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Escalation in Vietnam Alarms Japanese People
Johnson Flounders
in Middle East Crisis
Mao Takes Leon Trotsky as Target for Attack
The “Cultural Revolution”
and the Japanese Left
Background on Nicaragua
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NGUYEN VAN TROI, hero of the Vietnamese
people, has become a symbol of their de-
@ termination to struggle against imperial-
ism until they win, no matter what the Cuba and Fidel Castro cost. On October 15, 1964, in Saigon, the
U.S.-supported dictator Ky staged a pub-
= B k R H a lic execution of the young patriot. Ngu-
0o eview yen Van Troi defied the Hitler-loving Ky
to the end. In face of the firing squad,
he shouted, "Down with U.S. imperialism!
a Long live bresident Ho Chi Minh!"
The Futile Effort to Ban , _ Although in the "advanced" West he
is little known as yet, his memory is al- Proliferation of the Bomb =~ 5225.7.7°7°7°8 “Broushout the colonial
New York, N. Y. 10010. HP
Mao Takes Trotsky as Target
MOSCOW TRIALS PRAISED AS FORERUNNER OF "CULTURAL REVOLUTION"
By Les Evans
A curious turn in China's "cultural revolution" was the publication May 16 of a circular of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party that had been drafted May 16, 1966, and kept secret for an entire year.
According to Hsinhua [May 22] the circular was "drawn up under Chairman Mao's personal guidance and put forward the theory, line, principles and policies of the great proletarian cultural revolution.
In itself the circular contains nothing remarkable and is in fact somewhat obscure. What is plain is that its publication was the signal for the opening of a new campaign by the Maoist forces. A whole series of articles on the "significance" of the circular have been given wide play in the Chinese press.
Most important is an adulatory review entitled "A Great Historic Document" signed by the editorial boards of Red Flag and the Peoples Daily, the theoretical journal and newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. This review of the circular was carried by all the Peking papers on May 18, and was printed by both Hsinhua and Peking Review on May 19. Since then Red Fla No. 7] has even carried an article rticle [released by Hsinhua May 23] offering "reference material" to supplement the review.
The review, "A Great Historic Document," searches for "theoretical" precedents in the Marxist movement for the "great cultural revolution." The only historical analogy the authors come up. with of a similar event, however, is the Moscow frame-up trials of the thirties. In their eyes this does not constitute a damning exposure of the nature of the "cultural revolution"; to the contrary, they consider the analogy a most favorable one.
After a long diatribe denouncing Mao's factional opponents in the leadership of the CCP as "representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, the government, the army and the various spheres of culture..." the authors draw their comparison:
"Stalin was a great Marxist- Leninist who actually cleared out a large number of counterrevolutionary representatives of the bourgeoisie who had sneaked into the party, including Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Bukharin, Rykov and company."
The notes carried in Red Flag, No. 7, bear the pretentious title, "Reference Material for 'A Great Historic Document.'" In the guise of history, the notes present slanders of the victims of Moscow Trials that were definitively exposed as frame-ups thirty years ago:
"They were the deadly enemies of Leninism. They tried in a hundred and one ways to sabotage the Leninist line on a number of important questions concerning revolution, in an attempt to strangle the socialist revolution."
An especially lengthy section is devoted to rehashing Stalin's attacks on Trotsky, as if once again Lenin's martyred comrade-in-arms were the main eneny, to be disposed of at any cost and by no matter what method:
"Trotsky opposed Lenin's and Stalin's theory that the victory of socialism was possible in one country, and set up against it the reactionary 'Theory of Permanent Revolution', stating that it was impossible for one individual country to break free from ‘material dependence on the world economy' and impossible to carry out socialist construction through self-reliance."
The anonymous Maoist compiler continues:
"He opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat, saying that it would inevitably come into ‘hostile collision' with the broad masses of the peasantry. He slandered and attacked Stalin for turning the state machine into an ‘unheard-of tool for force and for strangling the independence of the people.'"
The unnamed defender of Stalin's authoritarian methods goes on to say of the man who organized the seizure of power in 1917 and then organized and led the Red Army that successfully defended the first workers state in history:
"Trotsky also concentrated his attack on the leading force of the dictatorship of the proletariat -- the Communist party. After Lenin's death, he opposed the correct leadership of the party's Central Committee headed by Stalin under the cloak of ‘restoring inner-party democracy,' 'fighting bureaucracy' and 'building the collective leadership.' He tried in vain to turn the Communist party of the
Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) into a bourgeois-type party, that is, a revisionist party for restoring capitalism."
The Maoist author takes up the question of industrializing the USSR -without mentioning that Trotsky was the one who proposed the first five-year plan:
"Trotsky also frenziedly attacked socialist industrialization and agricultural collectivisation in his desperate efforts to restore capitalism. He clamoured that without a developed industry in the Soviet Union, agricultural collectivisation was nothing but a ‘blind, crude and adventurist method'; he put forward a so-called ultra-industrial plan, which would increase taxation on the peasants in an attempt to shatter the worker-peasant alliance, disrupt the economic bond between town and country and undermine the foundations of industry.
"Zinoviev and Kamenev also raised a hue and cry about the Soviet Union being technically and economically backward and being unable to achieve the victory of socialism. In the summer of 1926, Zinoviev formed an anti-party alliance with Trotsky on a number of important ques-— tions.
