LETTER to the Leadership and Members of the Chinese Communist Party
Several leaders, organizations, and official publications of your party have lately brought up for discussion some of the central theses which have for long guided the activities of the Communist Parties and the governments of the workers' states.
Nobody can ignore or minimize the immense importance of this discussion and the positions put forth by you: it is the central problem of the strategy, tactics, and the very conception of the communist movement and its role that are involved in this diseussion. The Soviet CP leadership itself has understood this and has declared through Ponomarev that the position adopted by each Communist Party on the principle of peaceful coexistence determines its attitude toward many other problems, such as its line on foreign policy, on internal policy, and also the tactic for strengthening the positions of socialism. Fourth International, has been fighting inside the communist movement and he workers' movement against such conceptions you are opposing, stands on your side in the fight again-t conceptions -Leninist thought and criteria - of the leadership of the CP of the USSR and of most of the leaderships of the Communist Parties all over conceptions that brought the workers' movement to serious defeats in some European countries, in several developcolonial revolution, that rendered mighty Communist Parties sterile, that made the struggle for socialism more difficult when the historical conditions more favorable.
This discussion is necessary and not to be evaded. Il is necessary to examine the problems of the strategy and tactics of the communist movement, of the workers' states, and of the Communist Parties against imperialism and in regard to world revolution, by coming back to the criteria of Lenin and of revolutionary Marxism. The workers' movement, the communist movement, the alliance of the workers' states, can only gain from this discussion aiming at defining a true communist position about the great problems of the revolution in this period.
We are not surprised that it is the Chinese Communists who are living through so rich an experience of revolutionary strugggle, of struggle against imperialism and the feudal regimes in Asia, for economie construction and for the mobilization of the creative forces of the masses through experiments such as the communes, so full of new possibilities — who are the ones who are today opposing bureaucratic counter-revolutionary conceptions which for i long time have reached the status of incontrovertible truths among the leaderships of the Communist Parties and the workers' states. WHAT IS THE SUBJECT OF THE DISCUSSION?
Up till now, however, the discussion has been ambiguous, addressed to third persons. An attempt is made to present it as a discussion against the Jugoslav leadership. But it is not the policy of the Jugoslav leadership that is fundamentally being discussed. The idea of peaceful coexistence, the illusion about the possibility of reaching general disarmament, the policy of support to the bourgeoisies of backward countries, idealization of the possibilities of imperialism — all these are fundamental points in the policy of the Soviet bureaucrad CommuniSt dershep of the leadership of almost all the workers' states
The Jugoslav leadership also, in most cases. proceeds with such an arsenal of ideas elaborated by Stalin and his successors. The idea of peaceful coexistence, which is being dis-
23223 cussed in the communist movement as contrary
thought, as an idea that deceives the masses about the been and still is the keystone of the Soviet bureaucracy's foreign policy. This means that the Soviet bureaucracy has long since given
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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL up, since the defeat of the 1925-1927 Chinese revolution, the idea of basing itself on the revolutionary mobilization of the masses, on world revolution. Basing itself on its military and of the colonial revoiution, on pressure by the Communist Parties, it tries to negotiate with imperialism, to reach agreements, to avoid abrupt changes.
The Communist Parties became groups for exerting pressure on their respective bourgeoisies, on imperialism. The revolution; headed by Communist Parties, like yours and the Jugoslav, were made in spite of the Soviet bureaucracy, and developing forces against it, which in 1945 was negotiating with Chiang Kai-Shek, abandoning your fight to its fate. The revolution of the Vietminh, the revolutionary war of Korea, received from you help much larger than from the Kremlin.
It was the policy of peaceful coexistence that at Yalta divided the world into spheres of influence, that led the Italian and French Communist Parties to hand over the power and arms to their weakened bourgeoisies, that brought the Greek revolution to defeat.
