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

this struggle of opposites that Marxism-Leninism and the internationalworking-class movement have developed. And itis also through this struggle that the international workingclassmovement has strengthened and consolidated its unity onthe basis of Marxism-Leninism.Engels said:The movement of the proletariat necessarily passesthrough different stages of development; at every stage partof the people get stuck and do not join in the furtheradvance; and this alone explains why it is that actually the“solidarity of the proletariat” is everywhere being realizedin different party groupings, which carry on life-and-deathfeuds with one another. . . . 1This is exactly what happened. The Communist League,the First International and the Second International, all ofwhich were originally unified, divided in two in the courseof their development and became two conflicting parts. Eachtime the international struggle against opportunism and splittismcarried the international working-class movement forwardto a new stage and enabled it to forge a firmer andbroader unity on a new basis. The victory of the OctoberRevolution and the founding of the Third International werethe greatest achievements in the struggle against the SecondInternational’s revisionism and splittism.Unity, struggle or even splits, and a new unity on a newbasis — such is the dialectics of the development of the internationalworking-class movement.Secondly, the history of the international communist movementdemonstrates that in every period the struggle betweenthe defenders of unity and the creators of splits is in essenceone between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism-revisionism,between the upholders of Marxism and the traitors to Marxism.1“Engels to A. Bebel, June 20, 1873”, Selected Correspondence ofMarx and Engels, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, p. 347.314