[Reprinted from Liberation, Vol. I, No. 4 (February 1968).]
The heirs to Khruschev's mantle are holding a conference of world revisionists in Budapest, capital of Hungary, in February this year. But they have failed to knock up any delegation from East and South-east Asia — China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, etc. India will be represented by the Dange clique, the social-chauvinists who have abandoned Marxism. Though two PB members of the Marxist Party went recently on pilgrimage to Bulgaria and London, the "Marxist" leaders are, unfortunately for them, being left out, perhaps on account of factional fights with the Dangeites. Besides Albania, Rumania, Cuba and several other countries have refused the invitation to join the Budapest meet, which was, in spite of the Chinese Party's objections, planned more than three years ago by Khruschev. His successors, more wily and crafty than him, have taken quite a long time to prepare for the meet, yet they have failed to rally the entire herd for, despite their appearance of strength, the revisionists are really in disarray, especially, after the staggering blow they have received from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China.
What is the declared object of the so-called 'world conference of Communists'? When the bourgeois press says that the purpose is to 'ostracize' the Chinese Party, the Pravda has declared that the object is to consolidate and intensify the struggle against US imperialism, especially against its aggression in Vietnam.
The bourgeois propaganda points to the fact that the imperialists and other reactionaries are pinning their faith on this gathering of the revisionist chiefs in Budapest. An AFP message from Williamstown, Massachusetts, dated January 21, says that in a speech to Williams University students on the previous day "U.S. Senator Wayne Morse accused the American military leaders of preparing for a war against China". The U.S. imperialists, who despair of an early victory in Vietnam, have already spread the flames of war to Laos and Thailand and threaten Cambodia. They have set up almost a ring of bases, both nuclear and conventional, around China and expect their revisionist friends, Kosygin and Breznev, to come to their aid and 'ostracize' China. But the imperialists seem too optimistic. The question is, who will 'ostracize' whom?
Those who try to 'ostracize' the Chinese Party led by Mao Tse-tung are more likely to be 'ostracized' themselves by the peoples fighting for national liberation and socialism all the world over. Mao Tse-tung's thought, the Marxism-Leninism of our era, is the source of inspiration to the revolutionary comrades and masses throughout the world who recognize in the Chinese Party their friend, guide and leader. As most of the established socialist parties of Europe and their "esteemed" leaders renounced socialism and proletarian internationalism and rallied round the bourgeoisie of their respective countries after the outbreak of World War I, so the traditional communist parties of Europe, which, like the parties of the Second International, represent the labour aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie, have today betrayed Marxism-Leninism and the cause of world revolution and have, while mouthing Marxist phraseology, proved to be the lackeys of the Western imperialists. No doubt, they too, like the parties of the Second International, will be rejected and 'ostracized' by the toiling people of their own countries.
The revisionist leaders claim that their purpose is to consolidate and intensify the struggle against U.S. imperialism. They are indeed anti-imperialist in words; but are they also anti-imperialist in deeds? Engels said that an individual must be judged "not by his professions, but by his actions; not by what he pretends to be, but by what he does, and what he really is". A political party too should be judged in the same way. To quote, Marx, "In historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality." Only those who refuse to see fail to see that the revisionists are steadfastly pursuing the line of rapproachement and multilateral collaboration with imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, the line of disrupting the people's struggles against the imperialists and other reactionaries, the line of sabotaging the revolution. The Khruschev revisionists have proclaimed an interesting discovery of theirs - the discovery that the imperialists are split into a 'warlike section' and a 'peaceful coexistence section'. To them, the Kennedys and Johnsons and, sometimes, Eisenhowers are the representatives of this 'peaceful coexistence section' and so they treat them as their friends and try to arrive at compromises with them. This discovery leads them to conclude that a non-imperialist peaceful policy is not incompatible with the economic basis of monopoly capitalism and that a world without wars and weapons is possible even when imperialism remains. It is with the help of this anti-Marxist, pernicious theory that they seek to justify their close collaboration with the US imperialists, their efforts to subordinate all revolutionary movements and national liberation struggles to the policy of 'U.S.