Born together with capitalism, the proletariat is the last, revolutionary and international class of history. In Europe, its emergence and struggle against capitalism paved the way for founding of Marxism. Of extraordinary talent, Karl Marx along with his very intimate friend, Frederick Engels, discovered the world outlook of the proletariat - the dialectical and historical materialism. Known as Marxism, this scientific discovery was nothing but in essence a supreme synthesis of the experience and knowledge the mankind achieved in thousands of years. This science synthesized with a revolutionary objective of transforming the world, and not merely explaining it, brought an unprecedented revolution in the thinking of mankind, and provided a scientific device to understand and transform the world, and to fight against all kinds of dogmas, superstitions & evils of the society.

Marxism proved irrefutably how a particular production relation is established among the people with the development of productive forces in the process of production and reproduction for fulfillment of material needs, and how total development of history after the stage of primitive communism is the history of class struggle as determined by definite scientific laws. This is the allegation of historical materialism against total history.

Exposing the real cause of capitalist exploitation and accumulation of capital in the hands of a handful of capitalists in society, Marx put forward the great theory of surplus value. Also, Marxism made it clear how capitalism has created a vicious circle of exploitation by turning the human labor into a non-living thing in order to make more profits, and, at the same time, how it is developing huge army of modern proletarian class and is ultimately digging its own grave. Considering the unprecedented development of productive forces and the contradiction between socialization of production process and private appropriation of production, Marxism explained the coming into existence of the responsibility for social revolution on the shoulder of the proletariat and put forward a scientific ideal of golden communist society by demolishing the classes and states and ending all kinds of exploitation of men by men. Marx and Engels laid foundation of basic principles relating to the strategy of the proletariat to be pursued for the achievement of great ideals of communist society. In sum, fundamental views on the dictatorship of proletariat and socialist state as an inevitable need for the transitional period from capitalism to communism, need of violent revolution, need of the destruction of the old capitalist state, concept of development of armed masses, were presented. In his whole life, Engels fought vigorously against the bourgeois trends appearing in the worker’s movement to establish this scientific view.

Against the concept of bourgeois nationalism developed for security and need of the market, Marxism upheld the banner of proletarian internationalism. Chanting the slogan "Workers of all countries, unite!" loudly, the first Communist International was founded with initiative of and under the leadership of Marx and Engels. It spread the scientific ideas of’ “Communist Manifesto" among the workers and, simultaneously, fought vigorously against various opportunist trends appearing in the International Communist Movement. It is in this context that in Paris (France), the proletariat, for the first time in history, seized the state through armed revolt. Renowned as "Paris Commune" all over the world, this historical revolt not only justified the basic principles of Marxism but also helped Marx and Engels to refine it with the synthesis of the experiences. Though lasting for a short period of only 72 days due to its inherent mistakes, Marx and Engels declared that its experiences would live forever.

It is particularity remarkable that the views of Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune have been working as a historical inspiration even today to identify and fight against revisionism and opportunism in the communist movement. Due to the defeat of Paris Commune and conspiracy of opportunists within, the First Communist International was dissolved. However, after the death of Marx and as per need of new situation, the Second Communist International was formed again under the leadership of Engels in 1889, which played a significant role in disseminating Marxism in the primary stage. But after Engel’s death, the leaders of the Second International, mainly Karl Kautsky, knelt before the bourgeois parliamentarism and betrayed revolutionary principles of Marxism. In course of the hard struggle against reformism and parliamentarism a Bolshevik Party and revolutionary struggle of a new type developed under the leadership of Lenin and socialist revolution was completed in Russia in 1917. During the life and death struggle against revisionism for the defense of its scientific and revolutionary teachings, Marxism developed into Marxism-Leninism. Lenin highly stressed that there can be no struggle against reaction unless it is linked with that against opportunism. He elevated the philosophy of dialectical materialism to a new height. The fact that the principle of unity and struggle of opposites is the only fundamental principle of dialectics was further explained. By analyzing and researching on the characteristics of imperialism, Lenin contributed qualitatively in the field of political economy and defined the new era as the "era of imperialism and proletarian revolution" which made a great contribution in devising the strategy and tactics of revolution. His analyses, which were well justified by later events, are equally correct even today. Lenin not only enriched Marxism on total aspects of scientific socialism including the concept of a new party, strategy of socialist revolution, struggle against revisionism, uniting peasants for revolution in the backward countries and significance of full democratic revolution, proletarian view on right of nations to self- determination, proletarian revolution to lead the national liberation movement in the eastern countries, development and struggle of the workers and masses in capitalist countries developed into the imperialist stage, but also elevated it to a new height of development.

