Jonathan Aurthur
<I>Socialism in the Soviet Union</I>
Chicago: Workers Press, 1977, p. 1
(Communist Labor Party)

"What does Marxist philosophy say about the possibility
of the restoration of capitalism in a socialist country?
We are justified in saying that it denies the possibility
that socialism, once it is firmly established, can be changed
back into capitalism. Marxist literature takes for
granted the irreversibility of the victory of socialism."

[Why this quote is wrong:
It was wrong in 1977 but 25 years later, it is obviously
wrong, for even the most bone-headed to see: there is
no Soviet Union or socialism there anymore.

Along with the Communist Workers Party, and even though
it was always "Old Left," the Communist Labor
Party of the United $tates showed a lot of Maoist influence
before rejecting it. According to the CLP, it started moving
away from Mao in 1974: "Since then, our Party has carried
on a serious study of the question of Lin Piaoism and its
relation to the theory, long accepted by many revolutionaries,
that the Soviet Union had 'degenerated' into an 
imperialist super-power."(pp. iv-v)

Once again, like many others, the CLP attacked Mao for doing
less of what Stalin did when he signed a pact with Hitler:
"Our Party intends to do everything in our power to
break up this alliance, to destroy the theory that
'socialism' (China) and 'the other superpower' (US imperialism)
must ally against the Soviet Union, the so-called
'main enemy.' This theory, in whatever national guise
it presents itself, is nothing but a summer re-run of the
Churchill-Hoover-Hitler <I>cordon sanitaire</I> dubbed
with left phrasemongering and a CIA laugh track."(p. v)

What the CLP should have said was that it was a milder version
of what Stalin did when he signed the pact with Hitler. Once
again, MIM has to point out that a foreign policy strategy
debate is not justification for missing the nature of a 
mode of production.]