INDIA OPENS WAR ON "TROTSKYISM"
[The signal having been given in Moscow by "S, Ivanovitch" in Izvestia and "S, Cucumber" in Communist for a campaign in which the Fourth International is to be used as a Glub against the Chinese (See preceding article and World Outlook September 27 and October 4,), the pro-Khrushchev wing of: ‘the Communist party of India, headed by S.A.Dange, a supporter of Nehru, has demonstrated its alertness by picking up the material so generously provided and serving it up with a bit of curry for the Indian public.
[The article thus concocted, which we reproduce textually below, appeared in the October 27 issue of Link, a pro=Dange, pro-Nehru Indian. weekly, By their servile utilization of the Ivanovitch-Cucumber raw material (with some interesting variations), the editors of Link reveal what perfect control the most obscure hacks of Izvestia and Communist wield over the best minds in the pro-Khrushchev faction in India. Perhaps
J
we are wrong in this and it demonstrates, on the contrary, the power of . mind over matter, We hope our Indian ‘correspondents, can enlighten » us on. this point,
[The article appears in the feature “column called "COMMUNIST WORLD" and the country under which it is listed is "CHINA," w= Editor. ]
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Trotskyite Tail
The much publicised interview which Premier Chou En-lai gave to the _General Manager of the Reuters had. induced certain Western commentators to imagine that the rulers of China were now in a more conciliatory frame of mind and. that one could look forward to a slowing down of the abusive exchanges between Peking and Moscow. The Chinese leaders have, however, themselves hastened to disperse such hopes, In the last four weeks the _ People's Daily and the theoretical fortnightly Red Flag have come out with our. joint. editorials denouncing. four specific aspects of the current . . Soviet policies, The two papers have also promised to continue the series and "expose" some 80 and odd "lies and distortions" which they have discovered in the Soviet Central Committee's “open letter" of July 14.
The tone if not the content of these four successive editorials is qualitatively new, The Soviet leadership is attacked by name and charged of the most heinous crimes in Communist vocabulary, The language used had never before been heard in the Communist movement, It can only be compared to the language used by the Trotskyites in their abusive polemics against | the Soviet Union and: the international Commurlist movement, It is. perhaps for this reason that the Soviet press during the recent weeks has often ‘referred to the similarity between the Chinese arguments and the Trotskyite slanders and also hinted at the existence of some organisational collusion between the "petty-bourgeois ultra-revolutionaries" of Peking and the tiny.. Trotskyite groups in some countries,
Fourth International: As a matter of fact the Trotskyite groups are now of no great practical importance, As Kommunist of Moscow pointed out last week, the Trotskyite Fourth International founded in 1938 has turned into "a sect of conspirators devoid of any social basis whatsoever," Moreover, this narrow sect is constantly plagued by internal dissensions, There are at present three separate and mutually antogonistic Lsic] groupings parading under the deceptive signboards of “International Secretariat," tiInternational Committee" and "Latin American Bureau" of the Fourth International. The first functions from France with Walter German as its leader, [x] the second from the USA with Kennan as its boss [x*] and the third has its headquarters in Argentina with Posadas as its chief. Small Trotskyite groups are active in a number of countries including France, Italy, Britain, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, USA, Canada, Japan; a Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil and, of course, Ceylon,. Their. main activity is "to train ultra~leftist conspirators who can infiltrate the Communist Parties and disorient and wreck them from within.
"Single Front": The Chinese attack on the accepted policies of the international Communist movement have provided the Trotskyites with an. unprecedented opportunity and the latter are making full use of it. ‘Already in 1960 the Fourth International addressed an open letter to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party saying that it "welcomes the
ideological debate" opened by the Chinese leaders and that it "stands on the side of the Chinese Communist Party." In July this year the Trotskyite magazine Fourth International published a resolution adcpted by the Executive Committee of the Trotskyite international, The resolution. said:
"The 22nd plenary meeting of the Executive Committee of the
Fourth Taternationat ts approved of the nistoric task of unite
a ki towards a singL
W the inese and wor le fron etween
Ghinese Comrades, The Execu-
the Fourth International and the |
tive Committee greets the Communist Party of Ghina for its
Ideological struggle against the Soviet bureaucrac The Chinese. .
stra egy of the wor revolution, @ Chinese have accepted th
ropositions advanced by the Fourth International man ears .
