Bill Bland, Alliance, Hari Kumar: Kremlinologists, not scientific communists MIM has for long years distributed Bill Bland's book on the transition from Stalin to Khruschev and Soviet state-capitalism--"The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union." Although we knew the author was not Maoist, we distributed it just as we distribute J. Sakai's book, "Settlers: The Mythology of the Proletariat." The truth is the truth, no matter who says it and for whatever motivation. In fact, the truth is the truth even when someone says it in order to gain credibility in order to wreck the international communist movement. Those who read "The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union" will note that Bland writes in a Kremlinologist style. Intelligence officers of the major imperialists such as the united $tates and England had the job of gathering, intercepting, reading, translating and interpreting documents from the socialist countries. In the bourgeois custom, the intelligence officers sought information on the persynality of various socialist country leaders, so as to know what to expect in both diplomacy and military confrontation. Where possible, the imperialist country intelligence agencies wished to understand elite-level differences in the socialist country leaderships, with an eye toward taking advantage of them. Bill Bland writes in this vein--compiling quotes and interspersing them with very occasional rhetoric of interpretation for the benefit of splitting the international communist movement. Because his book "The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union" focuses on a question of genuine interest to real communists, we cannot ignore it. We are thankful for its references to the Soviet press which prove exactly what every anti-revisionist thought. On the other hand, the "Class Struggles in China" and other articles he wrote are useful only to intelligence officers of imperialist countries aiming to explain something to their bosses briefing-style and then split the international communist movement. Kremlinologists splitting the communist movement in England and India Seeing the divisive quality of Bland's work requires some discernment. In particular, Bland attacked the international communist movement along the national question in order to break it up and remove its most attractive aspects internationally. The most important attacks along these lines regard the "Black nation" thesis and Mao. The supposed "Stalinists" of England led by Bill Bland and Alliance in North America admitted that Lenin had spoken of a "Black nation." Nonetheless, they try to palm off Comintern resolutions on the subject on Zinoviev, who later degenerated and went before a firing squad. Because Lenin chose Zinoviev to head the Comintern and because Lenin in general gave Zinoviev the job of dealing with the imperialist country comrades, those in the imperialist countries seeking to attack Lenin always first focus their fire on Zinoviev when he was correct, while hoping no one will notice that not everything Zinoviev did was wrong or not defended by Lenin and Stalin. The method of pinning something political on a particular leader is very important to Kremlinologists. That is their job, to know what the differences are amongst the leaders and to continue the bourgeois ideology and idealist method that individuals make history. The Kremlinologists' own bosses would deride them for incompetence if the Kremlinologists did not pin down any information on specific leaders. When it comes to how a communist would regard this Bill Bland method, only those lacking basic Leninist discernment will be affected. It is the hope of the Kremlinologists to split the international communist movement, and this was especially their job when, according to Alliance defenders of Bland, Bland wrote detailed attacks on Mao in 1968. Along these lines, Alliance admits that Bland was successful in splitting various forces in England who favored Mao and socialism in the tradition of Lenin and Stalin. Bland split the Maoists from the Hoxhaites in 1968 and split the pro-Hoxha community as well-- this according to Alliance's own website: "To his astonishment, he could not match Mao's writings against those of Stalin and Lenin. Within a matter of a few months, Bland had put his finger on the essential incompatibility of Mao's theory of the "New Democratic State" with Marxism-Leninism. This led him to scrutinize the speeches and writings of Mao with even greater care. His stunning report at that time to the MLOB was accepted, but only at the cost of a large number of comrades leaving who were unable to accept that Mao was a revisionist." It seems that those of us lacking political discernment fell for a simple trick. Wherever it appeared that Stalin was not persynally involved in something, Bland & Co. simply alleged that Stalin opposed what was going on in the party. Alliance claims there was a plot to make Stalin to "blame" for the Black nation thesis--a fascination for Kremlinologists no doubt, but piffle as far as a scientific communist is concerned. Even if there was a "plot" to