![Black, Brown and White, the Proletariat Must Unite! [Part One of Three]](https://i0.wp.com/forwearemany.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/workers-of-the-world-unite.jpg?resize=816%2C612&ssl=1)
By Tom Watts 12/25/2017
There is no clear demarcations between, Black, Brown and White people in Amerika. Historically, the classifications have changed considerably over time. Originally, Irish, German, Eastern and Southern Europeans, and Jews were not considered “white” by Anglo-Saxon Protestants. During “Jim Crow” segregation, anyone with a “drop of African blood” was considered to be “Black,” at least in the South. “Brown” is sort of a “mixed bag” category, of “other people of color” who suffer “racial” discrimination.
In the United Panther Movement, we recognize only one “race,” the human race, but also recognize that discrimination comes down differently on different groups of people, so for the purpose of fighting racist oppression, it makes sense to organize within each group of people in accordance with the way they are perceived in society.
Black people were formed into a nation during “Jim Crow” segregation. The U.S. is still a predominantly “White Nation” with some 61.3% of its 325,719,178 people identifying as “Non-Hispanic White” on the most recent census. 13.3% self-identified as Black. Most of the remaining 25.4% identified as “Hispanic” or “Other.” Now when a racist cop pulls someone over for harassment he doesn’t “racially profile” as being “Black,” (in other words for being “Brown,”) he doesn’t necessarily know their “nationality,” that is if they are “Mexican,” “Arab,” “Pakistani,” “Native American,” “Puerto Rican,” “Mulatto” or whatever. He’s just targeting them for being “Non-White.” So, there is definitely a case of “special oppression” directed at “Brown” people in Amerikkka.
Poor “Whites” are definitely oppressed in the U.S., but their oppression is strictly class-based. Most (but not all) of the “People of Color” share this class-based oppression, but in addition they face racist oppression. Most liberals and even many “white radicals” don’t even try to hide their prejudice towards “Red Necks,” “Trailer Trash,” “Crackers” or what-have-you, and put the blame for white racism and reactionary ideas entirely on them, ignoring that the ruling class is the sponsor and beneficiary of these prejudices and ideas. They make a convenient “whipping boy.” There is truth that the poor are most susceptible to “white supremacist” propaganda, but let’s not kid ourselves, Blacks are susceptible to “anti-immigrant” propaganda directed at Mexicans and other “Brown” people too.
The “Blame Game” is a potent weapon employed by the ruling class to divide the oppressed and play one section against another. It is the task of revolutionaries to promote intercommunal solidarity and proletarian class unity. Within the United Panther Movement, the division into Black, Brown and White Panthers is about division of labor and going amongst the oppressed masses of each group to agitate, educate and organize to promote proletarian class consciousness and solidarity. All Panthers are equally regarded as comrades and bound to represent the same ideological and political line to advance the revolutionary struggle.
Distinguishing Friends from Enemies
“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray. To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. To distinguish real friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.”
– Mao Tse-tung, “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (March 1926), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 13.
The Chinese Revolution was a lot simpler than the one we face today. It rather neatly divided into two stages, with the anti-feudal, anti-imperialist stage preceding the socialist revolution. Even still, the bourgeois nationalists betrayed the revolutionary nationalists relatively early on and forced a civil war that was only interrupted by the invasion of the Japanese imperialists with their blatantly colonialist intentions. Once they were defeated, the civil war resumed with the U.S. imperialists blatantly backing the bourgeois nationalists of the Kuomintang, who were defeated and forced to flee by the communist-led forces. This left the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pretty much the sole power to lead the socialist stage of the revolution, though a bourgeois headquarters emerged within the upper ranks of the Party that eventually won out following Mao’s death.
In this period, the World Proletarian Socialist Revolution faces the hegemonic power of U.S. imperialism and a transnational monopoly capitalist ruling class that is driven to consolidate its global hegemony and as a consequence is unleashing chaos and anarchy on a grand scale, including the threat of nuclear war. In this neoliberal stage of capitalist-imperialism, all of the contradictions of imperialism are intensified and call forth the only solution possible which is the complete overthrow of the capitalist-imperialist system and its replacement by global proletarian dictatorship to carry out socialist reconstruction of the global political economy.
