jaruzelski regime.
The Polish press agency, PAP, was in no hurry to publicize this project. It was not announced until the end of February 1989 in a very general and discreet manner, with the comment, "This is a fundamental question for the national entente"? It passed over in silence the fact that the draft proposes that "a person who causes the death of an unborn child" — that is, the woman who decides to terminate her pregnancy and the doctor who performs the operation — "will be liable to a punishment of up to three years imprisonment"3 "It is a question of divine law"
On March 9 the Episcopal conference declared that it had "taken note of the efforts of various social circles to preserve the right to life of every human being from the moment of conception" and stipulated that this "guarantee must have a constitutional status" 4 In a subsequent communiqué, dated May 2, the Episcopate stated: "It is a question of divine law, expressed in the commandment "thou shalt not kill", and inscribed in the juridical conscience of each human being. The divine law cannot be abrogated, nor is it possible to establish
Ideological terrorism of
Church institutions