-Soviet cooperation,' and their insistence that the fate of the world revolution is to be determined by the outcome of the economic competition between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. So they are unsparing in their efforts to cultivate the best possible relations with U.S. imperialism, 'the chief gendarme of world reaction', 'the most ferocious enemy of all mankind,' and concludes all kinds of pacts and agreements with it (the latest in the series is the draft nuclear non-proliferation agreement), even when the U.S. imperialists are committing appalling crimes against brave Vietnam, neighbouring countries and other peoples. That is why Kosygin runs to Glassboro for a friendly meeting with Hitler's successor when Israel, egged on by the Hitlerites of today, has invaded and occupied large parts of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. That is why the Soviet revisionists are treating all stooges of the U.S. imperialists everywhere as their friends and take pains to cultivate their friendship. That is why they are prompt in extending their hand of friendship to the murderers of the Iraqi communists, to the Suharto-Nasution clique which has massacred five hundred thousand or more Indonesian communists and other progressives, to the treacherous rulers of Malaysia, etc. They are even establishing friendly relations with U.S. stooges in Latin America. While shouting the slogans of 'complete disarmament' and 'a world without arms', they feverishly rearm the reactionary ruling classes everywhere. They are today the second biggest merchants of death, second only to the U.S.A. They are the biggest suppliers of military hardware to India, Indonesia, Iraq and various other countries. Against whom are they arming the Indian reactionaries? The possible targets are Pakistan, China and the Indian people. But Soviet arms are not certainly intended against Pakistan because the revisionists, like the U.S. imperialists, are trying to unite the reactionary ruling classes of India and Pakistan in a front against China. The Soviet weapons of death are, therefore, meant to be used against China and the toiling people of India who may try to throw off the yoke imposed by imperialism, feudalism and comprador capital. This is one side of the picture — this close collaboration and friendship between the revisionists and the U.S.imperialists and all other reactionaries, both in theory and in practice. What does the other side reveal? It reveals that together with the U.S.imperialists the revisionists are frantically trying to retard the progress of China and to put out the flame of national liberation war in different countries. In 1960, when China was faced with difficulties caused by natural disasters, they trampled underfoot all treaties and agreements and withdrew all technicians and all other aid and removed even the blueprints of factories then being built up in China in collaboration with them. They have flagrantly violated their agreement with China and have tried their hardest to see that China does not obtain nuclear weapons when they and the U.S. imperialists remain armed to the teeth with these weapons of mass destruction. Their policy is the policy of disarming China while rearming all reactionaries. They can also hardly conceal their hostility to national liberation struggles. While the revisionists preach to the working class and other toiling people the virtues of peaceful transition to socialism, the Soviet revisionist rulers act together with US imperialism as the main prop — economically, militarily and politically — of the reactionary regimes in India and elsewhere. Recently they have extolled the merits of the reactionary Ne Win regime in Burma and fiercely attacked the Burmese Communist Party which has already liberated a large part of the country.
As the Chinese comrades said some time ago:
"Numerous facts show that the clamour of the new leaders of the C.P.S.U. against U.S. imperialism is a sham while their capitulation to U.S.imperialism is the essence, that their issuing of the statement against U.S. imperialism is a sham while their suppression of the masses struggling against U.S. imperialism is the essence, that their support for revolution is a sham while their disruption of revolution is the essence, that their statements such as 'unity against the enemy' and 'concerted action' are a sham while their actions to undermine unity and create splits everywhere... are the essence.
"To sum up, what the new leaders of the C.P.S.U. have been doing can be described as 'three shams and three realities': sham anti-imperialism but real capitulation, sham revolution but real betrayal, sham unity but a real split."
The most urgent task facing the Marxist-Leninists is to unite with all the forces that can be united in order to oppose U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, to oppose the reactionaries of all countries, and to lead the struggle for world peace, national liberation, people's democracy and socialism to victory. But any unity with the revisionists, who act as the accomplices of imperialism and reaction, is no better than a pipe dream. Lashing at the leaders of the Second International, Lenin declared in 1915 that "unity with the opportunists can be defended at present only by the enemies of the proletariat or by hoodwinked traditionalists of a bygone period. Today, following 1914, unity of the proletarian struggle for the socialist revolution demands that the workers' parties separate themselves completely from the parties of the opportunists." (What next?)
In order to wage the struggle against imperialism and reaction successfully and to strengthen further the unity of the toiling people of the world, it is imperative to expose the true features of the modern revisionists, the fifth column within the communist movement, and to lay bare the real meaning of their deceptive slogan of 'unity in action' against imperialism.
It seems that the revisionist chiefs have chosen this moment to gather in Budapest and to devise new tactics for intensifying their struggle against the forces of socialism and national liberation because of the blow they are daily receiving from the revolutionary people of the world, especially the stunning blow from the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China and because of demands from the U.S. imperialists. The Marxist-Leninist parties and groups in the different countries of the world will also redouble their efforts to frustrate all revisionist conspiracies and to defeat imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism and all reaction. All the machinations of the revisionists are bound to fail: the Revisionist International is doomed.