BZ Lasser | . - . .
‘ Significant Facts: Peking can certainly argue that it is not respon~ sible if the Trotskyites decide to support its policies, But the matter . is not. so simpie. Firstly, one would like to know why the self-appointed guardians of the purity of the Communist doctrine in China have not thought. it necessary to demarcate themselves from their unwanted support= -ers.. Secondly, it is not without significance that Peking is openly trying to mobilise "all true Marxist-Leninists whether inside or outside the Communist Parties" in their support and a large part of the so-called Marxist-Leninists outside thé Communist Parties obviously consists of confirmed Trotskyites, Thirdly, most of the pro-Peking Communists who have in the recent months resigned from the Moscow-oriented Communist . Parties are functioning in league with the local Trotskyites, The Grippe faction expelled from_the Belgian Communist Party thus coordinating its actions with the the [sic] Trotskyite group led by E. Modlik; the pro- Peking minority group in the Italian Communist Party is working in close collaboration with the Italian Trotskyite "party" which has requested the Chinese Communist Party to send an official delegation to its coming Con-= gress; and Sanmughthasan, the pro-Chinese Communist leader of Ceylon who was suspended from party membership last week is hand in glove with the Trotskyite groups led by E. Samarkodi,
One Voice: Finally, and what is most significant, the entire line of Trotskyite propaganda tallies with the Chinese campaign against the Soviet Communist Party, Like the People's Daily of Peking the Trotskyite magazine Communiste of Paris has been asking for a "revolutionary rejuvenation" of the international Communist movement, The fifth congress of the Fourth International held in 1957 insinuated that the Soviet Union "is in collusion" with the imperialist powers and that its policy of peaceful cow existence “has prevented the working people of several capitalist countries from making a socialist revolution in the post-war years", Like the Chinese the Fourth International too regards the present epoch as the _ epoch of imperialism, wars and proletarian revolutions, considers a new world war to be inevitable, rules out all peaceful changes and holds that an armed insurrection is the only way to overthrow the rule of the bourgeolsie, The Chinese leaders have only recently declared the colonial struggles to be the focus of world revolution, The Trotskyites have been preaching this idea ever since the end of World War II. Also the Fourth International was the first body to denounce the ideas formulated at the 20th and 22nd Congresses of the Soviet Communist Party as revisionist and reformist, The Chinese leaders only echoed them,
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Moreover, the Chinese charge that the Soviet Union is degenerating into a capitalist country is obviously borrowed from the Trotskyite arsenal, So also is their argument that if a socialist state does not use its military might to "extend the frontiers of revolution" but wastes its energy in peaceful economic construction it inevitably produces new bourgeoise Lements [sic] within its bureaucracy and loses the character of a revolutionary organism, In fact, the Chinese leaders, if they ever try to differentiate their ideas from those of the Trotskyites, will find it extremely , difficult to do so, But the most intriguing aspect of the situation is that they do not seem to have any desire to do so, In the Tavestia original, "S, Ivanovitch" gives the name as "Walter Ger= main," which is probably intended to refer to E. Germain, a well-known Trotskyist journalist and theoretician, To the Indian Khrushchevites it no doubt seemed more invidious to have a Trotskyite German as the leader of the "International Secretariat" which "functions from France." In Stalinist circles such departures from a prepared text have never been frowned on, falling as they do within the license permitted to artists adhering to the school of "socialist realism." -- Editor, seThe Moscow authority "S. Ivanovitch" lists the name as Cannon, This | happens to be accurate, James P, Cannon, who founded the American Trotsky~ ist movement in 1928, still stands for proletarian democracy as he learned. it directly from Lenin and Trotsky in the early days of the Communist International, The Indian Khrushchevites preferred "Kennan," who, it is wellknown, was ambassador to Moscow and thereby an obvious candidate for "boss" of the "International Committee," which Link locates in the United States, -- Editor. Unless it has been doctored beyond recognition, the quotation is not from Fourth International, which has sharply criticized the Chinese because of their resistance to de-Stalinization and their failure to grasp the full threat. to humanity inherent in nuclear war. Perhaps the quotation is from a publication of some group at odds with the main stream of the Fourth International, As under Stalin, so under Khrushchev, concern for truth and accuracy is scarcely the first consideration in the minds of the prostitutes assigned to engage in "pyolemics,'
Directeur-gérant: Pierre FRANK.