In the maze of Chairman Hua

I've been amusing myself lately by reviewing documents issued by Maoists based in the United States. This pamphlet was published in 1977 by the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). The same group had earlier used another designation, October League (Marxist-Leninist). The CPML was officially recognized by the Communist Party of China as its fraternal organization in the United States. CPML leader Michael Klonsky at one point met and conferred with Mao's successor, Chairman Hua Guofeng.

I previously reviewed two pamphlets published by Klonsky's group in its earlier incarnation as the October League. While filled with Mao and Stalin quotes, they nevertheless gave a surprisingly “soft” impression, emphasizing the need for broad unity. Thus, the OL supported the “progressive” wing of the “union bureaucracy”, including Arnold Miller and Ed Sadlowski, against the “reactionary” wing. Nor did they object when “gay women” (lesbians) joined an International Womens' Day rally co-sponsored by the Maoists. The OL even said that one should listen to criticism from opponents, so one can become a better Communist!

Flash forward to 1977. The OL proclaims itself *the* vanguard party of the American working class. The new look OL, now rechristened CPML, sounds rabidly sectarian, confrontationist and (surprise) homophobic, while simultaneously moving “to the right” in its foreign policy, due to China's de facto alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union. Mike Klonsky sets the tone in his report to the party congress: “We have not only had to fight the revisionists of the Gus Hall clique, but also their front-men within our own movement and in our own organization. We have led a determined struggle against all pretenders to the name of `communist' from the right-opportunist chauvinists of the Revolutionary Communist Party, to the centrist Guardian, to the various Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyists like Workers Viewpoint and the `Revolutionary Wing.' Internally, we faced the attacks from enemy agents like Martin Nicolaus, who nestled in our organization and tried to divert us from our central task of party building and into an alliance with imperialism.”

While the CPML still call for “unity”, the slogan sounds rather hollow, since they explicitly rule out even temporary unity with “revisionists” and “Trotskyists”. The main left-wing groups in the United States at the time were the “revisionist” Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The CPML explicitly state that the CPUSA is “bourgeois” and “fascist”, and strongly imply that the SWP is fascist, too. No wing of the “union bureaucracy” can be supported either. Miller and Sadlowski are repudiated. Indeed, the “main blow” within the unions should be directed against the “revisionists” and the “union bureaucracy”, including its reform wing. In effect, the CPML regard competing tendencies on the left, or to the left of center, as the main enemy. As for “feminists”, they are no good since they promote “counter cultural lifestyles”, presumably a prudish reference to lesbianism.

The tone of the CPML's founding document is dark and apocalyptic. “Appeasement” (they mean the attempted détente between the United States and the USSR) won't work, and a third world war is therefore inevitable. Fascism might be introduced by the U.S. establishment already prior to a war. The CPML see neo-Nazis and the Klan as clear and present dangers. The Soviet Union is already fascist, indeed it’s a “dictatorship of the Hitler type”. The tendency towards world revolution grows simultaneously with the tendency towards world war. In foreign policy, the CPML support “The Theory of the Three Worlds”, according to which the Soviet Union is the main danger. The Third World must unite with the Second World (Western Europe, Japan, Australia) against the superpowers, but principally the Soviet Union. While the CPML don't back the United States or NATO against the Soviet Union, this is the logical end-point of their strategy. Maoists who supported China's alliance with the United States did develop some pretty strange positions (at least for leftists), such as support for UNITA in Angola, the Shah of Iran and Mobutu's Zaire.

Listening to opponents to see if they just may have a point is, of course, also out of the question. The statement dealing with "enemy agent" Martin Nicolaus' expulsion is not included in this collection, but I can't help quoting it anyway (I found it on the web): "The October League has purged a revisionist and opportunist from its ranks (...) Nicolaus was a bourgeois intellectual who refused to remold his outlook or accept criticism of his revisionist line from the masses. (...) Upon his expulsion, he stole some money and fled. All this shows his basic bourgeois world outlook, his hatred of the working class and their revolutionary organization and his love for the bourgeoisie.This love for the bourgeoisie was so great that Nicolaus openly advocated an alliance with the liberal section of the imperialist ruling class". And so on. The statement ends with the chilling slogan "DEATH TO REVISIONISM".

I found the CPML founding documents interesting, since the Swedish Maoists (KFML/SKP) traversed pretty much the same trajectory as Klonsky's group. Originally, the KFML/SKP combined a naïve adulation of Mao and Stalin with a super-broad popular frontism and single-issueism, which sometimes made them sound almost “soft”. One wing of the movement was oriented to the youth counter-culture. In 1976, the SKP suddenly changed their line. All soft-liners were expelled, the Social Democrats and the Left Party were singled out as the de facto main enemies, and an extreme anti-Soviet line was adopted. The group also repudiated the counter-culture (ironically, they favored ABBA instead). Thus, the same curious combination of sectarianism and “rightism”…

Are we dealing with some kind of unknown international development here? Perhaps Chairman Hua really was calling the shots from the Forbidden City? Or perhaps the Hua-Deng Maoists simply were stunningly consistent. After all, if the Soviet “social imperialists” are the main enemy – and fascists to boot – then all tendencies that “appease” them must be pro-fascist. And the biggest appeasers were…the leftists, the Social Democrats and the liberals. I didn't support the Soviet Union back in the days either, but this is absurd!

Welcome to the surreal maze of Marxism-Leninism-Hua Guofeng Thought.