Airmailed to subscribers the world over, Peking Review was New China’s first English language weekly political and informative magazine. Published from Beijing between 1958 and 1978, the magazine grew into one with five language editions. It was printed on a thin but durable paper, with subsequentially poor photographic quality, however excelled in conveying information about what was happening in China and how it handled its international relations. Its’ propaganda mission as a publication for foreign consumption was to promote understanding and friendship among nations and peoples.
It was China speaking to the world at a time of blockade and international exclusion by world powers, specifically until the early 1970s long-delayed entry into the United Nations, and diplomatic recognition with the USA. However, the western stereotype of a closed-off, isolated Maoist China shunned internationally was wrong: China was at the centre of world radicalism, inspiring and supporting movements throughout the global. Peking Review was an explicit political weekly carrying Party and State material and commentaries, read diligently by anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists in the 1960s and those engaged in national liberation struggles, whose progress was covered in its pages.
In the absence of a functional “Maoist International”, the magazine played a part in the dissemination of anti-imperialist internationalism, the Chinese revolutionary experience and the ideological canon of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The economic and military assistance given was, not surprisingly, rarely in its pages, but the ideological arsenal it promoted was a weekly feature. This political material used in its readers own publications and activities.
Prior to 1963, under the rubric “International Situation and China’s relations with foreign countries”, the simmering differences in the world communist movement were obliquely expressed. The more transparent open polemical struggle accelerated in 1963 as the Chinese communists publically replied to criticisms and attacks from the Khrushchev leadership. Peking Review carried the polemical exchange and interventions of other parties as well as the CPC’s responses and analysis. Some of these later appeared in pamphlet form in various languages and distributed throughout the world. A collection of polemical exchanges between the CPSU and CPC was produced,
In 1964 & 1965 articles were index under the subject heading: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT AND STRUGGLE AGAINST MODERN REVISIONISM. This designation was dropped as the 1970s progressed, subsumed by 1973 under the general heading of China’s foreign relations with countries and regions, with news of the international communist movement interspersed with the occasions of state visits, diplomatic reportage and general coverage of topical news and background information more often about developments in the Global South.
Peking Review did serve to disseminate anti-imperialist ideology amongst Maoists and people sympathetic to China across the world during the 1960s and early 1970s. Evan Smith explores the distribution and reach of Peking Review and Maoist internationalism on the organic and domestic origins of anti-revisionism. [see Peking Review and global anti-imperialist networks in the 1960s – New Historical Express (wordpress.com) ]. However the tendency was not monolithic as evidenced by the multitude of groups within each country and by the splintering post Mao. Nor could the appearance of a specific political line in the pages of Peking Review be guaranteed to be upheld by others eg the Norwegian opposition to China’s encouragement of membership of the European Union in the 1970s.
Citation in the weekly political magazine (or Hsinhua News Agency) was tantamount to recognition, and reflected “acceptance”, within the pro-China tendency. [Although suspicion was exercised by some with regard to relations with groups that seemed to exist to send greetings for inclusion in Peking Review, for instance C. Petersen, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Marxist Leninist Party of the Netherlands who was later exposed as run by Dutch intelligence agency BVD.]
A similar recognition issue arose with China’s main European ally, the ruling Party of Labour of Albania when mention in the news agency, ATA and publications, or on Radio Tirana, was a good guide to approved status regardless of actual influence or activity undertaken by the feted group.
A disadvantage when being quoted was identifying to others within, what was referenced as the pro-China tendency, organisations and positions taken. A superficial judgement could be made when the lack of an international centre or publication for distribution of information and exchange saw a greater dependency on bi-lateral and geographical contact in an age without the outreach possibilities provided in an internet age.
With the spreading impact of the Cultural Revolution, that had begun in the middle of 1966, and developed more momentum during 1967, Peking Review also played a role in the dissemination of some of the more pertinent works of Mao before they were made more widely available from the Foreign Language Press publishing house.
1967 was to see the beginning of the publishing of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung in various translations into other foreign languages. The magazine, Peking Review, also in the forefront of publishing (for an oversea audience) many of the most important documents, declarations and statements made by the Party as the form and direction of the Cultural Revolution became more clear.
The structure and reach of Global Maoism, lacking an organisational form, saw an ideological focus in the pages of Peking Review, airmailed weekly to subscribers. It reflected the priorities of the Chinese communist party and the State it direct. The prime function to provide the point of view from China meant it was not a forum of discussion and debate but a platform of announcement. Hence citation of overseas sources, such as the communist press, reflected China’s concerns and not the varying tendencies within, what was termed by others, the pro-China camp. The anti-revisionist movement could not be understood solely in terms of what appeared in the pages of either Peking Review or Albania Today.
1972 was a year of growing foreign relations as China expanded ‘Diplomatic Relations’ or raises its international profile and status. Support for the national liberation struggles in Africa, the OAU and Third World countries relations and China at the United Nations appears in its pages, but the separate section for the International Communist Movement no longer appears in the index for Peking Review 1972.
The parties and groups of the anti-revisionist Marxist Leninist movement were evident in the messages of congratulations and acclamations reproduced in the magazine. Landmark party and state events, such as the Tenth National Congress of the CPC, drew messages of greetings from throughout the international movement- was published in three supplements to Peking Review (issues 37, 41 & 46). Although standardised accounts and reported visits by pro-China leaders, selected congresses and quotes from newspaper articles continued with Peking Review reports on the International Communist Movement.
Old friends appeared less in the general reportage, reflected in the political weekly Peking Review, as a noticeable shift in diplomatic relations and anti-Soviet concerns were evident. The visits of foreign Marxist-Leninist delegations continued, and their press mostly quoting dire warnings about Soviet social-imperialism, with coverage increasingly relegated to items appearing in a column of digest reports “Around the World”.
More limited coverage than previously and less triumphant, rhetorically subdued – still had mention but not comprehensive – European and Australasian organisations more likely than even those almost annual coverage of insurgent Asian parties, e.g. Thailand People’s Armed Forces Growing in Struggle of the early 1970s.
The focus on the Third World governments and European politics were all reflective of a recalibration of China’s international antennae. The struggle in Cambodia and Vietnam remained front and centre, joined by the national struggles of third world countries, less on mass struggles and more on the avenues of international relations such as UN and OAU. Warnings on the actions and intentions of China’s northern neighbour became a mainstay of Chinese diplomatic and propagandist output.
1976 was an eventful year reflected in Peking Review. It began with condolences from foreign political parties on the death of Chou En-lai [then the common Wade-Giles romanization] /Zhou Enlai 1998-1976 in issues #3 -#7 January-Feb 1976.
Peking Review #19 May 7th 1976 noted a number of ML parties and organisations supported the April 7th resolutions that saw Deng’s removal once again as the Tiananmen Square incident followed by an Anti-Deng media campaign. [Wade-Giles romanization: Teng Hsiao-ping/ Deng Xiaoping 1904-1997].
The Death of Chu Teh /Zhu De 1886-1976 covered in #28 July 9th 1976 had 26 condolence messages from ML organisations reprinted.
The occasion of 55th Anniversary of Founding of Chinese Communist Party drew forth congratulations from the pro-China organisations, and the 1976 earthquake in the Tangshan area of Hopei Province saw messages of solicitude.
In September 1976 around eighty Marxist-Leninist organisations sent messages or letters expressing “deepest condolences on the passing of Chairman Mao”/ Mao Zedong 1893 –1976 – see Profoundly Mourning pdf.
Messages greeting Comrade Hua Kuo-feng /Hua Guofeng 1921-2008 assuming posts of chairman of CPC Central Committee and chairman of its military commission- in Peking Review #46+ – was measured as approval for the purging of the Gang of Four, long seen as leftist allies of Mao.
The simmering differences discernible within the positions of the Marxist-Leninist organisations were not openly confronted as in the early Sixties in the pages of Peking Review.
The following year, 1977, coverage of “The Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds” illustrated the divisions that had been developing in the anti-revisionist camp as parties aligned either in support of the strategic line of the Chinese Party and State or expressed opposition, either inspired by the Albanian Party of Labour, or their own anti-regime criticism following the purging of the Gang of Four. The supporters of the regime were endorsing the strategic analysis promoted by China’s foreign policy.
Another repository of online copies of Peking Review, the Left side of the road website, argues that the magazine meet the changing needs of the times, reflecting what had changed in China:
With issue No 1 of 1979 the magazine was renamed Beijing Review, the new name bringing with it a new direction in the People’s Republic of China and was an open statement of the reintroduction of capitalism in the erstwhile Socialist Republic. On page 3 of that number the editors made the open declaration of the change in the direction of the erstwhile ‘People’s Republic of China’. By stating that the Communist Party of China (under the control then of Teng Hsiao-Ping/Deng Xiaoping) sought ‘to accomplish socialist modernisation by the end of the century and turn China …. into an economically developed and fully democratic socialist country’, the CPC was openly declaring the rejection of the revolutionary path, which the country had been following since 1949, and the adoption of the road that would inevitably lead to the full-scale establishment of capitalism. Peking Review – 1966 – Left side of the roadLeft side of the road (michaelharrison.org.uk)
With the consolidation of Deng Xiaoping’s return, Mao was within a few years consigned to a historic symbolic significance. In the post-Mao era, and the fragmentation and division within the ML movement, the pages of Peking/Beijing Review no longer served as a guide to the competing claims to authenticity and legacy of Mao’s teachings that Maoism outside China grappled with. The emerging initiatives, like their earlier counterparts, had their own organic, internationalist-orientation to reconstruct Global Maoism without looking East.
The formulation of the TWT essentially signalled a tactical foreign policy concept after Mao’s death. Despite the editorial claim that Chairman Mao’s Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds Is a Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism” it never turned into a theory based on concrete analysis. Rather it was derivative of certain substantiated theoretical specifications, e.g. the Soviet Union being social imperialist, social fascist and state capitalist, and empirical evidence ramrod into the theoretical boundaries. As these presuppositions were dropped in the early 1980s and the accusations against the CPSU as being revisionist were finally revoked under Deng Xiaoping,and as the geo-political circumstances changed, the TWT disappeared as well. It should not be understood as a strategic concept. Instead, it depended in its entirety on the short-term tactical assessment of the Soviet Union.
There was substantially more than a remark made by Mao Zedong on 22 February 1974 (during his talks with President Kaunda of Zambia): “In my view, the United States and the Soviet Union form the first world. Japan, Europe and Canada, the middle section, belong to the second world. We are the third world. […] The third world has a huge population. With the exception of Japan, Asia belongs to the third world. The whole of Africa belongs to the third world, and Latin America too.”
However, its impact on Chinese foreign policy was already on display in Deng Xiaoping’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly on 10 April 1974. Deng quoted Mao’s expression without naming the author, and then went on to emphasise the political core of the TWT: “The two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are vainly seeking world hegemony. Each in its own way attempts to bring the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America under its control and, at the same time, to bully the developed countries that are not their match in strength.”
Deng Xiaoping, “Speech at Special Session of U.N. General Assembly (10 April 1974)”, Peking Beijing Review, vol. 17, 1974, no. 15, special supplement
The formulation of the TWT as “a major contribution to Marxism-Leninism” only appeared in 1977, one year after Mao’s death. The notion of the two superpowers as the target was sideline by the developing relationship with the US and emphasis placed on the Soviet Union as the main source of war. Elements of these position existed in China’s foreign policy during Mao’s lifetime and could not have emerged without his sanction.
Critics argue Mao himself never advocated for a “TWT” in any of his known written or oral statements; however, he had spoken around the concept on numerous occasions. Mao had the final say in China’s foreign policy. In January 1957, Mao’s description of world politics was: “The contradiction between the imperialist countries and the socialist countries is certainly most acute. But the imperialist countries are now contending with each other for the control of different areas in the name of opposing communism. What areas are they contending for? Areas in Asia and Africa inhabited by 1,000 million people. […] [T]wo kinds of contradictions and three kinds of forces are in conflict. The two kinds of contradictions are: first, those between different imperialist powers, that is, between the United States and Britain and between the United States and France and, second, those between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations. The three kinds of forces are: one, the United States, the biggest imperialist power, two, Britain and France, second-rate imperialist powers, and three, the oppressed nations.” Selected Works Volume 5 /361 et sq.
A popular advocacy article that appeared in the Chinese media was Tan Wen-Jui explaining Chairman Mao’s Analysis of the Three Worlds translated for a foreign audience in China Reconstructs January 1978 | twt0001.pdf (wordpress.com)
Basically, the “three worlds” that would subsequently find their way into the TWT were thus already named. What changed was that the Soviet Union went revisionist and had to be assigned, along with the United States of America, to the category of the superpowers. The formulation of the TWT essentially signalled a foreign policy reorientation that had been brooding since the late 1960s. The Chinese leadership reached the conclusion that the threat posed to China by the Soviet Union outweighed the dangers of US imperialism; whilst a major contradiction of our time between the national-liberation movement and imperialism remain, greater importance was placed on inner-imperialist contradictions. In disregarding class antagonisms within “Third World” countries and attaching importance only to the antagonisms between these countries and the “superpowers”, the TWT de facto remained a tactical foreign policy concept after Mao’s death. China would retain the resistance to imperialist “hegemony” while pursuing the reform policy of “socialist market economy”.
When the Soviet Union fell apart, China’s foreign policy was reoriented once again, focussing on the competition and collusion with industrial nations in the global market place. The orientation towards the “Third World” may have retained some relevance but the Three World Theory was long obsolete.
Yet in a modern Chinese assessment, the Chinese academic Jiang An’s sinocentric argument described Mao Zedong’s theory of “the differentiation of three worlds” as “a hallmark achievement of China’s diplomatic strategy and international relations theory”. Succulently explaining,
“Taking national interests and the pursuit of sovereignty as its logical starting point, the law of the unity of opposites as its philosophical basis, the background of the Cold War as its historical platform, and opposition to hegemony as its diplomatic strategy, Mao Zedong advanced the well-known “three worlds” theory.”
Jiang An (2013) Mao Zedong’s “Three Worlds” Theory: Political Considerations and Value for the Times, Social Sciences in China, 34:1, 35-57, DOI: 10.1080/02529203.2013.760715
So, the Three Worlds Theory cannot be written out of the historical record but can have “very special value for the times” in its retelling as in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website presents the current regime’s presentation and spin on of what the TWT meant in an article on “Chairman Mao Zedong’s Theory on the Division of the Three World and the Strategy of Forming an Alliance Against an opponent”
“The 1970s witnessed significant changes in the international situation. The balance of military forces between the two super-powers of the Soviet Union and the United States developed in a way favorable to the former. While the U.S. strength was weakened and its status as a hegemonic power met with challenges as a result of its long years of overseas expansion, especially it was deeply bogged down in the war of aggression against Vietnam, the Soviet Union, by capitalizing this opportunity and intensifying its arms expansion, stretched its hands everywhere on the strength of its rapidly expanding military might. There emerged in the Soviet-U.S. rivalry a situation with the Soviet Union on the offensive and the United States on the defensive. In order to maintain its global hegemony, the U.S. made readjustments in its foreign policy and carries out a strategy of retrenchment in Asia and opened the door to Sino-U.S. relations with the aim of freeing itself from indo-China and concentrating its efforts in the defence of Europe which is its key area.
To continuously promote the world situation so that it moves in a direction conducive to peace and stability and favorable to the people of various countries, Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out during his meeting with Henry Kissinger in 1973 that as long as we share the same goal, we will not do harm to you nor will you do harm to us and we should work together to counter Soviet hegemonism. We hope the United States would strengthen its cooperation with Europe and Japan and draw a parallel line linking the United States, Japan China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Europe. This is unity against the Soviet hegemonism or the “Strategy of forming an alliance against an opponent”.
In February 1974, Chairman Mao Zedong set forth his strategic thinking of the division of the three worlds. He observed, “In my view, the United States and the Soviet Union belong to the first world. The in-between Japan, Europe and Canada belong to the second world. The third world is very populous. Except Japan, Asia belongs to the third world. So does the whole of Africa and Latin America”. At the 6th Special Session of the UN General Assembly held in April 1974, Deng Xiaoping expounded the strategic thinking of Mao Zedong on the division of the three worlds. He pointed out that after protracted trial of strength and struggles, the various types of political forces are currently undergoing drastic division and realignment. “From the perspective of the changes that have taken place in international relations, the world today in fact has three sides or three worlds in existence which are mutually related as well as contradictory. The United States and the Soviet Union belong to the first world. Developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other regions belong to the third world. And the developed countries in between the two belong to the second world”. Deng Xiaoping also expressed that China was a socialist country, a developing nation, and it belonged to the third world. The Chinese Government and people firmly supported all the oppressed peoples and nations in their just struggles. He declared that China was not and would never be a super-power in the future.
Mao Zedong’s strategic thinking shed light on the fact that the two super-powers were then the main source of instability and turmoils in the world. Their acts of pursuing hegemonism, power politics, the big bullying the small, the strong bullying the week and the rich oppressing the poor gave rise to strong opposition and resentment by countries of the third world. As a member of the third world, China firmly supported the third world countries in their struggles against hegemonism and struggles waged by countries of the second world against interference and control by the super-powers. China was firmly opposed to the policy of expansionism pursued by the super-powers and carried out the policy of uniting with and struggling against the United States with emphasis on striking at Soviet hegemonism thus effectively restraining the expansionist forces of the Soviet Union.”
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It succeeds in part, highlighting Soviet hegemonism but paved the way for a reorientation in China’s foreign policy to the detriment of the global anti-imperialist struggle as China’s domestic drive and international events made three world theory a redundant approach, quietly dropped and seldom mentioned. In the absence of any residue interest or contesting views, the Three World Theory, once so fruitfully controversial, has been consigned to an obscure historical fate.
Criticism of the Theory of the Three Worlds/ TWT accelerated following that initially raised in the 7th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA) in November 1976. Relations between the two allies had not fully recovered from when Enver Hoxha wrote a 19-page letter in August 1971 to Chairman Mao, declaring that President Nixon’s next visit to Beijing would be considered a betrayal to Marxism-Leninism. Enver Hoxha, It Is Not Right to Receive Nixon in Beijing. We Do Not Support ItSelected Works, Vol. IV p665. The “8 Nëntori” Publishing House, Tirana, 1982
The CPC did not response to the letter. Besides the silence to Hoxha’s letter, the second sign of the crack in the relationship was China’s refusal to send a delegation to the 6th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania, to be held in November 1971.
The criticism signalled at the 7th Congress did bring forth response as the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent a protest letter to the PLA on December 8, 1976. The Albanian response was to accelerate the issue the following summer with a more explicitly attack on the Three Worlds Theory with an article, later attributed to Enver Hoxha, published in Zёri i Popullit, “The theory and the practice of the revolution” Teoria dhe praktika e revolucionit”, Nr. 162, July 7, 1977, pp. 3-4. Enver Hoxha’s later publication, Imperialism and the Revolution (1978) returned again with an attack on “The Theory of “Three Worlds”: a counter-revolutionary chauvinist theory, and China’s Plan to Become a Superpower . The volume ends with his thoughts on “Mao Tsetung Thought”—An Anti-Marxist Theory.
From Hoxha we learn that Mao was a “bourgeois nationalist” and his foreign policy – Three World Theory – was, straight out of a cold war playbook, an attempt to instigate war between the USA and USSR so that China could dominate a devastated world.
The Albanian intervention saw a consolidation of some forces around the Party of Labour of Albania with a series of regional rallies and international rallies organised in Europe with joint statements (republished by the PLA) and supporting the Albanian position were publicised as Radio Tirana informed the world about the strengthening threads of this new international constellation. Albania Builds An International. Woodsmokeblog
João Amazonas de Souza Pedros (January 1, 1912 – May 27, 2002), national President of Communist Party of Brazil/ PCdoB, published The theory of Three Worlds – an opportunist variant of the class struggle of the proletariat , in Classe Operaria (1978) that built on a criticism of the seminal Renmin Ribao editorial of November 1st 1977. That editorial “Chairman Mao’s Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds Is a Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism” (reproduced in Peking Review November 4, 1977) was the retort to Zёri i Popullit. What was clear was that consideration of China’s foreign policy statement on the three worlds theory/ TWT raises questions about China after the death of Mao Zedong.
A common position argued against TWT supporters was expressed by the President of the Franco-Chinese Friendship Association (Association des amitiés Franco-Chinoises), FrenchMarxian economist and historian, Charles Bettelheim (1913-2006) that TWT “buries the class contradictions involved, to say nothing of the contradictions between countries.” The 1978 polemic, with Neil Burton, China Since Mao published by Monthly Review Press, challenged some of the basis of China’s foreign policy targeting the superpowers: “It wrongly assumes that, as between the ‘Second’ and the ‘Third’ worlds, unity can have primacy over contradiction, an idea which runs counter to everything taught us by history, past and present. History reveals the deep conflicts which set many of the countries of the ‘Second’ and the ‘Third’ worlds against each other”.
TWT was substantiated in reference to the writings of the “classics”, noted a German commentary, drawing on supportative quotes from Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.
Lenin’s 1916 assessment: “The social revolution can come only in the form of an epoch in which are combined civil war by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries and a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation movement, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations.” (Collected Work 23/60).
The division into several “worlds” was placed in a tradition stemming from Lenin: “The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations” (Collected Works 31/240).
“[U]nfortunately, there are now two worlds: the old world of capitalism […] and the rising new world” (Collected Works 33/149 et sq.).
Stalin: “The world has definitely and irrevocably split into two camps: the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism.” (Works 4/240) –
So far, only a dichotomous division of the world had been defined. But Stalin also conceptualised a second division, which could be understood as running straight through the first one: “The world is divided into two camps: the camp of a handful of civilized nations, which possess finance capital and exploit the vast majority of the population of the globe; and the camp of the oppressed and exploited peoples in the colonies and dependent countries, which constitute that majority.” (Works 6/149 et sq.)
The pedigree of the Three Worlds Theory did reach back into Chinese political thinking . As both practitioner and theoretician, Mao concluded in 1940: “This [world] revolution has the proletariat of the capitalist countries as its main force and the oppressed peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies as its allies. No matter what classes, parties or individuals in an oppressed nation join the revolution, and no matter whether they themselves are conscious of the point or understand it, so long as they oppose imperialism, their revolution becomes part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution and they become its allies.” Selected Works Volume 2 (1965) Peking Foreign Language Press p346
The Maoist unease in dealing with the three worlds theory originates from Mao’s own role in this theory. Mao was instrumental in this turn of Chinese foreign policy. “Mao himself and the revolutionary headquarters he led” were involved from the early ’70s on in “seeking to build an international united front…against the Soviet Union”. Any denunciation of the three worlds theory by the Maoist parties generally ends as a denunciation of “Deng Xiaoping’s three worlds theory”, while usually diplomatically remaining silent on “Mao’s three worlds theory”.
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement / RIM’s 1984 Declaration argued that “The Marxist-Leninists have correctly refuted the revisionist slander that the “Three Worlds Theory” was put forward by Mao Tsetung.” Unfortunately, this is indeed a questionable assertion. Whilst it is true that Mao himself never advocated for a “TWT” in any of his known written or oral statements; on the contrary, he seems to have prevented the publication of his statements from 22 February 1974 for as long as he was alive. A single critical statement by Mao on this subject would have resonated throughout the Maoist parties of the world. However, as a foreign policy concept, however, he developed and supported it. Mao Zedong on Diplomacy (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1998) A collection of 160 of Mao Zedong’s writings, speeches, talks, comments and telegrams concerningdiplomacy from July 1937 to May 1974.
Writings, released since his death substantiate statements and positions taken , such as from January 1957:
“The contradiction between the imperialist countries and the socialist countries is certainly most acute. But the imperialist countries are now contending with each other for the control of different areas in the name of opposing communism. What areas are they contending for? Areas in Asia and Africa inhabited by 1,000 million people. […] [T]wo kinds of contradictions and three kinds of forces are in conflict. The two kinds of contradictions are: first, those between different imperialist powers, that is, between the United States and Britain and between the United States and France and, second, those between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations. The three kinds of forces are: one, the United States, the biggest imperialist power, two, Britain and France, second-rate imperialist powers, and three, the oppressed nations.” Selected Works – Vol. V (marxists.org) Talks at a conference of secretaries of provincial, municipal and autonomous region party committees p359
An early defence of Mao against the Albanian attacks and post-Mao authorities, veteran maoist, Sanmugathasan of the Communist Party of Ceylon, laid out the basic position that:
“We vehemently repudiate the thesis that the anti-Marxist-Leninist Theory of the Three Worlds was a product of Mao Tse-tung Thought. There is no evidence whatever to support such a possibility. Comrade Mao Tse-tung 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.” Enver Hoxha Refuted (marxists.org) 1981
The Declaration of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in March 1984 acknowledged that in the years before Mao’s death Chinese foreign policy turned its back on revolutionary struggles, that “reactionary despots were falsely labelled as `anti-imperialists'” and “certain imperialist powers of the Western bloc” were labelled as “intermediate or even positive forces in the world”.
