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

Leninist ever has held or ever will hold that revolution mustbe made through world war.Marxist-Leninists take the abolition of war as their idealand believe that war can be abolished.But how can war be abolished?This is how Lenin viewed it:. . . our object is to achieve the socialist system of society,which, by abolishing the division of mankind into classes,by abolishing all exploitation of man by man, and of onenation by other nations, will inevitably abolish all possibilityof war. 1The Statement of 1960 also puts it very clearly, “The victoryof socialism all over the world will completely remove thesocial and national causes of all wars.”However, certain persons now actually hold that it is possibleto bring about “a world without weapons, without armedforces and without wars” through “general and complete disarmament”while the system of imperialism and of theexploitation of man by man still exists. This is sheer illusion.An elementary knowledge of Marxism-Leninism tells usthat the armed forces are the principal part of the state machineand that a so-called world without weapons and withoutarmed forces can only be a world without states. Leninsaid:Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisiewill it be able, without betraying its world-historical mission,to throw all armaments on the scrap heap; and theproletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when thiscondition has been fulfilled, certainly not before. 2What are the facts in the world today? Is there a shadowof evidence that the imperialist countries headed by the1Ibid., p. 363.2V. I. Lenin, “The War Program of the Proletarian Revolution”,Selected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1952, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 574.27