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

eliminated altogether because they would have disappearedbodily from our planet. 1In short, according to the leaders of the CPSU, with theemergence of nuclear weapons, the contradiction between thesocialist and the imperialist camps, the contradiction betweenthe proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries,and the contradiction between the oppressed nations and imperialismhave all disappeared. The world no longer has anyclass contradictions. They regard the contradictions in thecontemporary world as boiling down to a single contradiction,that is, their fictitious contradiction between the so-called commonsurvival of imperialism and the oppressed classes andnations on the one hand and their total destruction on theother.As far as the leaders of the CPSU are concerned, Marxism-Leninism, the Declaration and the Statement, and socialismand communism have all been cast to the winds.How frankly Pravda puts it! “What is the use of principlesif one’s head is chopped off?” 2This is tantamount to saying that the revolutionaries whodied under the sabres of the reactionaries for the victory ofthe Russian Revolutions and the October Revolution, the warriorswho bravely gave up their lives in the anti-fascist war,the heroes who shed their blood in the struggle against imperialismand for national independence and the martyrs tothe revolutionary cause through the ages were all fools. Whyshould they have given up their heads for adherence to principle?This is the philosophy of out-and-out renegades. It is ashameless statement, to be found only in the confessions ofrenegades.1N. S. Khrushchov, Speech at the Sixth Congress of the SocialistUnity Party of Germany, January 16, 1963.2“Left of Common Sense”, Pravda, August 16, 1963.244