BRIAN BECKER
'We must build a unity forged in action'
From a talk by Brian Becker Dec. 6 to the New York
conference on the "Communist Manifesto in the
Age of Imperialism."
It is not possible to discuss Marxist theory in the
abstract. Marxism has lived on all these years, and in all
parts of the globe, because it is above all else a guide to
action. If it was not a tool for the liberation of the workers
and all oppressed people, Marxism would be a lifeless dogma--in
short it would cease to be real Marxism.
The first question is: What are Workers World Party's
priorities, strategies and tactics in the next few months?
What is our attitude toward the question of unity with other
forces? On what basis will it be forged? What's the minimum
program for a united front to win a new trial for brother Mumia
and to wage a war against the racist death penalty?
Creating unity is easy to talk about but difficult to
achieve. The political differences between various tendencies
are not unimportant; they cannot be glossed over. It's
important to firmly grasp what it means when we say we want to
work for a principled united front--on the struggle for Mumia
or on any other struggle.
It is worthwhile to note the Leninist tradition on this
issue.
Example of China and Korea
One of the greatest examples of the power of unity in the
contemporary period was the fighting cooperation that existed
between the Communist Party of China and the Workers Party of
Korea.
It is fairly well known that these two parties forged a
military united front during the Korean War. U.S. imperialism,
aided by its junior partners, invaded Korea in 1950. After
months of fierce fighting in southern Korea, U.S.-led forces
were able to push into northern Korea. The bombing there by the
U.S. was the most intensive in human history. Not one building
above one story was left standing.
Because of its military and economic superiority, U.S.
forces led by Gen. MacArthur were certain they would crush
north Korea. But in December 1950 they were stunned by the
intervention of hundreds of thousands of Chinese volunteers.
The U.S. offensive was crushed and the U.S. was thrown back
below the 38th Parallel. Many thousands of the Chinese
volunteers died in this heroic intervention, including Mao's
son.
The imperialists had miscalculated. They thought the Chinese
wouldn't intervene. China's revolution had just succeeded in
1949 after 22 years of fierce fighting. Plus the Chinese people
had lost more than 20 million people in the struggle for
liberation from Japanese occupation during World War II.
This is all fairly well known. What's less known is that in
1945-46, the leadership of the Korean Workers Party decided to
launch an all-out effort to send volunteers and fighters to aid
Mao and the Chinese Red Army in the final, decisive struggle
against the U.S.-backed Chiang Kai Shek forces.
North Korea, or the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea,
had won its liberation first. It began to construct the early
stages of socialism in 1945. Their country too was ravaged by
war, by 35 years of Japanese imperialist occupation. Yet Kim Il
Sung and the Workers Party of Korea sent more than 100,000
fighters to fight alongside the Chinese in the years of
1945-1949. Thousands of young Koreans, men and women, died
making the Chinese revolution. It was a remarkable feat of
internationalist unity by a small country.
Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans demanded any political
concessions from each other as a condition for solidarity. No,
both were proud and independent parties. It was their unity in
combat that was decisive--unity in deeds, not simply in words.
The imperialists correctly saw this unity among revolutionary
forces as the most potent force.
We now know from recently declassified U.S. government
archives that the central priority of the U.S. ruling class was
to shatter the unity that existed inside the socialist camp. As
early as 1950, Dean Acheson, the hard-line secretary of state
under President Truman, was working to devise a strategy for
breaking up the united front between China and the USSR, to
break the Eastern European countries from the Soviet Union and
so on. Twenty years later, the principle objective of the
Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy was to divide and conquer both
the Soviet Union and China.
Unfortunately the imperialists, with their overwhelming
military and economic resources, succeeded in exacerbating an
ideological difference between the leaders of China and the
Soviet Union into a disastrous and debilitating state-to-state
rivalry. The worldwide struggle for socialism and national
liberation was severely damaged by this development.
Today we need unity of a certain type. There are groups in
the U.S. with whom we have serious differences. They call for
socialism, but are hostile to the Cuban Revolution, the Korean
Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution. They even call for the
overthrow of those governments. Well, of course we can't unite
with them on that. Our support for the countries trying to
build socialism is not uncritical, but our support for this
process is firm and militant. This is a matter of principle and
is not negotiable!
Another party on the left asserts its support for communism
but promotes and supports the Democratic Party. On the supposed
basis of "fighting the right," this organization promotes the
cause of the Democratic Party and the White House--in spite of
their war against Iraq, their elimination of welfare and other
crimes. This too, for us, is a violation of basic
principles.
But if these groups all agree that Mumia has been framed,
that justice requires a new trial, that we all should work to
build for a massive mobilization for April 24th--then it is our
contention that we must do everything to build such a united
front. Not just with a few groups but with all those sectors
who can unite around the minimal program: "Stop the racist
execution; a new trial for Mumia!"
We must learn the lesson of history. When the struggle
requires it, there must be a united front, a unity forged in
action and deeds. This is what the ruling class fears most.
This seems like an elementary point but we must constantly
fortify and work for the implementation of this
perspective.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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