Anti-Maoismus is Anti-Communism!
In our history, the history of the revolutionary communist movement, there are three red stars qualified to globally illuminate the future course of our movement:
Paris Commune of 1871: world-wide first dictatorship of the proletariat;
October Revolution of 1917 – 1952: establishment of soviet power and construction of socialism;
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966 – 1969: deliberate continuation of class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat by correcting undesirable developments of the previous movement.
By each of these revolutions the world-wide movement was lifted to to a higher level. Each of these pioneering achievements opened new, elementary and indispensable knowledge for the continuation of the movement. Every revolutionary communist cannot be dismissive or neutral to any of these mile-stones – on the contrary: without clearly positive fundamental stance towards the total balance of all epoch-making upheavals any confession to revolutionary communism remains necessarily incomplete.
It is possible to assign the three great revolutions to the following terms on theoretical level:
Marxism [by Engels, Kautsky and the Second International],
Marxism-Leninism [by the Stalin faction within CPSU(B) and Comintern],
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism [by Lin Biao and the Cultural Revolution Group].
After the respective creators of these theories Marxism, Marxism-Leninism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism resp. can also be called the “theories of the ingenious representatives”.
The problem is that each of these stages determines a dogmatic canonification and narrowing of the theory at a certain step of development of the movement.
Such terms can really be meaningful and useful amidst the brawl of the respective two-lines struggle but they will become out-dated sooner or later.
We should refer positively to the revolutionary communist heritage of the First, Second and Third International Workers Associations as well as to the revolutionary communist movement since 1943, but at the same time we should be or become aware of the weaknesses of our champions. One of those is e.g. the personality cult. Therefore the term of “theory of revolutionary communism” is more suitable for naming our theory, and unnecessary narrowings being too much tied to a certain phase do not occur (the term of Marxism-Leninism e.g. includes Anti-Luxemburgism that is rather no fundamental principle of revolutionary communism).
All this however includes that we definitely regard Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao as out-standing champions of revolutionary communism in the 19th and 20th centuries. We assess the merits of each of these historic figures for the theory and practice of revolutionary communism by far towering above their errors.
At the same time we state that we do not allow being reduced to the above-mentioned five when exploiting the theoretical heritage.
Especially Hoxhaists and Breshnevists insist on raising Stalin to the rank of a super and main classic. In doing so they especially defend and canonify the errors of the international communist movement under Stalin and so they, now and then, cause considerable ideological confusion directly leading water on the mills of anti-communism.
It is important that we fill the relation of 70 : 30 (70% merits against 30% errors) with contents. That means being as concrete as possible when defending Stalin. We e.g. shall defend the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union at the time of Stalin but not the killing of communists by organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the same epoch.
The main targets of revisionists within the communist movement are still the positions linked with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and Mao. Beating back and repulsing these attacks is an indispensable precondition for strengthening the front in the necessary struggle against anti-communism.
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Initiative for the Construction of a Revolutionary Communist Party (Austria), December 2008.
IA.RKP, Stiftgasse 8, A-1070 Wien, Austria; ia.rkp2017@yahoo.com