It is particularity remarkable that the views of Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune have been working as a historical inspiration even today to identify and fight against revisionism and opportunism in the communist movement. Due to the defeat of Paris Commune and conspiracy of opportunists within, the First Communist International was dissolved. However, after the death of Marx and as per need of new situation, the Second Communist International was formed again under the leadership of Engels in 1889, which played a significant role in disseminating Marxism in the primary stage. But after Engel’s death, the leaders of the Second International, mainly Karl Kautsky, knelt before the bourgeois parliamentarism and betrayed revolutionary principles of Marxism. In course of the hard struggle against reformism and parliamentarism a Bolshevik Party and revolutionary struggle of a new type developed under the leadership of Lenin and socialist revolution was completed in Russia in 1917. During the life and death struggle against revisionism for the defense of its scientific and revolutionary teachings, Marxism developed into Marxism-Leninism. Lenin highly stressed that there can be no struggle against reaction unless it is linked with that against opportunism. He elevated the philosophy of dialectical materialism to a new height. The fact that the principle of unity and struggle of opposites is the only fundamental principle of dialectics was further explained. By analyzing and researching on the characteristics of imperialism, Lenin contributed qualitatively in the field of political economy and defined the new era as the "era of imperialism and proletarian revolution" which made a great contribution in devising the strategy and tactics of revolution. His analyses, which were well justified by later events, are equally correct even today. Lenin not only enriched Marxism on total aspects of scientific socialism including the concept of a new party, strategy of socialist revolution, struggle against revisionism, uniting peasants for revolution in the backward countries and significance of full democratic revolution, proletarian view on right of nations to self- determination, proletarian revolution to lead the national liberation movement in the eastern countries, development and struggle of the workers and masses in capitalist countries developed into the imperialist stage, but also elevated it to a new height of development.

The success of Great October Socialist Revolution created unprecedented waves in the world. The masses oppressed for centuries felt that they had found out a new way to real liberation. Fiercely resisting the outlook of the imperialists and reactionaries, the Third International was formed with the initiative and under the leadership of Lenin in 1919 in order to forge ahead the world revolution in an organized way. Taking Soviet socialist state founded in a very large part of the earth as a base area, he gave emphasis on advancing the world revolution. The revolution of Germany among the developed countries and the issue of the same in the countries like India, China among the undeveloped countries was seriously thought over. Declaring that the proletarian revolution in backward countries with a majority of peasants is "very hard and great," he emphasized on applying general principles of communism in accordance with concrete situation of the country concerned. Eventually, a concept of "National Democratic Revolution" was put forward as it required to fight against colonial and semi-colonial exploitation, too, in such countries. However, Lenin emphasized that communist revolutionaries of the countries concerned must work out and develop the strategy of revolution themselves. At this juncture, particular attention must be paid to the stress given by Comintern led by Lenin on the significance of creative application of general principles of proletarian internationalism and Marxism in accordance with the national characteristics of such countries.

At a time, when the struggles are still needed in the international communist movement against the trend which, even today, represents, on the one hand, sectarian nationalism on the pretext of national characteristics, and, on the other, the Trotskyist trend which undermines national characteristics on the pretext of internationalism, its significance is evident.

After the death of Lenin, Stalin led the international communist movement. He served proletarian movement by undertaking historical tasks such as defeating the right liquidationism which emerged in the form of so-called permanent revolution of Zenoviev, Kamenov and, mainly, Trotsky; establishing Leninism; strengthening Soviet Union by collective farming and planned economic development; knocking the Hitlerian fascism to the ground in the Second World War; synthesizing the experiences of Soviet economic development, and leading the whole international communist movement for about three decades.