“Despite the tremendous victories of the Cultural Revolution the revisionists in the Chinese party and state continued to maintain important positions and promoted lines and policies which did considerable harm to the still fragile efforts to rebuild a genuine international communist movement. The revisionists in China, who controlled to a large degree its diplomacy and the relations between the Chinese Communist Party and other Marxist-Leninist parties, turned their backs on the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples or tried to subordinate these struggles to the state interests of China. Reactionary despots were falsely labeled as “anti-imperialists” and increasingly under the banner of a worldwide struggle against “hegemonism” certain imperialist powers of the Western bloc were portrayed as intermediate or even positive forces in the world. Even during this period ………… The Marxist-Leninists have correctly refuted the revisionist slander that the “Three Worlds Theory” was put forward by Mao Tsetung. However this is not enough. The criticism of the “Thee Worlds Theory” must be deepened by criticising the concepts underlying it, and the origins must be investigated. Here it is important to note that the revisionist usurpers had to publicly condemn Mao’s closest comrades in arms for opposing this counter-revolutionary theory.” (bannedthought.net)
This shifted somewhat as Maoists then insisted on the alleged distinction between the theory of three worlds as put forward under Mao, and as put forward later under Deng. For example, the Communist Party of Peru declared:
“We consider Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s thesis that three worlds are delineated just and correct and that it is connected with Lenin’s thesis on the distribution of forces in the world based on the analysis of classes and contradictions. We reject the opportunist and revisionist misrepresentation by Teng Hsiao-ping of the three worlds that follows at the tail of the U.S. or USSR in order to betray the revolution. Starting from this, President Gonzalo analyzes the current situation in which the three worlds are delineated and further demonstrated that they are a reality.” 1988 – Bases of Discussion of General Political Line : International Line (foreignlanguages.press)
RIM charged, many of the pro-Chinese Marxist-Leninist parties supported by the revisionists in the CPC had “shamelessly tail the bourgeoisie and even support or acquiesce in imperialist adventures and war preparations aimed at the Soviet Union which was increasingly seen as the “main enemy” in the whole world. All these tendencies blossomed fully with the coup d’etat in China and the revisionists’ subsequent elaboration of the “Three Worlds Theory” which they attempted to shove down the throats of the international communist movement. the Declaration of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement 1984
Some groups emphasised the Soviet threat
The strong Chinese preference for European unity was reflected in most Maoist groups, the Belgian group AMADA called for “a strong European defence which is democratic and independent” and argued that “in the face of the Russian menace, Western Europe must carry out a common foreign policy in order to protect its independence.” In Order to strengthen peace Through An Independent and Democratic Europe: Yes to European Unity.
AMADA argued “Russian social-imperialism is the main warmonger”, “No to social-imperialism, no to the policy of world dominance of Russia!” The Soviet Union: the most dangerous and aggressive superpower, issued in 1975 by the National Bureau of AMADA.
The idea of war in Europe did preoccupy the Norwegians conscious of the Soviet naval base at Murmansk and regular military exercises “to prepare landing of occupation troops in Norwegian territory”. The country was seen as strategically vital to control of Europe’s northern flank. Activities by NATO were seen as increasing military pressure by the US against Norwegian sovereignty and the sophisticated scenario discussed by the AKP (ML) included the possibility of a Chile-style coup orchestrated by the US in order to launch a ‘first strike’ blow against the Soviet Union.
The AKP (ML) campaigned for the defence of Norway, discussing strategic issues. Unpublicised planning to disperse an unknown part of its leadership, who when the party’s structures were smashed, the publically-identified leadership imprisoned or dead, were to go over to guerrilla struggle, based in the mountains and on the Swedish border, to engage in a national liberation struggle. The AKP (ML) was clear on its policy “of fighting against both imperialist superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union, without relying on the Norwegian bourgeoisie. If the Superpowers attack Norway, the line of the Party is that the Norwegian labouring masses have to rise in a national-revolutionary people’s war against the invader.” Norway’s Communists Get Prepared”. The Call (newspaper of the CPML) July 18 1977
Since there was no centralized Maoist International it was not surprising that there were differing interpretations of the Three Worlds Theory before, and after, it appeared formalised in its 1977 statement. It had been outlined at the United Nations in 1974 in a speech delivered by Deng Xiaoping in a major foreign policy statement. After Mao’s death in 1976 some critics vented their opposition to the theory and extended it to encompass Mao and Maoism. Organisations were split by the stance taken over TWT e.g
Toufahan’s opportunism, and opposition against the new Chinese leadership rallied e.g the appearance of the 1981Basic Principles for the Unity of Marxist-Leninists and for the Line of the International Communist MovementA Draft Position Paper for Discussion Prepared by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. There were contending political interpretations on the questions of the day that reinforced the organisational fragmentation of the movement.
There were sharp divisions with the pro-Three World Theory camp with some small groups taking up an interpretation of the policy to advocate a united front such as at the Lisbon Conference. The Communist Party of Portugal (ML) / Partido Comunista de Portugal (Marxista-Leninista) / PCPml – had the major organising role for the 1978 Lisbon Conference on the Russian Imperialist Threat calling “for patriotic and democratic action to oppose” the perceived foreign policy intentions of the Soviet Union described as “neo-colonial domination”, “expansionism” and “world hegemony”.
Even if the prospect of war in Europe influenced the analysis and actions of the MLs, the Lisbon Conference did not attract major support from pro-Chinese organisations. Few European Maoists would agree with the Portuguese analysis that:
In the present stage of revolution, the aim of the Party’s strategy is to defeat social imperialism. To affirm this aim, the formation of national democratic front with the national bourgeoisie is necessary. PCP (ML) International Information Bulletin No63, 30th December 1978
The British-based, Second World Defence group produced the pamphlet, The Superpowers, the Threat of War and the British Working Class in 1977. It produced a translation of a 1977 German pamphlet on Soviet Naval Strategy highlighting the Soviet threat.
Second World Defence and other minor British groups that adopted similar emphasis in their treatment were regarded as adopting a rightist interpretation.
Among the most developed of the treatments that advocated a policy based on the premise that the United States was “a positive factor in the united front against (Soviet) hegemonism” was the 120-paged argument presented inSooner or Later: Questions & Answers on War, Peace & the United Front published by Massachusetts-based New Outlook Press in 1980. The aggressive expansionist nature of Soviet fascism (characterised by analogies of ‘Hitler-like’ comparisons) and belief based on the analysis that the 1980s was a pre-war period similar to the 1930s, shaped the strategic considerations and conclusions that singled out the Soviet Union as the most dangerous source of world war. This shifted the dial away from the struggles against the two superpowers towards a singular focus in a united front.
The construction and advocacy of a global strategy by groups whose reach and impact within their own societies were negligible seems an intellectual indulgence, however such a worldview was vital in understanding the implications for politics at the domestic and local level.
Outside of the anti-revisionist Marxist Leninists, around any discussion of the Three Worlds Theory raises a multitude of issues that were focused on, by the various individuals and friendship associations who produced sympathetic commentaries on China’s foreign policy stances.
From the UK-based Anglo-Chinese Educational Institute, its publication “China’s World View” (Modern China Series No. 10, 1979) favourably explained China’s foreign affairs following Mao’s death, and focuses especially on its “Three Worlds Theory”. China’sWorldView-MC-10-1979.pdf (bannedthought.net)
Compiled by RCP,USA associated, C. Clark Kissinger , China’s Foreign Policy – an outline published in Chicago, August 1976, supported China’s foreign policy stances, however within a couple of years the Revolutionary Communist Party was issuing articles with a far different tone: “Three Worlds” Strategy: Apology for Capitulation [Revolution, Vol. 3, No. 14, November 1978.] China’sForeignPolicy-AnOutline-Kissinger-1976.pdf (bannedthought.net)
China’s Foreign Policy by Victor Levant, an academic in Canada published by Red Sun Publishers, San Francisco 1977, looked broadly and favourably at the subject. The subject was returned to many times e.g. Chinese Foreign Policy during the Maoist Era and its Lessons for Todayby the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. (January 2007).
Mainstream ML opinion was more like the Spanish Organisation Revolucionaria de Trabajudores /ORT , while accepting that the two superpowers were the main enemies of the people of the world and the Soviet Union the more dangerous source of war, the ORT’s strategy was “to direct struggle at principal enemies, US Imperialism and its Spanish supporters. They have bombs, bases and economic control. Simply not materialist to [argue the] Soviet Union is [the] main enemy.”
The Kommunistischer Arbeiterbund Deutschlands /KABD – fore runner of the Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands/MLPD founded in 1982 – took a pro-Mao stance that supported neither the ‘Gang of Four’ nor the post-Mao leadership in China. Back in 1978 the precursor of the MLPD dismissal of the anti-Mao arguments which came out of Tirana and those, like fellow Germans, the KPD/ML which promoted them. This defence of Mao Zedong Thought was accompanied by analysis that the three worlds theory, as a strategic concept, is a right-opportunist theory which negates class struggle as the decisive driving force behind the progress of history and the leadership of the proletariat in the class struggle. To lend this theory credibility, its proponents cite Mao as their authority. Their trick is to misrepresent a tactical concept developed by Mao for a special situation as a fundamental, strategic theory. The leaders of the Party of Labour of Albania also fell for this.
In contrast, the American League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L), Study Column on the Theory of the Three Worldsprovided a supportive study guide for Mao Zedong’s theory of the three worlds that first appeared in Fall 1978, in the pages of UNITY, the newspaper of the League It had sections on
The three worlds theory : a guide for Marxist-Leninists of all countries
The two superpowers : the main enemies of the people of the world
The third world : the main force opposing imperialism
The second world : a force that can be united with against the superpowers
The superpowers threaten a new world war
Combat the danger of world war; oppose the superpowers
The theory of the three worlds is a beacon for the international proletariat
The Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line has over 30 contributions to a contested debate of collated Primary Materials accessible from whenU.S. Marxist-Leninists Take Sides: the “Theory of Three Worlds”.Other 2nd World national sections have collated material e.g. Canada and the Australian Debate On the Theory of Three Worlds. The Communist Party of Australia(ml) under Ted Hill uncritically supported the Chinese position. Other Maoists, those in the Red Eureka Movement did not:
Interestingly in Spring 2020 The Australian Communist carried a discursive if critical look at TWT: It argue that, “Chairman Mao’s Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds Is a Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism” “became a source of a right-opportunist trend in the revolutionary movement world wide.”
“Deng Xiaoping saw no value in Mao’s TWT, in Mao’s theory of world revolution, or in Mao’s theory of class struggle. Deng’s “breakthrough” – his theory of cooperation and development – had an entirely different aim and objective to Mao’s pursuit of unity against Soviet social-imperialism.” Nick G probably now reflects the consensus of opinion that Mao’s “Theory of the Three Worlds is not a major component of his theoretical contributions, but rather a subset of his approach to an analysis of contradictions.” cpaml-3-worlds.pdf (marxists.org)
Global Maoism grew out of the anti-revisionist struggle. That quarrel grew in intensity and consequences from the late 1950s to mid-60s until marking a major demarcation in the international communist movement. The struggle against the new course initiated by the Soviet Union led to ideological division and political splits from the late 1950s in the international communist movement that remained until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The CPSU saw its leadership increasing diminished over the decades by dissident and autonomous behaviour among those institutionally aligned to Moscow. From the early opposition in the disputes arose an anti-revisionist trend associated with the ruling parties of Albania and China however it did not materialise on an organisational basis with a “Beijing Centre” to rebuild and lead component sections .
Components of this pro-China trend, as the anti-revisionists were more commonly labelled, were never as formalized and homogeneous as the pro-Soviet tendency with its international journals and multi-party meetings. The initial break with CPSU dominance saw the Albanian Party of Labour allied with the Communist Party of China. Other ruling parties maintained an uneasy neutralism. There was the exception of the Communist Party of Poland that arose from the ranks of the ruling revisionist parties, although oppositional groups were evident in the ‘Soviet bloc’. Only one Western classic communist party came out as anti-revisionist, the Communist Party of New Zealand. The pro-CPC movements were, after the initial split from the Moscow-line Communist Parties, in many cases in the industrialised nations, based amongst the wave of student radicalism that engulfed the world in the 1960s and 1970s. In the global south, smaller anti-revisionist parties as in Brazil and India, emerged. The anti-revisionist struggle was inspiration for newly re-established parties like in the Philippines and elsewhere, mainstream communist parties in South-East Asia, like the Burmese Communist Party and Communist Party of Thailand, and some would argue, in Cambodia.
A new communist movement had arisen in the 1960s in opposition to Soviet endorsed revisionism. In its formative years during the polemical exchanges on the general line of the international communist movement, regardless of Albania’s vocal and strident challenges against modern revisionism, the ideological leadership belonged to the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong. In the struggle against Khrushchev and his successors, the CPC were sensitive to the problem of the equality of parties. The Chinese leadership had suffered in the progress of the Chinese Revolutions the negative experiences of advice and pressure from the Soviet Party and Comintern, an intervention repeated by Wang Ming’s contributions during the 1960s.
This well-known history is offered as an argument against efforts to institutionalise the emerging anti-revisionists organisationally. Even with fraternal aid and assistance, selected training opportunities in China and expression of solidarity and internationalism provided to friendly parties and, for some, funding via Albania, the Chinese mantra of self-reliance was over-riding. When the Albanian party was manoeuvring at its Fifth Congress in 1965 to consolidate the supporting Marxist-Leninists organisations into a more institutional arrangement, they did not have the CPC ‘s support.
Unlike the Albanian party who cultivated visits to the small Balkan state, from the 9th Congress in 1969, the Communist Party of China ceased its practice of inviting fraternal delegates from other parties to its congresses. The practice of sending delegates to other fraternal parties’ gatherings was also discontinued. It could be argued that despite China supporting some revolutionary forces financially and through training in other countries in the 1960s and the early 1970s, the global impact was symbolic largely through lower-key, cultural dissemination and an emphasis on the ideological during the Cultural Revolution.. As the intensity of the Cultural Revolution waned in China bi-lateral visits were resumed however in the 1970s these included an eclectic range of invitees and clearly no moves were from Beijing to revive a (Maoist-orientated) communist international.
Through the latter half of the last century international anti-revisionist organisational relationships were largely bi-lateral. There were opportunities, particularly at Albanian Party congresses for contact between MLs but largely they were of a nature that saw exchange of papers and tourist visits. Co-ordinated multi-party statements were rare. There were notable exceptions when small regional gatherings occurred: in Europe, the Nordic parties met but these were precisely that – exceptions. e.g. Joint Meeting of Nordic Marxist-Leninists first-nordic.pdf (marxists.org)
International Maoism was largely an expression of solidarity. There were very good reasons why, even in a pre-Internet age, an international network of MLs, exchanging ideas and perspectives, failed to take an institutional form.
The obvious sponsor of such a network refused to take on that task. While the Party of Labour of Albania/ PLA was more favourable to the idea of international structures [as it demonstrated in the late 1970s], the Communist Party of China/ CPC in Mao’s time was firmly against any resurrection of a Comintern-type organisation. China’s ideological allies did not comprise an organised international bloc but maintained bilateral ties with the CPC. A relationship more suited to the Chinese argument for equality and non-interference in other parties’ affairs. Although visits were less frequent at the height of the Cultural Revolution, there were still visiting revolutionaries combining tourism and training, local embassy contacts with local ‘Friends of China’, the distribution of China’s publications and radio broadcasts to a global audience and reporting on struggles worldwide. There were political commentaries appearing taken as broad guidance by a receptive readership, notably “Long Live People’s War”. What there was not was a grand international gathering of strategic importance or an independent structured body where such questions could be addressed.
There was no impetus from China for the formation of a new international. There were a number of considerations that questioned the need for such an arrangement:
Such a centre would never be able to understand the concrete realities of revolution in each country
It would hinder the development of competent, self-reliant leadership in the different parties
On a practical level there was no capacity for the international coordination of the revolutionary movement, certainly neither Albania or China had the financial or personnel resources to sustain such an international
The unspoken objection was the experience of the Comintern itself whereby its policies became identified with the needs of the Soviet Union.
As the CPC had denounced the concept of a “Soviet camp”, and sought to encourage the decline of the CPSU’s hold on revisionist parties, and reassessed its foreign policy priorities, the prospect of creating a smaller, less influential rival international communist organisation diminished. Theoretical articles dealing with the problems of the communist movement in general largely disappeared and very little could be taken as organisational guidance for the anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists organisations.
Who would a Maoist International recognise? There were Maoist groups internationally, and in each country usually several vying for approval and recognition from Beijing. Italy provides a typical example whereby the “recognised” pro-Chinese Communist Party of Italy (Marxist-Leninist) – Partito Communista d’Italia (marxista-leninists ) / PCd’I(ml) had at least seven rival ML groups and factions claiming a maoist allegiance. The Albanian party cultivated its friends and maintained a one country-one party policy that meant recognition once given to the ‘vanguard party’ was kept. Obviously during the 1960s and 70s a great many organisations uncritically adopted the positions of both the Albanian and Chinese policies, not a bad thing if agitating around the issue of natural justice for Albania over its confiscated gold reserves held in Western nations, however the negative side could be (and was) the lack of independent examination of the vital questions of revolution, especially since there was an objective difference – and all too obvious – in the role of China as a developing socialist state and the tasks of pushing the revolution forward in specific countries. In terms of foreign policy this was starkly seen when the “three World theory” was taken up and championed by supportive-China organisation while others, in the light of Albanian opposition that went further in denouncing Mao Zedong Thought, followed the Albanian baton.
A number of small Marxist-Leninists delegations had continued to visited China, such as the Communist Party of Australia (ML)/ CPA (ML), however the CCP openly began to mend fences with more independent minded revisionists seen in the visit by the PCE – Partido Communista de Espana – led Santiago Carrillo in 1971. By 1977, Tito was welcomed to Beijing. Albanian foreign policy initiatives’ such as the diplomatic relations with the Greek military junta provoked less adverse comments.
Visits by ML organisations to China were easily out-numbered by the visits of bourgeois political personalities [the disgraced Richard Nixon and former Prime Minister Edward Heath to name but two] who were given greater official prominence in China’s media. Some disquiet as the seeming neglect of ‘Friends of China’ did quietly emerged. Still, when Mao died in September 1976 over a hundred Maoist organisations telegrammed their sorrow at the loss of the Great Helmsman using varying degrees of maoist sentiments and phraseology.
Hoxhaism onto CIPOML
It was in the post Mao era that saw first destruction, then the beginnings of any stirring towards international co-ordination after the movement splintered along ideological fissures.
A substantial break was the defection to the Albanian sponsored perspective expressed in the PLA’s 7th report and Enver Hoxha’s attack first upon China’s foreign policy stance, the Three Worlds Theory, and then followed up by condemnation of Mao Zedong as anti-marxist.
The Albanian leaders praised Mao Zedong in the most extravagant and even sycophantic terms up to and after his death in 1976. “The work of this outstanding Marxist-Leninist represents a contribution to the enrichment of the revolutionary theory and practice of the proletariat. The Albanian communists and people will always honour the memory of comrade Mao Zedong who was a great friend of our Party and people.” Enver Hoxha, Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA, November 1976
“Comrade Mao Zedong was an outstanding thinker and theoretician of Marxism-Leninism, who continued the brilliant work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. To him belongs the merit of the elaboration, defence and application of the general line of the Communist Party of China in the revolution and the socialist construction. He personally led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China and directed the struggle for smashing the counter-revolutionary revisionist traitor groups of Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, Teng Hsiao-ping and other enemies of the Chinese people and the Communist Party of China.”(Message of Condolences from Albanian to Chinese Party and State leaders, 9 September, 1976
“The Marxist-Leninist ideas of Comrade Mao Zedong on continuously carrying out class struggle in socialist society, on the struggle between the socialist and capitalist roads, and on continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat are an immensely valuable and creative contribution to the theory of scientific socialism…His works on anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggles contain theses of tremendous value, both in theory and in practice, to the struggle against imperialism, especially against the two superpowers and their policies of aggression and war, and to the people of various countries engaged in movements for their own liberation.” Hysni Kapo, 17 September, 1976, at memorial meeting during Albania’s three days of national mourning for Mao Zedong
However, that quickly changed as from Albania we learn that Mao was a “bourgeois nationalist” and his foreign policy – Three World Theory – was an attempt to instigate war between the USA and USSR so that China could dominate a devastated world.
The Albanian intervention saw a consolidation of some forces around the Party of Labour of Albania with a series of regional rallies and joint statements (republished by the PLA ) and delegations of the ML organisations participated in conferences in Albania as Radio Tirana informed the world about the strengthening threads of this new international constellation. Albania Builds An International. Woodsmokeblog
These groups precluded themselves from our consideration having chosen to isolate themselves in the citadel of Hoxhaism. This characterisation, an informal descriptive term, used to refer to a variant of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism that coalesced in the late 1970s as the divisions solidified after the ideological divergent between the CPC and PLA.
In the split led by Enver Hoxha, some within the international communist movement focused their political allegiance exclusively on Tirana as there was an attempt by Albania to constitute an international. There were supporters in Latin America, such as one of the original anti-revisionist parties from the Sixties, the Brazilian, Partido Communista do Brasil /PCdoB who published Classe Operaria, and the Partido Communista Marxista-leninista del Ecuador/ PCMLE who published En Marcha. Critics would argue that the dogmatic – Comintern rooted Stalinists – found expression in the split led headed by Albania’s Enver Hoxha.
While it failed to find an organisational expression, the tendency faltered when Albania became engulfed in the general disintegration in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. Some small pro-Albanian forces found expression in a rudimentary attempt after the demise of their state sponsor but failed to unite in a single international alignment. An international gathering saw the formation of the Hoxhist CIPOML (Conferencia Internacional del Partidos y Organizaciones Marxista-Leninista). The Hoxhaist CIPOMLwas inaugurated in Quito, Ecuador in 1994 by parties formerly associated with the PLA. They adopted A Communist declaration to the Workers and Peoples of the World and went onto publish twice yearly the journal Unity & Struggle. Its content made it politically impossible to be confused with the co-existent Marxistisch-Leninistischen ParteiDeutschlands /MLPD-inspired ICMLOP [International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations].
The PCdoB, one of the largest components of the Hoxhist trend, was active within CIPOML until 1992 when it abandoned the idea of reorganising around the pro-Albanian forces and broadened its relations with other parties which saw it re-establish relations with the ruling Chinese party.
One can set aside the individual call of Wolfgang Eggers, in December 2000 for the foundation of the new Communist International (Marxist-Leninist) and accompanying “19 Theses” dismissed by fellow Hoxhaist, Hari Kumar because “Your approach lacks either common-sense or persuasive power or psychological insight, or, frankly, anything that can commend it”. The path towards a new communist Marxist-Leninist International by essentially old-style Stalinist and Hoxha supporters was explored by Kumar (Alliance (ML) Issue No.19 1996)
The pro-Hoxhaists were still a divided tendency. The journals “International Struggle / Marxist-Leninist” and “Unity & Struggle” separately aimed to provide a common political platform for a new ML international that proved to have its strength in Latin America . There were 15 parties at the conference of Marxist-Leninist parties held in Quito in 1994, but only 12 approved the decision to continue meeting. The International seminar on problems of Revolution in Latin America initiated by the Quito conference has drawn from Maoist and Guevarist tendencies to discuss revolutionary strategies.
Still splits in the Hoxhist camp solidified as minor oppositional formations emerged in the International Struggle Marxist Leninist (ISML) grouping and Eggers’ minnow Comintern [ML] Stalinist-Hoxhaist who declared war on the ICMPLO and CIPOML.
The Crisis in the Global North
After the death of Chairman Mao, the nature of global Maoism had begun to change, as an ideology it became less reliant on the backing of a state actor and saw it rooted more deeply in an indigenous interrogation and application by activists drawing principally on their analysis of the Cultural revolution.
Whereas the various streams of Trotskyism had unsuccessfully attempted to construct their version of the 4th International from the 1940s to the present day, it was not until the pivotal year 1977 that Albania’s ruling communist party serious attempt was made to rally an alternative international movement. It was in the following decade that there were three substantive attempts to co-ordinate the international alignment of a fractious and diverse maoist constellation of organisations, one of which was self-consciously described itself as “the embryonic centre of the world’s Maoists” until its demise towards the end of the first decade of the new century.
Discordant voices were those with a predisposition to question China’s continuing socialist credentials. The policy changes in China had its effect of weakening the radical enthusiasm and support for what was developing in China since Mao died. While some were quick to denounce the arrest of the “Gang of Four” by the Hua/Deng regime and speak in terms of a counter revolutionary coup.
Those who defended Mao and the Cultural Revolution without endorsing the enhanced status of the Gang of Four, were a small number in the late 1970s seen in the actions of the Marxistisch-Leninistischen Partei Deutschlands /MLPD who republished in various languages their views and analysis. [The flavour of the time was seen when after the death of Mao Zedong, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany and its predecessor KABD (Communist Workers’ League of Germany) analysed the revisionist development in China, documented in eight pamphlets published in the CHINA AKTUELL / “China Today” series, and made available online their analysis in English language editions, also posting excerpts from the series REVOLUTIONÄRER WEG on the restoration of capitalism in the People’s Republic of China issue. CHINA Restoration of capitalism in the People’s Republic of China]
Those whose allegiance remained with the CPC led by Hua Guofeng continued to form a much-reduced tendency. With the publication of the “Three Worlds theory” – seen as the strategic international line of the People’s Republic of China [and by default, pro-China organisations], there was a clearer break with former Albanian allies and their supporters and further fragmentation. Some could not survive the transition as a core of self-identifying pro-China groups were to spiral off into oblivion.
As the CPC re-established party-to-party links with revisionist parties the raison d’etre of separate maoist organisation was questioned: what happened to the lines of demarcation against modern revisionism? In China these were abandoned consigned to the undiscussed past. There was the utter condemnation of the Cultural Revolution and the analysis made by Mao since the mid-1950s that fed the post-Mao disillusionment. Other than the subjective element, difficult to quantify, what was observable was the political discrepancies of policy and political rhetoric as post-Mao China projected images and policies in domestic and foreign policies that were in sharp contrast to those upon which a pro-Mao, pro-China identification had been originally built. The waning enthusiasm in the relationship was mutual with little encouragement and minimal coverage of the surviving “pro-China” groups from China, and the suppression in China of mass protest in 1989 further reduced those nominally “pro-Beijing” groups.