This Maoist purveyor of doctored "history" relies heavily on the ignorance of his readers: otherwise he would hesitate to repeat the more than 40-year-old charges of "super-industrializer." Stalin had to drop that one in 1930 when he hinself became a “super-industrializer."
"Stalin wrote a number of works," we are told, “including The Foundations of Ieninism, Concerning Questions of Teninism and Questions and Answers, sharply criticizing Trotsky's opportunist fallacies and defending Leninism. He pointed out: ‘Lack of confidence in the socialist potentialities of our work of construction leads to liquidationism and to degeneration....' Stalin believed that the victory of socialism was possible in one country since Soviet power was supported by the strong worker-peasant alliance and backed by the international proletariat and the people of the colonies and semi-colonies. He pointed out that the essence of Trotsky's fallacies was to ‘clear the way for a bourgeois-democratic republic....' Stalin exposed Trotsky's scheme of ‘restoring inner-party democracy' by showing that it was aimed at undermining the unity of the party, breaking its backbone and disintegrating it. He pointed out that the Trotskyists were ‘in words -- industrialisers, but in deeds -abettors of the opponents of industrialisation.'"
After an attack on Radek, Bukharin
and Rykov as "agents of the kulaks within
the party," the Maoist spokesman extols
the purges organized by Stalin in which
all the outstanding figures of Lenin's
time were imprisoned, driven to suicide
or simply executed:
"Under Stalin's leadership, the
Soviet party and people resolutely waged
repeated struggles against Trotsky, Zino-
viev, Bukharin and other representatives
of the bourgeoisie who had wormed their
way into the party, utterly frustrated
their opportunist line and finally purged
them from the party."
Why has Mao decided to praise the
Moscow Trials at this time? Is he seeking
an example from history which he wants to
apply to China now? Why has he singled
out a series of issues with which he
associates the name of Trotsky? The pro-
portion of material denouncing Trotsky's
struggle against bureaucracy and for
inner-party democracy reveals more than
the Maoists perhaps intended.
When the "cultural revolution" was
launched wasn't it aimed at the "bureau-
crats"? How did this objective happen to
become "Trotskyist" and therefore highly
reprehensible?
The sudden injection of "Trotsky-
ism as a theme in the bitter factional
struggle against the political opposition
to Mao is of particular interest because
of the clear way in which the Maoists
associate it with the content of the "cul-
tural revolution." The "cultural revolu-
tion" is directly linked by the Maoists
themselves to Stalin's monstrous purges
of the thirties!
And, as if to drive home the point,
they repeat Stalin's foul slanders against
his victims, trimming them only to meet
the immediate needs of the current fac-
tional struggle in China. (They omit the
themes about Stalin's victims having sold
out to Hitler and the Mikado. This perhaps
will come later.)
What does the reiteration of these
ancient slanders by the Chinese leader-
ship mean for the course of their own
"“sultural revolution"? Lenin's Central
Committee, after being framed-up by Stalin,
were shot. Is that what Mao plans for his
opponents in the leadership of the Chinese
CP? If not, why raise the example of the
Moscow Trials?
The Maoist authors of "A Great
Historic Document" are not entirely un-
critical of Stalin. Their criticism how-
ever is a singular one. They maintain
that Stalin did not carry the purges far
enough!
"But where he [Stalin] failed was
in not recognising on the level of theory,
that classes and class struggle exist in society throughout the historical period of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the question of who will win in the revolution has yet to be finally settled; in other words, if all this is not handled properly there is the possibility of a come~back of the bourgeoisie."
The reason for this criticism is rather obvious. It is intended to account for Khrushchevism, which the Maoists do not see as the continuation of Stalinism -- which it really is. Since they are in conflict with Stalin's handpicked heirs, while they extol Stalin himself, they are faced with the problem of explaining the origin of Khrushchevism. In absolute contradiction to Marxist method and theory, not to mention the most obvious facts, they find part of the explanation in a lack of vigilance on Stalin's part.
This “explanation” also has the advantage of justifying Mao's current way of meeting critics of his regime and policies and of making it sound more plausible that anyone who opposes the great helmsman is obviously out to restore capitalism. They “sneaked into the party."
Where the logic of Maoism leads to is indicated by the fact that Marx and Engels are no longer accepted as authorities in this field. These protagonists of proletarian democracy, whom Lenin cited in his pamphlet State and Revolution, offer no help to the cult of Mao! Or, as the Maoist spokesmen put it in "A Great
Historic Document," the article laying
down the line for 700,000,000 people in
China:
"Marx and Engels could not possibly
solve this series of major theoretical
problems at their time...lenin died early;
he did not live to solve these problems in
practice."
If this is not plain enough, more
is offered:
"In the early years of the 20th
Century, Marxism developed into the stage
of Leninism; in the present era, it has
developed further into the stage of Mao
Tse-tung's thought." Or to be more blunt,
where a contradiction is to be found,
Mao's thought replaces the teachings of
Marx, Engels and Lenin.
As to the new "theory" that it is
"necessary to strengthen the dictatorship
of the proletariat for a long period of
time," there is a straightforward an-
nouncement that this will entail more up-
heavals. In short the "cultural revolu-
tion" is just beginning:
"The present great cultural revolu-
tion is only the first, and in the future
there are bound to be many others...if
things are not properly handled, a capi-
talist restoration is a possibility at any
time. All members of the Communist party
and the people of the whole country must
not think that everything will be alright
after one or two great cultural revolu-
tions, or even three or four."
DEATH OF OMOTOSHO -- A BLOW TO