Whereas in the past it was possible to break the chains of capitalist-imperialism where they were weakest, as in the Russian and Chinese revolutions, and the wars of national liberation in the colonial and semi-colonial countries of the Third World, the present situation calls forth a more unified revolutionary struggle centered within the very “belly of the beast.” As Mao pointed out in “A New Storm Against Imperialism” (1968):
“The storm of Afro-American struggle taking place within the United States is a striking manifestation of the comprehensive political and economic crisis now gripping U.S. imperialism. It is dealing a telling blow to U.S. imperialism, which is beset with difficulties at home and abroad.
“The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous aid and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. “On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the Black people in the United States.
“Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the Black masses in the United States and the U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the Black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The Black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States have common interests and common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
“In 1963, in the ‘Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism,’ I said that the ‘the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the Black people. I still maintain this view.
“At present, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals of all countries and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the Black people in the United States! People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off.”
Mao nailed it right on the head! It is in this light that we must look at the vicious suppression of the Black Liberation Movement and in particular the original Black Panther Party (BPP), as well as the cowardly assassinations of not only Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but also Malcolm X and BPP leaders, Fred Hampton, Sr., Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, George Jackson and dozens of others, as well as the numerous comrades railroaded into prison or forced into exile, and the thousands made victims of police harassment and intimidation. Alongside of the FBI directed campaign of infiltration, disruption, suppression, entrapment and murder, known as COINTELPRO, there was an equally vicious campaign involving thousands of Black agents going back to the 1920’s to misdirect the Black movement by promoting narrow bourgeois nationalism, separatism and virulent anti-communism. Indeed, COINTELPRO, which was initiated in 1956, was a continuation and intensification of a policy initiated by J. Edgar Hoover as director of a special division of the Justice Department called the Bureau of Investigation tasked with surveillance and disruption of “subversive” organizations.
The first Black special agent was James Wormley Jones, a former Metropolitan DC police officer, who had worked his way up from patrolman to detective, and was commissioned as a captain of infantry in WWI in charge of Negro troops in France. Under Hoover’s personal direction, he was assigned to infiltrate the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) where he was made Adjutant General of the African Legion (the UNIA’s uniformed paramilitary arm) and had control over all incoming communications to the UNIA headquarters. A close confidant of Marcus Garvey, he was instrumental in setting him up for arrest and conviction for mail fraud in 1923.
In 1921, Wormley and four other Black agents who were infiltrated into UNIA expanded their operations to include infiltration of the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a revolutionary nationalist fraction which was expelled from the UNIA at the UNIA’s 1921 convention for opposing Garvey’s alliance with the KKK, his questionable business dealings and promotion of Black capitalism, and lack of any concrete program for Black liberation. Similarly, they infiltrated A. Philip Randolph’s journal, The Messenger. These agents provided intelligence to the Bureau of Investigation while in some case sabotaging meetings, vandalizing offices and acting as agent provocateurs. Eventually, Wormley’s cover was blown when he was recognized as a former D.C. police officer, and he resigned from the Bureau in 1923.
From 1919 to the present, the FBI has engaged in a nonstop campaign of infiltration, spying, blackmail, manipulation, misdirection, intimidation, coercion, entrapment, frame-ups, and murders of Black activists and organizations with the stated intention of preventing the rise of a “Black Messiah” to lead the struggle against racist national oppression. Side by side with the activities of the FBI has been the activities of the NSA, CIA and various other agencies including state and local police, military intelligence and even Mossad, the secret police of Israel. All of them intent on perpetuating the status quo of disempowerment of the New Afrikan masses in the U.S. and Black people internationally.
These counter-revolutionary, police state activities are not confined to the Black movements exclusively but have historically been applied to all manner of dissent including communist, socialist, anarchist, peace, environmental protection, religious, ethnic and labor organizations. The institutionalized dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is an ever present aspect of life under capitalist-imperialism. However, it is not confined to the activities of the political police targeting political activists and personalities.
Oppression and repression is broadly directed at the basic masses, at Blacks and other people of color, workers and intellectuals. Files are kept on hundreds of millions of people who are not consciously political at all. Newspapers and all manner of media are monitored and infiltrated, academia and social and religious organizations are likewise managed to ensure that the ideas and ideals of capitalist-imperialism are properly propagated to promote public opinion favorable to the system of class exploitation and subservience to the ruling elite. This goes on globally on many levels all the time.