Both the theory and policy of peaceful coexistence helped capitalism lo recapture positions, to control the mass Communist Parties in Europe, to render the Communist Parties in most countries powerless; this theory poliey isolated the Communist Parties from the new rise of the colonial revolution, which nevertheless received a great impulse from your victory: therefore today more than ever this theory and policy cannot be supported in the revolutionary process and in the development of the workers' states themselves.
Each forward step of the world revolution, whether in Cuba, the Congo, Laos, Turkey, or Japan, as before in Iray, Lebanon, and Guatemala, alerts the military apparatus of imperialism, its regional treaties and alliances, its atomic fleets, «spirit of Geneva" and later the "spirit of its atomic bases on the Soviet Union's borders. The Camp David," and all the spirits of coexistence and conciliation, fall one after another. The successes of the Chinese economy, of Soviet science and technies, do not contribute to coexistence, but to accentuating the existing contradictions.
The Soviet Union itself, together with China, had to use the threat, the ultimatum, of atomic bombing or of sending volunteers in the Suez crisis, against the imperialist military aggression in the Middle East, against the imperialist military intervention in Lebanon and Jordan, in defense of the Iraqi revolution, and in the case of Cuba, and the Congo. It was not gestures of pacification that restrained imperialism in decisive moments.
It is not only against the idea of peaceful coexistence that you have expressed your opposition. The fight for disarmament, which is tied up with it, is also the produet of a conception alien to Marxism, borrowed from the arsenal of the pacifist petty bourgeoisie, against which Lenin fought so hard.
For years now the so-called "fight for peace," the illusion of obtaining general disarmament, has led the masses astray and disarmed them in their real mobilization against war, putting them under the leadership of petty-bourgeois intellectuals, pacifists of all sorts engaged in convincing the world and imperialism about the horrors of an atomic war, just as others had engaged in convincing imperialism before the First and Second World Wars. The Communist movement, instead of organizing the mobilization of the masses against war, against imperialism, was condemned to powerlessness by being used as the activists in such a campaign of signatures and communiqués. The example in England, of the mobilization against war and for unilateral disarmament, the sole effective form of disarmament, it= vast repercussions on the British workers' movement as reflected by the hard-won triumph of the wing led by Cousins in the recent Trade Unions Congress, the moveagainst the A-bomb in Japan, show how peoples who have been sufficiently awakened can mobilize against atomic war and its promoters, going as far as revolutionary actions.
There are deep inherent causes that impel the capitalist regime, in its imperialist stage, to follow its present arms race. In order to reach disarmament, peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, it is not just some "war-mongers" thai have lo be eliminated. It is the imperialist regime itself which arms for a fight for its own existence against the workers' states and against the rise of the world revolution. The arms economy has paradoxically provided a market that has prevented the capitalist economy from suffering a serious crisis. The struggle for disarmament conceals the real situation and nature of imperialism, and, as pointed out by some of you, deceives the masses about the true revolutionary methods that are capable of placing imperialism in such a situation that it would be impossible for it to go forward to its atomic massacre, about the real struggle for overthrowing imperialism and capitalism.
The policy carried out by the Kremlin's leadership toward the bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries is a part of such a policy of coexistence with imperialism, aiming at replacing the revolutionary mobilization of the masses and the revolution by pressure on imperialism and on the various bourgeoisies.
In many instances the bourgeois leadership of colonial movements is seeking economic, diplomatic, and technical support from the workers' states, with a view both to resisting imperialist pressure and to consolidating their regimes in face of the masses. It is absolutely permissible for the Soviet Union to trade with and grant credits to such bourgeoisies, or take advantage of the contradictions between the colonial bourgeoisies and imperialism in its own diplomatic skirmishes. The leadership of the Soviet bureaucracy, however, has traded not only in cotton, machinery, oil, or credits; it has traded also in Communist Parties.
