"QRITICAL SUPPORT" FOR WHOM?
By Joseph Hansen
A seventh long article replying to the July 14 “open letter" of the Gentral Committee of the Conmunist party of the Soviet Union appeared in the Peking Review of February 7. Like the previous six, the polemical piece was prepared by the joint editorial departments of Renmin Ribao and Honggqi. It is titled "The Leaders of the 0.P.S.U. Are the Greatest Splitters of Our Times."
This is an important installment in the series, as it bears down heavily on the responsibility of Khrushchev for the deepening division between Peking and Moscow and its repercussions among Communist parties throughout the world, We hope to provide a close analysis of its arguments and its meaning in the near future, For the time being we call attention to a peculiarity that has appeared in previous articles in the same series. Many of the arguments echo charges made by the Trotskyists against the heads of the Soviet bureaucracy for
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decades, but they are advanced in guise of defending -- Stalin!
We call special attention to the following contention:
"The Trotskyites, who have long been politically bankrupt, are among those applauding the leaders of the C.P.S.U. The former actively support the latter on such fundamental issues as the attitude one should take towards Stalin, towards U.S, imperialism and towards the Yugoslav revisionists. They say, ‘The situation created by the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. and still more by the Twenty-Second Congress is eminently favourable for the revival of our movement in the workers states themselves.'! ‘We have prepared for this for more than 25 years, Now we must we senen? and move energetically,! 'In relation to the Khrushchov tendency, we will give a critical support to its struggle for destalinization * against the more conservative tendencies. ......!
"Just consider! All the enemies of revolution support the lead~ ers of the C.P.S.U. with alacrity. The reason is that they have found. a common language with the leaders of the C.P.S.U. in their approach to Marxism-Leninism and world revolution, and that the revisionist and divisive line of the leaders of the C.P.S.U. meets the counter=revolutionary needs of U.S. imperialism,"
The three quotations cited by the authors appear to read in logi-~ cal continuity. But as the authors indicate, they are taken from a 1956 document of the Socialist Workers party of the U.S.A., a document written five years later by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International, and e 1963 document of the Reunification Con-= gress of the Fourth international.
We will not stop here to put these quotations into context, The amcunt of reading which the authors had to undertake to find them is proof enough that they are. aware of the true position of the world Trotskyist movement and that they deliberately sought to falsify it. This, we agree, is in the tradition of Stalin, but not in the tradition of either Marxism, Leninism, or the simple truth, The fact is that the Trotskyist movement , from the beginning, has offered critical support -- not to the Khrushchevists -- but to the Chinese,
This is well known throughout the radical movement and far bee yond. When the Khrushchevists call attention to it, they are not lying, although few people in this world, as the Chinese should well know by now, are more given to lies and slander, [See the attacks on the Trotskyists by Izvestia, etc., reported in World Outlook September 27, October 4, November 8 and 22,
Nevertheless, there is a grain of truth in the conviction of the editorial boards of Renmin Ribao and Honggi that Khrushchev enjoys critical support from the Trotskyist quarter. For their next installment we offer them the following sentences for quotation, saving them the drudgery of combing through Trotskyist publications for the past eight years in search of something juicier:
Le Deue
"The Trotskyists have hailed the process of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union end other workers states; their main complaint is that it has not gone fast enough or far enough and that this confirms Trotskyts position that it will require a political revolution to restore the program of Leninism in the first workers state,"
And here is another juicy sentence with the quotation marks likewise already provided: “As against those who seek to restore the worst totalitarian practices of the dark days of Stalin, the Trotskyists have repeatedly declared they stand for critical support to Knrushchev,"
We hope that in return for our willingness to provide such perfect quotations, that our friends responsible for Renmin Ribao and Honggi will use them in their next article.
But we would also appreciate it if they would explain to their audience why it is that on a world scale, in the Sino-Soviet conflict, the Trotskyists consider the Chinese side the more progressive, Here are a few sentences offered for this purpose, with the quotation marks again provided to save the editors of Renmin Ribao and Honggi time and effort:
"The Trotskyists consider it a slander to say that Yugoslavia is a capitalist country. They also think it is absurd and unworthy of revolutionists to grovel before the shade of the hated dictator Stalin, They sharply disagree with the Chinese on these two points as well as on a number of others, But in reaffirming the primacy of the international class struggle, the importance of the colonial revolution, the need to discard illusions about a 'parliamentary! road to a socialist victory, the need after coming to power to establish socialist political and economic forms, the advisability of having no confidence in the class enemy, and the necessity to oppose American imperialism as enemy No. 1, as well as on other points, the Trotskyists think the Chinese have done the international revolutionary Marxist movement a great service and in this they offer them critical support,"
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