But, least we fall prey to the paranoia of “deep state conspiracy theories” which are intended to promote idealism, we must ground ourselves firmly in class analysis, recognizing that all ideas are rooted in and reflect the point of view of various classes with different relations to the means of production, and it is upon this canvas that the “deep state” is able to paint its scenarios to influence events and public opinion. Massive and well-funded as the state institutionalized agents of repression may be, they are none-the-less a small minority compared to the masses of people. In the final analysis, it is the masses of people not the agents of the bourgeoisie who are really powerful, and in the long run it is the people who will be victorious.
Essentially, capitalism divides people into two great classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; basically, those who own the means of production and those who own nothing but their labor power, which they are compelled to sell to the owners of the means of production in order to survive. That is; they must sell their labor power as a commodity (for wages) in order to purchase other commodities to satisfy their needs for food, clothing, shelter, heath care, education, entertainment and so forth. Capitalism reduces everything, (even water), to a commodity to be traded for a profit. If they could, (and they may yet), they would convert the air we need to breathe to a commodity and seek to obtain a monopoly control over it. Between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, there is a strata of petty bourgeoisie (literally petite or “little bourgeoisie”), with various relations to the means of production, who in some way receive a “piece of the action” in the exploitation of the proletariat. Below the proletariat are the dependent poor who are oft times forced into the lumpen (literally “broken”) proletariat, who are forced to survive by “any means necessary” (generally criminal activities).
Gone or rapidly disappearing are the classes (such as the peasantry and artisans) passed down from the previous mode of production, which was feudalism. Feudalism was the intermediate stage between, chattel slavery—the initial stage of the Epoch of Exploitation (civilization) which negated the initial stage of human social organization, which was primitive communalism. Capitalism is the highest and final stage of the Epoch of Exploitation, and capitalist-imperialism is the highest and final stage of capitalism. It too has its stages and neoliberalism (the current stage) is its highest and final stage. The next great epoch of human social evolution is that of global communism, and socialism is the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.
Communism represents the negation of the negation of the transition from primitive communalism to the Epoch of Exploitation. In other words as private property overthrew and replaced communally-owned property, it in turn is overthrown and replaced by communally-owned property but on a higher plane of socialized and industrialized mode of production.
At each stage in this transition, the outmoded form of social organization became a brake and a hindrance upon the further development of the means of production. Eventually, it reached a point where, as Mao poetically put it: “Tools cry out for liberation!” Slavery accomplished things that tribal communalists could not even dream of let alone accomplish with their primitive (though free) forms of social organization. The rise of civilizations, of great cities and empires were built on the backs of slave labor. Roman legions could conquer vast barbarian hordes, but it was Roman slaves who built the roads and aqueducts and tilled the fields of great plantations that fed the legions and the great cities.
In its turn, capitalism has accomplished greater things than the emperors and aristocrats of Rome could dream of let alone accomplish. Yet this system of global capitalist-imperialism too has become an anachronism unable to resolve the crises it creates except by means of sowing the seeds for greater and more devastating crises. Once again: “Tools cry out for liberation!” and the contradiction between the highly socialized and globalized mode of production demands an equally socialized and globalized ownership of the means of production. We have within our grasp the means and the technology to satisfy the needs of everyone on the planet for food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, transportation, entertainment and so forth, and what’s more to do it in a way so as to protect the environmental sustainability of the planet for future generations, but all capitalist-imperialism can do is continue to concentrate all wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands while generalizing poverty and powerlessness among the masses of people, and in the process laying waste to the environment. All it can generate is unending wars and a downward spiral of crisis upon crisis. It is time to overthrow it!
The Rise of Nationalism and Imperialism
“Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the suppression of the old society by the new.”
– Mao Tse-tung, “On Contradiction” (August 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I, P. 314.
The rise of capitalism marked the rise of nationalism. As Marx and Engels expressed in the Communist Manifesto (1848): “The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation.
Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.” In the period of rising capitalism, national groupings of bourgeoisie laid claim to their own national territories and proletarians over whom they created nation states to exercise a monopoly of the use of violence to enforce their class dictatorship and contest with the bourgeoisie of other nation states for control of trade and colonies to exploit.
But the very conditions that called forth nationalism also called forth internationalism and the development of a global capitalist economy. As Marx and Engels explained:
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
“The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”
– Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
While capitalism is driven to “expand or die,” the world has a finite amount of territory to colonize and monopolize trade with. By the end of the 19th Century, the scramble for colonies had run out of fresh territory and the great powers began plotting to jump each other’s claims. The U.S. went after the weakened Spanish Empire in 1898. On the pretext of an explosion aboard the America battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor, Congress authorized President McKinley to intervene in the ongoing independence war in Cuba, while disclaiming any imperial ambitions on the part of the United States. Spain had already announced an armistice on April 9th and speeded up its new program to grant Cuba limited powers of self-government, but Congress demanded the immediate withdrawal of all Spanish forces and recognized the independence of Cuba.