The Egyptian Communist militants are in prison; the Syrian Communist Party was dissolved; Kerala was a lamentable defeat; Khrushchev covered up the aggressireness of the Nehru government against the Chinese revolution, by presenting himself as a neutral party between that government and yours. The Iraqi Communist Party was reduced to a powerless condition amid a mass movement that it could have led, while the Iraqi revolution stagnales, its forces neutralized between the diplomatic alliance with Moseow and the economic power of the large oil companies, when it could have been the beginning of a new, socialist, stage of the Arab revolution.
The Algerian Communist Party has got itself completely isolated from the revolution of the Algerian masses, and is practically reduced to a powerless condition. The French Communist Party has been incapable of organizing and leading the struggle against the war in Algeria, and brought the French masses to the defeat signified by de Gaulle's rise to power, owing to its poliey of seeking alliances and compromises with the "democratic" bourgeois parties. The Indonesian Communist Party, which gave unconditional support to Sukarno, is now being persecuted and threatened with illegality by the selfsame Sukarno government.
The Communist Parties of Latin America are used for Moscow's diplomatie or commercial requirements and alternatively support bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders. The Communist Party of Argentina voted for Frondizi, who afterwards declared it illegal; the Brazilian Communist Party voted for Kubitschek, who keeps it illegal, and is now supporting Lott, an open enemy of commun-
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ism, of its relegalization, and of diplomatic relations with
In Colombia the Communist Party supported Lleras Camargo, an agent of imperialism, in the elections; in Venezuela it is supporting Larrazabal; in Bolivia, Paz Estenssoro; everywhere the Communist Parties move under the banner of bourgeois nationalism or other much less well-defined banners, in the past in Batista's Cuba.
The political line of suport for the bourgeoisie has brought a number of revolutionary movements to defeats. Ever since the time when such a line caused the defeat of the 1925-27 Chinese revolution, Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition rose up against the subordination of the Communist Party to Chiang Kai-Shek's bourgeois leadership. Your own revolution triumphed by carrying out socialist tasks at the same time as the unfinished tasks of the democratic revolution. That revolution, called "uninterrupted revolution." is a complete modification of the Stalinist theory of a bourgeois revolution separated, by time and by the classes who lead it, from the socialist
The dynamies that is the propulsive force of the revolution in Algeria, Cuba, Central Africa, and Latin America, is also that of the "uninterrupted revolution," of the "permanent revoiution," and contrasts with the crashing failures in Kerala, Iraq, and Indonesia.
Peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world, coexistenot with the bourgeoisie in each country, cannot stand up to the progress of the colonial revolution. It is these movements which — even leaving aside the isolated Communist Parties, reduced to small groups -revive the idea of a socialist alternative in order to their countries out of their backwardness by a revolutionary struggle against the political and economic power of imperialism and capitalism.
Your own revolution, even in its success, had to rely on the revolutionary mobilization of the masses of Korea, the Vietnam, and the various neighboring peoples, who prevented imperialism from establishing its war front in Asia. On the other hand, the various Nehrus and Sukarnos have become the agents of a new policy aimed at isolating and harassing the Chinese revolution in Asia. WHAT ARE THE ROOTS OF THESE ANTI-LENINIST POSITIONS?
What is the origin of these monstrous deformations of Marxist thought, that have led the world workers' movement to defeats, that have led astray a large part of the workers' vanguard?