These gradually no longer expressed pro-Chinese sentiments (choosing not to identify with an emerging capitalist power, unlike some revisionist surviving groups) but retained and reflected an ideological identification with what they considered the canon of Mao Zedong Thought, such as the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The early 1980s had seen confusion, disorientation and collapse within a couple of years of seemingly strong parties in Canada (Workers Communist party/WCP), USA (Communist Party Marxist-Leninist/ CPML) and Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands / KPD), Spain (Workers’ Revolutionary Organisation / Organización Revolucionaria de los Trabajadores/ ORT) and France (Parti Communiste Marxiste-Leniniste /PCML) sent shivers throughout the international movement and generated an awareness of a trend that developed whereby in the name of fighting dogmatism, a basic Leninist party building orientation was abandoned. As the Canadian WCP suggested, before succumbing to the same pressures,
“Rather than analysing its weakness in struggles and explaining and defending revolutionary positions, The KPD began question the possibility of revolution in Germany and, therefore, the need for a party to lead it.” Interview with Roger Rashi , October (Spring1981) Journal of the (Canadian) Workers Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist):14
There was a crisis in confidence expressed in March 1980 at the Third Congress of the KPD, when it voted for the dissolution of the organisation, “We know that we don’t have sufficient answers to decisive questions about today’s world situation and today’s task.” Semler & Plato. ‘Resolution to the Third Party Congress of the KPD. Rote Fahne Nr 5/1980
As organisations questioned past practices and policy positions, from the re-evaluation organisations fell under the impact of dissolution and ideological capitulation. Belden Fields records the explanation given in May 1982 by the French Maoist group, Pour I’Laternationale Proletarienne for disbanding the group: because it had “dissipated itself in concrete tasks, not knowing how to transform the general orientation into well-articulated activity corresponding to immediate reality.” A. Belden Fields. Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States. New York: Praeger. 1988
Many of the Maoist groups throughout Europe succumbed to society’s rechstruck (jump to the right) that characterised the Eighties with former activists moving into mainstream politics rather than other left formations. Membership in the post-Mao years stagnated: the Communist Union (KB) lapsed into lethargy by 1983 advising its members in Hamburg to join the Greens. In Germany, the ideological disintegration of the K-Groups was due in no small part to their inability to withstand the ideological competition and confrontation with the environmental movement. ‘The Liquidationist Tendency Within the Marxist-Leninist Movement’ adopted at the Second Congress of the Party of Labour of Belgium /PVDA-PTB in April 1983 spoke of the need for ideological consolidation and awareness of social democratic tendencies developing and disrupting ML forces.
Further evidence of this trend was in neighbouring France. The attempted unification of the PCML and PCRml in 1979-80 failed after the abandonment of the publication of the daily newspaper (which kept the name) ‘Le Quotidien du Peuple’ after being jointly published from January to April 1980. Each organisation went their separate ways: the PCRml becoming the PCR in 1981 and disappearing from the scene by 1983; the PCML suffers the same fate at its last Congress in June 1986.
The PCMLF that had supported the three world theory, moved near to social-democracy. The PCMLF, the result of a merger of the Intervention Communiste and the Union Revolutionaire Communistes de France/ URCF, approach the Socialist Party and at its 6th Congress of the PCML – (June 1986) – dissolves itself, creating the Parti Pour Alternative Communiste – the ‘Party for a Communist Alternative’ /PAC.
Jacques Jurquet, outgoing political Secretary, but also former secretary-general and founder of the PCML, withdrew from PAC because of its orientation towards the French Socialist Party. Jurquet attributed the failure of the organisation to a liberalism that rejected the ideological fight and accelerated political degeneration by seeking agreement without the foundation of principles.
See: Jurquet, Jacques (2001) À Contre-courant 1963-1986. Introduction by Jean-Luc Einaudi. Le Temps des Cerises, Pantin These memoirs (in French) cover the years 1963-1986, in which he was one of the leading figures in the French Maoist movement. Jurquet sketched the issues and controversies within the French Communist Party, which led him to choose the Maoist course and become one of the founders and leaders of the PCMLF.
Some small groups survived, such as the Dutch organisation, Groep Marxisten-Leninisten/ Rode Morgen [[Rotterdam-based ‘Marxist-Leninist Group/ Red Morning’] and Communist League of Luxembourg (Kommunistischer Bund Luxemburg) /KOL remaining with its founding Maoist principles but ceased activities in 1980. Others faded away: the lethargic Revolutionary Communist League of Britain/ RCLB quietly dissolved itself in April 1998 shortly after its last national gathering at the 1996 Hoxton conference. It had condemned the suppression of protestors during the Tian An Mein Square incident. Certainly the European movement had changed in composition and orientation.
1980s Changing stance of the Party of Labour of Belgium
Following Mao’s death there was readjustment in the political judgement that witnessed a prominent realigning in the changing stance of the Party of Labour of Belgium PTB/PVAD that mirrored a similar re-evaluation seen in China under Deng Xiaoping. There was a downgrading of ‘the Soviet threat’ as America under President Regan [1981-1989] was seen as more aggressive and dangerous and the emphasis on “The Three Worlds Theory” faded and shifted to focus on American Imperialism. The PTB abandoned (as did the Deng Xiaoping’s foreign policy) an analysis that Soviet Social Imperialism had become a superpower threat while maintaining criticism of hegemonic behaviour.
The PTB’s reading of Gorbachev leadership saw in the changes an opening up; PTB leader and theoretician, Ludo Martens (1946-2011) self-critically advised that “the party and state in the Soviet Union are more complex phenomena than we had thought”. By August 1987 the PTB/PVAD reversed its political judgement on the revisionist nature of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The PTB statement “Concerning Marxist-Leninist Unity” argued that communists could not “impose our idea of revisionism on all other parties” and that “we cannot demand that unity be based on this principle” (referring to Mao Zedong Thought).
What had evolved was the approach of the PTB, as expressed in 2004, that
“We continue to suffer from the regrettable splits in the past, which were due to important deviations, revisionist as well as sectarian and dogmatic.
In fact, the unity of the communists is not just an option, but an obligation. We must move beyond the past, without burying the discussion about the differences and without asking anyone to give up what he considers as principled. But it is absolutely necessary that the unity over the tasks of the future gains precedence over the differences of the past.”
The inclusion of self-declared communist forces into an internationalist co-operative relationship was seen (by the PTB) as essential components of rebuilding unity, the demarcation between Maoism and revisionism was regarded as a matter for the past; the overwhelming need was to consolidate the self-defined communist forces.
In 1985 the PTB had endorsed the principle of maintaining relations with communist parties “whose political line we consider as being right or left opportunist”. The arguments for such all-encompassing, and for the Left non-sectarian practice, gradually emerged in response to both changes in Chinese policies and were reflective of an ecumenical approach embracing former opponents in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.
Ludo Martens told an International Seminar to celebrate the centenary of Mao Zedong’s birth in 1992, “Concerning the Soviet Union, Mao also formulated the concepts of state capitalism, dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and fascist dictatorship of the Hitler type. In our opinion all these qualifications did not correspond to concrete reality of the Soviet Union…. [Mao] made arbitrary extrapolation from some very real but partial aspects of Soviet reality. “Mao was charged with not studying the phenomenon and labelling the Soviet Union as revisionist and imperialist when “it was not there in 1969.”
100 Years Mao Zedong Film Report on the International Seminar on November 6-7, 1993 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. VHS 60 minutes. Essen: Verlag Neuer Weg
The PTB called for solidarity, support and mutual aid amongst all communists. In looking at the roots of the divisions, the PTB concluded that the judgement of revisionist degeneration pronounced in 1963 “have been over-hasty and ungrounded.”
From 1992, the PTB was active through the annual International Communist Seminars in trying to rally a wide encompassing definition of what constituted the international communist movement, inviting contributions and speakers from across the Left political spectrum, included those formerly consigned to the political margins as ‘enemies of the working class’.
The annual May Day International Communist Seminars [ICS] organized in Brussels by the Party of Labour of Belgium proved successful in attracting a wide audience from many different political heritages as the PTB increasingly diverged from their origins as part of the Maoist anti-revisionist Marxist Leninist movement. (Although there are exceptions as reportedly the RCP, USA were disinvited from the 1997 seminar and while Bill Bland was invited to Brussels in 1995 he was denied speaking rights.) Such projects set aside the clear lines of distinction drawn in the historic line struggles waged by the CPC and PLA against revisionism.
The ideological diversity attracted representatives of ruling parties from North Korea and Cuba to the Brussel meetings and while some parties became more vocal in support for the positions of Cuba and North Korea, neither ruling parties could construct a substantial international group recognising its authoritative ideological leadership, while Vietnam was seldom mentioned.
The argument is that revisionism in power collapsed, so “old disputes” should no longer be an obstacle to co-ordinating forces of organisations on the same side of the barricade: Repeatedly the belief was proclaimed that “Whatever one’s opinion about the correctness or necessity of these splits at a certain point in history, it is nowadays possible to overcome these divisions and to unite the Marxist-Leninist parties which are divided into different currents.” Proposal from Parti Du Travail of Belgium and the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB)]. See also: 1995 | Ludo Martens | On certain aspects of the struggle against revisionism – For the unity of all communists, in defence of proletarian internationalism
The inability to agree on the past has consequences
The PTB issued ‘Proposals for the Unification of the International Communist Movement’ in May 1995 co-sponsored with the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB), as a means to encourage a process of theoretical and political realignment. Others continued to see such forces as those responsible for the initial divisions and destruction of the communist movement.
Different Leftist currents exist for a reason, and that heritage has a legacy in that each current offer contending analysis and perspectives. So, when one speaks about Khrushchev’s revisionism and the restoration of capitalism under Gorbachev and avoids the Brezhnev period when analysis inspired by Mao suggests that the Soviet Union had been thoroughly converted into a “Social Imperialist” entity. Disputes about the class nature of the Soviet Union is passed over and differences retained in the interests of pragmatic unity. Taking an agnostic stance on the merits of previously secured historical clarity is not attributed to other Leftists currents that would argue for an earlier date for the degeneration of the revolutionary project; outside the big tent are Trotskyists, left communists and anarchist currents. The Proposals were that such divisions can be overcome because they were now mere historical disputes as if those past judgements made were immaterial and without consequences or legacy: so what, dismissing the past realities of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia68, Afghanistan, Three World Theory, the Cultural Revolution, military role in Poland, Soviet foreign policy, Hoxha’s denunciation of former ally, Mao, Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea, invasion of Afghanistan etc.
The drive for internationalist solidarity that means the unity of views and actions may be for some a form of revolutionary nostalgia, sentimentally privileging the past at the expense of present concerns and the emotional reconstitution and preservation of revered histories. Against them is a past limiting progressive potential of a greater left unity, the idea of many forces on “our side” of the barricades facing a greater enemy. However, these “old disputes” involved political positions that were and are important: if they were wrong, mistaken or right affects subsequent decisions and notions of solidarity that were represented in past actions.
1990s: A decade of many international conferences
The 1990s was a busy decade that saw a repolarization of the international communist movement with rekindled interest in the need to regroup and coordinated communist parties in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact alliance. There has been a number of projects aimed at providing some kind of vehicle for unity of different organisation which self-declare their Marxist-Leninist commitment. These different streams, different venues, different organisations, were different and separate multilateral attempts to coalesce forces around a common position dependent of their ideological outlook. A partial listing illustrates the range of the scramble to overcome the deficiency, symbolic and practical, in their internationalist commitment.
1992+ Brussels annual May Day seminars
April 1992 Pyongyang Declaration
September 1992 Stuttgart Conference of 9 Marxist-Leninist parties from Europe
Essen 1993 – General Declaration on Mao Zedong Thought
September 1993 International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Dr Abimael Guzmán (IEC)
November 1993 European multilateral meeting of ML parties
December 1993 Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement declares that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism must be the commander and guide of the world revolution.
1994 Moscow Stalin today seminars
August 1994 Quito ICMLPO founding (journal “Unity & Struggle”)
March 1995 Ischia Conference (journal “International Struggle / Marxist-Leninist”)
May 1995 PTB Unity Proposals
May 1995 Sochi Statement at Anti-Imperialist Convention India, Socialist Unity Centre of India
July 1995 Unity & Struggle No.1
November 1997 Leningrad Declaration
1997 London – 2nd Conference “International Struggle / Marxist-Leninist”
December 1998 International seminar on Mao and People’s War
June 2001 Nine party declaration on formation of Co-ordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA) by RIM associates.
Drawing a line under the past may seem an attractive proposition in the face of a “common enemy”; not so attractive if they are strategically regarded as accomplices of that enemy. It is a different matter of co-operating and co-ordinating with co-thinkers than that of tactically working in alliance with a diverse (and often temporary) coalition of forces. Reserving judgement can disguise the suppression of genuine revolutionary positions. Do we now ignore those questions: Was the Soviet Union capitalist? Is China capitalist?
Not all parties fell in line behind the view that previous categorisation of the Soviet Union, as an aggressive capitalist power, was incorrect. In 1985, the Norwegian AKP (ML) reasserts the analysis of “the imperialist class content of the Soviet government administration”, and did not accept the view of the foreign policy as “only the result of ‘erroneous policy’ of great-power chauvinism.” Lysestol, Peder Martin (1985). The Soviet Union: Advanced Capitalism. Class Struggle – AKP (ML) International Bulletin – No17, July 1985 p10‐12 The following year, the MLPD organised an international “trial” against ‘social Imperialism and Modern Revisionism’ in Hamburg on March 15 1986 with 36 hours of testimony from 100 witnesses from 18 countries. On Charge –30 Years of betrayal of Socialism. Documentary film of the International Tribunal against social Imperialism and Modern Revisionism, 1986 62 min., colour video Verlag Neuer Wag
MLPD – ICMLPO to ICOR
The Marxistisch–Leninistische Partei Deutschlands/ MLPD remained an open critic of this strategy. Arguing that the PTB’s “neo-revisionism” blurred lines of political demarcation and served to rehabilitated the post-56 Soviet Union and its policies, by setting aside the historical ideological concerns of the polemics “anti-revisionism”, it undervalued the contribution of Mao with regards to theoretical understanding of the class restoration, and advances made within the Cultural Revolution.
While the PTB saw loss in the events of 1989-91, the MLPD “welcomed the complete bankruptcy of modern revisionism marked by the collapse of its centre in the Soviet Union”.
This was a major demarcation line in the Marxist-Leninist organizations. Whereas the PTB saw the collapse “as a setback for all communist and progressive forces” the MLPD declared,
“To this view we stand in complete contrast. The conviction of the MLPD is: the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a victory for imperialism, because the Soviet Union was an imperialist country socialist in words, imperialist in action.”
Increasingly in the 1980s, the MLPD was itself involved in an attempt to rally forces being the main organizational force, since 1988, behind a series of international meeting under the description of International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations/ICMLPO. Associated with ‘International Newsletter’ publication, ICMLPO was described as a forum of Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations, with participation based on the following main criteria:
Adherence to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought and their creative application in the conduct of the class struggle in each country.
Struggle against modern revisionism, and a positive attitude towards Stalin and Mao.
It played a major role in organising the International Seminar on the occasion the Centenary of Mao’s birth. Held in Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr district on November 6-7 1993, it attracted more than 900 participants from 32 countries and generated a video record and book of some of the contributions from the proceedings entitled Mao Zedong Thought Lives: Essays in commemoration of Mao’s centennial(1995)
However, the MLPD proved to emulate the PTB, adopting a more inclusive attitude to building co-operation and co-ordination between parties. The ICMLPO attempted to rally organisations towards a new co-ordinated International Communist Movement continued in the following decade with ICOR- International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations – founded October 2010 in Berlin, after three years preparatory work, had 41 organisations became founding members.
So, both European contending poles of attraction around the PTB and MLPD attempts at international communication, co-ordination and co-operation had seen both the ICOR and ICS groupings move away from their maoist identities and political allegiances, embracing an ecumenical dilution that included platforming fragments of the revisionist survivors of the end of the Soviet Union.
These attempts to re-institutionalise a communist movement that went beyond bi-lateral relationships did not receive unanimous support. Arguably, the most successful of the European Maoists, the AKP (ML) stated its position that:
“It is necessary to establish the fact that when struggling for a socialist Norway we can’t copy anyone. It is necessary to point out that there is no communist centre in the world that can present to us the correct line. We don’t even want such a centre to exist.”
In the Global North – the settled industrialised areas – maoist organisations generally wilted, restricted to the fringes and even seemingly promising parties like the AKP (ML) liquidated into the Red Party leaving behind a cadre grouping to fly the red banner of Maoism in Norway. Elsewhere, like in the once vibrant German scene, there was the MLPD left as the last party standing as the anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists proved incapable of making the transition from the initial impetus to organisational stability.
Consistently the Communist Party of the Philippines, the party engaged in the longest sustained armed struggle, basically maintained the bi-lateral relationship arrangements of previous years, although there was the swerve with engagement in some international initiatives like the conference around the journal Vanguard and co-operation MLPD. A different attempt at coordinating on an international scale was the creation of the non-party International League of People Struggle [ILPS] inspired by Communist Party of the Philippines leader-in-exile Jose Ma. Sison that compromised mass movements rather than overt political parties. It was a broad international anti-imperialist and democratic mass formation emulated by the smaller World People’s Resistance Movement that seems to lasted as long as RIM did.
In December 1998 an international seminar on Mao and People’s War on the initiative of the CPI(ML), Communist Party of the Philippines and, the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist, People’s War group saw 27 organizations represented in support of the practice of people’s war and the politics of new democracy. An invitation was extended to the Communist Party of Peru who did not attend. A short-lived website and international bulletin, Vanguard was established but no further international gatherings were sustained. The intention was to publicise the articles and news reports of Marxists-Leninist-Maoist parties, an ambition that found its expression in the present day Redspark website.
Since 1992, the ICS – International Communist Seminar – annually attracted organisations to Brussels, when it coincided with May Day celebrations organised by the Party of Labour of Belgium [later referred to as the Workers Party of Belgium /WPB]. Its “big tent approach” incorporated parties of varying degrees of revisionism. Around 200 organisations from throughout the world would take part. The WPB/PTB did politically distance themselves with the establishment of a separate seminar identity [with a separate, now defunct website, https://icseminar.org%5D and moving away physically from their May day celebrations. The last seminar, the 22nd, took place in June 2014.
The competing European initiative, the ICMPLO, associated with the MLPD, also attracted attendance that was politically inclusive. Its designation as Marxist=Leninist incorporates a variety of organisations but few overtly from the anti-revisionist milieu that the MLPD originally grew from. Speaking at the unveiling of the first Lenin statue in West Germany, Gabi Fechtner nee Gärtner-Engel, leader of the MLPD since April 2017, stated,
“To make it clear: I am neither a Stalinist nor a Maoist – the same goes for the entire MLPD. But we defend the achievements of socialism – and also the representatives of socialism, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.”
ICMPLO transformed in 2010 emerging as ICOR / International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations. Its existence had outlasted the ICS; they would argue they have thrived:
“With pride we can say: ICOR has become the living and initiative exponent of the revolutionary associations of the world. Without splits, signs of disintegration or liquidationist quarrels. But considering the tasks the future poses for the revolutionaries of the world, the ICOR is still in its infancy and still has a lot to learn and to build up.” News — ICOR
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of ICOR, MLPD’s Peter Weispfenning, myopically stated the growth of ICOR to more than 60-member organisation,
“is certainly one of the most important proofs that the international Marxist-Leninist and working-class movement has successfully passed the valley of decline.”
ICOR now re-emphasises the importance of founding an Anti-imperialist and Anti- fascist United Front. The initiative of AIAFUF criticised as an eclectic front with revisionism and opportunism by theCommunist Party of Brazil (Red Fraction) /PCB(RF) engaged ina distinct parallel ideological offensive
The original call came from a joint appeal by the ILPS and ICOR in December 2019. What is envisaged was that the United Front would be a movement of allied organizations without democratic centralism and a costly and expensive apparatus, so not a new Comintern-type arrangement. A challenging timetable was set with the promise that “The Front will be launched before the end of June 2020.” The global pandemic interrupted the timetable. A founding conference now planned for September 2023. https://ilps.info/en/2019/12/30/call-for-building-the-international-anti-imperialist-and-antifascist-united-front/
RIM: Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
In the 1980s the re-grouping in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and the European contenting poles of attraction around the PTB and MLPD, could not disguise that Maoism’s mass appeal was in the Global south where the maoist slogans still found a resonance in lives lived. While some parties had succumbed to oblivion – in Thailand and Burma – the Philippines’’ party sustained a people’s war led by Maoists. In India the flames of Naxibri radicalism continued to inspire and drive some to armed rebellion. There was a societal destabilising eruption of armed struggle in Peru and then later in Nepal, led by self-proclaimed Maoists. It was RIM/Revolutionary Internationalist Movement that became associated with this upsurge in revolution and people’s war.
There is also a fundamental question raised by, amongst others, Jose Maria Sison, and repeated in his 2019 interviewed on the 50th Anniversary of Communist Party of the Philippines:
“The CPP has opposed the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) seeking to impose the principle of democratic centralism on communist parties in violation of the principle of equality and independence among them.
At the same time, RIM exaggerated the status and role of the RCPUSA. Since the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, communist and workers’ parties have become equal to each other and independent from each other.
There has been no Comintern Executive Committee to treat them as national sections of a world party.”
Maoism, in the west, largely faded. Those who self-identified as maoist-inspired were mainly at the political margins of their societies. In those developed industrialised nations, the inability to articulate a revolutionary strategy appropriate to a society vastly different from that that spoke of peasants, landlords and comprador bourgeoisie, did see a decline in the idealist attachment to a distant society like China that began to embrace capitalist market mechanism and the philosophy and culture that accompanied it. What Mao had warned about since the late 1950s, worked to prevent through the Cultural Revolution, had come about: the victory of revisionism in China.
In the autumn of 1980, a communique signed by 13 non-ruling maoist organisation was addressed “To the Marxist-Leninists, The workers and The Oppressed of All Countries” quickly followed by a position paper prepared jointly by the leaders of the Chilean Revolutionary Communist Party, Partido Communita Revolucionarico /PCR and the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA/RCP,USA led by Bob Avakian. They jointly announced a defence of Mao, the Gang of Four and the Cultural Revolution to rally international support. This laid out the basic principles for the unity of Marxist-Leninists and the line of the International communist movement.
It was in March 1984 that a second congress of seventeen organisations from fourteen different countries adopted the founding declaration of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement/RIM which adhered to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
January 1985 saw, “on the same side of the barricade” but not an official publication of RIM (in all but name), the relaunch of “A World to Win”/ AWTW. Two previous editions had appeared, the first contained an article by Sri Lankan veteran Leader, Sanmugathasan, entitled “Enver Hoxha Refuted”. After 32 issues it ceased publication in 2004.
RIM included such notable organizations as the Communist Party of Peru /PCP, also known as “Sendero Luminoso” or “Shining Path,” the Communist Party of Nepal Maoist, later known as the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)/UCPN(M), the Union of Iranian Communist (Sarbedaran).
RIM presented itself as “the embryonic centre of the world’s maoist” although absent from its ranks were major parties engaged in armed revolution (like in the Philippines and India). It regrouped a core of parties who were initially characterised as pro-Gang of Four and against the revisionist betrayal in China, maintaining a Late Maoism focus on the value of the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, in December 1993, under Peruvian influence, RIM formally adopted Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and “advanced further still in the direction of a communist international of a new type” AWTW #23 1998 p74
How far they were sharply demarcated from other tendencies which had developed out of the previous maoist movement? On the Struggle to Unite the Genuine Communist Forces looked at the principles and forces that RIM was looking towards in its unity drive AWTW #30 (2004)
The latter half of the 21st century’s new decade saw RIM near defunct as many of the one-time RIM organizations have become increasingly critical of each other. The intensified tensions within RIM were not unrelated to the setback of the capture of the Peruvian revolutionary leader Guzman.
What can be said concerning the struggle in, what consisted itself, the International Communist Movement on the role of Chairman Gonzalo was that it was inconclusive, failing to address some of the issues raised in the theory and practice of the Peruvian revolution. It continues to provoke responses as the French organisation OCML-Voie Prolétarienne [Marxist-Leninist Communist Organisation – Proletarian Way] noted in May 1990 expressing support for the Communist Party of Peru “because the positive aspects by far outweigh the reservations and criticisms we are duty bound to raise.” When such reservations were critically raised in its 2017 article “On People’s War in Peru, the betrayal by the leadership of the PCP and the capitulation of Gonzalo”, they argued: “The way we understand the world is guided by dialectical materialism, not romantic idealism!”
An unrelated posting (in August 2018) by frequent commentator on the Democracy & Class Struggle website, Harsh Thakor, Resurrecting Flame of Gonzalo Thought and Peruvian Peoples War, provides a brief survey of some elements that contributed to the reversal in fortune for the Communist Party of Peru at the end of the last century. He begins by stating that: No doubt Chairman Gonzalo is the greatest Marxist-Leninist-Maoist leader after Chairman Mao…… I disagree it was Gonzalo who wrote the peace letters in Jail after 1992….”
Disagreements has resulted in many public splits with the RCP USA condemning the UCPN(M) as revisionist after the Nepalese party abandoned its people’s war for parliamentary participation. Only in turn for the RCP USA to be criticized by many of RIM’s surviving members for attempt to foist a “new synthesis” and an “undisputed leadership” of Bob Avakian upon the international communist movement. Such a move was subjected to wide criticism such as in Against Avakianism by Comrade Ajith (K. Murali). Due to growing internal problems and differences RIM ceased functioning around 2007, though there was apparently never any public announcement that the organization was disbanding. It was the “Special Resolution” published on May 1st, 2012 that formalized the liquidation of RIM, signed by The C(m)PA, together with CPm Italy and the then CPI ML-Naxalbari . [see Maoist Road website]
A factor to the differences in assessment and evaluation of its historical legacy is evident in the documents and line struggle that has emerged over the contemporary response to the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement [RIM] that has shaped the current positions in the call for overcoming the great dispersion of forces which characterized the ICM over the recent decades.
The main subjective cause of the emergence and dominance of revisionism within RIM were suggested to be
“the incorrect method of secret discussion of differences, tolerance with opportunist tendencies given the excessive cult of personality and thinking of leaders that long ago had taken flight in the movement; concessions to opportunism that handcuffed to the parties when revisionism openly rose in the ranks of the RIM, and they condemned to their Committees – gnaw it by cancer revisionist avakianism – to silent before revisionist betrayal vile of the revolution in Nepal, to the proletariat, to MLM and to the own statements of RIM, all of which led to its bankruptcy.” UOC (MLM):137
Furthermore, “made common cause with the false Maoism “new” PCN(M) whose lie and program required full compliance with the Peace Agreement of 2006.The betrayal they don’t see in the agreement but rather the politicking by Prachanda and Bhattarai inside the reactionary state. They have not broken with the revisionist line of “Prachanda Path” or are afraid to admit were wrong.”
“RIM was liquidated by revisionism’s handling of the two-line struggle. The maneuver of Avakian was, to state – as a starting point of his “criticism” of the second Right Opportunist Line, revisionist and capitulationist, in Peru – that supposedly “the author would not matter, only the line”, which precisely led to centering the debate on who “the author” was. Or did this miserable not know that the communists of the world would rise when their Great Leadership was questioned? This is how the two-line struggle was derailed. The Problem for the left in the ICM was the hard and complex situation in which the PCP entered after the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo.”
The Communist Party of Brazil (Red Faction) repeated similar concerns:
“RIM ceased to play a positive role when the revisionists of the “RCP” from United States – taking advantage of the problematic situation of the left due to the bend in the People’s War in Peru – turned to totally hegemonize it.” false leaders such as Prachanda and Bathharai or failed prophets like Avakian were exposed and demoralized as “new revisionism”, opposed to Maoism.”
The response to the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo, and subsequent development in the Peruvian revolutionary struggle proved to be a destabilising fissure within the various supporting groups enmeshed in the polemical fight around the ROL – Right Opportunist Line – and elements within its leadership supporting RIM’s implication of the imprisoned Gonzalo as its author.
Others from within the broadly defined international communist movement have also raised criticisms and objections of the paean of praise e,g Stefan Engel of the MLPD. The contributions of Chairman Gonzalo, uncritically evaluated (the revolution in Peru had lost momentum), was presented by some as a Universalist checklist, divorced from analysis of concrete conditions. What might be applicable lost in a mantra of learnt reiteration unthinkingly repeated and lifeless in homages in anniversary speeches. If the contribution of Guzman seems ill-served by those who praise him, those who long spun out of any Maoist orbit with its advocacy of the “new synthesis”, had their partisan AVAKARIANIST view of the developments within RIM:
“These past fourteen years have seen major developments, including the collapse of RIM itself. Not only are some of the forces previously united in RIM now sharply opposed to each other, the previous understanding of revolutionary communism itself has, to borrow Mao Zedong’s term, “divided into two”. One strand of the old Maoism has wound up in a social-democratic liquidation of the core revolutionary principles of Marxism, exemplified tragically in the capitulation of the Maoist leadership in Nepal and the termination of the revolutionary war there. Others from the previous MLM movement are stuck in a dogmatist, religious-like upholding of sterile “Maoist” formulas that are equally devoid of revolutionary content. In opposition to this, Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism has fully emerged, rescuing the scientific kernel of communism while criticizing and repudiating those secondary aspects in the past understanding and actions of communists that have actually gone against communism’s liberatory nature.”
Despite its chequered history and political legacy, RIM was arguably the most successful attempt to rally overtly maoist forces in an international association. Its experience lurks in the background of contemporary attempts to regroup MLM forces. It failed to perform its function as political disagreements stalled the organisation as parties’ divergent paths (terminatable with the adoption of “A New Synthesis” by the American Revolutionary Communist Party) disrupted its ideological basis, and the split in the thriving Nepali communist movement with the bourgeois republican divergence in Pranchanda’s Path.
A number of parties formally affiliated with the RIM (principally the Communist Party of Italy (Maoist), the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) [Naxalbari]) released a series of public statements calling for the two-line struggle that had been raging inside the RIM to be made public. It is also clear that the RCP, USA played an especially factionalizing role in the RIM, especially by organizing the CoRIM on factional lines
A sterile silo polemic with Avakianists followed the three-party “Special Resolution”, with “Letter to Participating Parties and Organizations of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement”, by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA made public on July 3, 2012; this had a short appendix responding specifically to the 3-Party Initiative on May Day 2012.
The various positions from organisations were repose in the shadow of the RIM’s demise and attempt to start a process of politically summing up the experience of the RIM, thus beginning a process that could inform the revived debate inside the international Maoist movement as to whether a new international coordinating body was necessary, and if so, how such a body would be organized as to avoid the problems that were experienced in both the Comintern and the RIM.
Two principle issues of the debate have been known to all for a while i.e. the situation in Nepal and the controversy regarding Bob Avakian’s “New Synthesis”. An underlying issue was that the beginning of the end for the RIM was the division that was fermented in the RIM regarding the situation in Peru. The political summation of the situation in Peru and the Right Opportunist Line (ROL). However, it is understandable that the movement in Peru continues to grapple with its relationship with Chairman Gonzalo.
The Afghan Maoists publicly circulated two documents critiquing the New Synthesis – one in relation to the RCP(USA)’s Manifesto and Constitution and the other, the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)’s adoption of the New Synthesis in sharp and uncompromising terms.
One of the founding groups of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the CPI(ML)[Naxalbari] provided an account of the increasing centralization of authority with the RCP, USA and parties that are sympathetic to its line, at the expense of bilateral relations between the different RIM parties and a proper leadership role for parties actually engaged in people’s wars like the Peruvians, Nepalese and Indians. Furthermore, the CPI(ML) [Naxalbari] explain how the co-ordinating and directing structure of the Committee of RIM / CoRIM increasingly was unable to dispense with its duties in a democratic manner, as was seen in the case of Peru and the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo. Indeed, it becomes apparent that the CoRIM did not consult with the Movement as a whole on a host of issues and thus was unable to advance to a form of agreement. RIM collapsed.
21st Century Maoism is a different force than in the previous century when it was identified with a state power. Its’ 21st century manifestation inspired not by contemporary politics of China, but an understanding of the legacy and that bequeathed in past Maoist practice. Maoists drew upon their understanding and analysis of the experience of communists in the struggles in China, and the appreciation of that that spread globally in the latter half of the 20th century. The shared canonlogical perspective on the importance of the ideological compass and tactical flexibility that Maoism had demonstrated on China’s terrain was not always demonstrated by those who upheld the contribution of Mao and the Communist Party of China.
The International Maoist movement had suffered setback of deflection and disintegration, a period of political chaos and readjustment, as remaining veterans and new recruits navigated the shifting political terrain has engaged in debate and shaped the evolution of a unified communist movement.
There was a legitimate question of definition for Maoists that emerged in the last quarter of the Twentieth century, and remained a contested question in the first quarter of the 21st century. In the latter half of the previous century the history of the anti-revisionist Marxist Leninist movement could not be reduced to the identification with the China of Mao Zedong. That would be a crude distortion of the movement’s own dynamics and inspiration, and disregard its own interaction with the societies it was based.
Still, for over a decade, the question of naming names occupied many activists for what you called your politics was taken to represent a philosophy and political approach in the pursuance of revolutionary change. The promotion of the ideological dominance of Maoism as a third stage, not simply replacing the Sixties cumbersome ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought’, was an assertion of historical interpretation and contemporary analysis that ‘Maoism Lives!’
A contemporary Maoist intellectual – J.Moufawad-Paul, henceforth JMP – articulated what seems to be a counter-intuitive view that Maoism, as an ideological trend, came forth in the first decade of the 21st century, and rooted in an earlier Peruvian elucidation by the founder-leader of the CPP, Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, also known by his nom de guerre Chairman Gonzalo (1943-2021). While Mao Zedong Thought was a common reference point in the ant-revisionist movement of the 1960s, however JMP argued that, even since the Chinese communists broke from Soviet hegemony, “then it was simply short-hand for a dominant current of anti-revisionist communism.” JMP asserts that the theoretical developments produced by the Chinese Revolution under Mao Zedong represented a development in universal revolutionary theory. That it should be regarded as a new stage in revolutionary communism, was said to have been articulated by the Communist Party of Peru/ PCP at the end of the 1980s. And following the early assertions of the PCP, that RIM would finally declare in 1993 “Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!” MLM. It is this moment, moving into the 1990s that Maoism is said to have crystalized as an actual theoretical current.
JMP with revolutionary optimism argues in his 2012 article,
“Maoism, then, is just over two decades old, far younger than Marxism was at the time of the Russian Revolution, and already there have been significant attempts to pursue its operationalization: Peru, Nepal, India… There will be more attempts, and the RIM will rear its head again, and the 21st century will not only be a century of great rebellious upheaval––as is every period of crisis––but it will be for anti-capitalists, in many ways and despite banal movementist claims, the maoist century, just as the 20th century, regardless of the tiny counter-currents of anarchism and reformism, the Leninist century.”
A Diversion into Third Worldism
At the fringes of the movement there were other ideological stirrings that were eventually offered as an alternative path to follow. One was the state-sponsored Juche idea associated with the heredity regime in the People’s Republic of Democratic Korea, the other a transnational analysis based on the political economy of imperialism. Deviations to more fringe allegiances in either a Juche or Third worldism orientation was noticeable amongst individuals rather than organisations (even when posing as an organisation). The technology of the Internet gave such individuals a greater profile than their actual effectiveness in real life. The substitution of a digital existence and argumentation rather than real life collective engagement proved a comfortable individualistic existence that allowed commentary on issues and proved the Eleventh Theses on Feuerbach as set out by Karl Marx.
Set aside from consideration of MIM initiatives are those grouped as a kind of internet fraternity of like-minded individuals detached from their supposed maoist roots. Those individual commentators and grouplets whose existence were advertised principally as a digital existence, posting online reflecting a “third wordlist” perspective.
While interesting not materially substantial or sustainable, never a unified tendency and like the post-RIM ‘Avakianists’ and their “new synthesis”, Maoist-Third Worldist claim their ideological positions represents a breakthrough in revolutionary science, one that makes previous ones obsolete. A position shared with those few upholding Juche theory’s universalisms.
While the concept and application of the term “third World” has a broader history, in the context of the international maoist movement, its specific evolution can be traced from an interpretation of what constituted proletarian internationalism and solidarity with struggles in the global south. It found expression in the politics associated with Gotfred Appel, and the Kommunistisk Arbjdskreds /KAK formed in Danmark in 1963, and in the American-based tendency from a small group called RADACADS (for RADical ACAdemics) around Harvard University. This evolved into the Maoist Internationalist Movement / MIM headed by Henry Park. From its foundation in 1983 building on the familiar notion that the labour aristocracy in imperialist countries were fundamentally counter-revolution; a labour preserved at extext.org.archive.
MIM dissolved in early 2008 following a post that asked, “Where we are at theoretically at the end”. Henry Park (who wrote as MIM3/MC3) had personally difficult last few years dying in May 2011. Tributes from former comrades stated their belief that they had “always recognised MIM as a leader of the international communist movement from its foundation in 1983 to the middle of the past decade.”
There were a few spin-offs from MIM’s disappearance, the maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prison, and the IRTR website (It’s Right To Rebel). IRTR, associated with ‘Paire Fire’ and ‘Serve the People’ acted to extend its ideological perspective from MIM’s “communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism from the vantage point of the Third World Proletariat”. An attempted political rehabilitation of Lin Biao during this period saw a ripple of interest in the digital blogosphere but IRTR could not retain its unity of purpose. There was a triumvirate of activists that emerged from its disintegration; from 2009 Monkey Smashes Heaven /MSH internet presence focused on cultural production of Shubel Morgan found on YouTube; while from 2010 Nick Brown provided Third-Worldist maoist news and analysis via (now defunct) anti-imperialism.com until the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement / RAIM disbanded in 2019. The short-lived Organisation for the Liberation of Oppressed Peoples reproduced a collection of its writings in “Selected Essays”. The miniscule Leading Light Communist Organisation/ LLCO emerged as a third strand to this tendency.
There was some credulity and appeal in the emergent Third Worldism, theoretically informed by the contributions of the likes of Henry Park and Zak Cope and the endeavours found in various publications. [Cope, Divided World Divided Class Kersplebedeb, 2012; The Wealth of (Some) Nations: Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer Pluto Press, 2019; A Thousand Truths: Maoist (Third Worldist) FAQ 2014; N.Brown’s Third-Worldism Marxist Critique of Imperialist Political Economy 2013 and The Weapon of Theory: A Maoist (Third Worldist) Reader].
The LLCO – which Jason Unruhe of Maoist Rebel News/ MRN “authoritatively” describes as the foremost Third Worldist group – produced The Sun Rises In The East that provides an outline of “Maoism-Third Worldism”. Summarising what it considered lessons since the Cultural Revolution, it advocates a new universal stage of revolutionary struggle. Although the identification with Maoism was eventually discarded it did draw upon a number of lines of Marxist enquiries to underscore its radicalism.
However, the tendency was subject to critique from Maoists who saw it an ultra-left move away from a revolutionary strategy for change into dead-end rhetoric. The (now defunct) Maoist blogsite, Democracy and Class Struggle announced:
“in 2014 our revisionist targets were Prachandism and Avakianism, in 2015 it will be LLCO’s Lin Biaoism…. The Leading Light Communist Organisation now completely embraces Lin Biaoism and sees Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a ladder to climb to new position and then throw it away.” They described the LLCO ass stranded on a hillock unable to reach the summit of revolutionary change. LLCO no longer considered itself a maoist organisation, claiming to uphold Leading Light Communism. Founder-leader, Brennen Ryan, self-identifying genius, said, “I think of Maoism a lot like Maoists once used to think of Hoxhaism, as “dogmatic revisionism”. I see it as a dead trend and a dead end.” Ryan died in 2019.
There were the individual internet contributions that had clear differences between them but politically worked within the same direction of movement even if of marginal impact, their amplified opinions competing for an audience. There was political commentary (of varying quality) from the North American-based Celticfire and Leftspot, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, and the supposed “social media star” of MRN. Internet spats and personal attacks peppered their exchanges.
Other known manifestations involved a Peruvian tendency, mainly based in exile, that spun out of the experience around Peru People’s Movement /MPP and its dog-attack Red Sun website. Other inspired, and possibly venturing beyond “Gonzaloism”, includes the work of the French site, lesmaterialistes.com. Guiding Thought grew from Franco-Belgium endeavours, principally the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist centre of Belgium and Communist Party of France (Marxist Leninist Maoist) joined by the sceptically-regarded Organisation of the Workers of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist).
Around 2010 there have been efforts accelerated by some to try to resurrect a new internationalism, of re-establishing a RIM mark 2, or else some new international Maoist organization. This took the form of projects and networks advertised on the internet like the Maoist Road blog . The emergence of a Gonzaloist trend in the second decade of the century saw a minor constellation coalesce on the basis of a prescriptive exclusivity that had a sense of theatre without sustained impact. It became clear that these were advancing contending foundations for any new regrouping of MLM forces.
May Day 2019, fifteen organisations pledge to organize a preparatory meeting this year for an International Joint Conference of the MLM parties and organizations stating this was a call for a unity based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, on the path of people’s war for the development of the world proletarian revolution. 2019 MayDay Red and Internationalist !
Other groupings equally publicize that they were making strides towards holding the ‘United Maoist International Conference’ UMIC. that started as an initiative in the Meetings of MLM Parties and Organizations in Latin America associated with Communist Party of Brazil – Red Fraction and Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun. A declared objective pursued since May 2016 and their 5th Meeting of MLM Parties and Organizations of Latin America, parties and organizations.
What was foreseen was that the proposed International Maoist International Conference would “seal and open. It will seal an entire stage of struggle of the communists in the struggle against the dispersion of forces and open a new phase in the struggle of the Communists for the reconstitution of the Communist International.”.
These public pronouncements were part of the ideological struggle to revive and prepare for the gathering of Maoists all over the world; what is anticipated will be a leap forward in the development of the Internationalist Communist Movement and encouragement in the formation of Maoist communist parties in each country. However, what transpired was that engagement in a disembodied ideological struggle had strengthen the self-isolation of currents within “global Maoism” from each other, and brought forth rhetorical good intentions, however each saying to the other that they had not understood what Maoism involved.
The experience of the Covid pandemic temporarily paused any attempt to achieve a large unified international conference of all the MLM Parties and Organizations. There was a reinforcement of the trenches. There was a joint proposal signed by the Committee for Building the Maoist Communist Party, Galicia, Spanish State, Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, Communist Worker Union (MLM) – Colombia and the Maoist Communist Party – Italy to act as the promotors to convene the Unified International Conference with bilateral and multilateral meetings; an attempt to move the process forward amidst the pandemic.
Canadian sceptics
The problems of establishing and agreeing a general orientation involved in uniting on a common platform was raised by the Canadian PRC-RCP – the Quebec Continuator group – that lays into the Communist Party of Brazil (Red Fraction), Red Guard/Struggle Sessions group, the Maoist Communist Party in France, and domestically swipes at “intellectual revisionist Joshua Moufawad-Paul”. ‘Maoism as in itself: against the idealism of the “mainly Maoist” current’ Iskra January 26, 2020.
Canadian critics of all the “participants” in these internationalists architectural drive argued that, “recent events have confirmed that not only are the idealistic and the true Maoists not part of the same movement, but that this scenario will never happen. Indeed, the political options defended on both sides are so divergent that they are unassimilable to each other.” Maoism as in itself: against the idealism of the “mainly Maoist” current. Iskra January 26, 2020
Factional fighting and name calling maybe features on the road to demarcation but could the direction of travel be to a unitary destination? Dismissive of the whole engagement in the international project of communication, co-operation and co-ordination – they were never members of RIM – the Canadian group thought not:
“Currently, there is no, such a thing as an international Maoist movement per se. What exists are Maoist parties and organizations with more or less strong links between them, and in many cases without links at all. For a movement to exist, there must be unity, even if it is relative: common objectives, regular exchanges of experience, close collaboration and solid organizational links. If there is no unity at all, there is no movement. In history, the only time that an international Maoist movement actually existed was when the Internationalist Revolutionary Movement (RIM) was in place. Ironically, this experience, the partisans of the idealist tendency reject it under the pretext that the RIM defended a “disjointed and eclectic” conception of Maoism. The PCB (RF) declared that “in today’s world, unlike the founding or existence of the RIM, a revitalized international communist movement has flourished and developed”. This is a mind-blowing statement totally disconnected from the real world situation.” https://www.iskra-pcr-rcp.ca/2020/01/26/le-maoisme-tel-quen-lui-meme-contre-lidealisme-du-courant-principalement-maoiste/ January 26, 2020
However, these critics were unlikely to be invited by any of the proposed international conferences as, by definition, they exclude themselves in their quirky conclusion that
“the Chinese cultural revolution, although a highly positive experience and one with fundamental lessons, has a lesser importance that the experience of more than twenty years of armed struggle and united front preceding the seizure of power in 1949. We say that it is mainly – if not almost entirely – in the experience of the prolonged people’s war in China that Maoism finds its material origin, and only in a secondary way in the cultural revolution.”
This, a marginal position, reverses the roots of Maoists for the last half century and predates (and negates) consideration of the cultural revolution as the greatest and most original contribution of Mao to the development of Marxism-Leninism in order to combat modern revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism. It is a position that dismisses the struggles over Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, Maoism and continuity and rupture that has drawn the contours of 21st Century Maoism.
The advice from the Maoist era was clear: “the CPC, to its credit, refused a hegemonic role…and constantly drummed into overseas Maoists the need to think independently about their own conditions” Biel, Robert (2015) Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement. Montreal: Kersplebedeb p162.
It is the position, the Philippine party has long argued, that there is no need for a “father-party” and that bi-lateral relations should be the standard relationship with internationalist relationship – In 1994 guidelines for such relationships stated:
“The CPP favors bilateral relations with foreign parties as the principal form of its international relations. Bilateral relations logically and necessarily follow from the principle and reality of the integrity and independence of the CPP as well as its equality with every foreign party with which it relates. The CPP can better handle its bilateral relations than multilateral ones in ideological and political terms and in the most concrete forms of cooperation. “Guidelines on International Relations of the Communist Party of the Philippines GuidelinesOnIntlRelations-CPP-1994
Trying to make concrete the notion of ‘global Maoism’, the various searches for consolidation witnessed evidence of an enduring transnational ideological appeal offered from South America. In one camp much of the theoretical justification drew upon the work of the Communist Party of Brazil – Red Fraction in El Maoista magazine. An emerging network of fraternal groups raised fundamental questions in advancing a two-line struggle in the international communist movement. These groups were principally advancing the contribution of the universal validity of Gonzalo Thought and of People’s war in their particular understanding of Maoism.
Simply put: Chairman Gonzalo has hoisted higher the flag of Maoism and if that contribution – “the universal validity contributions of the Gonzalo Thought” – is not acknowledged, absolved and actioned, then you are not a Maoist. That definition excludes the Maoist organizations leading the most advanced revolutionary movements today, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of the Philippines. The contested argument is that:
“Currently there are four people’s wars that exist today, in Peru, in Turkey, in India and in the Philippines. They are the axis in the proletarian world revolution. In the international communist movement, the red banner for uniting the movement under Maoism and people’s war is being raised.”
The focus on the nature and form of the revolutionary party and a universalist task of initiating the People’s War as a strategy for those in imperialist countries separates maoist organisations with some of those engaged in armed struggle against it (as with the Communist Party of the Philippines), while others in far from favourable conditions, supporting it. See posting Protracted people’s war as a strategy for the imperialist countries
Equally intent to unite the various self-identifying Maoist strands beyond the principles of mutual support, cooperation and mutual or common benefit, an alternative view from South America, that illustrates some of the difficulties in arriving at an agreed position, was in the Columbian analysis that covers the divisions in historical legacy and contemporary strategy. Proposal for developing a General Line for Unity of the International Communist Movement. Negation of the Negation , Organo teorico de la Union Obera Comunista (MLM) No.5 August 2016 [English language edition] 2016 Communist Worker Union (mlm) Columbia General Line.
Internationalism is in the DNA of the politics
“The Communist party of each country must be a contingent of the International Communist movement, a section of the International and its struggle, part of the world struggle for communism that subordinates the interests of the struggle in each country to the interests of the World Proletarian Revolution.” UOC (MLM): 139
The UOC (mlm) argues that organisationally the form should be a world party of the proletariat and not a World Federation of proletarian parties. The Columbian’s view advanced a scaffolding of attributes and policies to build the new internationalism, specifying support for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the fight against oppression of women, and “work on the preparation and development of People’s War taking the specific conditions of each country” [UOC (MLM): 149] among others as tasks expected of the Party “as part of the new International and directed by it.” UOC (MLM): 150
This theoretical proposition would have dubious practicality and impact in real world struggles. Without collaboration in actual policies or coordination of a general outlook, where is the internationalism in collective decision-making? The UOC (mlm) is not alone in believing that the way forward is to push the ideological struggle, to rally the like-minded and draw lines of demarcation to create a smaller but coherent movement. However, putting the debate in context, the political identification for any grouping amounts to less than twenty committed organisations, far less than what would have been marshalled back in the mid-1960s. And, even as RIM was conceived as an embryonic political centre however the type of International that would emerge was less certain.
“Work to finalize the new Communist International, task that does necessary to clarify in the ideologically to unite politically and build the organisation. The union of Marxist Leninist Maoist in the Program for the World Proletarian Revolution, for Socialism and Communism, is not possible without the principled and intransigent struggle against opportunism, without close ties between the communist organisations in different countries, agreeing joint political campaigns internationally, materially contributing to the tasks, organising meetings or conferences where expands and debates issues of historical experience, the current political situation and the General Line, practicing the method of start from a base unit to fight for conquer a greater degree of unity.” UOC (MLM): 148
Mapping out the existing divisions
The most obvious demarcation line within the self-identifying Maoist movement is the analysis and evaluation of the Peruvian experience led by Abimael Guzmán, universally known throughout his party career as chairman Gonzalo. These differences impact on the conclusions drawn and lessons learnt, and are reflected in the strategic way forward.
The tendency influenced by the Communist Party of Brazil (Red Fraction) /PCB(RF) argued its fundamentalist position the problem in the international communist movement is not primarily related to the fact that Maoism is not formally recognized, but rather to the way some conceive it.
“… this is why it is important to start with who defined Maoism as the new, third and superior stage of our ideology; because it is only by starting from what was scientifically established by Chairman Gonzalo that we can understand Maoism as one unit, as one harmonic system. If one does not take the work of Chairman Gonzalo as a starting point, one falls into eclecticism, counterpoising quotes but not understanding the ideas.” This has become a minority position as other voices contest from a variety of contributions in disagreement with the analysis of what was identified as a “Gonzaloist” tendency.
Critical Opposition to Gonzalism
Unlike, and in opposition to the CPB (RF), other organisations express reservations about uncritical wholesale adoption of Gonzalo Thought.
“Deviationist efforts to impose formulations based on Gonzalo Thought over the entire international Maoist movement will not have a positive outcome” stated the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, in a wide ranging criticism that, “a one-dimensional/uncritical adulation of the PCP still exists amongst some Maoist parties and organizations, particularly Latin American parties and organizations, and this should also be eliminated by ideological-political struggles.”
The C(M)PA maintained that “it is necessary that––alongside the principled theoretical, ideological and political struggles based on MLM against Avakian’s New Synthesis and Prachanda Path revisionisms––a struggle should also be waged against the deviation that has emerged as Gonzalo Thought. The C(M)PA is no longer obliged to keep the struggles against the latter internal but deems it totally necessary to begin carrying out such a struggle at the international level.”A Glimpse at the Joint International Statement Sholajwid # 17, June 2018 (sholajawid.org) For a critical commentary see Red PAGES Issue Number 1: January 2021, The Debate on Gonzaloism in the International Communist Movement: On the Recent Exchange Between the C(M)PA and the CPB(RF)
The Afghanistan organisation explicitly argued that Gonzalo thought “is continuing to play a negative historical role and was even behind the composition of a joint international statement in celebration of international workers day to promote sectarianism…”. Whilst others have generalised criticism of concepts associated with the Peruvian struggle in particular, the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan statement emphasised that alongside MLM struggles against Avakian’s New Synthesis and Prachanda Path style revisionism–– “a struggle should also be waged against the deviation that has emerged as Gonzalo Thought.” “A Glimpse at the Joint International Statement of the Eight Latin American Maoist Parties and Organizations.
The Communist Party of Brazil (Red Faction) counters that:
“The Campaign for Maoism cannot make a great leap only with declarations, studies and debate if it does not advance in more People’s Wars in the world, in addition to further development of those that are taking place. On the other hand, no party can advance the central and principal task of reconstituting or constituting a CP to initiate the People’s War, without understanding and assuming the contributions of universal validity of Gonzalo thought, as an inseparable and indispensable part for the application of Maoism as ideological-political embodiment.”
Furthermore, in order to attack Maoism, revisionism in its most varied expressions points increasingly and centrally against Gonzalo thought, in order to prevent a correct assimilation of Maoism, to empty and reduce its content, and to sterilize it. So the campaign in defence of Chairman Gonzalo and the campaign for Maoism are two strategic and inseparable campaigns, as the Maoist Communist Party (France) affirmed, defending Chairman Gonzalo was defending Maoism.
Others question this, veteran founder-Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison’s gave a number of interviews and wrote a number of important articles on what was being promoted by supporters of Gonzalo and the PCP theoretical views. These analysed the strengths and weakness of the Peruvian contribution, critiquing the foundational claims that Gonzalo synthesized Maoism. He noted,
“As I have earlier pointed out, Mao himself constituted in his own lifetime Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism by making great contributions to the development of Marxism-Leninism in philosophy, political economy, party building (especially the rectification movement), the people’s war and the proletarian cultural revolution in socialist society. Mao Zedong Thought has gained universal significance long before Gonzalo called it Maoism. The universal significance of Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism does not depend in any way on Gonzalo who has not really summed up all the great achievements of the great Mao.
“The worshippers of Gonzalo use his coinage of the term Maoism to evaluate him as the greatest Maoist after Mao. They should take him to account for his own conduct of leadership in his own country, his “Left” opportunist line before his capture in 1992 and Right opportunist line soon after his capture. These conflicting opportunist lines have brought about the decline of the people’s war in Peru. And the mystique about him as being responsible for “synthesizing” Maoism should not be used as an ax against those who continue to wage people’s war. Kautsky did not prove himself any better than Lenin when he protested that Lenin’s ideas were not Marxism but Leninism. He was the first among all people to utter the term Leninism against Lenin himself….
…..Before, during and after the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the foregoing six components of Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism were already acknowledged and propagated in CPP publications and grasped by CPP cadres and members. What the Gonzaloites are doing is to tear apart Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism and exaggerate protracted people’s war as prescription for all countries under all circumstances and require militarization of the party as the principal or essential elements of Maoism. This is not Maoism but a grotesque Gonzaloite distortion of Maoism.”
Sison, Jose Maria (2020) Questions on Mao Zedong Thought/Maoism, Interview by Imbong, Regletto Aldrich
The Columbian view, along with the Norwegian blog, MLM Thoughts and American group, Mass Proletariat http://bannedthought.net/USA/MassProletariat/2019/MP-OurPresentSituationAndSomeLessons-190201.pdf , involved criticism of the personality cult developed around the leadership theory of “Guiding Thought” associated with even smaller Gonzaloist trends . Promoted by the Organization of the Workers of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist), Communist Party Marxist Leninist Maoist – Bangladesh, Communist Party Marxist Leninist Maoist – France and supported by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Centre of Belgium. http://lesmaterialistes.com/fichiers/pdf/revues/Theguidingthought.pdf
“The Marxist Leninist Maoist theory about leaders is diametrically opposed to the cult of personality called “guiding thought”, “ways” and “synthesis” keyed in the RIM; this anti-Marxist conception of leaders in the same experience of the RIM checked to lead to revisionism, to the disaster of communist organisation and defeat, renunciation or delivery of the revolution. Of those anti-Marxist theories derives the pilgrim prophecy that the party of the proletariat can’t be built, it can’t successfully lead the revolution in one country, but has a great leader that gives shape and national content to Marxism Leninism Maoism.” UOC (MLM): 145
“Defend Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Against Gonzaloite Revisionism!” was the position advanced in April 2020 from the (now defunct) American Organizing Committee for a Maoist Communist Party (MCP-OC). It argued “the defeated people’s war in Peru represented the creative application of MLM to the Peruvian conditions; this alone does not constitute a new ‘Thought,’ any more than the petulant hooliganism of our comrades in Austin might be called ‘Com. Dallas Thought’!” A critical reference to the Red Guards tendency that was to implode in the USA in 2022. Various accounts have emerged online on the collapse of its last manifestation, the “Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the United States of America”.
Late December 2022 saw an unsigned commentary posted on the online Gonzaloist site, Communist International highlighted an attempt to liquidate the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA (CRCPUSA). As a clandestine organization it lacked a public profile or organizational documents. Its origins are rooted in the Red Guard milieu that ‘dissolved’ around late 2018 .Unattributed but supportive, was an identified site, Tribune of the People , an online news outlet that carried reports on the revolutionary movement in the US and supported reconstituting the party. The US-based Internet Blogger, Black like Mao, had commented previously that
“Tribune does not publish materials from ILPS, from FTP chapters, or from Maoist Communist Group, because they do not support these organizations. They publish materials from UNDM, the various European Gonzaloite sects, and the Brazilian because they support these projects. You’re not clandestine, you’re not in the middle of a people’s war, you’re a few people that have decided to go to a few protests, wheatpaste some flyers about the peasant struggle in Brazil, and try to organize tenants. “
With contradictory conclusions drawn by former members, still very disturbing description of misogyny , cult behaviour and a record of some masquerading as revolutionaries can be found under the “Rebellion” category at the reinstated Struggle Sessions website and the rebuilding Revolutionary Study Network . Criticism from the American Proletarian Feminist Research Group can be found here: https://proletarianfeministresearchgroup.wordpress.com/
Militarized party
While clearly identifying the armed struggle of the masses as the highest form of political struggle, the Columbian UOC(MLM) argue:
It is “very radical in appearance but is actually a theory that undermines the role of the Party and breaks the conscious discipline, feature not only of Party members, but also the actuation of the broad masses in the era of capitalism, for the first time in history they exercise its quality role as protagonists of the revolution.” UOC (MLM): 140
“The policy of the Communists is public, but the character of the organisation is always clandestine” is the approach of the UOC. The conscious unity of Party members, rather than the hierarchal obedience necessary in a fighting unit, and emersion and contact with the revolutionary masses .A militarised party is thought to denigrate the development of the party ideologically, minimising line struggle through criticism and self-criticism, Marxist education, and too readily categorises line struggle as the plots of police and imperialism , shutting down arguments allowing ideas to move freely within the ranks, it allows resolution by those who believe in eliminating opportunistic thoughts by physically liquidating their carriers attacking the ranks of the Party and its wider relationships.
Combatants of People’s War recognise contentious concerns that question what seldom appears in partisan propaganda and sometimes erupt in polemical fury. But here, in a statement not dated by time, is a quietly spoken observation from a leading Indian combatant:
“Our capacity has been reduced to the military needs of the war.” In response to the intense state repression, they have increased their attention to the military attacks and counter-attacks at the expense of the political education of their soldiers, the ethical foundation of their cadres and the politicisation of their supporters.
In the new century the legacy of struggle and the positive methodology of the old parties were ill-appreciated when nuances of leftism prevailed that counterpoised this approach with the preparation of the people’s war. What did not happen in China was a strategy that subsume the political to the weapon, that despise the ideological and political work among the masses forging their class consciousness about the role of the armed people and revolutionary objectives of their armed struggle. In substituting in a small consciously committed group as the cutting edge it draws upon foci theory and the ‘propaganda of the deed’ both discredited in experience, and contemptuous of the mass line and organising the class to face its fight. The tasks of communist seen as traditionally in the struggle to obtain revolutionary leadership through agitation and propaganda, to communicate to the masses a true picture of class relations and interests that exists in society, explain why the socialist transformation is necessary and unavoidable and their own crucial role to perform in this historical transformation.
While the Indian, Turkish and Filipino comrades fundamentally disagree with the assertion that people’s war is an international strategy, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada, the Maoist Communist Party of France, the Maoist Communist Party of Turkey and North Kurdistan, the PCm Italy, have been promoting the idea of the universality of people’s war. By the “universality of people’s war” these organizations seem to mean that the sort of people’s war that Mao led in China in the 1930s and 1940s is applicable always and everywhere, including within highly urbanized advanced capitalist and imperialist countries. For these comrades, although they recognize the universality of Maoism, they are said to ignore one part of it and counterpoises the Leninist theory of insurrection without allowing for the enrichment provided by Maoism. They truncate Marxism and an essential element of the military theory supplemented by Mao.
While non-practicing, supporters of the universality of protracted people’s war have not clearly and fully articulated their respective visions of such a political and military strategy, or have clearly demonstrated the similarities and differences between their line and the failed urban guerrilla line of the 1970’s and 80’s as practiced in Europe and South America.
In opposition to the “Gonzaloist” recipe are parties and organisations that do recognize the universality of Maoism but deny the universal nature of people’s war and raise significant issues that divide the movement as with the question of the correct revolutionary strategy in imperialist countries. As observed by Banned Thought, “many other Maoists and Maoist parties and organizations disagree with this perspective and promote people’s war only in countries where they view it as appropriate, while promoting mass insurrection (when the time is ripe) as the appropriate revolutionary strategy in the more urbanized and/or advanced capitalist countries. Some Maoist parties also support a mixed strategy of people’s war in wide areas of the countryside, followed at some appropriate time by mass insurrection in the cities. These parties point out that mass insurrection was the strategy of Lenin in 1917 Russia, and that even Mao himself did not argue that people’s war is always and everywhere the appropriate revolutionary strategy.”
The militarised party as a party building strategy has some serious flaws, not least what happens when the general command is “decapitated” by the enemy, how can that vanguard leadership be maintained in the ranks if exercised in a command structure less democratic-centralism and more directed, how can momentum be maintained in the struggle if mass involvement is not regarded as militarily important?
Practitioner and theorist Jose Maria Sison’s comments on the question of people’s war in industrial countries were critical:
“There is no protracted people’s war of any kind going on in any industrial capitalist country. What has been protracted is merely idle talk or hot air about the possibility of waging protracted people’s war. No serious preparations for it are being made.
It is only a “Left” opportunist, a fake Maoist or even an agent provocateur who has disdain for the lasting admonition of the Communist Manifesto to win the battle for democracy against the bourgeois class dictatorship and who clamors for proclaiming and starting a people’s war in an industrial capitalist country without the necessary preparations of the subjective forces and the favorable objective conditions that I have mentioned.” Sison (2019) “On the Question of People’s War in Industrial Capitalist Countries”.
Sison’s observations in the battle for the unity of the MLM communist movement were immediately counter with the call to “Defend and apply the universality of Protracted People’s War!” attributed to Ard Kinera, contributor to Tjen Folket Media’s /TFM website.
Arguments accelerated within the International Communist Movement tend to focus less on Gonzalo/Guzman’s praxis and more on those who raise the banner of Gonzalo Thought and how they interpret and what applies in their struggles. Various criticisms have appeared from different sections of self-defined Maoists individual and groups, some argue it is important to distinguish between the PCP itself—which despite its defeat, was a dominantly revolutionary organization—and Gonzaloist groups today who are often little more than small activist groups.
An article commenting on the demise of a small American activist group, and encompassed the position that nobody should charge Chairman Gonzalo with the simplifications of many of his supporters in Peru and abroad, initiated polemical exchanges on the understanding of the contribution of Chairman Gonzalo and the interpretation and application by some of those activists who identified and support that contribution regarding them as an ultra-left deviation. This was followed by counter thesis from the (former) US Red Guard associate, Struggle Sessions, A Crackle of Hens in response to the attacks on “our German Comrades”. This was reinforced by Tjen Folket Media’s contribution, “Answer to Blog Post Against Gonzalo” by Øystein Iversen.
The exchange underscored that for some, anything less than fulsome references to Chairman Gonzalo was objectionable on the grounds that as he is regarded as the one who more than any other has summarize Maoism and more than that: “Gonzalo, furthermore, did not simply “summarize” Maoism; he synthesized it and in doing so brought the whole of the ICM out of increasing darkness. Through the application of this synthesis he developed greater analysis which pushed MLM even further.” Kavga’s A Crackle of Hens Struggle Session website
As like-minded ally of Tjen Folket Media’s contributors, argued: “Studying and following the PCP and Chairman Gonzalo’s example is necessary and important for communists in all countries that wish to reconstruct communist parties today, because these must be constituted as Maoist parties.”
Whereas one Norwegian blogger opinion was: “I have no desire to keep people away from studying Gonzalo. On the contrary – Gonzalo has written a lot of sense and should be studied. But not uncritical. Not everything he writes is good (see, for example, my article on “Great Leader or Collective leadership?”).” Neighbouring activists contributed to the critique with “Gonzaloism: A ‘Left’ Revisionist Deviation”, by Thomas Berg from the Kommunistiska Föreningen / The Communist Association” [2022] in Sweden. Direct link
Clearly on this issue of what lessons to draw from the Peruvian revolutionary struggle that is shaping the contemporary politics and alignments and others there was no unity. The struggle of two lines on these issues, goes through the debate in the international communist movement and the RIM and beyond.
However, convergence is unlikely to unify the different organisations as the various joint statements and declarations expressed different criteria for the construction of the ICM from the outset. The history of these declarations constitutes part of the struggle for the reunification of the communists in the world, increasingly separating on distinct political lines. There are mutual accusations of “revisionism” due to discrepancies in the content and the alleged monopoly on the only “true” and “scientific” understanding of maoism results in the quick transformation of differences into matters of principle as initiatives developed in separate ways, expressing distinct political lines in active opposition to others. Certainly, the hostility directed at the contribution of the late leader of the Philippine Party did not bode well for prospects of a majority international alignment to emerge.
Within the two-line struggle the demarcations are being clearly signalled, with opposition to the position of adoption of Chairman Gonzalo’s Maoism is to oppose in fact the whole application of Maoism and People’s War and to the unification of the International Communist Movement based on these principles. This is to follow the path of what the Brazilians harshly characterise as the rightist liquidationist tendency, describing it as a more recalcitrant and pernicious form of the new revisionism. Exclusion from the new internationalism will be an ideological choice. In advancing its “Gonzalo banner” it drops the cornerstone of Mao’s success in revolutionary struggle in China, the relevance of the politics to the condition of the day.
The Maoist Road
At the start of the second decade the demarcation lines had been drawn and could be discerned into the non-aligned that included the Philippine comrades, the committed Gonzaloists that went onto form the International Communist League in 2022 and those striving towards an accommodation around the Maoist Road positions nurtured by the (nuovo) Partito comunista italiano / (n)PCI.
The Maoist Road saw itself as an arm of the MLM movement engaged in debate and struggle for a new unity of the international movement. Maoist Road provided an avenue for international meetings , its website hosted the publication of texts that had an interest for those against the revisionist lines in Nepal and support for People’s War in India, and reports on the accompanying blog (http://maoistroad.blogspot.com/) with the support of some other Maoist parties. Its participants had a RIMish background and initiated the appearance of the journal, Two Line Struggle in early 2023.
Establishing, as demonstrated by the various historical attempts by international Trotskyism, a small network of international alliances with organizations and groups does not reproduce the influence or effect of the original Comintern. The failure to seriously address the only international Maoist movement that has existed to date, and explain the experience of the RIM, simply in terms of the revisionist positions developed by Avakian and betrayal of the Nepalese revolution, hampers the difficulties in restructuring a supportive internationalist structure through an ideological struggle over the definition of Maoism on the basis that it will give a new impetus to the global proletarian revolution.
The Maoist Road tendency suggests, “CoRIM became arrogant and with its subjective evaluations and sectarian attitude created obstacles and harms to the International Maoist movement. It is important that a summation of its experiences will include a review of its ideological, political positions in its Declaration of foundation.” (emphasis added)
Other parties and organizations would also like to see RIM re-established, but recognize the serious difficulties in doing so at present. Including the short-term collapse of the revolutions in Peru (a description contested by some) and Nepal, and the degenerated lines of the parties which had been leading those revolutions, (again, a description contested by some) and also the bizarre political lines and behaviour of some other RIM parties, such as the RCP, USA (not so much a disputed judgement).
The first issue of Maoist Road appeared in the Spring of 2011, underscoring signs of efforts by some parties and organizations around the world, to try to resurrect or re-establish RIM and explore how should a new international coordinating body of Maoist forces be organized, especially in the wake of the latest failed attempt. The publication saw the political disagreements and divisions inside RIM made public became clearer providing a realistic picture of the current situation of the movement and illustrated the real ideological differences that could impede any future unity.
2020 began with reports from Maoist Road of a successful International preparatory meeting held in Italy in January before the pandemic paralysis and international lockdown. Arguing for a method of unity-struggle-unity and against the spirit of faction and division, it had striven through the Maoist Road sharing of information and campaigns and other avenues, for organizations “to arrive at the widest possible unity of the MLM movement”. https://maoistroad.blogspot.com/ January 2020
The main organising sponsors issued a message that still spoke of “The battle for the unity of the MLM communist movement, the struggle between the two lines within it, the definition of a common platform, the organized form with which to continue this work require, as we know, a prolonged work which demands preparatory meetings, new bilateral and multilateral meetings, as well as the exchange of documents, initiatives aimed at the masses, on the tortuous but luminous path of the realization of a Unified International Conference of the communist movement MLM that wins over the fragmentation, surpassing the effects of the collapse of the RIM and responds to the need to unify MLM on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, on the basis of a critical-self-critical assessment of the general experience of the RIM and other attempts to formation of an international organization.”
Even before the enforced pause brought about by Covid-19, the conditions for convening the unified international conference have been absence with 2020 the year of alternative planning for separate developments on the unitary road in the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tendencies. None of the current tendencies command a majority allegiance for their vision of a unified movement, and realistically some of the self-declared groups may register more on the internet than anywhere else. While the aspiration for Maoists to unite is voiced, the impetus towards antagonistic contradictions is coming to dominate this current period.
International Communist League
Without any evidence of growing support or consensus, there was an intensification of the division in the two line struggle with the long promised “Unified Maoist Conference” held by those gathered around the positions promoted by the Coordinator for a Unified Maoist International Conference.
The reaction to the declaration in December 2022 of the founding of the International Communist League / ICL by Gonzaloist organisations went along well defined trench lines. Fifteen communist organizations from 14 countries had come together under the name International Communist League after the holding of their Unified Maoist International Conference.
The ICL, essentially presenting itself as the centre of the international communist movement, declared it aim to unify Maoist parties and organizations under its banner and program, while demanding that those who join submit to democratic centralist control by the ICL. The immediate aftermath of the Unified Maoist Conference saw the ICL issue an Appeal to continue the great path for the reunification of the ICM under Maoism stating, “The dispersion is still the main problem in the ICM and revisionism is the main danger”. The fifteen groups involved, “aiming at raising the two line struggle and promoting ideological and political unity…will support all the propositions, initiatives, forums, that serve to develop unity-struggle-unity. … join the red flag of the International Communist League in order to strengthen this new great wave of the World Proletarian Revolution.”
The online news site, Communist International carried pictures of graffiti and public displays of banners, flags and posters, all actions carried out worldwide throughout January 2023. This social media offensive could not hide the marginal nature of the activity nor that the basis of unity of International Communist League was the theoretical outlines that a majority of Maoist parties internationally did not uphold. See Red Pages Theoretical Journal: A Critical Evaluation of Gonzaloism Number 3: February 2023
In danger of over-hyping, the self-referring ICL was advertised as a great step forward and as the basis and reference point to unify the whole international communist movement. It argued the foundation of the ICL did not close the process of struggle for unity. “The foundation of the International Communist League is the result of a long and complex process of more than four decades for overcoming dispersion and uniting the International Communist Movement under Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the command and guide of the world revolution. Only by understanding this decades-long process it is possible to understand the historical transcendence and deep strategic content of the foundation of the International Communist League.”
Broadly sets out the foundational basis to defend the three basic principles:
the defense of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
struggle against revisionism, and
to be for the World Proletarian Revolution.
While looking forward to expanding its international relations, establishing more Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and anti-imperialist ties, and forging greater unity and cooperation with communist parties and organizations, including those in the ICL, the Communist Party of the Philippines reiterated its different perspective and judgement that it did “not presently see the conditions for establishing an international center that assumes the role of world proletarian vanguard”. It welcomed the undertaking to promote Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and carry out revolutionary struggles across the world, reiterating that
“Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations are the most competent in determining the revolutionary path in their own countries. It is their responsibility to take initiative in determining the line of struggle based on the application of the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to their particular concrete conditions.”
Setting out its position in a statement, On the announced formation by the International Communist League, the Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines, released January 18, 2023, in part, expressed its critical assessments of the ICL’s approach commonly voiced by other Maoists.
It is our view that the most urgent task currently facing communist parties and organizations around the world is to apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to conduct class analysis and social investigation into the varied conditions in their countries, in order to determine the particular strategy and tactics to lead the proletariat and all oppressed and exploited classes in waging new democratic and socialist revolutionary struggles.
Arguing that organizations, while benefit in drawing lessons from the history of revolutionary struggles in different parts of the world, and to exchange views and experiences with other communist parties, they must strive to raise their capacity to become independent and self-reliant.
“It will be counterproductive, however, for them to subordinate themselves to a presumptive international center and lose their independence and initiative in carrying out revolutionary work within the scope of their competence and leadership. …
The CPP encourages parties and organizations towards greater international unity and cooperation, to conduct bilateral meetings and multilateral conferences and consultations where crucial questions of theory and practice can be discussed, threshed out and agreed upon, while setting aside points of disagreement for further study and discussion. It stated “We must always strive to build unity on the basis of upholding Marxism-Leninism, promoting Maoism as the third stage in the development of the proletarian ideology, exposing and fighting revisionism, advancing the struggle against imperialism and all reaction, and carrying forward the new democratic and socialist revolutions.”
Sentiments that may seem familiar with what the ICL expresses in language and terms that differ greatly in actual meaning. The declaration of two barely concealed antagonistic positions remains muted for the time being.
An aspect of the two-line struggle for a unified international movement has been the gradual crystallisation of blocs emerging around political positions subject to polemic exchange and muted criticisms. Other organisation that have explicitly expressed their reservations and criticisms include:
The Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia stated in a post on Maoist Road blogsite January 26, 2023 that “From our point of view, launching a new international organisation with political authority without being able to hold a unified conference first, is a practice that leads to separating part of the ICM from the rest. It also leads to making the rest do the same and that the confrontation within the ICM becomes not a two-line struggle, but a sum of useless confrontations between various tendencies, as well as creating a dynamic that ‘forces’ each tendency to differentiate itself from the rest.”
It expressed support for the proposal from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) – CPI (Maoist) – to create a world Maoist ‘Forum’, expressed its views on revolutionary violence that defend the universality of the people’s war and specifically noted
“We consider that the CWU (mlm) defends its political line with honesty. We must be critical between all communist detachments, but the treatment that certain parties have given to CWU (mlm) is unfair. If in all the international contacts we have had within the ICM, all the organizations have always treated us with great courtesy and comradeship, the same has not happened to CWU (mlm), being subjected to an unfair treatment for an organization that dedicates efforts to contribute to the strengthening of the ICM.”
The Communist Workers Union (mlm) of Colombia – CWU (mlm) – has been subject to harsh polemical comments by some of the component groups of the ICL. The organisation had quickly offered its own explanation on December 27, 2022 as to “why we decided not to participate in that Conference, which far from being «Unified» as announced, represents the positions of a particular hue within the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists.”
Furthermore questioning the status of its claims, “The non-participation in this event, by the comrades of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia, the Maoist Communist Party of Italy, the Maoist Communist Party of Afghanistan, among other Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizations and parties, is evidence that the Conference held was not «unified» as announced; for our part we renew to the comrades participating in that Conference and of the new organization International Communist League, the fraternal call to give primacy to the general needs of the world class struggle, which impose as a necessity the struggle for unity in a truly unified International Conference of all Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, a struggle to which the Union remains fully committed.“
There was something of a Columbian rebuke with the appearance of their English language edition of the theoretical organ of the Communist Workers’ Union (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) Negation of Negation, dedicated to the struggle for the international unity of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, as have been the three previous issues, on this occasion in polemic against “leftism”. It advertises that “the reader will find a refutation to the “leftist” ideas and attacks made by the comrades defending the proposal of bases of discussion presented by the International Maoist Conference promoted by the Coordinator for a Unified Maoist International Conference.”
“We uphold the acute necessity of unifying the International Communist Movement (ICM) under Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and welcome any genuine steps in this direction. However, we believe that the level of unity necessary for the founding of an international organization has not yet been reached, nor do we believe the proposal for a General Line has been sufficiently debated on an international level. Therefore we consider the establishment of ICL to be premature, as the international Maoist movement has not reached the ideological unity necessary for organizational unity. We fear that the premature formation of an international Maoist organization will serve as an obstacle to the development of two-line struggle, thus preventing real unity. We hope this fear will be proven wrong, and that the two-line struggle will continue so that a greater unity can be achieved.”
“The founding of the ICL may or may not be a genuine step towards the unity of the international Maoist movement, depending on how the ICL relates to MLM parties and organizations that are outside of it; especially those non-member parties that are actively engaged in People’s Wars (India, Philippines… In spite of our criticisms, and although we consider the founding of an international Maoist organization to be premature at this stage, we welcome the increased collaboration between Maoist forces and hope to continue to engage in comradely criticism and debate.”
Maoist Road’s Clarification, posted, for its comrades and readers, explained it publishes reports on all demonstrations in May Day throughout the world, because they are generally in the camp of proletarians and peoples struggle against capitalism and imperialism for proletarian and socialist revolution.
However, it made clear that at “the same time Maoist Road supports mlm parties and organisations ideological/theoretical/political/organisational struggle against revisionism/opportunism and ‘ICL deviation’ and now supports the new review, Two-Line Struggle engaged in this specific struggle for a true mlm Unified International Conference, for a new MLM International Organisation, after collapse of the RIM.
Explicitly it stated, Maoist Road supports ICSPWI/ The International Committee in Support of the People’s War in India and PCI(Maoist) as the principal international campaign supporting people’s war in the world. The side-lining of the longest running example of the People’s War in the Philippines an oversight reflecting the relative development and focus of the solidarity movements.
Better optics were provided with the, not unrelated, launch of another propaganda outlet with the “online newspaper”, The Red Herald, covering struggles throughout the world. Appearing in March 2023, produced in English and Spanish, focus on those mainly aligned to International Communist League positions without ignoring people’s war in the Philippines and India. The intention said to be, “that in a world dominated by media giants belonging to a handful of people, it is more necessary than ever to promote just that type of information, that might hopefully be disturbing to the Masters of War and Destruction.” https://redherald.org/about-us/.
Expanding its publishing endeavour, the MLM publishing house, the French-based Foreign Language Press /FLP tweeted in May 2023 plans for a new initiative: Material, an MLM journal for contending schools of revolutionary thought. J.Moufawad-Paul co-edits the proposed journal with Jin and Van Herzelle, editors at FLP and an impressive advisory committee. Its objective is to foster a “creative, non-sectarian, sharply critical debate and discussion in what we might loosely call and broadly define the ‘socialist camp”.
The struggle continues.
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State of the Movement 2 is a selection of documents that navigates these developments, and signposts further investigation of that journey.
A transitional pamphlet from KPD/ML in their political journey to embrace Hoxhaism.
Published in 1977, it still speaks of “A malicious attack on comrade Mao Tsetung” disassociating Mao from the post-Mao foreign policy of Hua Guofeng and opportunist revisionist leadership in the KPD/ml attack on the “three worlds theory”.
“The Three World Theory” – A Marxist-Leninist Theory? Upon the theses of the new opportunist current” first appeared as a supplement to Roter Morgen No.11 1977. This english language edition was produced in July 1977 in Dortmund by Vertiag roter Morgen Gmbh and distributed by Red Star Press of London.
The idea that behind the façade of how any organisation says it operates, there are rule makers and rule takers is not a novel concept. Seeing that illustrated in open sight on a national scale is not normally associated with the assistance of a press release.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, released an amended version of government working rules, the first since 2018, that add specific clauses saying it will closely follow instructions from the Communist Party. The State Council is responsible for economic regulation, market supervision, social management, public services, and ecological protection, among others.
China’s new premier, Li Qiang, at the first meeting attended by all members of the new State Council in March, said the government’s mission was to “ensure the sound and faithful implementation of the decisions and plans made by the Communist Party’s central leadership”. Already Heads of government bodies now regularly report to the Politburo Standing Committee. Hostile commentators suggest the State Council has been reduced to being an administrative office of Party Central and the Xi leadership.
The official press release did not impart any revelation when it noted that:
“major issues to be submitted to the CPC Central Committee for deliberation and decision, discuss issues to be submitted to the State Council plenary meetings for deliberation, discuss draft laws, deliberate draft administrative regulations, and discuss and decide on important guidelines to be issued by the State Council.”
Chinese Premier Li Qiang has signal a weaker role for State Council, with western analysts saying that changes are the biggest revision of Deng Xiaoping’s reform measures to separate the state and party. The Party has reclaimed the authority over economic policy that it delegated to the state starting in the 1980s.
In his report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in October 2022, General Secretary Xi Jinping stated that, from this day forward, the central task of the CPC is to lead the Chinese people in a concerted effort to realize the Second Centenary Goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through a Chinese path to modernization.
The authorities in China repeatedly state:
“The rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is now on an irreversible course. The evidence shows that Chinese modernization is not a reprint of socialism in other countries, nor a duplicate of the modernization of Western countries. Rather, it is a form of modernization that has distinctly Chinese features and conforms with the realities of our country, and it is a path of great promise for advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Advance the Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation Through a Chinese Path to Modernizationhttp://en.qstheory.cn/2023-03/02/c_865495.htm . (Originally appeared in Qiushi Journal, an official publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China . Chinese edition, No. 23, 2022 English Edition of Qiushi Journal Updated: 2023-03-02.)
The theme or narrative that dominates the public address to domestic and foreign audience is that the goal is to improve common prosperity, rejuvenate the nation and fulfil the Chinese dream. The mechanism to achieve that ‘peaceful rising’ is distinctly familiar to any student of western economies, sharing its language and concerns regardless of the baseline commitment expressed by Xi,
“… to uphold and improve China’s basic socialist economic systems. We will unswervingly consolidate and develop the public sector and encourage, support, and guide the development of the non-public sector. We will work to see that the market plays the decisive role in resource allocation and that the government better plays its role. We shall firmly deepen market-oriented reforms, advance reforms in key areas, and further improve the socialist market economy. We will deepen institutional reforms in key fields. We will construct a national unified market, advance reforms for the market-based allocation of production factors, and put in place a high-standard market system. We shall refine the systems underpinning the market economy, such as those for property rights protection, market access, fair competition, and social credit. We shall support the exploration and innovation of major reform pilot areas and reform pilot demonstration areas. We will deepen the reform of the system and mechanisms for supervision of grain purchases and sales. We will promote the market-oriented reform of competitive links in industries including energy, railways, telecommunications, and public utilities, and we will energize all market entities. We will deepen reform of state-owned capital and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), accelerate efforts to improve the layout of the state-owned sector and adjust its structure, and steadily deepen mixed-ownership reform of SOEs. We will provide an enabling environment for private enterprises and protect their property rights and the rights and interests of entrepreneurs in accordance with the law. We will deepen reforms of key aspects of our business environment, and make it more market-oriented, law-based, and international so that SOEs have the confidence to act, private enterprises have the confidence to move ahead, and foreign enterprises have the confidence to invest.”
A restructuring plan makes several major changes to various government bodies and implements a major overhaul of the financial system. Institutional regulatory system seldom generates a frenzy of interest and excitement however, they set frameworks of operation and boundaries, with supervisory powers to match, investigating and pursuing legal violations, many would skip a headline that speaks of “strengthened regulatory oversight.”
The Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) will be restructured to consolidate its powers and responsibilities, strengthen MOST’s macro-management responsibilities, such as strategy and planning, system reform, resource planning, and policy and regulatory work, as well as supervisory and inspection responsibilities. As stated in the reform plan, “scientific and technological innovation occupies a core position in the overall situation of China’s modernization drive.” “Facing tough science and tech competition globally and external containment efforts, we must straighten out leadership and management of science and technology,” said Xiao Jie, a high-ranking State Council official, when introducing the reforms.
The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), hitherto the top government agency regulating banking and finance, will be dissolved and absorbed into the newly established National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA). “Establishing the new institution clarifies the responsibility of the financial supervision system.” This should also free up the central bank to focus on monetary policymaking and macroprudential supervision.
The NFRA will be responsible for the supervision of the entire financial industry, except securities, which will remain under the jurisdiction of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).
A new bureau, called the National Data Bureau, will be established to coordinate and promote the development and utilization of digital resources and the digital economy.
The granule specifics of the State Council Institutional Reform Plan can be investigated however, outlining the big picture illustrates the main contention that the ruling party has certainly moved a long way away from socialist construction. The ruling party welcomes millionaire members, speaks in the business language of capitalism, integrated China into the world economic system and identified as the main competitor to American imperialist interest. The restructuring focus on three important development areas of economic and social importance, and retains central supervision and influence on the direction of movement within the industries deemed crucial to the authorities.
It is commonplace in western commentary to argue that Xi Jinping, since becoming the top leader in 2012, cemented his strong control over the top echelons of the CCP at last October’s 20th Party Congress. Afterall, Xi is serving his third term as president (having abolished the previous restrictions of two-terms only) and loyalty to Xi was clearly the first and most important criterion for elite promotion, as demonstrated by the makeup of the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee. (e.g. see Shirk, Susan. “China in Xi’s ‘New Era’: The Return to Personalistic Rule”. Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 2, Apr. 2018, pp. 22-36.)
Xi’s first term saw an unprecedented campaign against official corruption and Party indiscipline. Through this crackdown he cleaned up the CCP—and purged his rivals. As of late 2017, the CCP Central Discipline Commission had punished almost 1.4 million Party members. They included seventeen full and seventeen alternate Central Committee members, a pair of sitting Politburo members, an ex-member of the Politburo Standing Committee, and more than a hundred generals and admirals. The main goal, said Xi, was to restore public respect for the Party. It was a matter of “survival or extinction.” Xi has also begun using the Discipline Commission against local officials who fail to carry out top-down economic and environmental policies.
The tendency has seen centralise decision-making under Xi. Formalised in the promotion of the “Two Establishes” and the “Two Safeguards”, CCP slogans that establish Xi and his ideology as the “core” of the party. The “Two Safeguards” were added to the party charter in 2022.
Xi’s personal contribution to Party ideology, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era,” was incorporated in the CCP constitution during his time in office, an honour accorded to no one since Mao.
The Two Establishes are
“To establish the status of Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Party’s Central Committee and of the whole Party”
“To establish the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era”
“Safeguard the ‘core’ status of General Secretary Xi Jinping within the CCP”
“To safeguard the centralized authority of the Party”
These terms of reference ensure party members are kept “aligned with the Central Party leadership”. Radio Free Asia, the United States government-funded news service broadcasting since September 1996, headlines its report: “China deletes Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, other ideologies from government rulebook”. Such an observation serves the wider context of RFA’s own terms of reference as international broadcasting reflect the priorities and internal politics of the sending nation at a time when the West is attempting to constrain (and undermine) China.
RFA’s mandarin language service says that “References to Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Deng Xiaoping and the ideologies of former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao have all been deleted from the new edition of the document titled “Working Procedures for the State Council” that was published on official websites on March 18.” The rulebook only refers to the doctrines of Xi Jinping, informing State Council officials that they must heed his directives as “core” of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
It has been suggested that in China today, the lip-service paid to Marxism has been transcended and ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the new era’ become the official state ideology. Already compulsory study material is Xi’s authored four volumes of The Governance of China collection of speeches and writings. The conclusion of Radio Free Asia is that “Such extensive changes to the State Council’s guidelines point not just to the Communist Party’s tighter grasp over the Chinese government, but also Xi Jinping’s effort to place himself above the regime, former leaders, and its ideology.”
“ builds on and further enriches Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development. It represents the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and encapsulates the practical experience and collective wisdom of our Party and the people. It is an important component of the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and a guide to action for all Party members and all the Chinese people as we strive to achieve national rejuvenation. This Thought must be adhered to and steadily developed on a long-term basis.”
Xi Jinping has grasped all the levers of power in the Party and the state (including the military and police) exacerbating the systemic source of the problem that over-concentration of power is liable to give rise to arbitrary rule by individuals at the expense of collective leadership. With regard to the governance of China today, Xi’s policies challenges the diffusion of responsibilities and decision-making built since 1978 that saw oversaw the practice of peaceful leadership succession and regularize political life, and check arbitary power that threatens regime stability by breeding power struggles and sclerotic leadership. Two features of elite politics identified as contributing to the collapse of one-party rule in the Soviet Union back in 1991.
BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) — The following is the full text of a resolution on an amendment to the Constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted Saturday at the closing session of the 20th CPC National Congress.
Resolution of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on the Revised Constitution of the Communist Party of China. Adopted on October 22, 2022.
The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has deliberated and unanimously adopted the revised Constitution of the Communist Party of China proposed by the 19th Party Central Committee and has decided that it shall come into effect as of the date of adoption.
The Congress notes that adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times is a process of seeking, revealing, and applying truth. Since the Party’s 19th National Congress, the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has continued to integrate the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and fine traditional culture, put forward a series of new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies on national governance, and made continuous progress in enriching and developing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, thereby opening a new frontier in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times. Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is the Marxism of contemporary China and of the 21st century and embodies the best Chinese culture and ethos of this era.
The Congress unanimously agrees that the new developments in Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era since the Party’s 19th National Congress should be incorporated into the Party Constitution, so as to better reflect the major contributions made by the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core to advancing the Party’s theoretical, practical, and institutional innovations. The Congress calls on all Party members to acquire a deep understanding of the decisive significance of establishing Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and establishing the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and to fully implement this Thought in all areas and stages of the work of the Party and the country.
The Congress affirms that, over the past century, the Party has always stayed true to its original aspiration and founding mission, and it has united and led the Chinese people in writing the most magnificent chapter in the millennia-long history of the Chinese nation. In doing so, it has made great achievements and accumulated valuable experience. The Congress approves the incorporation of the Party’s original aspiration and founding mission and its major achievements and historical experience over the past century into the Party Constitution. Having the courage to fight and the mettle to win gives the Party and the people unassailable strength. All the achievements were made through persistent hard work of the Party and the people. The Congress agrees to add to the Party Constitution a statement on carrying forward our fighting spirit and building up our fighting ability.
These additions are of great importance for inspiring all Party members to remain confident in our history, exhibit greater historical initiative, stay committed to the Party’s original aspiration and founding mission, pass on the traditions of revolution, fully appreciate the contemporary features of the great new struggle, and unite and lead Chinese people of all ethnic groups in achieving new successes in building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.
The Congress notes that, at the ceremony marking the centenary of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Xi Jinping solemnly announced on behalf of the Party and the people that we have realized the First Centenary Goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and that we are now marching in confident strides toward the Second Centenary Goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects. The Party Constitution is revised to reflect this.
These revisions will help all Party members fully and faithfully grasp the new requirements for advancing the cause of the Party and the country on the new journey of the new era. They will enable us to rally the will and strength of the whole Party and the entire nation for realizing the Second Centenary Goal and the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.
The Congress notes that advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization has been proposed and designated as the central task of the Party on the new journey of the new era. Basic socialist economic systems, including the system under which public ownership is the mainstay and diverse forms of ownership develop together, the system under which distribution according to work is the mainstay while multiple forms of distribution exist alongside it, and the socialist market economy, are important pillars of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Congress agrees to incorporate statements to that effect into the Party Constitution.
Also added to the Party Constitution are statements on gradually realizing the goal of common prosperity for all; having an accurate understanding of the new stage of development; applying a new philosophy of innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared development; accelerating efforts to foster a new pattern of development that is focused on the domestic economy and features positive interplay between domestic and international economic flows; pursuing high-quality development; giving full play to the role of talent as the primary resource; and ensuring higher-quality and more efficient, equitable, sustainable, and secure development of the economy.
These revisions will help all Party members align their thinking and action with the Central Committee’s accurate assessment of the domestic and international environments and with the strategic plans for Party and state initiatives, act on the Party’s basic line with a stronger sense of purpose, and continue writing the great history of China’s development in the new era with new achievements.
The Congress recognizes that building a modern socialist country in all respects is a great and arduous endeavour; the future is bright, but we still have a long way to go. To build China into a great modern socialist country in all respects, a two-step strategic plan has been adopted: basically realizing socialist modernization from 2020 through 2035; and building China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful from 2035 through the middle of this century. The Party Constitution is revised accordingly. This will inspire all Party members to maintain firm confidence, forge ahead with enterprise and fortitude, and keep on working to accomplish the Party’s set goals.
The Congress notes that since the 19th National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core has developed new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies for advancing the coordinated implementation of the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy. The Congress agrees to add to the Party Constitution statements on following the path of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics; developing a broader, fuller, and more robust whole-process people’s democracy; establishing sound systems and procedures for democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight; and both pursuing development and safeguarding security.
These additions will play an important role in helping all Party members act with a stronger sense of purpose and greater resolve in implementing the Party’s basic theory, line, and policy, so as to comprehensively advance the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The Congress also notes that since the 19th National Congress, Comrade Xi Jinping has put forward a series of new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies on national defense, the armed forces, the united front, and foreign affairs. It agrees to include in the Party Constitution statements on enhancing political loyalty in the military, strengthening the military through reform, science and technology, and personnel training, and running the military in accordance with the law; elevating the people’s armed forces to world-class standards; fully, faithfully, and resolutely implementing the policy of One Country, Two Systems; resolutely opposing and deterring separatists seeking “Taiwan independence”; holding dear humanity’s shared values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom; and advancing the building of an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.
These revisions reaffirm the Party’s commitment to building a strong military with Chinese characteristics, making sustained and steady progress with the One Country, Two Systems policy, advancing national reunification, promoting the building of a human community with a shared future, and leading the tide of human progress.
The Congress affirms that, guided by the belief that it takes a good blacksmith to forge good steel and based on a commitment to strengthening itself politically as the overarching principle, the Party has made significant advances in exercising full and rigorous self-governance. The major new achievements made and successful experience gained in Party building should be duly reflected in the Party Constitution to translate them into the common will of the entire Party and general rules followed by all Party members. The Congress thus agrees to add to the Party Constitution statements on carrying forward the Party’s great founding spirit, which comprises the principles of upholding truth and ideals, staying true to the Party’s original aspiration and founding mission, fighting bravely without fear of sacrifice, and remaining loyal to the Party and faithful to the people, and on using the Party’s own transformation to steer social transformation. It also agrees to add statements on improving the capacity for political judgment, thinking, and implementation and becoming more self-motivated and resolute in implementing the Party’s theories, lines, principles, and policies; on advancing the adaption of Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of our times; on the Party’s self-reform being a journey to which there is no end; on constantly improving the system of Party regulations; on strengthening the principal and oversight responsibilities for full and rigorous Party self-governance; on making integrated efforts to ensure that officials do not have the audacity, opportunity, or desire to become corrupt; and on adhering to the Party’s organizational line for the new era as a new fundamental requirement for Party building.
These additions will help all Party members maintain a spirit of self-reform, implement the Party’s strategic policy of full and rigorous self-governance, and further advance the great new project of Party building in the new era, thus ensuring that the Party grows stronger through revolutionary tempering and remains the strong leadership core in the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The Congress notes that the Communist Party of China is the leadership core in advancing our cause and that the leadership of the Communist Party of China offers a fundamental guarantee for achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Congress agrees to add to the Party Constitution statements on the Party being the highest force for political leadership and on upholding and strengthening the overall leadership of the Party. These additions will help the Party fulfil its core role of exercising overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all sides and will help ensure that Party leadership is exercised in all aspects and every stage of the endeavours of the Party and the country.
The Congress notes that in view of the successful experience gained in Party work and Party building since the 19th Party Congress and in compliance with the revisions to the General Program, appropriate revisions to some articles of the Party Constitution are necessary.
The following are now included into the obligations of all Party members: study the history of the Party; strengthen consciousness of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment with the central Party leadership; stay confident in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics; and uphold Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and uphold the Central Committee’s authority and its centralized, unified leadership.
To see that primary-level Party organizations play a key role in ensuring the exercise of the Party’s leadership, revisions are made in order to help strengthen Party building in hospitals, clearly define the status and functions of Party organizations in subdistricts, townships, towns, villages, and communities, and refine the responsibilities of Party committees and leading Party members groups in state-owned enterprises with regard to strengthening their own organizational development.
To fully reflect the achievements in Party work and Party building since the 19th National Congress, revisions are made in order to regularize and institutionalize activities to study Party history; require Party officials at all levels to oppose privilege-seeking mindsets and practices; amend provisions related to Party discipline; clearly define the coverage of dispatched discipline inspection teams; define major new tasks for commissions for discipline inspection; and adjust and enhance the functions and responsibilities of leading Party members groups.
These revisions will help all Party members uphold and strengthen the Central Committee’s centralized, unified leadership and enhance cohesion and forge the Party’s soul with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. They will also help enhance the political and organizational functions of Party organizations, take strict steps to improve Party conduct and tighten Party discipline, and ensure full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
The Congress notes that since entering the new era, the Party and the country have faced a situation of unparalleled complexity, a fight of unparalleled graveness, and tasks of unparalleled difficulty in promoting reform, development, and stability. Establishing Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and establishing the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era has enabled the Party to successfully resolve the acute problems and challenges undermining its long-term governance, the security and stability of the country, and the wellbeing of the people, to remove serious hidden dangers in the Party, the country, and the military, and to ultimately set the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on an irreversible historical course. The establishment of both Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era represents a major political achievement for the Party in the new era and a decisive factor in the historic successes and changes in the cause of the Party and the country. All Party members must acquire a deep understanding of the decisive significance of this major achievement, more conscientiously uphold Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and uphold the Central Committee’s authority and its centralized, unified leadership, fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and closely follow the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core in thinking, political stance, and action.
The Congress calls on Party organizations at all levels and all-Party members to follow the firm leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and carry forward the great founding spirit of the Party. They should become more conscious of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment with the central Party leadership; have firm confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics; uphold Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and uphold the Central Committee’s authority and its centralized, unified leadership; and more purposefully study, observe, apply, and uphold the Party Constitution. This will ensure that the entire Party strives in unity to build a modern socialist country in all respects and advance national rejuvenation on all fronts.
It is the last volume of the original volumes VI to IX published by from Kranti Publications and Sramikavarga Prachuranalu from 1990 to 1994. It covers the time period of 1963 to 1968, with a few texts from 1969 to 1971.
The Indian editors observed that in the context of the development of countries in eastern Europe and Socialist Russia, and even in China, adopting the capitalist road, the study of Mao’s writings assume greater significance. On the other hand, the class struggles in the third world, including the Philippines and Peru reinforce the relevance of Mao’s thought for the revolutions in the oppressed countries. In India, since the days of Naxalbari, Mao’s thought has been, and it continues to be, the guiding star. (1994 draft on From Marx to Mao website).
Volume 9 contains a selection of material from a critical time in China: the Socialist Education Movement and the first years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).
The practices and lessons learned from the Cultural Revolution, trying to arm the people with questions, insight and understanding in order to continue the struggle for socialism, are the cornerstone of the development of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought to Maoism.
The texts from the Socialist Education Movement, the last Party-led mass movement, are essential to understanding why Mao saw it necessary to launch the Cultural Revolution. The sharp line struggle that emerged from it brought into clear focus that there was the emergence of a new bureaucratic capitalist class in the Party under socialism, and that this line struggle could not be combated by mass movements led by the Party alone when the target was capitalist-roaders inside the Party.
The Great Debate, Sino-Soviet Split, the Polemic – call it what you want to emphasis – was a very valuable episode in the defence and rejuvenation of Marxist thought. It challenged the growing revisionism, shinning a searchlight on the dangers within the international communist movement and launched a resistance ibn a rallying call to oppose and reject the attempts to divert the freedom struggle into the accommodation and absorption of the concerns of monopoly capitalism and imperialism.
What remains the most insightful starting point to understand the contours of that anti-revisionist approach remains the 1965 collection produced by FLP Peking, “The Polemic on the General line of the International Communist Movement” and associated publications. The modern MLM publishing house FLP announced it was gonna release the documents of the CPC, The Great Debate Volume 1 in mid-October 2021, that brings that back in print alongside internet access.
That struggle looms over as the backdrop to the domestic dramas unleashed in the Socialist Education Movement and the early years of the Cultural Revolution covered in this selection of the conversations, texts and interjections by Mao Zedong.
During the Cultural Revolution a nationwide programme devoted to studying the works of Chairman Mao were launched. When it was in high tide, Mao himself observed:
“The Selected Works of Mao, how much of it is mine! It is a work of blood. The struggle in the soviets was very acute. Because of the errors of the Wang Ming line, we had to embark on the 25,000 li Long March. These things in Selected Works of Mao were taught to us by the masses and paid for with blood sacrifices. “
source: Volume 9 p66 – Foreign Languages Press, Paris 2021
The GPCR was the manifestation of Mao’s realization that the only way to win the struggle for socialism was the elevated consciousness of the masses and their ability to rectify the Party: to target the real enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat within the highest levels of party leadership.
It’s only called class struggle when you resist
The question of why the capitalist-roaders in China were victorious in the end has many answers in the fierce struggles during all of the mass movements, from the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-1959) to the Socialist Education Movement, culminating in the GPCR.
Mao spoke in August 1964 of what was at stake:
“Mao Zedong [Talking about the first criterion for successors]: Are you going to study Marxism-Leninism, or revisionism?
Mao Zedong: Don’t be too sure, who knows what you’re studying? Do you know what Marxism-Leninism is?
Yuanxin: Marxism-Leninism means that you must carry on the class struggle, that you must carry out revolution.
Mao Zedong: The basic idea of Marxism-Leninism is that you must carry out revolution. But what is revolution? Revolution is the proletariat overthrowing the capitalists, the peasants overthrowing the landlords, and then afterwards setting up a workers’ and peasants’ political power, and moreover continuing to consolidate it. At present, the task of the revolution has not yet been completed; it has not yet been finally determined who in the end will overthrow whom. In the Soviet Union, is not Khrushchev in power, is not the bourgeoisie in power? We too, have cases in which political power is in the grip of the bourgeoisie; there are production brigades, factories, and xian committees, as well as district and provincial committees, in which they have their people, there are deputy heads of public security departments who are their men. Who is leading the Ministry of Culture? The cinema and the theater are entirely in their service, and not in the service of the majority of the people. Who do you say is exercising leadership? To study Marxism-Leninism is to study the class struggle. The class struggle is everywhere; it is in your Institute, a counter-revolutionary has appeared in your Institute, are you aware of this or not? He wrote a reactionary diary filling a dozen or so notebooks, every day he cursed us, shouldn’t he be considered a counter-revolutionary element? Are you people not completely insensitive to class struggle? Isn’t it right there beside you? If there were no counter-revolution, then why would we still need revolution?”
Source: Volume 9 p140 – Foreign Languages Press, Paris 2021
The scholarship to compile the first edition of Volume mined the existing sources, the improvements in the second edition included the replacement of some texts with the official translation published in Beijing Review and correction to chronological dating and order of publication (see “Some Technical Points Volume 9 piii – Foreign Languages Press, Paris 2021).
Drawing on state published official sources including Hongqi (Red Flag), the unofficial Wansui editions and a variety of familiar western publications (like the JPRS collection, drawing on the work of Stuart Schram, Jerome Chen’s Mao’s Papers, Edgar Snow’s 1965 interview, memoir of Andre Malraux), Volume 9 has made available, at an affordable price, texts consigned to disparate second hand markets. It could provide a revelation to a new generation studying Mao. His words, expression of concern, advice and reasoning conjure up a vastly different impression than that of the stereotypical bad leader tope beloved of western coverage. Such revolutionary scholarship restores Mao to his place as a leading revolutionary of the last century, and relevant to this.
The collation of Mao’s texts in Volume 9 provides a source of study material for activists, and provides a commentary on the issues of a struggle mistakenly portrayed as little more than a chaotic miscalculation amongst a political elite. Its chronological arrangement illustrates the unfolding concerns raised through the Socialist education Movement and the rapid mass criticism from below unleashed during the Cultural Revolution.
The upcoming Volume 10 promised by FLP will complete the entire period of the Cultural Revolution and represent a new departure with its publication.
These background notes on China’s engagement in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s concentrates on what was seen as its revolutionary diplomacy. The initial spur, and borrowed title came from reading this article from China Reconstruct.
There are dated general overviews such as Hutchinson (1975), and more general discussion provided for a survey of China’s involvement with national liberation movements[i] .These plagiarised notes draw freely upon the thesis by Ismail Debeche (1987), Julia Lovell (2019) and Peking Review, and more overtly unsympathetic sources like Chau (2014), US Government and CIA reports, and localised focused expositions. Other sources read, and not always acknowledged can be found in the bibliography at the end.
Going around the compass, geographically (and roughly chronology) the main focus of Chinese engagement began in North Africa with transversion to, firstly West and central Africa, across to the eastern seaboard and then southwards
NORTH AFRICA
The focus post-Bundung was North Africa, initially Egypt where China’s first African embassy opened in 1956. China contributed annual funds to the AAPSO, Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization demonstrating its commitment to African nationalism. Its permanent secretariat was based in Cairo.
Before the end of the 1950s China had extended financial and other aid, plus training, to the Front de Liberation (F.L.N.) as support for revolutionary activity in Algeria received priority. Articles published in the Peking Review gave moral support to the Algerian cause. In November 1957 a public display of support saw China celebrated a “national day of solidarity with the Algerian people.” A resolution adopted at the rally pledged “full support for the just cause of the people of Algeria and of Africa as a whole in their efforts to secure and safeguard their national independence.”
China was the first Communist country to establish official diplomatic relations with the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement Provisionel de la République Algérienne) after its formation in the autumn of 1958. There was Support Algeria Week (5–11 April 1959) and in May 1959 the Algerian military delegation spent a month in China.
While more specific evidence would offer a detailed assessment of Chinese operations, clearly China was intent on providing the FLN with whatever support was needed—from weapons and equipment to funds and training—to achieve independence, which it did in 1962.
On 22 December 1963 an New China News Agency (NCN A) correspondent writing from Algiers “described how he had been left with the impression that Mao’s work enjoyed wide popularity among the people.” According to the correspondent, Mao’s works on guerrilla warfare circulated underground, in prison, and among FLN guerrillas. He also recalled how he had found four well-worn volumes of Mao’s Selected Works in French and a copy of Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, copiously annotated in Arabic, in the political commissar’s office in a barracks near the Moroccan border
China’s success in Algeria “opened the gates”‘ for other African anti-imperialist forces and movements to follow suit. Not only revolutionary uprisings in the Congo (1960-65) Cameroun (1960-65) and Zanzibar (1964) but also the transformation of national independence movements in the Portuguese colonies and in southern Africa were inspired by the victory of FLN in Algeria.
Niger
To the south, Niger did not establish diplomatic relations with China until July 1974, a situation largely related to the latter’s support for the outlawed liberation party (Swabain opposition to the French-dominated regime of Diori. In February 1965, 23 Sawaba fighters were arrested, according to a government announcement. The previous autumn of 1964 saw many Sawaba members executed in public. The president of Niger, Hamani Diori, accuse it, and Peking, of subversion.
The domestic roots of the conflict were often under reported in the attempt to reinforce and prove a tie-in with the Chinese and emphasis an international communist subversion in Africa.
While militants had been trained by Chinese experts in Ghana, Algeria (after the latter’s independence in July 1962), and at Nanjing in China. The public denunciations proved part of the anti-communist Cold War offensive with the American ambassador accusation that the China might certainly have been behind this assassination attempt on President Hamani in April 1965. [ii]The manipulation of news management has not just been a feature of the digital age with fake news being a feature of the propaganda offensive against an opponent as a practiced art. [ See fake news is not new]
Mali
Neighbouring Mali presents a contrasting picture. From 1960 (the year of its independence) until the overthrow of President Modibo Keita in 1968, Mali was perhaps the only African country which openly took China’s side as opposed to the Soviet Union’s on most international issues – and especially those concerning the best means of struggle against colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism.
The leaders of Mali have made numerous and long pro-Chinese statements. Among these we might single out the one statement which appears to be most significant and which was made by the Minister of Development of Mali, Seydu Badian Kuyate, on 10 July 1964, after his return from a visit to China:
“The help of the Chinese People’s Republic is the most valuable of all the help which Black Africa is getting currently. Africa is poor and Chinese aid fits perfectly into our needs and our local conditions. One could not possibly speak of Chinese neocolonialism in Africa. There is no more selfless aid than the aid of continental China.
On the other hand, this aid is also the most efficient and most interesting if we compare it with the aid from the other countries which costs us much more. At any rate, what Mali gets from the Western and socialist countries could not possibly measure up to what we get from China” [iii]
West Africa
The experience in West Africa was a mixed bag. The observations of a Chinese journalist did see the publication of Glimpses of West Africa by Feng Chih-tan in the early stages of diplomatic engagement in 1963. However generally, China’s viewpoint can be found in the writings of Mao Zedong, and to a lesser extent in the record of Zhou Enlai’s 1964 African tour. They were made available in reports in Peking Review and in the 1964 Foreign Language Press publication, Afro-Asian Solidarity Against Imperialism: A Collection of Documents, Speeches and Press Interviews from the Visits of Chinese Leaders to Thirteen African and Asian Countries.
Connections and relationship were built under the progressive regimes such as Nkrumah’s Ghana and Sekou Toure’s uncompromising and aggressive posture against colonialist and imperialist powers, and on the firm support given by his government to national liberation movements and revolutionary forces in the Cameroon, the Congo and other parts of Africa.
Ahmed Sekou Toure was the first African Head of State to visit -China (10-15 September 1960). GUINEA under Sekou Toure received 9.8% of China’s total aid to Sub-Saharan Africa during this period (1959-66). [iv]
Critical of the wavering support given by the Soviet Union, Sino-Guinean relations characterised Guinea as one of the leading progressive countries in Africa. Guinea’s support for China during the Cultural Revolution illustrated its militant relationship with China during this period. In 1967, Guinea itself launched its own ‘cultural revolution’ and formed its own version of the ‘Red Guards’ – Jeunesse du Rassemblement Democratique (JRDA).
The economic cooperation included a package of military aid for the liberation fighters of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
The PAIGC – the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde – resistance forces led by Amilcar Cabral found the neighbouring Guinea, independent since 1958, prepared not only to allow it to have a base in its territory but also to facilitate external financial and military support. In Guinea, It was here that PAIGC’s first contact with China took place.
In July 1960, a PAIGC delegation visited China. From the following year, PAIGC guerrilla forces received training in China. In 1963 a group of PAIGC guerrilla fighters went to China for advanced training after undertaking their initial training in Ghana. In October 1964, Aristedes Perreira, a member of the Political Bureau and Deputy General Secretary of PAIGC visited China where he attended China’s National Day (1 October).
Cameroon
Cameroon was the first instance of a country in Africa in which China openly took the side of a national liberation movement led by militant party Union des Populations du Cameroon (UPC) against the established government. the Soviet Union urged compromise, supported the government of Ahidjo and urged UPC leaders to give up their armed struggle and join the central government.
In pro-Western and pro-imperialist government of Ahmadou Ahidjo was opposed by the UPC with its radical character and communist inclinations.
UPC’s armed struggle against French colonial rule (from 1958 onwards) had seen more than 80,000 French troops were sent to the colony. Over 50,000 Cameroonians were thrown into concentration camps.
In 1958, Ernest Ounadie the Vice President of UPC paid his first visit to China where he was promised its continuing and resolute support.: In February 1959, Jean Paul Sende, a UPC leader, visited China where he attended a mass rally in Beijing organised by the Chinese Committee for Afro- Asian Solidarity to commemorate ‘Cameroon Day’ (18 February).
In January 1960, Ahmadou Ahidjo, the UNC leader, was made the first President of the French occupied eastern region of Cameroon, A year later (October 1961), the British-administered southern part was integrated with the eastern Cameroon into the newly established Federal Republic of Cameroon.
UPC’s headquarters moved from Cairo to Accra, a location which was strategically better suited to the organisation and meant guerrilla operations and armed activities were undertaken easier. The Chinese had continued to help the Cameroun U.P.C. based in Accra. Their aid had partly been channelled through the Afro-Asian Solidarity Fund and partly had consisted of the training of Cameroonians in guerrilla tactics in China.
GHANA
In Ghana, Nkrumah’s ideology encompassed both Socialist and pan-African beliefs. Nkrumah’s interest in supporting African national liberation movements, for example, at the end of 1957 Nkrumah invited the Cameroonian guerrilla movement Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (Union des Populations du Cameroun, or UPC) to move its headquarters from Cairo to Accra.
August 1960 two Chinese diplomats and five officials arrived in Accra to open the first Chinese embassy in Ghana. Treaty of Friendship between China and Ghana that was signed in Beijing in 1961 was followed, In October 1962, with the protocol of the agreement on economic and technical cooperation
Chinese activity in Ghana continued in earnest after codification of another
agreement, this one with strategic ramifications across Africa. In 1964 “the two countries signed a secret agreement for the provision of military equipment and advisers for Ghana’s ‘freedom fighters.’”
Following a coup against Nkhrumah, documentary evidence, published by the Ministry of Information, in two brochures in November 1966 provided a detailed information and an account of the operation of the camps – A copy of the Protocol Agreement for Chinese military experts working in Ghana signed by Huang Hua, was included as Appendix B .[v]
The evidence from the files of the Bureau of African Affairs confirmed Ghana under Nkrumah had been host to training freedom fighters since 1961. Nkrumah had authorised the setting up and used three successive camps for this purpose. Soviet instructors had originally staffed the camps but were replaced by Chinese instructors in September 1964. The formal agreement between the governments of Ghana and China covering the assignment of guerrilla warfare instructors in Ghana was signed in August 1965.
Back in September 1961 Peking Review had published a brief article entitled “China and Africa.” It read in full,
“Chinese and African peoples have established a militant friendship in the struggle against their common enemy, imperialism. The Chinese people have always shown the deepest sympathy for and resolutely supported the African peoples in their patriotic struggle for national liberation against imperialism and colonialism. They have demonstrated these sentiments in various ways.”
The suspicion in the West framed the issue as if China was furthering Ghana as its base of operations from whence it could support liberation and guerrilla movements across Africa. The problem with this pictured was the assumption of China as masterminding this onslaught in a controlling and directing rather than supportive manner. China was legally active in Ghana by agreement of the two governments, but the activity focused mainly on the training and arming of African fighters. The agency was African revolutionary sentiments not some bureaucratic planning in downtown Beijing. Aid and assistance were provided to the willing.
October 1964 a five-member team of Chinese guerrilla warfare experts arrived at a training camp in Half Assini, a village near the Ghana–Ivory Coast border. They inaugurated a twenty-day course that consisted of training in the manufacture and use of explosives, guerrilla tactics, and basic guiding and thinking on armed struggle.
Camp Half Assini was closed down due to its proximity to the border, distance from Accra, and poor lines of communications—specifically, the condition of the roads. At the same time, a replacement camp was created at Obenemasi, the site of an abandoned goldmine.
Training at Camp Obenemasi included guerrilla warfare, explosives, and weapons, but also the use of telecommunications equipment and battlefield first aid. By January 1965 multiple sources reported that Camp Obenemasi had 210 students and 17 Chinese instructors. In May 1965 a new course at Camp Obenemasi started with fifty students from Niger.
The Chinese program in Ghana attracted Africans from many parts of the continent, including Angola, Cameroon, Congo-Kinshasa, Gabon, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso), and Zambia.
Conversely, a large, disparate number of African youths were trained in China at three secret training centres: Harbin in Manchuria, Nanjing on the Yangtze River, and in Shantung Province on the North China coast. Africans were from Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zanzibar. The guerrilla warfare course in China lasted from 7 October 1964 until 13 February 1965 and was described by one of the participants from Ghana as “a 90-day course in theory and practice . . . arduous and intensive.” Ghana had become a base of operations for African radicals and guerrilla groups.
In 1965 Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso) accused President Nkrumah of sending “subversives” to neighbouring countries, while President Diori Hamani of Niger charged China with trying to smuggled [Communist-trained Africans] into Niger by way of Ghana and that his country would seek outside aid if the Communist infiltration increases.
Amplified by western sources was the idea that China was targeting West Africa through Ghana—to further its political interests in Africa. What was exaggerated was the influence of Chinese doctrine and tactics, as if Nkrumah’s programme for training guerilla fighters from independent African countries organised through Accra’s Bureau of African Affairs was controlled and master -minded by the Chinese Communists. The charge was of exporting ‘revolution’ to West and Central Africa implied a directing hand with a Pan-African strategy and the questionable accusation was presented as plausible and subsequently accepted as true.
On 24 February 1966 a coup d’état removed Nkrumah from power and changed the country’s foreign and security policy. Over 1,000 Russians, East Europeans, and Chinese (even though the Chinese personnel, including guerrilla instructors, were in Ghana at the request and signed agreement of a legal and popular government) were promptly expelled after the coup.
– Look at the numbers involved: The Peking Review later reported that a group of Chinese experts and embassy staff, numbering 125, returned to China on 5 March. Four days after the coup, moreover, Ghana sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese embassy requesting all Chinese technical experts working in Ghana to leave immediately. As a result, Ghana expelled 665 Soviet and 430 Chinese nationals, including three intelligence officers and thirteen guerrilla instructors who were training liberation fighters. [vi]
An aide-mémoire dated 20 October from the Ghanaian ministry of foreign affairs had informed the Chinese embassy that Ghana was suspending relation ns between the two countries. All embassy staff would withdraw by 5 November 1966. It was not until February 1972 that China and Ghana issued a joint press communiqué on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Nigeria
China’s relations with neighbouring Nigeria were far different to those with Ghana. In the later stages of the Nigerian civil war, China gave its moral support to the Biafran separatist movement against the Federal government in Lagos. A delegation from Biafra which went to China (October 1967) seeking military support had returned empty-handed.
China’s recognition of Biafra (23 September 1968) came at a time (after the Soviet invasion in August of Czechoslovakia) when Sino-Soviet relations were fast deteriorating and the Soviet Union had established itself as the major supplier of military aid to the Federal Government of Nigeria. China viewed the Soviet Union’s association with the Federal Government of Nigeria as clear evidence of what China had begun to characterise (from 1968 onwards) as ‘Soviet social imperialism’.
China’s decision to recognise Biafra was perhaps also influenced to a degree by its friendly relations with Tanzania and Zambia, which – along with the Ivory Coast and Gabon – were the only African countries to recognise (April-May 1968) Biafra. The Federal government had not yet established diplomatic relations with China.
Ismail Debeche thought that,
“China’s justification of its stand on Biafra seemed to stem from humanitarian grounds rather than political grounds. China accepted the assessment that the mass of the Biafran people were being oppressed and massacred by the federal troops.” [vii]
Congo
The Congo had become independent from Belgium in June 1960. There were two countries called Congo delineated by their respective capitals: Leopoldville and Brazzaville .[viii]
Under PatriceLumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a political leader committed to a non-tribal nationalist ideology, insisted on a centralised government, and who, in his speeches and statements, made no secret of his antiimperialist and nationalist inclinations. [ix]
The Congo (Leopoldville) Crisis 1960-65 saw a separatist rebellion in a southern province and Belgian military intervention in the country.
The central government requested (11 July 1960) UN to intervene. The Leopoldville government hoped that UN troops would put an end to both Katanga’s separatism under Moïse Tshombe, and foreign intervention however the Western powers as well as Lumumba’s internal enemies conspired for his removal through a military coup. Mobutu, the Chief of Staff, was chosen to lead the coup. The UN forces in Leopoldville under Kettani, a Moroccan General, provided the financial and military help with which a coup was organised to take place 14 September 1960.
Lumumba was captured and then murdered by Belgian-led Katangese troops on 17 January 1961, and eventually Mobutu made himself President in November 1965. [x]
The resistance continued, led byPierre Mulele (1929 – 1968) who had been minister of education in Patrice Lumumba‘s cabinet. In China in 1963 to received military training, Pierre Mulelle also took a group of Congolese youths with him, who received training in guerrilla tactics. Mulele had returned to the Congo, where he formed a Youth Movement (Jeunesse Mouvement) in Kwilu Province (South-Western Congo – East Leopoldville). Mulele’s movement was influenced by China’s strategy of people’s war and Mao’s classic ‘Eight simple and straightforward rules’ of military behaviour.
China was able to supply military and financial aid to the anti-government forces led by Mulele and Gbenye. Chinese military were active in training Congolese guerrilla forces in Tanzania and neighbouring Congo (Brazzaville).
The western press had reports of collusion, that many Chinese communist advisors have visited the zone under rebel control; Le Monde reported the presence of Chinese officials in the regions of Impfondo, Gambona and Fort Rousset, where training camps were set up for the Congo rebels. These camps were directed by young Congolese trained in Peking.[xi]
The intervention of Belgian troops came when rebels who had seized Stanleyville (later renamed Kisangani) were suppressed by central government troops officered by foreign mercenaries. The landing of Belgian paratroopers in November 1964, from five United States Air ForceC-130 transports dropped 350 Belgian paratroopers of the Paracommando Regiment onto the airfield at Stanleyville to rescue European hostage between 1,500 and 2,000, many of them missionaries and teachers. Most of the captives were Belgians, but they included a significant number of Americans and other nationalities. Tshombe, echoing the western narrative said: “I have absolute proof of communist participation in the rebellion in the Congo,” charging Peking with “trying to create a permanent center of subversion on African soil and a new international trouble spot.”
“The Reds wanted the vast mineral wealth of the Congo, but America in the form of the CIA stepped in and, assisted by Belgium, funded a mercenary army whose objective was to keep the Congo aligned to Western interests. It was Prime Minister Moise Tshombe who called in white soldiers of fortune, mainly South Africans” mercenary soldiers under the leadership of Lt Colonel Mike Hoare. “
August 1964. Prime Minister Moise Tshombe showed the press “weapons, explosives, and documents” which had been captured and which had come from the UAR, Algeria, and China. He accused the Chinese Embassy in Brazzaville of helping the CNL [National Liberation Committee] for the purpose of engaging in subversion. He once again attacked the use of Burundi and Congo (Brazzaville) by China as “helpers in China’s subversion campaign against the Congo.”
Such was the obsession with Chinese infiltration, for good measure, another accusation was added; the missionary Father Josef Scheonen, who lived in Kivu for 10 years, testified that China was supplying arms, opium, and heroin to the Congolese rebels.
Fake news is not just a feature of today’s politics.
In October 1968, after mediation by the Soviet Union and the Congo (B), Mobutu lured Pierre Mulele out of exile under a guarantee of safe conduct and amnesty. Mulele returned to Congo-Kinshasa. A Wikipedia entry notes:
“he was publicly tortured and executed: his eyes were pulled from their sockets, his genitals were ripped off, and his limbs were amputated one by one, all while he was alive. What was left was dumped in the Congo River.”
The Belgian Maoist leader Ludo Martens wrote extensively on Pierre Mulelle who led a maoist faction in the Kwilu Province and rebel activity in the Simba rebellion of 1964.
China’s 1964 statements “In Support of the People of the Congo (Leopoldville) Against US Imperialism”.
In January 1966 China agreed to construct a broadcasting station in the Congo(B). Within a short period (March 1967), the project was completed. It was named ‘The Voice of the Congolese(B) Revolution’. This station was to be used for revolutionary campaigning in support of liberation forces in the Congo(K), Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique and other countries in southern Africa.
Congo(B) announced in 1967 the creation of a militia, the –Jeunesse du Mouvement do la Revolution (JMNR) China was invited to train and arm the militia which ‘openly professed admiration for Chairman Mao’. At the same time, China was already involved in training African guerrilla forces in the camps of Bouanga, Dombona and Ipfonda in the Congo(B).
In June 1968, a high-level military delegation visited the Congo (B) from China to attend the 4th annual celebration of the Congolese (B) People’s Army Day (22 June 1968). In July, a military delegation visited China from the Congo(B).
East Africa
Tanzania
In the western driven narrative, the East African state of Tanzania was regarded as heavily influenced by the People’s Republic of China. Under the leadership of the African National Union and President Julius Nyerere, the country issued the Arusha Declaration in 1967. The theme of the Arusha Declaration was to place emphasis on national self-reliance, the uplifting and empowerment of the peasantry as well as the realization of socialism based on the concrete conditions existing in Tanzania.
Following Nyerere’s visit to China in February 1965, the newspaper Nationalist printed an editorial stating,
The Chinese people support us Africans in the struggle to oppose imperialism and colonialism, new and old, and to win and safeguard out national independence…They support the Africans policy of peace, neutrality and nonalignment. They support Africa’s desire to achieve unity and solidarity in a manner of its own choice as well as its efforts to settle its own internal disputes through peaceful consultations…Above all, the Chinese have expressed their respect for the sovereignty of the African countries and have undertaken to avoid encroachment or interference in our political affairs.[xiii]
Interestingly in was neighbouring Zanzibar that first drew the ire of western propagandists.
The Cold War warriors would point to Abdul Rahman Mohamed (popularly known as “Babu” (1924 –1996), a Zanzibar-born Marxist and pan-Africanist nationalist, who played an important role in the 1964 Zanzibar revolution, served as a minister under Julius Nyerere after the island was merged with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania. [xiv]
Zanibar
The idea of Chinese experience being relevant in Africa was not a Chinese opinion alone as African radicals regarded It as providing both inspiration and a model for a host of anticolonial struggles across Africa and Asia. Abdul Rahman Mohamed (also known as “Babu”), secretary general of the Zanzibar Nationalist Party ZNP, visited China in January 1960. His opponents regarded him a Chinese agent of influence. Others saw him, as he saw himself, as an African revolutionary.
Amrit Wilson noted that Babu, was also, like many other young Africans and Asians of the period, inspired by the Chinese revolution. He had studied it in detail, but particularly for its relevance to Africa. China’s socialist revolution, he wrote:
“was an extension of its own liberation struggle and consequently there was a very thin dividing line between her nationalism and socialism. This dual loyalty to the two great movements of the period, enabled the Chinese to share more intimately the sentiments and aspirations of Africa’s liberation struggles and the struggle for national reconstruction both of which were Africa’s top priority.” [xv]
Babu had visited Mao Zedong’s China in 1959. and built close relations with the Chinese leadership , viewed by the British as “the best known Sinophile” in the area. Babu had a key role to play in the establishment of the TAZARA Railway ,offering both freight and passenger transportation services between and within Tanzania and Zambia, with the help of Chinese aid. Babu was among the progressive, leftist members of the Zanzibari government who was retained in the new joint Cabinet Dar es Salaam when the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar occurred on 26 April 1964 resulting in the creation of Tanzania
His connections to China continued, and his ideological affinity and work with the New China News Agency made him a good channel of communication with Beijing. He had an international profile attending in July 1964 at the second summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo and meeting and became friends with, as well as arguably influencing, people like Malcolm X.
Abdul Rahman Babu was one of Africa’s foremost thinkers and analysts. A leader of the anti-colonial struggle in Zanzibar and of the Zanzibar revolution, Babu was seen as a threat by the US government and his approach would bring him into sharp contradiction with Nyerere’s perspective on African Socialism.[xvi]
According to the US representative in the country, Petterson,
“Babu did not confine his revolutionary Marxism to words. In June 1962, he fomented the burning of the British Information Office and was accused of other acts of sabotage. He was convicted of sedition and spent fifteen months in jail. It was believed that he was behind an arson attempt against the American consulate in August 1961” [xvii]
The UK intelligence agencies had been keeping an eye on Babu from his early days in Britain. The UK Foreign Office noted, for example, on February 23, 1962:
The subject has a long record of Communist activity dating back to 1951 … he is believed to be a member of the British Communist Party and … to have lectured at their school in Hastings on the ‘Problems of Imperialism’… quickly established contact with the WFTU and other Communist organizations …. He became the principal East Africa correspondent for the New China News Agency, the editor of ZaNews, a particularly scurrilous pro-Communist news sheet and most significantly General Secretary of the ZNP …. Was largely instrumental in setting up the ZNP Cairo office as a staging point for students travelling along the iron curtain countries pipeline …. Subject attended an anti-atom bomb conference in Japan in July 1961, and strongly supported a resolution that none of the countries present should allow American consulates or bases in their countries. Shortly after his return an abortive attempt was made to set fire to the American Consulate in Zanzibar. [xviii]
Petterson repeated the political smear that it was well known “that Babu and his Umma Party are bought and sold by Peking. Chicoms have furnished Babu with New China News Agency material, duplicating equipment, vehicles, propaganda material, tickets for tours and scholarships for [a] number of years.” [xix]
He stated that
“The U.S. government strictly enjoined American officials abroad from any contact with the Chinese, because the United States did not recognize Communist China. Perhaps an added reason for shunning the Chinese was that in the American line up of Cold War villains, Communist China was seen as particularly nefarious” [xx]
The cold war scenario meant that the United States was convinced that China, or the ‘Chicoms’ as the Americans called the Chinese, were behind every change in the weather. Despite the absence of any tangible evidence, China’s big initial success, according to Western intelligence, in Africa was in helping to stage a revolution in Zanzibar in 1964. China recognized the revolutionary government of the People’s Republic of Zanzibar on 17 January 1964
‘Although documentary proof not available, circumstantial evidence of Chicom involvement in [the] Zanzibar revolt … points strongly to Chicom participation in financing and planning the coup … there is no hard evidence yet’
In that casual colonialist racist frame-of-mind, the explanation from Lord Colyton, a former junior minister in the Colonial Office in the House of Lords, suggested that Beijing had planned the whole revolution. British officials read it wrong thinking Peking had designed to turn the island into a centre of revolutionary subversion in the newly independent countries of Africa.
It was not only the Chinese put into the frame: false rumours of direct Cuban involvement surrounded intelligence-fed press coverage; The Sunday Telegraph 19th January 1964 furnished “proof” that the Chinese newspaperman Kao Liang was the instigator of the revolt in Zanzibar! Being a confirmative source, US ambassador Leonhart referred to revolutionary Zanzibar “as the Cuba of Africa” analogy, spoke of its use as a base for subversion on the mainland, and called for U.S. military intervention.