Spain declared war on the United States on April 24th, followed by a U.S. declaration of war on the 25th, which was made retroactive to April 21st. The ensuing war was pathetically one-sided, since Spain had readied neither its army nor its navy for a distant war with the formidable power of the United States. The U.S. Pacific fleet pounced on the Spanish fleet lying at anchor in Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1st. Commodore Perry destroyed the Spanish fleet without losing a single man and only seven seamen were wounded. The U.S. military then proceeded to occupy the city of Manila. In July, the U.S. staged a combined amphibious and naval assault on Santiago, Cuba, where the outgunned Spanish Caribbean fleet was scuttled on the beach and the U.S. forces, (including future President Theodore Roosevelt and his “Rough Riders”), captured Santiago on July 17th. By the Treaty of Paris, Spain granted independence to Cuba, and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam to the U.S. for a sum of $20 million. Now this caused some embarrassment to the U.S. which had proclaimed it had no imperialist ambitions, but President McKinley solved this problem by claiming God had spoken to him in a dream and asked him to “befriend and Christianize” his “little Brown brothers.” Never mind that they’d been “Christianized” already by the Spanish colonizers.
Evidently they had a “bad connection,” because God failed to communicate his intentions to the Filipinos, who had already liberated the rest of their country before the Spanish in Manila surrendered to the Americans, and they figured they had a right to independence like Cuba. So McKinley sent the U.S. military to correct his “little Brown brothers.” The Philippine-American War (1899-1902) was not as popular back home as the “splendid little war” America had just fought with the Spanish. The U.S. couldn’t posture as the “arch foe of imperialism” when war correspondents kept writing about the widespread use of torture employed by the U.S. military on the indigenous people in their efforts to root out the Filipino guerrillas.
Mark Twain, the famous humorist, enjoyed pulling Uncle Sam’s beard at every opportunity over the war:
“The funniest thing was when at the close of the Spanish-American War the United States paid poor decrepit old Spain $20,000,000 for the Philippines. It was just a case of this country buying its way into good society. Honestly, when I read in the papers that this deal had been made, I laughed until my sides ached. There were the Filipinos fighting like blazes for their liberty. Spain would not hear to it. The United States stepped in, and after they had licked the enemy to a standstill, instead of freeing the Filipinos they paid that enormous amount for an island which is of no earthly account to us; just wanted to be like the aristocratic countries of Europe which have possessions in foreign waters. The United States wanted to be in the swim, and it, too, had to branch out, like an American heiress buying a Duke or an Earl. Sounds well, but that’s all.”
– interview “Mark Twain in Clover/Joseph in the Land of Cornbread and Chicken.” Baltimore Sun, 10 May 1907, p. 14
Even after the Filipino “rebels” surrendered, the “Moros,” Muslim tribes who lived in the Southern Philippines, an area that includes Mindanao, Jolo and the neighboring Sulu Archipelago, who had never accepted the yoke of Spanish colonialism, continued to resist. The Moro War (1902-1913) was even less popular and certainly more vicious. Many prominent Americans, including Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), became consciously anti-imperialists. They formed an Anti-Imperialist League of which Samuel Clemens became the vice-president. Some his more memorable quotes on the subject are:
“I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”
“Who are the oppressors? The few: the king, the capitalist and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.”
“Why is it right that there is not a fairer division of the spoil all around? Because laws and constitutions have ordered otherwise. Then it follows that laws and constitutions should change around and say there shall be a more nearly equal division.”
And: “God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary Marxist leader summed up that imperialism represented more than an aggressive and exploitative foreign policy or the acquisition of overseas colonies, that it was in fact a new stage in the evolution of capitalism. As he explained in Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916):
“Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system.
“If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.