Nevertheless, the fact that many serious weaknesses prevailed in Stalin and eventually, they caused some serious problems should not go unheeded. While doing so, our starting point should be, of course Stalin’s evaluation made by Mao, in which he has divided his thoughts and works into two aspects and declared 70 percent of them correct and 30 percent wrong.

Advancing on the basis of general guideline about revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries of pre-capitalist stage as put forward by Lenin during the initial period of Third International and greatly influencing the international power balance, the New Democratic revolution was completed successfully in China. The successful revolution in a huge area with the largest population in the world through struggles of decades, presented a new model for revolution in the semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries of pre-capitalist stage. As Lenin had called for, Communist Party of China led by Mao undertook the "great and difficult" task of revolution in an eastern country by creatively applying the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism in their own specificities. In this context, Communist Party of China led by Mao enriched and developed the Marxist science. The theory and knowledge of contradiction in philosophy, analysis of bureaucratic capitalism in political economy, development of strategy for New Democratic revolution and universal principle of People’s War, concrete concept of Party, army and united front, clearly show the enrichment of Marxism-Leninism.

During the process of revolution, Mao had to fight hard against right and ‘left’ opportunism of various kinds and the elements who wanted to mechanically copy the foreign experiences, such as Li Li San, Wang Ming, Chang Kuo -Tao etc. When pondered deeply , Mao’s struggle against Li Li San, Wang Ming etc., seems, in essence, to be related to the struggle against many mechanical materialist thinking and working styles of Stalin and Comintern, though he never disclosed it. Mao had called upon the people to be alert against the threat of mechanical materialist and metaphysical thinking that existed in the Communist Party of China and international communist movement not only through his policy of unity and struggle worked out in the case of united front but also through his great works like " On Contradictions", "On Practice", "Reform Your Studies", "Rectify Working Style", "On New Democracy" etc.

In the international communist movement, Mao defined the Party as a unity of opposites, and not as a monolithic and homogenous unity, and clarified that two-line struggle inside the Party is, in deed, always the motivating force for the Party life. In addition, clarifying the inter-relation between class struggle in society and two-line struggle in the Party, he presented scientific explanation about the fact that as long as classes are there, the Party exists and as long as the Party exists, ideological struggle prevails. He declared the concept of monolithic unity as anti-dialectical and flatly rejected it. His view on Party added a new dimension to the Leninist view of militant Party of a new type. According to Mao, a struggle between the right and wrong ideas always runs inside the Party and at a certain stage, wrong ideas appear as revisionism and take in turn into a hostile struggle with the revolutionaries. If non-proletarian ideas prevail in the Party, the whole Party changes its colour. Therefore, the revolutionaries should  continuously revolutionize the Party through two-line struggles.

Thus, the Chinese revolution based on Marxist-Leninist thoughts goaded millions of workers and peasants to be the masters of their own destiny. Communist Party of China led by Mao put forward a programme for socialist revolution right after the success of New Democratic Revolution under the leadership of the proletariat. In this historical process of socialist revolution, the contradictions between the revolutionaries and the people who had been influenced by the bourgeois character of New Democratic Revolution and joined the revolution, intensified. Right at that period, Stalin died in Soviet Union. The Khruschovite revisionism seized the leadership in the 20th Congress in a counter-revolutionary coup in the Soviet Union, and capitalism was restored. The Khruschov clique was successful to overturn socialism and dictatorship of the proletariat in the pretext of struggle against personality cult of Stalin. This event shocked the revolutionaries all over the world. Terrorizing with nuclear arms the clique rejected the decisive role of the people in the making of history. The renegade Khruschovite clique advocated class conciliation instead of class struggle in the name of “three peacefuls". He cloaked his blatant advocacy of bourgeois parliamentarism with the possibility arisen from the changed world situation. Encouraged by the restoration of capitalism in Russia, the Chinese rightists intensified their attack on the proletarian revolutionaries in the Party. The Peng Teh-hui event is a concrete example of this.