They are the theoretical and political expression of a bureaucratic dictatorship imposed on the USS R and on the Communist Parties all over the world. They are expression of the bureaucratic caste which in the USSR liquidated Lenin's old Bolshevik Party, that persecuted and assassinated the Bolshevik-Leninist emptied the Communist International of its revolutionary content and used it as an instrument of its foreign policy before dissolving it. That is where Lenin's traditions and conceptions, that you are vindicating today, were swept
It was not the interests of the Soviet Union, whose fate is tied up to that of the world revolution, that caused the development of the theories of peaceful coexistence, of socialism in one country, of support by the bourgeois leaderships in the colonial revolution, of disarmament, of agreements with imperialism. It was the interests of the bureaucratic caste which came to power in the Soviet Union by taking advantage of the situation created by the defeats of the world revolution, by the isolation of the first workers' state, by the huge effort expended by the Soviet masses to make their revolution triumph with-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL out any economic and revolutionary support from outside. Today Kardelj finds similarities between your positions and those defended by Trotsky in that period. Trotsky fought against that degeneration of Marxist thought headed by Stalin, defended the Leninist theses about the world revolution, fought against the subordination of the Chinese Communist Party to the Kuo-ming-tang, and against the degeneration of the substance and revolutionary role of the Communist International. Today the first workers' state is no longer isolated, relationship of forces is evolving against imperialism. role of the bourgeoisie in the colonial. revolution has appeared clear in a thousand instances. The colonial revolution progresses, leaving aside the Communist Parties transformed into pressure groups. The defeats and the isolation that formed the context in which the Stalinist theses could be imposed on the Communist movement have disappeared and have been replaced by a advance of the revolution, by great progress on the part of the workers' states. These are the deep reasons why, in the workers' states, in the colonial revolutionary movement, there are developing demands for an ideological and programmatic rearmament, demands for going back to the criteria of Marxism-Leninism. This is the objective basis of this new discussion that you have initiated. This discussion is an objective necessity for the communist and revolutionary movement; it cannot be checked or concealed. Your own leadership has shared these positions, has shared the heavy responsabilities of their application. The People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party bureaucratic privileges. But we know, comrades, the highly dynamic elements that keep your revolution marching on. Eleven years of development and many more of revolution, the huge mobilization of masses for economic construction, the new experiment of the communes, the permanent mobilization against aggression or in support of the Asian revolution - all these factors have developed, in China and in your tons pano, ind inadeenhe old Stainer arsenal, enera. new requirements, new concerns, new generain your own activity you had to leave aside at each revolutionary step forward. The enormous revolutionary resources and the great possibilities that you have in your hands, doubtless have an influence on yourselves, on the whole of the world communist movement. Your successes and the tempo of development have an influence on the consciousness of communists. The successes of the Chinese revolution liquidate the subjective bases of Stalinism in your own rank and file as they earlier liquidated the
And it is not only in the Chinese Communist Party that this is happening. The Soviet Union itself is affected by deep changes. The successes and scientific progress have been accompanied by the collapse of Stalin's myth, by changes in the most hated aspects of the regime. The XXth Congress, the Polish and Hungarian revolutions, the successes of the Jugoslav economy with the development of workers' control - all these are expressions of an objective change. Your raising of these questions, your concern about getting back on the Leninist road in the fundamental problems, correspond in these countries to an objective necessity of the communist movement, whose conceptions contrast with the new necessities of socialist development. The hard opposition which your positions run up against in the leaderships of those workers' states is not the expression of the worker and communist masses but only of the fear of an open discussion, which might, in the next few years, spur the development of revolutionary Marxist tendencies that may escape from bureaucratie
demned to sterility if not to betrayal of the revolutionary October 1960
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL control. The resistance which you will rades, is the bureaucratic resistance of those sectors for which the reëstablishment of workers' democracy in the Communist movement is equivalent to the end of their privileges. It is not a discussion about principles and programmes which you will have to face outside and inside your own party. Your position will clash with the conservative forces in Soviet society, in the workers' states, in the Communist Parties, in your own state and party, entrenched against a real renovation of the Communist movement.
The only way to fight against these positions, these conceptions alien to Marxism, is that of fighting their social bases, the monstrous bureaucratic degeneration or deformation of the workers' states (including yours), of the Communist Parties all over the world.
The only road through which true revolutionary posttions can open their way in the movement of the munist masses, in the workers' states, in the world revolutionary movement, is that of intervention, of free expression, by the social forces who are driving both for a change in these present positions and for the liquidation of the bureaucratic privileges that provided them with a basis, by those social forces who objectively and to a large extent subjectively are driving for the renovation of the Communist movement, of its tactics, strategy, and or. ganization. These are the workers, the students, the intellectuals, the peasants, the cadres constructing the new economy, the new science, the new society. It is necessary to open the way for them to express their ideas freely; the renovation, the development of communist thought depends on them. Have confidence in them, in the workers, in the new cadres building the workers' states.