“But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:
“(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital,’ of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
World War I occurred precisely because the “Great Powers” sought to re-divide the world and their respective colonial possessions and spheres of influence. World War I killed more people (9 million combatants and 5 million civilians) and cost more money ($186 billion in direct costs and another $151 billion in indirect costs) than any previous war in history. Of course, some people profited tremendously from the war, the rich got richer, particularly the international bankers and the military industrial complex in the U.S. In Russia it created the conditions that allowed the proletariat to seize power from the bourgeoisie and create the first socialist state, but it was no picnic. The imperialist powers tried to kill it in its infancy, invading and giving aid to the reactionary white armies and boycotting the Soviet Union. The workers attempted revolutions in the defeated German and Austrian cities, but were sold out by the various socialist parties that had betrayed internationalism during the war. The victorious Allies imposed reparations and conditions on the defeated countries that nurtured the rise of fascism and set the stage for World War II.
During World War II, the Nazis and other fascists went all out to attempt to defeat the Soviet Union. Starting Sunday, June 22nd 1941, Operation Barbarossa had four million Axis soldiers invaded along a 1,800 mile front driving the Soviet Red Army back and capturing over five million troops during the war, the majority of whom did not survive captivity. Over 1 million Jews were exterminated and many other Russian civilians were killed or enslaved by the occupying fascists. Prior to the invasion, the Axis forces had conquered most of the rest of Europe, excepting the British Isles. But everywhere resistance movements sprang up, often under communist leadership, to harass and disrupt the fascist lines of communication and force them to garrison all of the occupied territory. The Partisans were often women and youths as well as older men and escaped POWs. The fascists committed terrible reprisals for every act of sabotage or resistance, often destroying whole villages, and suspected or captured partisans could expect no mercy.
The powerful Axis juggernaut ground to a halt at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, where despite great hardships, the defenders held their ground, buying time for fresh armies to be assembled in the East for a counter offensive and for the Russian winter to take its toll on the invaders. Under Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union had developed from a backward “wooden plow” economy into an industrial powerhouse, and now the tanks and planes rolled off the assembly lines into battle—sometimes only blocks away. Hitler had gambled on crushing resistance with a massive blitzkrieg. His armies were ill-equipped for winter campaigning. By the time the American and British Allies opened a second front on D-Day, June 6th, 1944, the once mighty German Army was in retreat all along the Russian Front, out of fuel and morale, driven backward by the Red Army all the way to Berlin, where Hitler committed suicide in his bunker.
The U.S. emerged from World War II as the sole imperialist superpower. The Soviet Union was also a superpower as head of the “Socialist Camp,” which soon included China, where the Communist Party came to power in 1949. “The Chinese people have stood up!” Mao proclaimed:
“It is because we have defeated the reactionary Kuomintang government backed by U.S. imperialism that this great unity of the whole people has been achieved. In a little more than three years the heroic Chinese People’s Liberation Army, an army such as the world has seldom seen, crushed all the offensives launched by the several million troops of the U.S.-supported reactionary Kuomintang government and turned to the counter-offensive and the offensive. At present the field armies of the People’s Liberation Army, several million strong, have pushed the war to areas near Taiwan, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Kweichow, Szechuan and Sinkiang, and the great majority of the Chinese people have won liberation. In a little more than three years the people of the whole country have closed their ranks, rallied to support the People’s Liberation Army, fought the enemy and won basic victory….
“We have closed our ranks and defeated both domestic and foreign oppressors through the People’s War of Liberation and the great people’s revolution, and now we are proclaiming the founding of the People’s Republic of China. From now on our nation will belong to the community of the peace-loving and freedom-loving nations of the world and work courageously and industriously to foster its own civilization and well-being and at the same time to promote world peace and freedom. Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up. Our revolution has won the sympathy and acclaim of the people of all countries. We have friends all over the world.
“Our revolutionary work is not completed, the People’s War of Liberation and the people’s revolutionary movement are still forging ahead and we must keep up our efforts. The imperialists and the domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat lying down; they will fight to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they are sure to engage in sabotage and create disturbances by one means or another and every day and every minute they will try to stage a come-back. This is inevitable and beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance.
“Our state system, the people’s democratic dictatorship, is a powerful weapon for safeguarding the fruits of victory of the people’s revolution and for thwarting the plots of domestic and foreign enemies for restoration, and this weapon we must firmly grasp. Internationally, we must unite with all peace-loving and freedom-loving countries and peoples, and first of all with the Soviet Union and the New Democracies, so that we shall not stand alone in our struggle to safeguard these fruits of victory and to thwart the plots of domestic and foreign enemies for restoration. As long as we persist in the people’s democratic dictatorship and unite with our foreign friends, we shall always be victorious.