In the face of the complex situation, Mao seriously thought over the class struggle in socialism and upheld the banner of struggle against modem revisionism of Khrushchov outside the country and right opportunism inside the Party. During the fierce struggle, Mao put forward, with a scientific analysis of class struggle in socialism, a concept of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat as the principle to prevent restoration of capitalism and led the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, which is considered as an unprecedented mass-revolution in the whole history of mankind. With this earth-shaking revolution, Mao armed the proletarian class with a new weapon to prevent the restoration of capitalism in the socialist society. This great contribution established Mao as the propounder of a new, third and higher stage of Marxism, i.e. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This great revolution prevented restoration of capitalism in China for 10 years. Notwithstanding the success of capitalist- roaders to restore capitalism in China through counter-revolutionary plots due to various national and international reasons after Mao’s death, the significance of the principle he developed has not declined at all, but, instead, it has grown as a beacon for future revolutions.

What is notable here is that Mao, after the Khruschov clique succeeded in restoring capitalism in the Soviet Union without any serious resistance, fought, on the one hand, to safeguard the achievements of the first socialist state of the world, and on the other, persevered seriously in studying the weaknesses which caused such an irreparable loss, It is in this context that we must understand his defense of Stalin against the attack of Khrushchov clique, and explanation of various mistakes and weaknesses of him. Mao’s evaluation of Stalin stands apart against both rightist revisionism that negates him completely, and sectarian dogmatist revisionism that accepts even his mistakes and weaknesses. In the international communist movement, the former trend is led by Trotsky, Tito, Khruschev etc., while, the latter trend is led by Enver Hoxa, etc. Another important point to note is that the Euro-Communism, on the pretext of opposing Stalin’s concept of monolithic unity and bureaucracy, began opposing unified dialectical materialist science of Marxism itself from bourgeois anarchist pluralist angle.

When the debate was going on in the international communist movement and Khruschov, the ring-leader of modern revisionism, along with imperialism was simultaneously defaming Stalin from counter-revolutionary angle, it was but necessary to defend Stalin emphasizing his essentially correct and positive aspects. Doing so did not mean defending him alone but also the whole communist movement, socialism, and in all, Marxism-Leninism itself. But today things have changed greatly; the Khruschov revisionism, later turning into social imperialism, has fallen completely with the dissolving of the Soviet Union. In China, the Chinese Khruschovites have usurped power through a counter-revolutionary coup and restored capitalism after Com. Mao’s death. Today there isn’t even a single socialist state in the world.

At this moment, the revolutionaries all over the world are free, without any political pressure, to draw the essence of the experiences of history, and a great responsibility bas been laid on their shoulder, to fulfill which they must work hard, no doubt. In this context, we must go into the depth of what has been mentioned in the very beginning of the letter entitled " The Question of Stalin" during the Great Debate launched by the Communist Party of China led by Mao against the Khruschov revisionism. It states, "The question of Stalin is one of world-wide importance which has had repercussions among all classes in every country and which is still a subject of much discussion today, with different classes and their political parties and groups taking different views. It is likely that no final verdict can be reached on this question in the present century". The century as stated by the Communist Party of China led by Mao has ended and twenty-first century has already started. We must focus our attention on defending Stalin’s 70 percent positive contributions and drawing lessons from his 30 percent errors. As elsewhere stated in the same article, "It would be beneficial if the errors of Stalin, which were only secondary, are taken as historical lessons so that… the Communists might take warning and avoid repeating those errors or commit fewer errors". Another important point is that his errors contain two aspects - the errors committed inevitably due to lack of experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the errors caused by ideological mistakes. It was not possible to prevent the former errors but the latter ones could be.

Listing the errors of Stalin, it is stated in the same article of Great Debate, "In his way of thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions, which are different in nature, contraction between the enemy and us and contractions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter- revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter- revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government organization, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handing relations with fraternal Parties and countries he made some mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement".