attribute the theory to Stalin, Stalin never renounced it once between 1928 and 1953. That is what our Kremlinologist wreckers leave out. In fact, what they are saying is that Stalin was some kind of garden-variety Liberal who allowed people like Zinoviev to run amok! Well, quite the contrary, discerning scientific communists will notice that Stalin had Zinoviev shot, but Stalin never attacked the Black nation thesis that Lenin, Zinoviev and Stalin were all tied up with. Stalin was not a Liberal, and he would not let something stand if it were reactionary--even if it meant mobilizing to shoot some people. Even if Stalin never had the chance to sum up Khruschev, and thus Mao gained a chance to criticize from hindsight (which is something that DOES have to be done for the international communist movement to go forward), Stalin was not so Liberal and so anti-theory as to leave a major stance like that of the Black nation thesis just blowing in the wind, if he did not in fact back it. It's sad that those of us without a basic knowledge of Liberalism and democratic-centralism fell for the Kremlinologists' intrigues. It probably says something about the international communist movements' psychological needs that if Stalin was not there every single minute for every single issue and action, then something was terribly, terribly wrong. This sort of psychological need is the same one that causes people to posit the existence of God authorities that exist everywhere, all-knowing and all-powerful. The authoritarian persynality seeking a God everywhere has a certain kind of psychological need that the splitters preyed/prayed upon. Since Mao had the benefit of hindsight and summed up where Stalin left off, in the same manner in which Lenin and Stalin summed up beyond Marx and Engels and the same manner in which Lenin and Stalin summed up as they went along in their lives, the Kremlinologists took advantage of another psychological need when they split the communists. Specifically there were those who had fought long and hard through World War II and who wanted to take advantage of the Soviet Union's super-power status to take a rest. Here was Mao saying we had to sum up and keep on struggling to go forward, but a large portion of the hitherto communist movement at most wanted to see Stalin as the endpoint. Here dogmatism allies itself with Liberalism, in which resting in the struggle means enshrining the factual analyses of Stalin as if the concrete situation would not change and develop. Distinguishing differences of viewpoint from wrecking One might ask, "isn't it a little harsh to be calling the Alliance and Bill Bland 'Kremlinologist' wreckers?" Is it just that we are being intolerant of other "viewpoints" here? No, this again is something that we have to learn to discern. If this were a question merely of viewpoint, the people in Alliance and Bland's circles could have come out as people and said, "we believe the Black nation thesis is wrong" without ever trying to drag in the names of Lenin and Stalin and without ever making up stories about what they did during their own lifetimes on the subject. There is even a possibility that the Black nation thesis was right when Lenin and Stalin said so but wrong later. However, this is not what Alliance did and this is where we have to gain scientific anti- Liberal discernment. According to Alliance itself, and by the very logic of what the Bland circles reportedly did, the Kremlinological writing succeeded in splitting England's communist movement. If the question is one of viewpoint alone, there is no need to go inside the communist movement. One can even struggle to have the communist movement either acknowledge past errors or see that times have changed. If the question is how to split the international communist movement, then inventions like Bland's and Alliance's serve their sinister purpose. In that case, from the reactionary infiltrators' point of view, it is important to have some scribblers who can divert a portion of the undiscerning communist movement. We communists have democratic-centralism and accountable leaders for a reason. While an anarchist movement can never succeed in knowing who did what or organize against reactionary infiltration, we in the scientific communist movement had appointed Stalin our leader. We gave him the task of striking down the Black nation thesis if it were wrong. It was his responsibility to correct mistakes if people simply screwed up within the party and allowed something out that wasn't really official line. So we communists know what it means that Stalin never opposed the Black nation thesis between 1928 and 1953. It means that whoever worked out the details, and many claim it was Stalin, Stalin still supported the thesis. There is no other interpretation compatible with Leninism. Utter bologna against Mao from Alliance/Hari Kumar There are certain things that can only be accomplished within the communist movement--namely splitting its less discerning members off by means of invented theoretical controversies. For this reason, a persyn wants to be thought of as a Marxist-Leninist in order to infiltrate and wreck. The work on Mao took advantage of two psychological needs already present in the English labor aristocracy (and also amongst the Russian people, but that is another matter relevant only in Friendship Society circles): 1) the racism that held that China was too backward to learn anything from and therefore Mao could not be heading the international communist movement 2) the geopolitics-first political orientation which makes no discernment regarding class struggle and modes of production. Those wishing for a Liberal unity of the Soviet Union and China against u.