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

lies, they live in the wrong age, for Marxism-Leninism hasalready found its way deep into people’s hearts. As Stalinrightly pointed out, Leninism “broke down the wall betweenwhites and blacks, between Europeans and Asiatics, betweenthe ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ slaves of imperialism”. 1 It isfutile for the leaders of the CPSU to try and rebuild this wallof racism.In the last analysis, the national question in the contemporaryworld is one of class struggle and anti-imperialiststruggle. Today the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals,anti-imperialist and patriotic bourgeois elements andother patriotic and anti-imperialist enlightened people of allraces — white, black, yellow or brown — have formed a broadunited front against the imperialists, headed by the UnitedStates, and their lackeys. This united front is expanding andgrowing stronger. The question here is not whether to sidewith the white people or the coloured people, but whether toside with the oppressed peoples and nations or with the handfulof imperialists and reactionaries.According to the Marxist-Leninist class stand, oppressednations must draw a clear line of demarcation between themselvesand the imperialists and colonialists. To blur this linerepresents a chauvinist view serving imperialism and colonialism.Lenin said:. . . the central point in the Social-Democratic programmemust be the distinction between oppressing and oppressednations, which is the essence of imperialism, whichis falsely evaded by the social-chauvinists, and by Kautsky. 2By slandering the unity of the people of Asia, Africa and LatinAmerica in the anti-imperialist struggle as being “based on1J. V. Stalin, “The Foundations of Leninism”, Works, Eng. ed., FLPH,Moscow, 1953, Vol. VI, p. 144.2V. I. Lenin, “The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nationsto Self-Determination”, Selected Works, Eng. ed., InternationalPublishers, New York, 1943, Vol. V, p. 284.213