Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

ealized by using the old state machinery. Lenin repeatedlyelaborated on the famous saying of Marx and Engels, “Theworking class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made statemachinery and wield it for its own purposes.”5. The social democratic parties are not parties of socialism.With the exception of certain Left wings, they are partiesserving the bourgeoisie and capitalism. They are a variantof bourgeois political parties. On the question of socialistrevolution, our position is fundamentally different from thatof the social democratic parties. This distinction must not beobscured. To obscure this distinction only helps the leadersfor the social democratic parties to deceive the masses andhinders us from winning the masses away from the influenceof the social democratic parties. However, it is unquestionablyvery important to strengthen our work with respect to thesocial democratic parties and strive to establish a united frontwith their left and middle groups.6. Such is our understanding of this question. We do holddiffering views on this question, but out of various considerationswe did not state our views after the 20th Congress ofthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since a jointDeclaration is to be issued, we must now explain our views.However, this need not prevent us from attaining commonlanguage in the draft Declaration. In order to show a connectionbetween the formulation of this question in the draftDeclaration and the formulation of the 20th Congress of theCPSU, we agree to take the draft put forward today by theCentral Committee of the CPSU as a basis, while proposingamendments in certain places.