$. imperialism believed that geopolitics come first, and cared not a whit if millions of people's blood and millions of lives dedicated to socialism were wasted by revisionism and capitalist restoration. By the way, we have to point out that the geopolitics-first movement is especially useful to intelligence agencies in the imperialist countries. After all, intelligence agencies are not so much interested in scientific communism: they want to know who opposes their imperialist country, how and working with whom. To infiltrate a movement and obtain this information, it is especially easy and useful to build one geopolitics-first movement and then infiltrate, just as Lenin advised us that the imperialists would give people arms and money if they could then trace where it went. These above-referenced psychological needs already existed. Bland simply wrote articles that filled the need but inside the international communist movement. That is what makes the Alliance/Bland articles on Mao so damaging. Spoken on the Internet out of context, such articles we would assume came from some deranged follower of Gorbachev or even Yeltsin, but coming from Alliance, the articles on Mao have divisive impact. Alleging to rebut Ludo Martens for not abandoning Mao enough, the Alliance starts its criticism pointing to Mao's statements to the united $tates during World War II. Thus from the very beginning of its article, Alliance plays to racism while trying to convince imperialist country comrades. Stalin in 1939 just got done signing a whole treaty with Hitler, and Alliance did not oppose that, but our racist "Stalinists," believe that there is no reason for Mao to approach their American allies during World War II, when Americans were giving concrete military including air force aid to both the Chinese and Vietnamese. How racist is that? Stalin can sign a pact with Hitler when there is not even a war going on on Stalin's own soil yet, and yet, Mao cannot say things to the U.$. imperialists while those imperialists are aiding Mao and while they are considering Chiang Kai-shek's future. These alleged "Stalinists" better go look at what Stalin told Tito to tell the British during World War II and he will know where Mao got the idea about what to tell the Amerikans. Then these phony Stalinists will know that it was only the Titoites who complained about telling the Allied U.$. and British imperialists that they were radishes. (See for example Djilas whine incessantly on this subject in "Conversations with Stalin," which is what the Alliance people are echoing perfectly.) With regard to major theoretical points that they choose to pick on, the Alliance is simply factually wrong again. With regard to the theory of new-democracy and that stage of revolution, Alliance says, "see that if the working class gains leadership of the national-democratic revolution; this revolution can be transformed relatively uninterruptedly, into a socialist revolution. Mao disagrees with this key point." Quite the contrary, Mao published till his dying day through his press the belief in uninterrupted revolution and there is a whole book with that title reflecting Mao's actual work along those lines. That book by Victor Nee and James Peck was not inspired by eventual sell-out M.N.Roy but by Mao's actual revolution. Alliance wrote a long article on this subject without actually proving its point. It no where showed that Mao disagreed with the idea of uninterrupted revolution expressed above. The simple reason for that is that it is not true. We also have to address how Hari Kumar is unable to distinguish Trotsky's criticism of the Communist Party of China and Mao's. According to Mao, Chen Tu-Hsiu who was the general secretary of the Communist Party of China bore political responsibility for the 1927 massacre of communists by ultra-reactionary Chiang Kai-shek. Let's be clear that Chen Tu-Hsiu went on to become an open Trotskyist. Instead of concluding that maybe Stalin lacked in discerning a closet Trotskyist, or that maybe it was just too early in the Chinese Revolution to be developed enough to separate Trotskyism and Marxism-Leninism, Hari Kumar said that it was Mao who took the Trotskyite line! The whole concluding all caps sentence of Hari Kumar's open letter to Ludo Martens in one section is: "MAO AND TROTSKY AGREE THAT STALIN SABOTAGED THE 1927 REVOLUTION!" Yet, while Hari Kumar found time to write that Mao took Trotsky's line, no where did Hari Kumar mention that Chen became an open Trotskyist. It's as if Hari Kumar reasoned