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

justify their erroneous line and have made it a “basis” for theirattacks on the Chinese Communist Party.This is of course futile. Like all his other works, this bookof Lenin’s can only serve as a weapon for Marxist-Leninists inthe fight against various kinds of opportunism and can neverserve as an instrument of revisionist apologetics.When Lenin criticized the “Left-wing” infantile disorderand asked the party of the proletariat to be skilful in applyingrevolutionary tactics and to do better in preparing for revolutions,he had already broken with the revisionists of the SecondInternational and had founded the Third International.Indeed, in “ ‘Left-Wing’ Communism — an Infantile Disorder”,he stated that the main enemy of the international working-classmovement at the time was Kautsky’s type of opportunism.He repeatedly stressed that unless a break was madewith revisionism there could be no talk of how to master revolutionarytactics.Those comrades whom Lenin criticized for their “Left-wing”infantile disorder all wanted revolution, while the latter-dayrevisionist Khrushchov is against it, has therefore to be includedin the same category as Kautsky and has no rightwhatsoever to speak on the question of combating the “Leftwing”infantile disorder.It is most absurd for the leadership of the CPSU to pin thelabel of “Trotskyism” on the Chinese Communist Party. Infact, it is Khrushchov himself who has succeeded to the mantleof Trotskyism and who stands with the Trotskyites of today.Trotskyism manifests itself in different ways on differentquestions and often wears the mask of “ultra-Leftism”, but itsessence is opposition to revolution, repudiation of revolution.As far as the fundamental fact of their opposition to theproletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariatis concerned, Trotskyism and the revisionism of the SecondInternational are virtually the same. This is why Stalinrepeatedly said that Trotskyism is a variety of Menshevism, is398