On 1 November 1977, the official Chinese newspaper
People's Daily published an extended editorial, "Chairman Mao's Theory of
the Differentiation of the Three Worlds is a Major Contribution to
Marxism-Leninism". I've read the Swedish edition, dutifully translated by
the local Maoist faithful.
Mao had been dead for over a year when the editorial appeared. Hua Guofeng (a.k.a. Chairman Hua) had overthrown and arrested the Gang of Four, including Mao's widow Jiang Qing. The approachment between China and the United States had begun already during the last years of Mao, with Nixon and Kissinger being prominent players on the American side. Under Hua, US-Chinese relations reached a kind of zenith, with China essentially becoming a US ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. With some modifications, this policy was continued under Deng Xiaoping, until the fall of the Berlin Wall created a new situation...and a budding Chinese-Russian alliance instead.
That the great powers play these kinds of games is, of course, hardly news. But China was a great power with a twist. Being Communist, they had to give their Cold Warrior alliance with Carter and Reagan a "Marxist-Leninist" gloss. This is what the Chinese Communist Party set out to do in this People's Daily editorial. The attempt is known as "three worlds theory". If "three worlds theory" really was the brainchild of Mao himself is unclear. The editorial frequently quotes Mao and Zhou Enlai, but none of the quotes really prove that Mao and Zhou developed this "major contribution to Marxism-Leninism". My guess is that it was the invention of Hua and Deng. Naturally, they had to foist the theory on Chairman Mao to give it legitimacy.
Most of the editorial is filled with the usual boring Marxist rhetoric, including attacks on US imperialism. China and the Third World are said to be the main forces fighting imperialism. The two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are called the First World. The other Western nations, including France, Britain and Japan, are the Second World. The task of Marxist-Leninists is to unite the Third World, win over the Second World and isolate the First World. However, the editorial regards the Soviet Union as the most dangerous, rapacious and war-prone superpower. The main blow must therefore be directed at the Soviet Union, this "social imperialist" and "fascist" superpower, which the editorial implicitly compares to Nazi Germany.
People's Daily opposes détente between Western Europe and the Soviet Union, instead calling on the Western European nations to arm themselves against a future Soviet invasion, which is said to be inevitable. Of course, this is a backhanded way of supporting NATO, since most West European nations belonged to that military alliance. And NATO, of course, is led by...the United States! The editorial doesn't explicitly state that Marxist-Leninists must support the United States (the supposedly weaker superpower), but Maoists abroad did get the message. The Swedish Maoist group SKP *did* explicitly say that Communists must support the United States in a third world war with the USSR.
"Chairman Mao's Theory" is filled with deceptive quotations from Marx, Engels and Lenin by which the authors attempt to prove that their pro-American positions are authentically Marxist. Naturally, Marx & Co are quoted out of context. That Friedrich Engels was willing to support Germany against Czarist Russia supposedly proves that the labour movement in Western Europe must support a military build-up (read: NATO) against the "present day czars in Moscow". Lenin's statement that national wars of liberation were still possible in Europe even during the "epoch of imperialism" is taken to mean that such a military escalation is somehow progressive, etc. (In reality, Lenin was probably referring to Poland, at the time still divided between Russia and Germany.) It seems anything can be supported by clever proof texts from Marx, Lenin or the Holy Bible!
All this is so crackpot that one wonders how anyone could possibly have taken it seriously. But some people did. The Maoist SKP in Sweden (a small but notorious group - now long defunct, apart from some ex-front groups) actually swallowed "three worlds theory" hook, line and sinker. Bizarrely for a left-wing group, they supported the Swedish army, opposed campaigns against Pinochet, and implicitly preferred a right-wing government to a Social Democratic one. As already stated, they believed that NATO and the United States should be supported in a coming world war. And yes, they regarded Mobutu Sese Seko, the shah of Iran and a host of other unlikely candidates as "objective allies of the world socialist revolution". Since they simultaneously supported Pol Pot and upheld "Mao Zedong Thought", the SKP became a sick joke on the Swedish left. Interestingly, they never stopped demanding the destruction of Israel, apparently for anti-Semitic reasons. Through all twists and turns of Maoist policy, *that* remained a constant. Was I surprised to learn that the most prominent Maoist intellectual in Sweden, Jan Myrdal, is also a Holocaust denier? Not really.
"Chairman Mao's Theory" isn't the most graceful read around. It might put you to sleep unless you know what code words and turns of phrase to look for. It's probably of interest only to students of Chinese foreign policy who love to indulge themselves in its rhetorical justifications. And no, it's not really a major contribution to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Rather, it's Chairman Hua's immortal contribution to Henry Kissinger Thought!
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