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

sequences. The nuclear and rocket weapons created in themiddle of this century have changed former conceptions ofwar. These weapons possess unprecedented destructive power.Suffice it to say that the explosion of only one powerfulthermonuclear bomb surpasses the explosive force of all theammunition used during all previous wars, including the firstand the second world wars. And many thousands of suchbombs have been accumulated.Have Communists the right to ignore this danger? Mustwe tell the people the whole truth about the consequences ofa thermonuclear war? We believe that undoubtedly we must.This cannot have a “paralyzing” effect on the masses, as theChinese comrades assert. On the contrary, the truth aboutmodern war mobilizes the will and energy of the masses forthe struggle for peace, against imperialism — the source ofthe war danger.The historic task of the Communists is to organize and headthe struggle of the peoples to prevent a world thermonuclearwar.Prevention of a new world war is a fully real and feasibletask. The 20th Congress of our party arrived at a conclusionof the utmost importance — that in our times there is no fatalinevitability of war between states. That conclusion is basednot merely on good intentions; it is the result of a realistic,strictly scientific analysis of the balance of class forces in theworld arena; it is based on the vast might of world socialism.Our views on this question are shared by the entire worldcommunist movement. “World war can be averted”; “a realpossibility will have arisen to exclude world war from thelife of society even before socialism achieves complete victoryon earth, with capitalism still existing in a part of the world,”the Statement stresses.That Statement bears the signatures also of the Chinesecomrades.But what is the position of the CPC leadership? What canbe the meaning of the propositions they advocate, viz., that541