From Marx to Mao Tse-tung - BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET

The development of capitalism proceeds extremely,.re,r"rrly in different counlties' It cannot be otherwise,rra", Jo**odity production' From this it followsi.r"trrtuUty that socialism cannot achiewe victory;;;i;;"sly in att countries' It will achieve victory"d;J-i;;"" o, serre.al, while the others,wjll remain for;;; ;;; bourgeois or pte-bo"geois' (LCW 4; g')And, after the new socialist republic had emerged,ri"to.iow frorn the war of intervention and the civilrvar, he declared :t has turned out that, while our forecasts did notmaterialise simply, rapidly and directly' they wereiulfilled in so far'u, *" uthi"''ed the main thing' Therrossibilitvhas been maintained of the existence of;;;i;;L" .,rt" u"a the Soviet Republic even in theI;;;;;ffi" *Lrld socialist revolution being delaved'(LCW 3r.4rr.)But is the existence of a socialist republic in acaoitalist environment at all conceivaL'le? From the,ra militarv asPects it seemed inconceivable'"Hii-lJ Tfr^i i, ;, possible, both'politica-lly-and militarily' has,,o* U."., prorred. It is a fact' (LCW 33' I 5 I ')In reaching this conclusion, Len-in did not mean toimply that ihe survival of the Soviet republic. wasthenceforth guaranteed. On the contrary' he continuedio-*ri"t*"ihat the victory of socialism could not be;g;;;-;t final until it had been won on a worldscale :The final victory of socialism in a single country isof course impossible' (LCW z6'47o')Everyone knows the difficulties of a revolution' It-u, U"ei., with brilliant success in one country andii,"i, g"-rrl."ugh agonising periods, since final victoryscale, and only by the;;iyporrluL oi u -ita78joint efforts of the workers of all countries. (LCW27.372.)We have always known, and shall never forget,that ours is an international cause, and that, untilthe revolution takes place in all lands, including therichest and most highly civilised, our victory will beonly a half-victory, perhaps even less. (LCW 3I.399)We have always said that we are only a single linkin the chain of world revolution. (LCW 3r.43r, cf .32.36 t.)g. Uneuen DeaelopmentIn rejecting the theory of simultaneous revolutionLenin appealed to the law of the uneven developmentof capitalist society.IJneven development, arising as it does from thenature of commodity production, is found in all stagesof capitalist society, and indeed also in pre-capitalistsociety, in so far as it too reveais rudimentary forms ofcommoclity production I but, just as capitalism marksthe highest stage in the growth of commodity production,the stage at which labour-power ibecomes a commodity,so it is in the era of imperialism, the higheststage of capitalism, that the law of uneven developmentbecomes a major factor in world revolution. All thiswas shown by Lenin in his study of imperialism' Hisargument may be presented in the form in which it waslater summarised by Stalin in dealing with the questionat issue :What is the law of the uneven deveiopment ofcapitalism, whose operation under the conditions ofimperialism leads to the victory of socialism in onecountry?Speaking of this ,law, Lenin held that the old,pre-monopoly capitalism had already passed into im-79