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

people, and in the interests of the socialist camp and the internationalcommunist movement and for the sake of theirunity.REFUTATION OF THE CHARGE OFSEIZING THE LEADERSHIPThe leaders of the CPSU ascribe our criticisms and our oppositionto their revisionist and divisive line to a desire to“seize the leadership”.First, we would like to ask the leaders of the CPSU: You saywe want to seize the leadership. From whom? Who now holdsthe leadership? In the international communist movement, isthere such a thing as a leadership which lords it over allfraternal Parties? And is this leadership in your hands?Apparently, the leaders of the CPSU consider themselvesthe natural leaders who can lord it over all fraternal Parties.According to their logic, their programme, resolutions andstatements are all infallible laws. Every remark and everyword of Khrushchov’s are imperial edicts, however wrong orabsurd they may be. All fraternal Parties must submissivelyhear and obey and are absolutely forbidden to criticize or opposethem. This is outright tyranny. It is the ideology offeudal autocrats, pure and simple.However, we must tell the leaders of the CPSU that theinternational communist movement is not some feudal clique.Whether large or small, whether new or old, and whether in orout of power, all fraternal Parties are independent and equal.No meeting of fraternal Parties and no agreement unanimouslyadopted by them has ever stipulated that there are superiorand subordinate Parties, one Party which leads and otherParties which are led, a Party which is a father and Partieswhich are sons, or that the leaders of the CPSU are the supremerulers over other fraternal Parties.The history of the international proletarian revolutionarymovement shows that, owing to the uneven development of331