that Trotsky criticized the party headed by Chen, so therefore Chen must be Marxist-Leninist! In his open letter to Ludo Martens, titled "Was Chairman Mao a Marxist-Leninist" in one Internet version, Hari Kumar mentioned Chen six times, without ever mentioning that Chen became an open Trotskyist. With historical "help" like that, there is no wonder that revisionism still has the upper hand amongst those calling themselves communist today, even when communism is supposedly dead. We ask you Hari Kumar, why did you fail to expose the open Trotskyist in the context of a discussion of 1927, Stalin and Mao? If anyone is guilty of Trotskyism, it is Alliance for echoing Trotsky on the Black nation thesis, how the new-democratic stage of revolution can be skipped and Alliance's evaluation of Mao. Then Alliance goes on to nit-pick, and inaccurately at that. For sending two people to investigate the situation in Yugoslavia in 1947, Alliance concluded that China was trying to find a way to copy Tito and his compromises with u.$. imperialism. That is chauvinism, pure and simple. It's something that the Soviet Union is allowed to do, because Alliance is pandering to the Western labor aristocracy with the Russians as a white people, but it's not something that China is allowed to, according to these phony Stalinists. Just check this quote from Alliance: "'Stalin directly inquired about the Chinese position on the YUGOSLAV ISSUE'.. KOVALEV (replied) to Stalin.. Kovalev stressed.. In 1947 Mao had sent two top lieutenants LU DINGYI AND LIU NINGYI to Yugoslavia and [Kovalev] inferred from this that Mao wanted to understand 'How Yugoslavia which had declared itself to be a socialist country, might find a way, under the conditions of severe struggle between the camps of socialism and imperialism, to establish friendly relations with the imperialists countries, the USA and England.'" What is the point of this? Alliance then says, "THIS 'SHOPPING AROUND' OF THE CCP, WAS IN MARKED CONTRAST TO THE CORRECT WAR TIME BEHAVIOUR OF SUCH AS ENVER HOXHA OF ALBANIA." During World War II, Stalin wanted the Yugoslavs to have British military aid including British air bases and naval supply lines. Likewise, Mao had U.S. armed forces operating on the ground with them. If Enver Hoxha did not have imperialist armed forces he was working with, that indeed was the real difference, not what Alliance is talking about, but we should be clear that Stalin naturally supported having the imperialist Allies do as much as they could instead of letting the communists do all the fighting. That is a matter of historical fact, while the suspicions of people Stalin mobilized were just that--suspicions. Anyone seeing how the imperialists buy people out this past one hundred years should be suspicious--ah, but unfortunately, Alliance does not support Lenin and Stalin on that point either, including in application to Yugoslavia. Being vigilant is not the same thing as naming someone an enemy and Stalin never named Mao an enemy. Quite the contrary to the image that Alliance presents, Stalin was the in fact the originating source for tactics of how to deal with the u.$. imperialists on your soil--in both Yugoslavia and China. Unfortunately, Alliance is probably aware of that, but takes advantage of undiscerning people anyway: "Again, Marxist-Leninists accept that, as a general principle, it is correct to expose the reactionary role of religion. But an aspiring Marxist-Leninist who intrudes into a Catholic Church during mass shouting: 'Down with the Pope!' is not acting in accordance with correct Marxist-Leninist tactics." Actually there may be moments when "Down with the Pople!" may be correct, but Alliance seems to understand that it often would not be correct; yet at the same time, Alliance expected Mao to appear redder than red in front of the U.S. military in the midst of World War II. Can there be anything more idiotic or hypocritical (if this posture is intentional as we suspect)? We have to warn the Alliance circles, Ray O. Light and various others in the confused and ignorant Stalin/Brezhnev camp widely construed with its anti-Mao line: if you have racism in your heart or find it necessary to pander to the imperialist country labor aristocracy, you will never be able to study and focus on China long enough to understand it. You have to read both about China and the Soviet Union. It's not enough to read Stalin and Soviet history. If you can't focus on China, it's better that you say nothing at all, but you should also acknowledge that your own consciousness will slide steadily back to bourgeois consciousness. Taking advantage of our most historically ignorant comrades, Alliance said that Mao "leaned" toward the u$a and not the Soviet Union under Stalin, despite Mao's direct statements contrary. The one mention of the Korean War that Alliance makes is that Mao did not nationalize U.$. assets during the Korean War (a period in which China was still in the New Democratic stage). Mao's son died fighting in the Korean war, without Alliance mentioning it, but Alliance and Bland say that Mao was a U.