This must start from your own example, by promoting such renovation among the Chinese communist masses, with the same boldness and decision with which you faced economic construction, the communes, and the armed confrontation of imperialism. Your own bureaucratic methods in the Communist Party and in the goverment will be an obstacle to advancing your positions, to your really reaching the communist masses all over the world. The freedom of tendencies in your own party is a very important basis for the development of communist thought. Full soviet democracy, the freedom of existence for various soviet parties, with the right to have different platforms about economic, social, and internaabout the organization of the workers' power and the state, on the basis of loyalty to the social
- this is the only way to develop all the creative force of the masses, not only in the economic effort, but in directing the new society. This is the only way to stop and eliminate bureaucratic privileges, which are the social basis of the anti-Leninist conceptions against which you are
There may be some who will try •to limit and check this discussion with the excuse that imperialism will take advantage of it. Imperialism and the Social-Democratic leaders have for years now been laying their hopes the outbreak of a fight between People's China and the USSR. This is a demonstration of their political powerlessness. An open discussion will strengthen the alliarice among the Communist Parties. Your positions will find a great echo among the new Soviet generations. Khrushchev himself had to take initiatives at the Summit Conabout Cuba and the Congo, that objectively
It is not imperialism which will benefit by revolutionary. Marxist renovation of the Communist movement, but the Communist militants of the capitalist world, who are con-
57 and internationalist cause, and the revolutionary move. ments of Asia, Latin America, and Africa./ These movements have empirically launched themselves on a revolutionary road, outside or against the Communist Parties. This colonial revolution is faced by a capitalist or socialist altermative. If the Communist movement maintains its policy for peaceful coexistence, for collaboration with the bourgeoisie, for the illusions that capitalism is capable of reforming itself, it will disarm the socialist tendencies and encourage the capitalist alternative. If the Communist movement clarifies the real role of imperialism and adopts revolutionary tactics, the strategy of workers' and peasants' power, it will encourage and spur on the colonial revolution to culminate in the struggle against capitalism, the struggle for socialism.
The Communist movement, by once more taking the road to revolutionary Marxism, to Leninism, the instruments of socialist revolution, has the whole world of the colonial revolution to win. These colonial revolutionary movements, very close to the workers' states, allied to nevertheless resistant to Communism in the derormatives his delorma, with of monstr its creaucrati deformations,
It is this discussion that can open the way to the elimination of the bureaucratic command of the Communist Parties, their monolithism, their subordination to the Kremlin, and pave the road to the regeneration of the communist movement, lo a communist international which can really be the Marxist-Leninist party of the world revolution. Comrades,
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International welcomes this discussion that you have reopened in the whole of the Communist movement, a discussion which is full of possibilities and prospects for the world revolution. It exhorts you to develop these positions consistently, to put your enormous resources and possibilities at the service of the fight not only tions but also
The International Secretariat invites you to discuss openly and frankly, with no false addresses, without appealing to ideological terrorism, in a clear manner understandable by the whole of the communist movement. It invites you to open the road of discussion, of free expression of positions, to all communist militants, to all communist ganizations, and the Fourth International. Let the members of the Communist Parties, or tendencies, be free to express themselves on positions on which they differ from their leaders. Your party must start giving an example of this. - Soviet parties which accept the social bases and the principle of workers' power, with different platforms on other problems. - Workers' management of industry and free management of the administrative committees of the people's communes. - A world congress of all the Communist Parties and other communist tendencies to discuss democratically all these problems. Comrade Communists of the Soviet Union and of the Entire World!
A discussion of the greatest importance and scope has been opened. It is up to you to take part in it. Prevent it from being confined to mere administrative resolutions.
For the revolutionary-Marxist renovation of the communist movement.
For the return to the criteria of Lenin.
THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL