In February, the two final volumes of this book series completes the translations of Mao Zedong’s writings from 1912 to 1949 providing abundant documentation in his own words on his life and thoughts as well as developments in China during the pre-1949 period.
The penultimate volume in the series, Volume IX, covers in 690 pages the period from the Japanese Surrender through the Chinese Communist Party’s Strategic Defense during the Civil War, August 1945 to June 1947. Volume X runs to 942 pages , covers the period from the Chinese Communist Party’s Strategic Offense during the Civil War to the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China, July 1947 to October 1949.
The Routledge published Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: Volume IX and Volume X, were co-edited by Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, and Nancy Hearst, the librarian at Harvard University’s Fairbank Collection of the H.C. Fung Library. Previous volumes involved the scholarship of Stuart R. Schram, Nancy Hearst, Roderick MacFarquhar, and toil of researchers, typists and unnamed librarians etc.
Mao’s Road to Power Revolutionary Writings was an academic endeavour with matching price tag:
Volume IX – Published February 2023, the Blackwell website prices it at £233.50 print copy, there is also an eBook edition available.
Volume X – the final volume runs to 942 pages, takes us up to October 1949, the creation of the People’s Republic of China, marking the completion of the long process of revolutionary upheaval begun by the Chinese Revolution of 1911.
W H Smith prices a copy at £120 but offers ebook at £33.99
[Whereas the Selected Works of Mao published by Foreign language Press (Paris) are available at $15 each.]
The first 8 volumes of the Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: series have been scanned and can be found on various internet sites, and is referenced in the on-going exploration of the Chinese revolution at People’s History of Ideas Podcast.
v. 1. The pre-Marxist period, 1912-1920
v. 2. National revolution and social revolution, December 1920-June 1927
v. 3. From the Jinggangshan to the establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927-December 1930
v. 4. Th rise and fall of the Chinese Soviet Republic, 1931-1934
v. 5. Toward the second united front, January 1935-July 1937
v. 6. The new stage, August 1937-1938
v. 7. New democracy, 1939-1941
v. 8. From rectification to coalition government, 1942-July 1945.
There were many testimonies on the passing of comrade Sison that referenced his political contribution and achievements of his remarkable life. The sentiments expressed in more than one observation should suffice to speak volumes:
“At every stage of his life, Joma could have taken the easy path. He could have settled into the life of a petty-bourgeois professor or intellectual, making his peace with the class inequalities of Philippine society. He could have capitulated into the revisionist PKP and become another hack apparatchik. He could have capitulated to Marcos avoiding years of isolation and torture. He could have accepted one of many offers to order the NPA to put down their guns and joined one of the post-Marcos administrations. He could have settled into a quiet retirement, instead of writing and giving interviews up until the very end of his life. Comrade Joma Sison lived his whole life going against the tide, upholding revolution until the very end.”
In November 2022, Maoist Road announced the appearance of a new online journal focused on various positions and criticisms around a Unified Maoist International Conference. The journal“Two Lines Struggle”, reproduces statements previously made on the subject. The journal is described as …. not the journal of a party, or a block, a faction or particular trend within the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, but the decision of different parties and organizations in order to promote the two-lines-struggle within the communists, as its name and slogan indicate, and to contribute to its unity, in particular, with the preparation of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Unified International Conference.
Contents
Editorial For an International Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Conference
Proposal Regarding the Balance of the International Communist Movement and of its Current General Political Line – CUMIC
On the “Proposal on the Balance of the International Communist Movement and its current General Political Line – For a Unified Maoist International Conference!” – UOC (mlm) Colombia
Some critical notes on “For a Unified Maoist International Conference! – Proposal regarding the balance of the International Communist Movement and of its current General Political Line” – PCm Italy
On the Unified Maoist Conference (UMIC) – CCPCM Galicia
The Approach of Our Party on the Prepared Draft – TKP/ML Turkey
Info for other documents in web-site
Debate
Brief critical Notes on “Our Position Against the Imperialist War in Ukraine” of Communist International website – PCm Italy
On the “criticism” of the Italian comrades – CI-IC.org
On the Necessary Development of the Two Lines Struggle on the War in Ukraine – PCm Italy
Communist Party of Nepal (Revolutionary – Maoist) by Maoist Outlook
People’s Wars
Answers of Basavraj, General Secretary of CC, CPI (Maoist) to the Questions of Journalist Alf
Let’s develop the Revolutionary Struggle against the Imperialist World War Preparations! Joint Declaration by Communist Workers Union (mlm) – Colombia / Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia / Maoist Communist Party Italy/ Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan. One of the initial signatories was missing for the journal’s republication, that of Red Road of Iran (Maoist group).
Sweden
A separate , while related, contribution was posted in the Swedish section of the Banned Thought website
“Gonzaloism: A ‘Left’ Revisionist Deviation”, by Thomas Berg, 3rd Ed., September 2022, 36 pages, from the Kommunistiska Föreningen [“The Communist Association”] in Sweden. Direct link [BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET]
Italy
One of the sponsors behind Maoist Road, the (new) Italian Communist Party was the subject of an interview carried by the American Kites journal “about issues concerning international communist movement, starting with the summation of the first world proletarian revolution (1917-1976). Thus, the interest for it isn’t limited to North America (US and Canada) nor to Italy. We think that its study will be useful to all those who will make it in order to develop a frank and open debate about these issues.”
Kites (www.kites-journal.org) was founded in 2020 by two North American organizations: Revolutionary Initiative (RI) from Canada and Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (OCR) from US. It is a publication aimed to the discussion about revolutionary strategy and tactics that communists have to adopt in North America and in their respective activity contexts. Until now, they published five issues of the review.
Other news from Turtle Island
Canada
From the Communist Worker’s Front (Organizing Committee) , that has its origins as a red fraction of the student “MER-RSM”,came its analyse On the Complete Liquidation of the “PCR-RCP” It refers to the start of the year in January,[2022] when a split occurred in the Continuator faction of the PCR-RCP between the old-guard centred in the Norman Bethune House and the young-guard who have since dissolved the Continuator faction of the PCR-RCP to found the supposed “Communist Vanguard of Canada”. In passing, political attacks are made on other Canadian leftist, Revolutionary Initative, expelled opponents of the Continuator faction “CCG”/”CMU” that built a public face under the name of Young Socialists for People’s Power which would later take up the name of its magazine Youth Riseup! . Adding to the mix are defunct organizations, such as the Ontario-based the “Social Revolution Party” and the “Revolutionary Workers Party”.
As self-declared partisans of Gonzalo Thought, “We call for all communists, militants, and workers reading this document to not fall for the false flag of reconstitution raised by the revisionists, who want to turn back the clock on the “PCR-RCP”. Nor must we wait idly for a communist party to arrive while the proletariat clamour. Instead, we must look ahead at the road of hard work and struggle in reconstituting our general headquarters for people’s war!”
USA
The continuing existence of autonomous local organizations of pre-party formations pepper the American scene with a number of organizations that emerged from the breakup of the Organizing Committee for a Maoist Communist Party (MCP-OC) looking towards party building and national coordination . These, often identified by the FTP- For the People – prefix to a geographical location, comprises small Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political organization activists engaged in ideological study and localised mass work however regarding themselves as building blocks for a reconstituted national communist party.
Not all are on board as For the People – Boston (FTP – Boston) critiqued moves for the re-constitution of a national formation to coordinate leadership and unity of action among the organizations bearing the FTP name with Marxism or Idealism? Once Again on Party Building and our Tasks, a response to the “It Won’t Stop Until We Stop It” 2021 May Day statement, published on People’s Voice News. For the reasons it argues FTP-Boston believe that a centralised national network, and its lack of ideological clarity and consolidation determined to be inappropriate at this stage of struggle.
It had provided a summation of its strategic criticism as a component of the Maoist Communist Party – OC that saw the dismantling of the central structure of the MCP-OC at its 2020 congress. The document, One Step Forward Two Steps Back: mutual aid, “mass work” and communist strategy, “advances that the central work for those formations emerging from the MCP-OC is primarily organizational. The small group left remains isolated from the masses, and has failed to develop serious unity on the basis of a real revolutionary program. This deficiency can only be overcome through the summation of (and struggle over) protracted sequences of mass work”.
The Maoist Communist Union, its antecedents in the Mass Proletariat organization (2016-2020), founded in late 2020, describes itself as “an organization dedicated to advancing the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the struggle for revolution in the United States” primarily working in Massachusetts. The MCU has produced two issues so far of a theoretical journal Red Pages.
Some of the self-declared groups may register more on the internet than anywhere else – The Cincinnati Study Collective – whereas others, while sharing a similar goal, display a more sober and modest attitude; the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition – Chicago states in its Points of Unity,
“Although we are not a party formation, we understand that no revolution can be won without the leadership of a vanguard party armed with the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It is our hope that through the experience and theories learned from work within our revolutionary mass organization that the most politically advanced members among us will develop further and eventually be able to constitute a Maoist Party which is capable of toppling the capitalist-imperialist system.”
Late December [21, 2022] saw an unsigned commentary posted on the online site, Communist International highlighted an attempt to liquidate the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA (CRCPUSA).
A Reddit posting described the CRCPUSA as a clandestine organization hence the lack of public statements or organizational documents. Its origins are rooted in the Red Guard milieu dissolved around late 2018 .The posting identified Tribune of the People as a news outlet that reports on the revolutionary movement in the US and supports reconstituting the Party. US-based Internet Blogger, Black like Mao, commented two years ago 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 pMs 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. “
A statement of the situation of the Maoists in the USA
Since February/March this year, the comrades in the United States who struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in their country are facing a complicated internal situation resulting from an attempt to liquidate the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA (CRCPUSA) – the ongoing initiative to unify all the communist in the task of reconstituting the communist Party of the United States under Maoism. The liquidationists are launching a vicious internet campaign in which they go so far as snitching, diffusing internal information about the revolutionary organizations, and, in the most repulsive cases, publicizing names and photos of alleged leading members. This helps the reaction in striking blows against the revolutionary and communist movement. It is collaboration with and legitimization of the enemy apparatuses, and does not, in any way, help to build a communist party, nor does it constitute a method of revolutionaries and communists for developing the struggle.
Chairman Mao always insisted on the necessity to correctly draw the line between Yenan and Sian, that is between revolution and counter-revolution. He also advocated to “clearly differentiating the errors that take place at the practical work (problems of application) from the errors of principle (problems with the conception), separating Marxism from revisionism”. The attempt to liquidate the CRCPUSA confuses Yenan and Sian, and the mistakes on principles with those made within the practical work, and, in doing so, it harms the effort for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in the United States.
Accusing people of being revisionist requires a serious critic of its ideological, political and organizational line. It can only be made by conducting a persistent and protracted two-line-struggle, and this is always carried out with the aim of unifying the Party and not destroying the Party. We call on all the honest comrades in the United States – which we believe constitute the overwhelming majority of those that had taken part in the process of reconstitution- who wish to serve the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of the USA to follow “Practice marxism, not revisionism; work towards unity, not for splitting; act in honest and honored way and don’t thread intrigues nor machinations”. A principled two-line-struggle through the correct internal channels must be conducted with the aim of firmly unifying on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the struggle against imperialism, revisionism, and the reaction, and to serve the development of revolution in the US as part of and in service of the world proletarian revolution. We call all the comrades that have criticism toward other comrades to dispose all post-modernist criteria in the struggle, to reject individualism and personal disputes. All criticism must have a political sense. We call all comrades that have committed mistakes to undergo serious and honest self-criticism and to correct the mistakes in their revolutionary practice. We call on all comrades who have been left without reliable contacts to not despair, nor open any organizational debates and information online, nor cease their work with the masses, we urge them to keep developing their revolutionary activities. With the proper development of two-line-struggle, you will be able to reconnect and participate in it through the internal channels.
Liquidating the CRCPUSA does not serve revolution and does not combat revisionism, rather it destroys the efforts to unify the communist under the task of reconstituting the communist Party of the United States. Calls to “destroy the CRCPUSA” are only expression of liquidationism and is not the way Maoists struggle to impose the correct line. On international level, the CRCPUSA continues to be the only recognized organization that represents the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in the United States, and we urge all comrades to develop internal two-line-struggle, to apply unity-struggle-unity, and to firmly reject all snitching and police work.
The international communist movement fully supports the struggle of the comrades in the United States and will support the two-line-struggle to rectify mistakes and to achieve a higher unity in the path of unifying under Maoism; and reconstituting the communist Party of US.
Ireland
The third edition of An Ghrian Dhearg, produced by the Irish Socialist Republicans appears just as its first edition is posted online at the Irish left Archive:
And FLP living up to its name, and goal of providing the broadest possible access to revolutionary literature at an affordable cost, publishing high production paperbacks of over 130 Marxist titles in a variety of languages available from their web shop https://flpress.storenvy.com
Established in Canada in 2021, this site provides access to English-language pdfs of anti-revisionist literature and the name should sound familiar. The original “8 Nëntori” Publishing House, literally meaning “8 November” in Albanian, honours the founding of the Party of Labour of Albania on November 8th, 1941. It published Enver Hoxha’s Selected Works, his Reflections, his many theoretical works, his memoirs, historical notes, and more.
The new incarnation, while republishing material from the Hoxha’s canon, aims “to promote discussion among Marxist-Leninists, even reprinting controversial figures and literature. In this work, we should note that reprinting does not mean we endorse the content — nor does it necessarily represent our views — it only means that we acknowledge that there may be some value in studying it.” Amongst its existing list are titles from the usual suspects, Lenin, Stalin, Dimitrov, Zhdanov, Ramiz Alia , Nexhmije Hoxha, and Wang Ming and Kim Il Sung. Being based near Ottawa (formerly at Toronto), there are some specifically Canadian communist literature reprinted.
Amongst its publications is a new collection Congress of Betrayal – The November 8th Publishing House (wordpress.com) partially of previous untranslated comments from Enver’s Diary and other more familiar material. This selection covers the decade 1955-1966, covering such events as the 20th Congress and the denunciation of Stalin, including his epochal 1960 Moscow Meeting speech, the Hungarian counter-revolution and its source, the “anti-party” plot of Molotov et al., to the break of diplomatic relations by the Soviets in 1961, and the removal of Khrushchev and the 23rd Brezhnev Congress in 1964-66.
seek truth to serve the people
What it illustrates is the argumentation forcibly and persistently offered in the through-going contradictions with the revisionist developments under Khrushchev. Far from being a pawn in the Sino-Soviet split, as if Albania was a side show in the anti-revisionist struggle, it highlights the contribution made sincerely and independently in that anti-revisionist struggle. Having read Albania Challenges Khrushchev Revisionism (New York 1976) or The Party of Labor of Albania in Battle with Modern Revisionism (Tirana 1972) you will know what to expect, and the speech delivered at the meeting of 81 Communist and Workers’ parties in Moscow (November 16, 1960) is included in the collection. That self-reverential sense that “we have done our sacred duty to Marxism-Leninism” still pervades the selection but then again, reality proved the life-and-death class struggle they were engaged in. The disruption of the international movement and eventual disintegration did see the attempted formation and reorganisation of anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist forces. Something the Albanian party did pay close attention too.
Any evaluation of the struggle experienced by the Party of Labour of Albania led by Enver Hoxha should acknowledge it opened up the gates for the formation of the new Marxist-Leninist parties and the end of the old “fossilized and demobilized” Communist parties in the early stages of that struggle. The subsequent stance raises other questions which seems to have influenced some of the selected inclusions in the collection, before Hoxhaism was clearly delineated from Maoism,to reinforce the (contested) position that the PLA were the only forces to assess every deviationist move of the USSR correctly from the very beginning.
Congress of Betrayal | CONTENTS
KHRUSHCHEV ANNULS THE INFORMBUREAU DECISION (May 23, 1955)
WE ARE ALONE AGAINST TITO (May 25, 1955)
DITYRAMBS FROM TITO TO KHRUSHCHEV (February 18, 1956)
ON KHRUSHCHEV’S SECRET SPEECH (February 26, 1956)
THE AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS CAN NEVER CHANGE THEIR ESSENCE (March 8, 1956)
THE “ITALIAN WAY TOWARDS SOCIALISM” (March 18, 1956)
THE TRAITORS REHABILIATED UNDER THE PRETEXT OF THE “CULT OF THE INDIVIDUAL” (March 30, 1956)
A REVISIONIST PLOT AGAINST THE PARTY (April 16, 1956)
THE LESSONS WE SHOULD DRAW FROM THE PARTY CONFERENCE OF THE CITY OF TIRANA (April 21,1956)
THE 20th CONGRESS DID NOT PUT MATTERS RIGHT (May 26, 1956)
MOLOTOV HAS BEEN SACRIFICED FOR TITO (June 4, 1956)
KHRUSHCHEV SUGGESTS TO USE THE EXPERIENCE OF HITLER (June 23, 1956)
ANOTHER SLANDER LAID ON STALIN (July 2, 1956)
THE FOREIGN PRESS SALIVATES OVER THE MANOEVRE OF KHRUSHCHEV (July 3, 1956)
THE CHINESE ARE FOLLOWING THE ROAD OF THE SOVIETS (September 17, 1956)
IN NO WAY WILL WE MAKE CONCESSIONS ON PRINCIPLES (November 13, 1956)
Floating around the internet is a 4 volume English language compilation entitled “The Collected Writings of the Communist Party of Peru 1968-1999” comprising some 1116 pages. A few are in Spanish. It has been seen in pdf and epub file format. Production wise it has some obscure last lines on various articles where the spacing and setting is off but the entries seem to be of released material from the CPP. No formal identification to its production is evident.
This contents listing is a research aid to the material.
The MLM publishing house, Foreign Language Press has embarked on producing a new three volume edition of the Selected Works of Ho Chi Minh. The first volume was made available in 2021.
In “The Path Which Led Me to Leninism” Ho Chi Minh describes the excitement of reading Lenin’s writings on colonialism (although the recollection comes from 1960, he is referring to his experiences in 1920). Ho’s early writings attacks “the hydra of western capitalism” for “stretching its horrible tentacles towards all corners of the globe.” He accuses the French of hypocritically talking about a “civilizing mission” while bringing “misery, ruin, and death” to their colonies. He criticizes the French Socialist Party for silence in the face of these policies and applauds the Communist International for taking up the colonial question. As he explains, “Uncle Ho” embraced Leninism because it offered a “path to liberation” for the Vietnamese people. But there is more than nationalistic motive when Ho describes Leninism as “the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism”.
Ho Chi Minh, real name Nguyen Tat Thanh (1890-1969), Vietnamese Communist leader and the principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle against French colonial rule. He came to symbolise Vietnam’s struggle for independence. His personal qualities of simplicity, integrity, and determination were widely admired, not only within Vietnam but elsewhere as well. In the struggle to complete the liberation of Vietnam, Ho died before the withdrawal of US forces, and defeat of the Saigon regime it had bankrolled and militarily underpinned. He died on September 2 at the age of seventy-nine.
The revolutionary internationalism and national liberation that motivated the commitment that this outstanding communist displayed throughout his life was evident in the commemorative issue of Vietnam magazine that marked his funeral in 1969.
The pdf shared is not a catalogue of British-related material drawn from the online archive provided by the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line.
It contains other material produced around, and within the anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist movement, and a listing or related material that provides background reference information to that movement without being an exhaustive bibliographical guide (or for bibliophiles, a checklist).
However, even given those limitation it provides a signpost to the literature produced, and a springboard for any research on the origins and developments within Britain’s anti-revisionist movement from the 1960 to the new century.
Died aged 70 at Chichester, West Sussex on October 12, 1995.
Long gone, Gerald Ian Greig has faded in the consciousness of many but he played his part in maintaining an obsessive rabid anti-communism that poisoned political life in Britain. A sympathetic obituary noted, “Greig was identified by those unsympathetic to his views as a fully paid up member of the ”reds under the bed” school of thought.” His professional life ending as Deputy Director of the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, a right-wing “think tank” policy group that focused on the communist threat, and his written output would only substantiate that characterisation.
Born in West London, October 26, 1924, he travelled the route of public school, army, and political journalism familiar in many upper middle class life stories. [i]
In 1942, upon leaving the incubator of Chandos House at Stowe independent school in Buckingham, Greig was commissioned at the age of 18 in a cavalry regiment seeing service in Holland after the D-Day landings. He remained in the Army after the war and time spent in Palestine was said to have stimulated “his lifelong fascination with terrorism and its methods.”
After a spell as a Conservative constituency, he went into journalism. His informal political contacts were on the right of Britain’s political right. Much of his written output under the name ‘Ian Greig’ had sources drawn from a reading of public documents and statements published by communists, what is described as “official reports of western Governments” (including the briefing reports of the small circulation newsletters) and “the statements of defectors who actually took part in the events described”.
In 1961 he was a founding organiser of the Monday Club, a hard right pressure group, separate organisational from the Conservative Party but populated with its members, and others from the Far Right. The thirty-six year old Greig served as Membership Secretary until 1969.
The Monday Club was a reaction (and reactionary), dubious about the rapid decolonisation of Africa foreshadowed in Macmillan’s ”wind of change” speech to the South African Parliament, which illiberal Tories saw as the last straw. The club stated that Macmillan had “turned the Party Left” and attracted Conservatives who looked for leadership to the Marquis of Salisbury.
They were in that racist colonialist way disparaging about the former colonies’ ability to rule themselves satisfactorily and worried about the opportunities this offered the communists to further their strategic aims. Ian Greig’s Monday club opposed what it described as the “premature” independence of Kenya, and the breakup of the Central African Federation, which was the subject of its first major public meeting in September 1961. It was fundamentally opposed to decolonisation, and defended white minority rule in South Africa and Rhodesia. Or as the obit in the Glasgow Herald politely put it: The group published papers on South Africa and Rhodesia and remained well disposed to the Smith regime after it declared UDI in 1965.
The soft-pedalling of Greig’s opinions continued with a reference that:
Certainly he shared the views of those like retired General Sir Frank Kitson that more should be done to prepare the armed forces to cope with terrorism.
In fact Ian Greig was a former Senior Executive of the Institute for the Study of Conflict,[ii] a right-wing propaganda group established by Brian Crozier in 1970. It ran until 1989 and produced a series of reports on terrorism, guerrilla war, union activism and other topics. Institute offered professional and authoritative-sounding analyses, both for the general public and for more specialised audiences of academics, policy makers, police officials, and military commanders. It provided respectability to right-wing and repressive policies, primarily through its dissemination of academic presented studies.[iii] It also developed connections with other right-wing organisations and offered training on ‘subversives’ to police and the military.
His life was spent around the networks of power, lobbying, public relations and the communications activities that operate as keyboard warriors in the shadows, away from accountability the various “think tanks” of AIMS and Common Cause and others were outlets for his work. Greig’s prolific published themes reflected the anxieties of a section of the western political class as seen in an incomplete bibliography of books and briefings compiled from Foreign Affairs Publishing – postal address one-time above the shops at Arrow house, 27-31 Whitehall, SW1A 2BY. These were reviewed in foreign affairs journals, bought by the university’s libraries (see Trinity College Library Dublin) and included on undergraduate reading lists even today, and of course, digitalised.
The first to gain attention was The Assault on The West published in 1968 / 14 editions published between 1968 and 1974 in English and Chinese (Taipei: Youth Cultural Enterprise (1974))
Greig’s book The Assault on the West (1968) spelled out the dangers which he believed insufficiently alert western democracies faced from expansionist Communism aided by those engaged on internal subversion. It carried an approving preface by a close friend of Sir Alec Douglas-Home who shared his political views on the dangers of Communist expansion.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903 -1995), served as Foreign Secretary then Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964. Narrowly defeated in the 1964 UK general election, Douglas-Home resigned the party leadership in July 1965. Noted for his forcefully expressed anti-communist beliefs, Home’s description of it as “a careful and detailed analysis of the multifarious ways in which they deal in subversion” reflects the cold war mentality that there was only one side as the problem. The focus on a grand narrative of expansion and subversion discounted western policies, the rhetoric of roll back and containment, and actions that created conditions for international mistrust and tension. The imperialist self-interest in his anti-communist crusading was subtly acknowledged:
The advertised aim of this “study of communist political warfare techniques [was] to present a general survey of the strategy and tactics employed by International Communism in its bid for world domination…..The main thrust of the communist offensive is now being centred upon attempts to gain control or influence over the developing countries of Asia, Africa and South America in which areas of the world the West’s vital sources of raw material lie.”
Work that followed reflected the angst of the age when resistance and liberation at home and abroad threatened the status quo, when linking arms and running down the Strand was an act of sedition.
Today’s Revolutionaries: a study of some prominent revolutionary movements and methods of sedition in Europe and the United States
14 editions published between 1970 and 1971 in 3 languages
Subversion: Propaganda, Agitation and the Spread of People’s War (1973)
5 editions published in 1973
The Communist Challenge to Africa: an Analysis of Contemporary Soviet, Chinese and Cuban Policies (1977) Foreign Affairs Publishing now Richmond, Surrey based. 26 editions published in 1977
Lord Chalfont’s endorsement in the book reflects part of the nexus of interlocking like=minded people and groups on the anti-communist landscape that sought to bolster and underpin the ideological authority that defended the West by attacking the East. He agrees that “many Western observers have come to the conclusion, reached some time ago by Chinese foreign policy experts, that the Soviet Union is engaged upon a programme of global expansion – that the Russians are, in effect, the new imperialists.” [A topic for a different posting]
According to the distorted and selective worldview of people like Greig, the West’s rush to decolonize left an open door for the world’s new colonizing super-power – Russia. When Russia and, to a lesser extent China, moved through that door, the stage was set for the chaos and bloodshed that has become part and parcel of life on the continent. Written to make it plain that “foreign Communism is using the “liberation” of Africa as a stepping stone to its self-proclaimed goal of world domination.” South Africa, South West Africa and Rhodesia are clearly obstacles on the way to this goal – obstacles that Moscow would very much like removed – which was why, in the face of the national liberation armed struggle such racist white minority rule was defended by so many in Greig’s Monday Club and beyond.
Greig’s dire warning continued in numerous articles, through the Foreign Affairs Research Institute newsletter and in East-West Digest, of the threat to the West. Throughout 1977 churning out
East-West Digest: ‘Some recent developments affecting the defence of the Cape route’
Foreign Affairs Research Institute paper: ‘Moscow’s control over Mozambique and Angola’.
Foreign Affairs Research Institute paper: ‘Barbarism and communist intervention in the Horn of Africa’ by Ian Greig.
Foreign Affairs Research Institute paper and East-West Digest: ‘The need to safeguard NATO’s strategic raw materials from Africa’.
Foreign Affairs Research Institute paper: ‘The escalating Soviet and Cuban involvement in Africa’ by Ian Greig.
Africa: Soviet Action and Western Inaction (1978)
Iran and the lengthening Soviet shadow (1978)
The Ultra-Left Offensive Against Multinational Companies: Moscow’s Call for World Trade Union Unity (1979) 9 editions published between 1978 and 1980
The continuing crisis in Iran (1979) with James Philips
The security of Gulf oil (1980)
The need to respond to Soviet military pressure in the Third World (1980)
Soviet bloc activities in Africa (1980)
The emerging nature of the Soviet grand design(1980)
A new shadow falls on the Gulf (1981)
They mean what they say : a compilation of Soviet statements on ideology, foreign policy and the use of military force (1981) 7 editions published in 1981
East Germany’s continuing offensive in the third world (1982)
The extent of Soviet support for African “liberation movements” revealed: report to the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 1982.
Soviet global power projection at the third world (1982)
The police under attack (1986) published by AIMs for Industry , an anti-trade union group , associated with Michael Ivens, in defence of free enterprise and freedom, publishers of the red scare material like Reds under the Bed, Aims of Industry (January 1974)
Terrorism: a brief survey of the extent and nature of the threat from terrorist groups in Europe [and] in the Middle East (1987) published by Common Cause
The Second World War and Northern Ireland (1990) published by Friends of the Union founded in 1986 by 16 Tory MPs and eight peers to maintain the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The organisation was wound up in 2006
Greig’s career across the gamut of right-wing causes marks him out as yesteryear’s shadow warrior upholding the Unionist cause, he wrote several pamphlets on Northern Ireland, some dealing with the influence of ultra-left groups.
[ii]) Its history and operations quite exposed, and studied eg Michaels, J. H. (2014). The Heyday of Britain’s Cold War Think Tank: Brian Crozier and the Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1970–79. In Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War (pp. 146-160). Palgrave Macmillan
iii) Including Bertil Haggman’s 1975, Sweden’s Maoist “subversives”: a case study. Conflict studies, no. 58
An accelerated publishing programme saw the first webinar from Foreign Language Press now available on Youtube and includes the web launch of two new titles: J. Moufawad-Paul offers an exacting analysis of the different trends that emerged out of the victory, development, and ultimate defeat of the Chinese revolution, exploring maoism after Mao in his Critique of Maoist Reason. Also discussed in the presentation is number 19 in the Colourful Classic series , a reprint of the 1975 A New Outlook on Health with an introduction that contextualise the issues in healthcare policy in the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic , including the addition of some detailed footnotes. The footnotes provide more current statistics and some updates about how healthcare and the US economy has changed in the past forty plus years.
A brief history of the development of the publishing endeavour is also provided by Chris Kistler in the internationally organized Zoom webinar.
The next webinar is on Sunday, August 30, North America: 9:00PM EST/6:00PM PST featuring two titles in the New Roads series.
Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! focuses on the Ethiopian communist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Ian Scott Horst’s – whose principle contribution made EROL’s national section on Ethiopia such a valuable online legacy to the struggle in the region – provides an historical treasure trove of first hand accounts and narratives from the actors themselves documenting the heady, complicated and ultimately tragic events of that revolution.
A collection of writing from the imprisoned K. Murali (Ajith) confronts and counters Brahmanism, an ideological linchpin of the Indian ruling class, is also featured
Other titles, including corrected reprints of the additional selected Works of Mao Zedong originally published in India by Kranti Publications, are available from its webshop http://flpress.storenvy.com/
The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Publishing House , Foreign Languages Press established in 2016 have extended their publishing programme beyond « Colourful Classics » (see previous posting here) and have four titles in their New Roads collection that publishes original works and essays that analyze the challenges and answer the questions posed by Marxist-Leninist-Maoists today, and shed light on lesser known aspects of the history of the communist and workers movement.
From Victory to defeat : China’s socialist road and capitalist development (Pao-Yu Ching)
Preface by J. Moufawad-Paul
How can a country that developed the most advanced socialist society in the history of the world change directions so quickly and so completely? In From Victory to Defeat Pao-Yu Ching dissects this question, providing economic analysis of what it means to actually “build socialism” with all of the necessary contradictions and obstacles that must be overcome.
Addressing seven commonly asked questions, Pao-Yu Ching gives accessible explanations to the complicated issues China faced in its socialist transition and the material basis for its capitalist reversal.
Silage Choppers and Snake Spirits : the lives and struggles of two Americans in modern China (Dao-Yuan Chou)
Forward by Juliet de Lima-Sison
Silage Choppers and Snake Spirits follows the journey of two Americans who left the United States to experience first-hand the events of the Chinese revolution. Sid Engst came from a poor farming family in upstate New York and found himself on the run from Chiang Kai-shek’s generals in the barren hills of northern China. Joan Hinton went from working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos to wearing disguises and ducking the Nationalist government in the Chinese communist underground. The two married and stayed in China to raise a family and help build a new society.
This biography follows their experiences working alongside ordinary Chinese people, from the Inner Mongolian steppe to a state commune in Beijing. Their lives and struggles offer an unusual insight into the events that make up modern Chinese history from Liberation to the Cultural Revolution.
Which East Is Red? The maoist presence in the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc Europe 1956-1980 (Andrew Smith)
This short essay tell the little known story of antirevisionists and Maoists in post-Stalin Eastern Europe. Interrogating the myth of a monolithic Marxism in Eastern Europe, overwhelmingly supportive of Khrushchev, Andrew Smith answers the question he posits: To what extent was Eastern Europe red?
Mao Zedong’s “On Contradiction” – Study Companion (Redspark Collective)
On Contradiction is Mao Zedong’s seminal text on dialectical materialism. Perhaps his most well-known work, it’s been read and studied by millions all over the world and is required reading for all those who seek to objectively analyze the world and struggle to solve the contradictions in it. The Redspark Collective prepared this study companion to assist readers by providing historical and modern day context and examples.
Redspark maintains a news site that focus on organisations engaged in people’s war
Also distributed from their webstore are some titles from the French language publishers Soleil Rouge.
This “open letter” is both belated and contrived to commemorate an anniversary that may have no significance outside what Phil Ochs sang as “a small circle of friends”.That anniversary is that a decade has passed this month since work began on EROL – the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line.
Sparked by a conversation on that gloriously sunny day at the London Radical Book Fair the question was raised “Why the effort on EROL”; after all, as you rightly commented revisionism isn’t going anywhere. The point has been made since the mid-1960s that the identifier of “anti-revisionism” is a politically passé term since Maoism has now superseded the need for using such a term as a prefix. Underlying the question was the thought that, given the ongoing struggles and need to rebuild a movement, was this really a furrow worthy ploughing? It is an argument that deserved greater reflection than given in that moment.
The trajectory of modern revisionism hit a brick wall: although even with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there are still on the English left, aging remnants along the British Road arguing the same failed politics, while Trotskyism thrashes in its last stages unable to shake off its legacy as the failed competitor in a struggle nearly a century old. The only advanced this century has been the stalled revolutionary struggles in the Global South largely led by Maoist forces who drew their initial inspiration from the anti-revisionist struggle associated with the Albanian and Chinese communist parties. It is that history that EROL addresses but not from the perspective of bourgeois scholarship or sectarian belief that one red thread persisted throughout its history.
What have we spent nearly ten years building is an archive of revolutionary endeavour. Cynics claim that ‘history belongs to the victors! Don’t belief a word of it! History belongs to those who keep records and tell their story.
The function of making the record accessible has provided an access point to a political trend and argumentation and built a foundational backstory that illustrates the legacy and past attempts to tackle the strategic and tactical challenges facing a revolutionary movement.
EROL focus is on document publication – a low priority in conventional academic and commercial publishing. Initially encouraged by a non-sectarian American Trotskyist (thank you David), the bulk of the administrative duties and political tone of EROL since started up in 2009 has been borne by an equally industrious and non-sectarian veteran of the American New Communist Movement as the Maoists were known (thank you Paul).
By the early 2000s, very little of the anti-revisionist record was easily available in English. The entire experience was in danger of languishing in the margins, being largely forgotten. For the most part, the documents in question had been published in in books or periodicals at the time of the birth and demise of the anti-revisionist movement.
Today there is no equivalent resource seen in the incredible wealth and diversity of items posted by EROL. No pay walls or subscriptions here – a true product of unpaid voluntary labour for the greater good, it allows access and has more holdings than even a National Library collection of record. The digital medium makes somethings possible that would be very difficult in the physical world such as the international co-operation and co-ordination for such political depositories such as the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line that allows access to material that is scattered, rare and uncatalogued.
The internet provided a medium for the development of an accessible collection that initially was constructed from the personal resources of the EROL team, and subsequently built from contributions and further research facilitated by the growth of relevant websites.
This site is purposeful, in the words of a committed Canadian blogger:
“it is important to examine the strengths and limitations of revolutionary organizations that were once significant so as to avoid repeating past errors. Often we tend to repeat the past’s mistakes, even when we think we are forging a new path, and there is sometimes little to know historical memory over an experience that can and should teach us something about how to organize as communists now.”
[JMP, Learning From Documents of Past Struggle (continued) May 31, 2013 ]
The transnational experience of the anti-revisionist movement offers the possibility of assessing the experienced gained in the historical process of development, growth and implosion of the emergent Marxist-Leninist movement. EROL goes some way to make this available and whether that experience of ML groups and parties in the advanced capitalist countries is utilised in future party-building, it is clear that changes comes from within.Fracturing of the CRCU the pioneering ML organisation in Britain, as charted in this research note, signposts some of the internal factors that contributed to its diminutive existence.
As best we can, we try to pass on and, where necessary, rediscover this laboured past and make it available for a new generation to weigh and assess. EROL’s publishing work aimed to do this for a small but significant fragment of our revolutionary heritage.
IN providing primary material, EROL reduces a dependency on partisan historical interpreters and provides a basis for assessment of rival explanations based on direct access to source materials. EROL goes someway to illustrate the inherent complexity of political action, the validity of argument and interpretation and the contributions and failures of the movement. Even without an editorial narrative it illustrates that political struggle involves far more than following a single line or leader. Navigating the ideas and actions presented by the various actors in the drama of the anti-revisionist movement enriches an understanding of the struggles of the age.
The contributions made in the early phase of the anti-revisionist period to forging and forcing democratic, social, economic’ and cultural progress has never been adequately recognised or appreciated. The shortcomings were explained by the paucity of material. That is no longer the case. The rarity of surviving copies, limited distribution, the costs of acquisition, the preservation of the records of that anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist trend are all barriers that EROL dismantles.
Most of what was included would probably not have been saved in archives or re-published elsewhere. There laid out in their own words, they can be read, studied, analysed and evaluated. Not least, by any means, in redressing the want of educational and study material, has been the contribution of EROL – an online archive accessible, saveable, useable for activist, the curious, enthusiastic scholars and reluctant students pursuing assignments, will find their sources wherever they may be.
There is a duality in such an archive, not to survey the past, but in our need to look forward and consider where we are going. For the 21st-century reader, this history can provokes reflection about the tactics and strategy of struggle, about the nature of working class advanced, about the shape of communism in a different national sections. The echoes of past politics are played out in the debates and discussions of today, and knowledge of those previously contested position can inform the debates of today. As EROL stalwart, Paul Saba noted in his insightful review of Max Elbaum’s history of the movement;
“Many in the NCM considered themselves too busy making history to spend much time studying history’s lessons. As a result, mistakes were made, wrong directions taken, that otherwise might have been avoided.”
[Lessons from One Left to the Next: Revolution in the Air Reissued. Viewpoint magazine July 19, 2018]
Perhaps there are too few reminiscence pieces and the extensive collection of original documents, internal and those once in the public domain draw upon what is available and there is a monolingual basis in its presentation. There are other sites in specific languages yet EROL has always had an internationalist intention, hence the different national sections.With 19 separate national sections providing information in English on, and primary documents from, anti-revisionist movements, organisations and parties, the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line is the first web stop for any historical investigation of global Maoism. EROL maintains this history that had faded into obscurity. In providing the source material from the movement (as Canadian editor Malcolm pointed out) we do not want to force conclusions on people from that period but to provide documents so that those studying them can draw their own. EROL does accept original contributions on the history of the ML movement but it would be a different forum to undertake the task to explain mistake individuals clearly identified from that history, what lines were worth pursuing and how struggles exposed the weaknesses of the organisations involved.
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