The often reported key US manipulator and destabilizer of progressive governments, Frank Carlucci, had on January 12, 1964 arrived in Zanzibar. He had come directly from the Congo where the CIA had been deeply involved in the overthrow of Lumumba, and this perhaps shows just how seriously the Zanzibar revolution was being viewed by the State Department. The Congo had seen Carlucci’s record of destabilizations, that would include service in Brazil and Portugal. His aim now, in his own words, was to prevent Zanzibar becoming ‘an African Cuba from which sedition would have spread to the continent’ [xxi]
In Zanibar western claim that China’s was the hidden hand behind such a Revolution. Zhou Enlai during a visit to Somalia, explained that the revolution in Zanzibar was the outcome of the work of its people and not that of outside communists because revolution can neither be exported nor be imported; only when the people of the country have awakened can they drive the aggressors out and overthrow their oppressors. Of course we do not conceal the fact that we sympathise with and support the revolutionary struggles of the peoples. [xxii]
On 20 February 1964, China offered aid to Zanzibar in terms of “men, machines, and money.” In accepting this offer, the minister of Foreign Affairs Abdul Rahmam Maomed announced: “There are people who say that Zanzibar is the Cuba of Africa but nothing could be further from the truth”
In his pen portrait of Babu, Petterson speaks of his magnetic personality. [xxiii] Babu was intellectually and emotionally committed to Marxism then and remained so throughout his life. Babu had been in London in 1951 to study journalism at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
“At the outset of our conversation, Babu insisted that Zanzibar had no quarrel with the United States and wanted the friendship of the U.S. government. Zanzibar, he said, did not wish to be involved in “Cold War propaganda or activities.” Its foreign policy would be an African policy whose ultimate goal was African unity. Its domestic objective would be the elimination of poverty; to achieve this end, he said, Zanzibar had to become a socialist state, for it did not have the time that the United States and Britain had to develop their economies.” [xxiv]
Yet behind embassy walls there was discussions of how Babu’s power could be “drastically reduced or eliminated.” [xxv]
All the Communist missions offered scholarships and overseas training opportunities for young Zanzibaris. The Soviets had a military training unit and continued to provide arms and equipment. They bought a large amount of cloves. The Chinese interest-free loan was appreciated, as was their military training and agricultural technical assistance. The East Germans were slow to get off the mark on their housing project, but the promise of it kept the Zanzibari leaders happy for the time being. The East Germans were also developing a plan to build a radio transmitter.
—
In February 1964 Babu, the former correspondent of the NCNA who was at one point general secretary of the ZNP, became minister in the union government. In planning the new Zanzibar economy Babu had turned to China – a country which had not only confronted underdevelopment and imperialist plunder but was, at that time, the only third world country that had developed an economy independent of external resources. The economic relationship with Tanzania was symbolised by the build of the TAZARA Railway.
Babu remained in the union government until 1972, when he was dropped from the cabinet. Nyerere, by this time, had consolidated power and acted following Karume’s assassination, the President of Zanzibar, on April 7 1972, Karume was killed in Zanzibar by a man whose father he had murdered. Babu along with 40 other Umma Party members were arbitrarily incarcerated, jailed for alleged involvement, despite a lack of evidence, leading to death sentences three years later, but after an international campaign under the leadership of people like the Guyanese and Pan African freedom fighter Walter Rodney that Babu was released after six years.
After his release Babu remained a vocal critic of imperialism, authoritarian states and excessively statist (as well as private capitalist) development models. He came into conflict with the policies of ‘African socialism’ espoused by President Julius Nyerere. Babu’s well-known book Socialist Africa or African Socialism, was written in Ukonga prison in Dar es Salaam and the manuscript smuggled out :
“At this crucial historical juncture, anti-colonial nationalism has already exhausted its potential and run out of steam. Its limited objectives have led perilously to the bleak realm of graft, corruption and economic decline. Its former usefulness has actually turned into a negation of all that Africa has stood for and indeed fought for. Only through socialism, whose direction has already been pointed out by the Zanzibar revolution, it can re-emerge from the shackles of neo-colonialism and imperialists domination with their legacy of poverty, starvation and disease. Only socialism can put Africa once again on the road to rejuvenation and rekindle that post-independence mass enthusiasm which has now everywhere been replaced by cynicism. Only socialism can open the way towards turning the entire continent into a unified, progressive Africa, utilising its almost unlimited natural and human resources for the benefit of its people. Only socialism can turn Africa into a giant among giants today. That is the meaning and legacy of the Zanzibar revolution.”
In exile, Babu went to the United States, lecturing and teaching at Amherst College. Later in1984 Babu made London his home, teaching at Birkbeck College, University of London and doing freelance writing, until his death in 1996.
—
Tanzania drew concern because of its perceived priority was to support those still struggling for national independence against the remnants of colonial rule specifically in Southern Africa. It offered a home and organising base for national liberation movements and facilitated military training as had Nkrumah’s Ghana before them.
In 1964, Tanzania had an official Chinese military mission to train its army, as distinguished from the clandestine training of guerrilla forces in Ghana and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
In August 1964 the Tanzanian government invited a Chinese military mission of eleven instructors to teach in the use of Chinese weapons. The military mission consisted of seven instructors and four interpreters and arrived some time before 9 September. Aid was taken from where it was offered as Tanzania was host to other instructors from the Soviets and East Germans.
Whereas such miniscule presence was given prominence, less publicity or concern was expressed at Sandhurst trained military or those taught the art of coup d’etat by the Americans, French or Belgians.
There was assistance in other forms .In early December 1966 President Nyerere opened a $560,000 short wave radio transmitter built with aid from China. Marking the occasion, Ambassador Ho said, “This station will help in the liberation of Africa.” As did training guerrillas in southern Tanzania to fight in Mozambique and other areas of southern Africa. Geographically, Tanzania provided a crossing point for liberation fighters going to the battlefields of southern Africa. Through Tanzania with which it had friendly relations, China was able to provide financial and military support to FRELIMO, not only an anti-colonial but also an anti-imperialist movement. As far as FRELIMO was concerned, Portuguese colonialism could not be separated from its NATO allies in the Mozambican people’s struggle for national liberation.
In October 1964 the Portuguese reported that five groups of guerrillas had penetrated Portugal’s East African territory of Mozambique from (then) Tanganyika. In operations against the guerrillas, the Portuguese captured guerrilla general Lucas Fernandes, who “was said to have received his military training in Peking.”
According to additional Portuguese reports, the Soviet Union and China were aiding Algerians, Cubans, and Tanzanians to subvert Portuguese Africa. The New York Times reported that arms and munitions were landing in Tanzania , repeating CIA reports that Pointe Noire in Congo-Brazzaville and Mtwara in Tanzania were entry points for Chinese arms for liberation movements in Mozambique and Angola using Chinese trucks to transport weapons to the Congo and the Mozambique border
Dr. Eduardo Mondlarfe was able to mobilise Mozambican groups and parties in a national united front for Mozambique’s independence under the name of the Frente de Liberta cao de Mozambique (FRELIMO, June 1962).
China’s relations with FRELIMO began almost two years (January 1963) before the beginning of guerrilla warfare in Mozambique (September 1964). In 1963, five FRELIMO delegations visited China, one of which (January) was led by Mondlane himself. On his return from China, Mondlane described the Chinese model for national liberation as stimulating to the African people and that he was very much impressed by the enthusiasm of the Chinese people towards the national liberation movement in Africa and their willingness to support the African people’s struggle.
_______________________
Southern Africa
Angola
When Western reports spoke of landings of weapons from Chinese ships in the Congo, these weapons were earmarked for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Initial support for the MPLA became defined by Cold War politics. In 1962–1963, China stopped being a major supporter of the pro-Soviet MPLA. [xxvi]
China’s involvement followed Organization of Africa Unity’s recognition for the three major liberation movements in Anglo: the Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA), Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola (UNITA), and the Frente Nacional para Libertacao de Angola (FNLA).
In 1963, Holden Roberto of FNLA met with Foreign Minister Chen Yi in Nairobi, and China is reported to have agreed to provide most of their armaments. Likewise, in 1964, Jonas Savimbi of UNITA met with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou En-lai in China, where he received military training and was referred to as a maoist in western reports.
In 1974, the FNLA received a 450-ton shipment of arms and benefited from the assistance of 112 Chinese instructors based in former Zaire. UNITA also was the recipient of Chinese largess. With the end of the Cultural Revolution in the early 1970s, China did provide military training to MPLA commanders and guerrillas but its relationship was unsteady.
Unjustly China was charged with supporting Apartheid South Africa and the United States against the Soviets and Cuba in the Angolan civil war. The Soviet-backed MPLA came to power declaring Angola independent in November 1975, and formal diplomatic relations between Beijing and Luanda were only established in 1983.
Zimbabwe
In support of the national independence movement in white-minority ruled Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe, China organised a Zimbabwe Day’ rally in Beijing (17 March 1963). The first group of five recruits for the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) went to China for six months training in military science on September 22 1963, led by Emmerson Mnangagwa.
It was followed by a second group, who had basic training in Ghana in 1964, went on to China in 1965 for advanced training as instructors.
China’s emphasis on the formation of united national front with the aim of engaging in concrete positive action against white minority rule. Thus, even though China appeared favourably inclined towards the more radical ZANU, it hoped publically that ZANU and ZAPU would unite in order to consolidate the national movement of Zimbabwe.
In February 1964 when James Robert, a ZAPU leader, visited China on his way to Moscow, China offered a financial contribution of $19,700 to ZAPU. In April 1966, five months after Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, (UDI) ZANU was the first national liberation movement to launch a full-scale guerrilla war in Zimbabwe/Southern Rhodesia from its bases in Zambia. ZAPU denounced ZANU’s action as “irresponsible”.
China view UDI as an act of the white colonialist authorities to carry on a fascist rule.
ZANU guerrilla fighters trained in China played a leading role in the war.
During early 1966, ZANU sent its third group of guerrillas for training to China. Josiah Magama Tongogara led a group of 11 to the Nanjing Academy in Beijing where they trained in mass mobilisation, strategy and tactics, returning to Tanzania later the same year. Tongogara, who became Commander of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla), “learned in China that it was vital to mobilise the people, and it was that lesson which shaped future strategy”.
Reading from the Mao Tse-tung play book on peasant revolutions, the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA) concentrated a great deal of energy on winning over the masses in the rural areas. Attacks were planned and carried out on African collaborators, and just like the government, ZANLA used coercive methods to ensure compliance with the nationalist movement. Mao teachings also influenced battle tactics of the Zimbabwean liberation movement.
In January 1969, a team of eight Chinese instructors arrived at Itumbi in southern Tanzania to train the Zimbabwe African Liberation Army (ZANLA), ZANU’s military wing. One of these instructors, Comrade Li, the infantry expert, played a particularly important role in the evolution of the new strategy.
At Itumbi and other training camps, the recruits learned the meaning of “a people’s war, a people’s army, the objectives of the war and the basic teachings of Chairman Mao on guerrilla warfare . . .
“The Chinese, who by then had 20 instructors at Mgagao, believed that you have got to be matured politically in your head before you go and shoot,” one of the early recruits said later. “I learned that the decisive factor was not the weapons but the people.”
The illegal Rhodesia regime highlighted the communist support given to – the Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union (ZAPU), and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), noting that since the early 1960’s the numerous visits to Moscow and Peking by leaders of the nationalist groups. The pattern that emerges here is of close links between ZAPU and the USSR and between ZANU and the PRC. Obviously there were para-military and sabotage training, and with the capture of Chinese made AK-47’s, the Smith regime pointed to
“Groups of Rhodesian African nationalists have been trained in camps near Peking and Nanking. Instruction has been given by Chinese military instructors in revolutionary tactics, arms, explosives, sabotage technique, communications and strategy. … Large groups of Rhodesian African nationalists were trained at Half Assini and Abenamadi Camps in Ghana during 1965. [xxvii]
Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) the military wing were supplied arms and provided advisors to train the cadres. Engaged in Chimurenga is a Shona language word for liberation, which entered common usage as they fought a protracted nearly 15 year bush war against the Rhodesian Security Forces drawing support largely from the adjacent African host countries of Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana and Angola (commonly referred to as the Front Line States)
The training of ZANU recruits has been carried out in the PRC at established military bases near Peking and Nanking. While the same para-military subjects are taught there as in the Soviet Union, great emphasis is placed on the ‘ideology’ of guerrilla warfare. The Chinese make much of the fact that they ‘won their liberation struggle’ by the same tactics being taught to the African trainees.
“all our militants also receive political training. They study Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, the history of Zimbabwe and writings on either revolutions, such as in Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, or the Mau-Mau in Kenya. Whenever we can, we spend time on political education, since it is crucial in building and maintaining the morale and good comportment among our guerrillas.” [xxviii]
Josiah Tongogara, the commander of ZANU’s liberation army in Zimbabwe, trained at a guerilla camp at Nanjing’s Military Academy in 1966. The training included two months of education on the Chinese Revolution and communist ideology, months more of training in “mass mobilization, military intelligence, political science, mass media, and guerilla strategies.” More recently courses inside the PRC have been largely replaced by similar training and exercises in Tanzania under Chinese instructors. Also of late, emphasis in this training has been on defense against attack by aircraft and on mine laying and sabotage.
In the final stages of the Zimbabwean struggle for independence in 1979, Tongogara related to a BBC reporter:
When we open a new area, we don’t just go and fight. First of all we make a study – investigation among the masses – they tell us their grievances, and those we exploit and use them…and we explain to them why we have come to them, why you are fighting this war. They have to understand it. [xxix]
Chinese aid extended to the supply of radio stations to Tanzania and Zambia for the purpose of broadcasting against the white-governed countries of Southern Africa, in support of Zimbabwe National Liberation Struggle.
Azania / South Africa
China’s early contact with Southern Africa was with ANC on the occasion of Walter Sisulu’s visit to China (1953). In an interview with the-then African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo in regard to China’s support for the armed struggle to end apartheid in the sub-continent, Tambo spoke on a visit saying that “It was the third time that the ANC has sent a delegation to the People’s Republic of China. The first time was in 1963. I was leading both. [xxx]
Testimony from an imprisoned black African fighter confirmed China’s practical assistance: Sometime in late 1963, according to the testimony, Beijing selected an African named Peter Metchane and sent him for military training in China. Metchane went to Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana) and from there flew to Tanganyika, India, Burma, and finally to China. He was enrolled in the military academy at Nanjing and was trained in the use of antitank mines and other equipment. South Africa sentenced Metchane and another black African to ten years imprisonment for their involvement in armed liberation movements, which was the ultimate purpose of their foreign training. During the trial Metchane testified that “four other Africans” had enrolled at the same time in Nanjing.
Two factors contributed to a more tepid relationship: that the ANC was much influenced by SACP which strictly followed the Soviet international line, and the assistance given by the Chinese to the Pan Africanist Congress, founded as a result of an ideological dispute within the leadership of ANC. Mangaliso Sobuke, PAC’s founder-leader, had been arrested in April 1960 following the Sharpeville massacre. In the early 1960s two PAC missions visited China and returned with $20,000 on each occasion and military training was offered.
Prior to Chinese aid, military training and camps of the Pan Africanist Congress military wing Pogo were based in Maseru in in the mountainous areas of Lesotho without the permission and knowledge of the Lesotho government. The authorities in Lesotho, at the time a British Protectorate, were closely allied with the South African government.
Eventually militants were to travel to the Congo, geographically the nearest independent country to South Africa, and it was here in 1963 that the Kinkuzu camp opened.
The PAC also sent its cadres for training in Botswana and Tanzania. In the early 1960s the PAC enjoyed the widespread sympathy of leaders in most of the newly-independent African countries largely because of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960.
A seven-member PAC “study delegation” (presumably a euphemism for military training) visited China in October 1964, another visit to China by the group under Ntantala followed in April 1967.
Training in China seems to have a significant impact on the PAC in general, and it’s military wing in particular, in that it is clear that the structure of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) was based closely on that of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In addition, the ideological training imparted to members of the PLA was also given to APLA members trained in China. Evidence of this grounding in Mao’s version of Marxist-Leninism was found, for instance, in APLA’s training Field Manual. In China, emphasis was placed on the ideological orientation of the cadres. In consequence, the PAC experienced a major shift in strategy, arguing that APLA cadres, armed with revolutionary propaganda, would carry out mobilisation work amongst the people along with attacks on enemy forces. Unlike the Poqo military phase that was by nature a localised insurrection, based on the Chinese model, APLA elevated its training and ideology and these became critical components of its warfare. Far from being a dedicated maoist formation, the radical hodge-potch of radicalism, Africanist and Marxist sentiments meant the disciplined focus insurrectional force was never constructed, and the PAC played second fiddle to the older ANC. [xxxi]
APLA camps in exile, 1970-1981
The camps in Tanzania were waiting camps to hold trained personnel of the liberation organisations of southern Africa”. The emphasis was on physical exercises and karate. The Chinese trainers provided training in the martial arts, as well as theoretical training. The camp was a joint camp with ZANU. [xxxii]
HoustonI et al argued that the leadership of the PAC, and in particular the conflicts that characterised its history for most of the exile period, were largely responsible for the limited attention the leadership gave to military training and operations, and for insufficient support from the international community for its armed struggle and military camps.
When the internal leadership squabbles occurred in the mid-1960s the young cadres were complaining that they were lost and … they did not know what was happening to the leadership.
It is quite apparent that there was no strategic direction behind the training provided to APLA cadres. The PAC simply took advantage of any offer of training, irrespective of whether it was relevant for strategic reasons.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, APLA cadres underwent training in Libya, Ghana, Guinea, Uganda, Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Yugoslavia, China and Kampuchea (present day Cambodia).
Zebulon Mokoena underwent another training session in 1976 when he led a group of PAC cadres that were sent to China at the beginning of 1976 “for military training”.110 During the first month of the three-month course the cadres were provided with cultural and political training, including visits to all the relevant historical sites, where they were given lectures on the Chinese revolution and the work of the Communist Party of China. The group was then transferred to Guangzhou, where they were trained on how to establish an underground guerrilla army; to use light weapons manufactured in the East and light to medium weapons manufactured in the West; to manufacture home-made explosives using readily available material; and regimental drill. Mokoena later went to Libya with the SASO group that stayed in Libya for nine months; they were given a course in infantry.[xxxiii]
There were African Maoist groups, like the exiled based editorial team around Ikwezi (1975-1982) under the editorship of Bunsee Bunting and non-Party intellectuals who saw Maoism as a revolutionary universalism, rather than a nationalist ideology of Chinese exceptionalism. Bunting had joined the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in the early 1960s and was part of the first group that went to China for military training with other PAC stalwarts retaining an ideological affinity with Pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness in the post-apartheid period. [xxxiv]
IKWEZI was a pre-party publication based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought working at the stage of the Azania national democratic revolution. Working within the Pan Africanist and Black Consciousness movement, the struggle was seen as both a national and a class struggle against colonial and imperial domination. It was critical of revisionist influences within the mainstream liberation movement, the African National Congress ANC. Ikwezi took a firm stand against Russian social-imperialism regarding it as being the greater danger compared to American imperialism
Bunting returned to China in July 1979 as editor of an IKWEZI Delegation. The magazine subsequently published a talk given us by a member of the Liaison Department of the CPC on China’s Foreign Policy, and later published its critical assessment of the 1981 CPC’s Assessment of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong. [xxxv]
ENDNOTES
[i] [e.g. Snow, P., (1988). The Star Raft: China’s Encounter With Africa. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Pp. 76-87].
[ii] Drawing upon the analysis detailed in Debeche’s 1987 thesis
[iii] Diario de Noticias, 11 July 1964 quoted in Debeche’s 1987 thesis
[v] Draws on the postcoup publications of the Ghanaian government, Nkrumah’s Deception of Africa (1966) Accra-Tema: THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION (Ghana); and,Senate Internal Security Sub-committee (1972) Communist Global Subversion and American Security Volume 1 : The Attempted Communist Subversion of Africa Through Nkrumah’s Ghana. Washington: US Government Printing Office
[ix] See: Lumumba Speaks; the speeches and writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961. (edited by Jean Van Lievade) 1968. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Available on archive.org.
[x] Investigation conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, under the chairmanship of Senator Frank Church, in 1975. After extensive closed hearings, revealed in its report that the C.I.A. had plotted to assassinate Lumumba and several other foreign leaders and had engaged in a variety of other illegal activities at home and abroad – all this under four Presidents (two Republicans and two Democrats).
See ~ ASSASSINATION PLANNING AND THE PLOTS
The death of UN General Secretary, Dag Hammarskjold in a plane crash in September 1961, shrouded in secrets and lies, was explored in Susan Williams’ Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (2011) London: Hurst & company.
[xi]Le Monde, weekly, No 845, 24-30 December 1964, p. 5
[xiii] “The Nationalist Hails CPR Support of Africans,” Peking NCNA International Service – 1965-01-29, Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts, FBIS-FRB-65-021.# Such rhetoric covered in reality a more cautious and conservative regime balancing its international relations.
[xvii] Don Petterson (2002) Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale. Boulder Westview Press 2002: Page 109
The memoirs of the trials and tribulations of an American Foreign Service Officer , Don Petterson (2002) Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale. Boulder: Westview Press, is embroidered with both a defence (against some judgements in Clayton’s work, The Zanzibar Revolution and its aftermath. 1981 London: C. Hurst & Co. ) , an explanation of events from an American perspective and interests, and his own assessment of his experience at the time. Petterson “corrects” Adam Clayton’s assessment of Americans and their roles (Frank C.Carlucci, CIA? No! Highly regarded Foreign Service Officer. Just happened to be serving in Congo when Lumumba murdered and went onto serve as the United States Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan, having been Deputy Director of the CIA from 1978 until 1981 and US ambassador in Portugal in 1974 following the Carnation Revolution).
US fears of China
During the Cold War in Zanzibar, and later in Tanzania, the US State Department was beset with the fear of ‘Chicoms’. An exploration of American anxieties about China and China’s relations with growing economic strength and burgeoning trade with African countries is for another time. Discussion on what is regarded as a footnote to Africa’s post-colonial history can be found in a few studies e.g.
Amrit Wilson (2013) The Threat of Liberation: Imperialism and Revolution in Zanzibar. London: Pluto Press
Clayton, Anthony (1981) Zanzibar, revolution and aftermath. London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
Don Petterson (2002) Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale. Boulder Westview Press 2002
Salma Babu and Amrit Wilson (eds), The Future that Works: Selected writings of A.M. Babu. Trenton: Africa World Press.
[xxvi] China were not without their supporters: in 1963, Viriato de Cruz, then secretary-general of the MPLA and a key intellectual voice, split partly over the China issue and fled to Beijing, where he died in 1973.
[xxvii] Information Section , Ministry of Foreign Affairs COMMUNIST SUPPORT AND ASSISTANCE TO NATIONALIST POLITICAL GROUPS IN RHODESIA SLB/CGR 28 November 1975
[xxviii] Interview with Edward Ndhlovu, ZAPU Deputy National Secretary, Dec. 1974
[xxx] Journal of African Marxists, No. 5, March 1984
[xxxi] Actual performance was disorganisation in the movement as well as a marked lack of resources explored in Military training and camps of the Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa, 1961-1981 by Gregory HoustonI; Thami ka PlaatjieII; Thozama April Historia vol.60 n.2 Durban Nov. 2015
[xxxii] When the PAC’s ally came to power in Zimbabwe in 1980, ZANU decided that it would not allow the South African liberation movements to use its territory as a springboard for operations, nor did it give permission for the establishment of military camps in Zimbabwe.
[xxxiii] A group of new recruits that arrived in early 1977 were sent for military training in China, followed by another group that went to Kampuchea. In June 1977 there were 21 cadres who left Tanzania for Khmer Rouge-ruled Kampuchea under the leadership of Ezrom Mokgakala. The group spent a few weeks in China, before proceeding to Kampuchea. Their initial challenge was to learn the Cambodian language before commencing with training. One member of the group, Sgubu Dube, recalled that:
We were a group of 23 … and spent six weeks in China on orientation on what to expect from Kampuchea because the country had just received independence in 1975. When we were about to start with the heavy machinery like tanks, airplanes and helicopters, the Vietnamese invaded Kampuchea and we had to move from the city to the countryside. That was a very good experience because all that we had been taught we had to put into practice: how to evacuate people … We marched for eight months from Kampuchea going down to Thailand” .
Bibliography ¨China’s revolutionary flames in Africa 2
Statements
Apologists of Neo-Colonialism — Comment On The Open Letter Of The Central Committee Of The CPSU (IV)October 22, 1963. Peking: Foreign Languages Press 1963
Chau, Donovan C. (2014) Exploiting Africa The Influence of Maoist China in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press
CIA Research Reports, Africa 1946-1976. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Frederick, MD. : University Publications of America, 1982. (Microfilm format)
Clayton, Anthony (1981) The Zanzibar Revolution and its aftermath. London: C. Hurst & Co.
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Petterson, Don (2002) Revolution in Zanzibar An American’s Cold War Tale. Westview Press
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Strauss, Julia C. The Past in the Present: Historical and Rhetorical Lineages in China’s Relations with Africa. The China Quarterly, 199, September 2009, pp. 777–795
Van Ness (1970) Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy: Peking’s support for wars of national liberation. University of California Press
Wilson, Amrit (2013) The Threat of Liberation Imperialism and Revolution in Zanzibar. London: Pluto Press
The friendly relations between China and Allende’s Chile, followed by diplomatic silence and business-like relations with Chile under Pinochet broke an unspoken contract that revolutionaries without power expect better of Socialist states they admire and defend.
The international communist movement gets conflated with behaviour of regimes negotiating the currents of international relations in a hostile imperialist dominated world. Historical precedents abound of disillusionment and sense of betrayal engendered by the pragmatic nuisances and decisions taken from Brest-Litovsk onwards.
Former regime supporters of different political currents can name their own pivot event that shredded the bounds of friendship and solidarity : non-aggression pacts, suppression in Hungry, peaceful co-existence, the Sino-India border war, invasion of Czechoslovakia, Sri Lankan revolt, war in the Horn of Africa, three world theory, the occupation of Kampuchea, teaching Vietnam a lesson or the silence over Chile. The tapestry of issues is beyond this simple chronology of articles in the English language edition of Peking Review on Sino-Chilean relations and the aftermath of the 1973 military coup.
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