“The people’s democratic dictatorship and solidarity with our foreign friends will enable us to accomplish our work of construction rapidly. We are already confronted with the task of nation-wide economic construction. We have very favourable conditions: a population of 475 million people and a territory of 9,600,000 square kilometres. There are indeed difficulties ahead, and a great many too. But we firmly believe that by heroic struggle the people of the country will surmount them all. The Chinese people have rich experience in overcoming difficulties. If our forefathers, and we also, could weather long years of extreme difficulty and defeat powerful domestic and foreign reactionaries, why can’t we now, after victory, build a prosperous and flourishing country? As long as we keep to our style of plain living and hard struggle, as long as we stand united and as long as we persist in the people’s democratic dictatorship and unite with our foreign friends, we shall be able to win speedy victory on the economic front.
“An upsurge in economic construction is bound to be followed by an upsurge of construction in the cultural sphere. The era in which the Chinese people were regarded as uncivilized is now ended. We shall emerge in the world as a nation with an advanced culture.
“Our national defence will be consolidated and no imperialists will ever again be allowed to invade our land. Our people’s armed forces must be maintained and developed with the heroic and steeled People’s Liberation Army as the foundation. We will have not only a powerful army but also a powerful air force and a powerful navy.
“Let the domestic and foreign reactionaries tremble before us! Let them say we are no good at this and no good at that. By our own indomitable efforts we the Chinese people will unswervingly reach our goal.
“The heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the People’s War of Liberation and the people’s revolution shall live forever in our memory!
“Hail the victory of the People’s War of Liberation and the people’s revolution!
“Hail the founding of the People’s Republic of China!”
– Mao Tse-tung, “THE CHINESE PEOPLE HAVE STOOD UP!” September 21, 1949
Speaking to the assembled leaders and delegates of the world communist movement in Moscow in 1957, Mao stated: “Over a long period, we have developed this concept for the struggle against the enemy: strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously. This also means that we must despise the enemy with respect to the whole, but that we must take him seriously with respect to each concrete question. If we do not despise the enemy with respect to the whole, we shall be committing the error of opportunism. Marx and Engels were only two individuals, and yet in those early days they already declared that capitalism would be overthrown throughout the world.
However, in dealing with concrete problems and particular enemies we shall be committing the error of adventurism unless we take them seriously. In war, battles can only be fought one by one and the enemy forces can only be destroyed one by one. Factories can only be built one by one. The peasants can only plough the land plot by plot. The same is even true of eating a meal. Strategically, we take the eating of a meal lightly – we know we can finish it. Actually, we eat it mouthful by mouthful. It is impossible to swallow an entire banquet in one gulp. This is known as a piecemeal solution. In military parlance, it is called wiping out the enemy forces one by one.”
He further stated: “It is my opinion that the international situation has now reached a new turning point. There are two winds in the world today, the East Wind and the West Wind. There is a Chinese saying, ‘Either the East Wind prevails over the West Wind or the West Wind prevails over the East Wind.’ I believe it is characteristic of the situation today that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind. That is to say, the forces of socialism have become overwhelmingly superior to the forces of imperialism.” (“Speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties,” November 18, 1957).
But all was not as it seemed. Since the death of Comrade Stalin on March 5, 1953, a new bourgeois class that had emerged in the upper ranks of the Party and state bureaucracy were busy with plans to “de-Stalinize” the Soviet Union and consolidate state capitalism and imperialism under the cover of socialism. Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the “top dog” of this pack of curs. On February 23-24, 1956, Khrushchev delivers a “secret speech” to a selected group of delegates to the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. and others, attacking Stalin and his leadership of the Soviet Union and the world communist movement. The speech, which would become public and be published in the New York Times and other major newspapers, sent shock waves through the world communist movement causing masses of communist party members to resign and ultimately led to a split in the world communist movement.
Defenders of Stalin and revolutionary Marxism-Leninism rallied around Mao Tse-tung. Within China there was bitter struggle between the Maoists and the “capitalist roaders,” who rallied around Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, which reached a peak in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s. Following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping led an internal coup to replace the Maoists and consolidate the position of the “capitalist roaders.” By 1991, the leaders of the C.P.S.U. could no longer maintain even the facade of socialism nor hold together the “Socialist Camp” or the Soviet Union, and it all broke apart turning into openly capitalistic nation states.
[Continued in Part Two]