$. comprador. Sorry Pekinologists, last we checked, comprador lackeys don't sacrifice their sons in war against the imperialists. They send their sons to U.$. military training to come back as torturers and generals with plenty of money in Swiss accounts from the CIA. Yet there are a lot of Russophiles who are unaware of China's huge blood sacrifices during the Korean War. Again this has a lot to do with racism. Even Mao's Three Worlds conception these supposedly pro-Stalin people have the gall to attack with: " The practical consequences of this 'theory' has been the formation of unprincipled alliances with the most unsavoury fascist elements world wide, justified because they are in the so called 'Third World'." Here Stalin signed a pact with Hitler himself and Alliance has the gall to call Mao revisionist over the Three Worlds idea. They aim their spear at both Stalin and Mao simultaneously, while letting U.$. imperialism off the hook as the world's number one enemy. Stalin can make pacts with leading imperialists according to Alliance, but Mao is not allowed to mobilize whatever vacillating coalition he can involving non-imperialist countries against imperialist ones, according to these phony Leninists. Finally, the Alliance people just let the whole social-democratic cat out of the bag: "The Maoists 'marginalise' the metropolitan countries' proletariat struggle, by pointing to the 'Third World' as the important struggle. The theory even justifies the nonsensical theory of the super-profits being used to benefit the proletariat of the metropolitan countries. This lie makes the proletariat of the metropolitan countries, supposedly the accomplices of the ruling class in the rape and exploitation of the semi-colonial world." So in truth, the Alliance people know damn well they can't criticize dealings with fascists out-of-hand, if they are going to claim to be pro- Stalin, and not criticize his pact with Hitler, but what they really object to is what Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao said about the labor aristocracy. (See just a few quotes on this at: www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/classics.html ) Yet again, the Alliance turns to a purely empty geopolitical position instantly exposed by a minute's thought about Stalin's Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler and its absolute necessity. For Alliance, like countless Trotskyists who attacked Stalin, merely shaking hands with one of Hitler's henchmen was enough to label a communist "revisionist." We quote again in completeness Alliance's last section on this point to prove how little it takes for them to see "revisionism" and how little substance there is to its argument: "After the victory of Mao in the 'cultural revolution' the rapprochement with the USA did not take very long. From 1969 a visible change took place. On February 25th, 1971, US President Richard Nixon told Congress of the USA : "'We are prepared to establish a dialogue with Peking... The US is prepared to see the People's Republic of China play a constructive role in the family of nations.' "In his First speech in Peking during his visit of February 21st to 28th, President Nixon made matters clear: "'What brings us together is that we have a common interest. So let us in these next five days start a long march together.' "From now on, the PRC established close links with the US dominated bloc such as Pakistan and Romania; with fascist Spain in 1973; and with other unsavoury regimes : General Ne Win of Burma (visited PRC in August 1971); Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (visited in October 1971); General Sese Mobutu of Zaire ( visited in January 1973); and Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia (visited in 1974). The PRC supported the regime of Yahya Khan who attempted to destroy the legitimate national liberation struggle taking place in Bangla Desh." Did the mode of production in the USSR change when Molotov shook hands with Hitler? Did the mode of production change in China when Mao shook hands with Nixon? Of course not, but Alliance postures for the support of the most simple-minded in our lot, those who usually end up supporting Trotsky or anarchism anyway--the kind of people who abandoned the Soviet Union in 1939. That's not to mention that if it were not for the support of the majority of U.$.-backed Third World fascist regimes, Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan would still be representing China in the United Nations. Mao was correct to open diplomatic relations with these countries and do what could be done within the realm of bourgeois diplomacy. That's what Stalin did too. Notes: All the below from http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/ 1. Alliance Marxist-Leninist (North America), "UPON THE CURRENT SITUATION, UNITY, AND IDEOLOGY - AN OPEN LETTER TO LUDO MARTENS; 'PARTI DU TRAVAIL' BELGIUM" 2. Bill Bland, "Class Struggles in China" 3. Bill Bland, "The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union" 4. Proletarian Path, "AN INITIAL ASSESSMENT: W.B. BLAND'S POLITICAL LEGACY" 5. "More on the Fifth Column in the Stalin Society"