In the background of experiences of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Maoism and contemporary international communist movement, what is evident today is the fact that although he was a great Marxist-Leninist, Stalin’s ideological mistakes have substantially influenced the world communist movement subjectively. Categorically speaking, he had some weaknesses in his thinking of understanding and dealing with fundamental principles of dialectics, the unity and struggle of opposite. Taking the Communist Party as a monolithic unity, instead of unity of opposites, led him to errors in identifying the nature, relations and ways of dealing of two-line struggle inside the Party. As a result, it was declared, on the ground of rapid economic growth through elimination of private ownership, collective farming and industrialization, that there was no hostile class- contradiction in the Soviet society, which violated basic principles of Marxism- Leninism. Such analysis made Stalin think one-sidedly that threat to the Soviet society may occur from external intervention and conspiracy only. The emphasis on possibility of counter-revolution from external intervention and conspiracy, instead of paying adequate attention on how new capitalism is produced within the Communist Party itself in the Soviet society and how to control them, violated at times Lenin’s basic postulates on the relation between building of socialism in one country and the development of world revolution, developed at the initial period of the Comintern. Though there was no ill intention at all, the emphasis on safeguarding the Soviet society from external threat virtually undermined internationalism and exaggerated Russian nationalism, which created a lot of confusions about understanding and advancing the world revolution and functioning of the Comintern. It is to be remembered that Lenin, while forming the Comintern, had stressed the concept of world revolution and world Communist Party and everything would be subsumed under it, but under the leadership of Stalin, the world revolution was considered as a part of Soviet society, instead of vice versa. This is what Mao has pointed out as wrong advice of Stalin on the international communist movement. 

Stalin took collective farming, industrialization and rapid development of production and productive forces due to centralized planning in the economic field as enough grounds for the guarantee of the success of socialism and kept on stressing on it one-sidedly. It undermined the importance of resolving differences prevailing in the society and revolutionizing the production relations. This helped in developing a new bourgeois class, which was represented later by counter-revolutionary Khrushchovite clique from inside the Party and thus established the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by overturning that of the proletariat.

Drawing lessons from the errors of Stalin due to historical limitations and ideological weaknesses, Mao studied seriously the economic policy and pointed out its positive and negative aspects to elevate the Marxist-Leninist principles regarding the class-struggle in a socialist society to a new height in order to prevent restoration of capitalism and presented a new model of socialist economy that required one to be red and expert and to walk with two legs, etc. Collective ownership of production alone does not guarantee the success of socialism because many kinds of differences such as mental and physical labour, city & village, capitalist stage of the production of commodities, etc., still exist in the society which continue to provide material ground for growth of new capitalist class. Therefore, Mao made it clear that characteristics of both communism and capitalism exist in socialism and there remains the danger of capitalist restoration. He aptly presented the scientific truth that march towards communism is possible by regulating capitalism through the process of continuous revolution after the proletariat sizes the political state power.

On the basis of this principle he led the people to exercise the right to rebel against the capitalist- roaders of the Party who advocated the Khrushovite line, which claimed that it was good to be rich. He drew a clear demarcation line between the Marxist revolutionaries and revisionists with the principle of 3 Dos and Don’ts: ‘Practice Marxism, not revisionism; Unite, do not split; Be open and above board, do not conspire and intrigue’. With the slogan, "Bombard the bourgeois headquarter," he called upon the people to invade the fort of the revisionists. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, through the struggle against the renegades Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, and Teng Hsiao-ping, he further developed the dialectical method of achieving new unity on a new basis in the Party through a process of unity-struggle-transformation and emphasized the need to form Party committees according to the principle of 3 in 1 with olds, adults and youths in order to transfuse new blood in the Party. However, it was not possible to sweep away all the rightists who had reached higher echelons in the Party and government, because of several negative impacts of international communist movement, historical limitation of class struggle and since it had been virtually late in exposing them. But it has enhanced the importance of the principle developed. Some people do not realize the complexity of the Cultural Revolution period and blame Mao for a number of compromises in the later period, which is completely wrong. He had been promoting the rise of revolutionaries including Chiang Ching, Chiang Chun- chiao as a revolutionary core in the Party. He was in fact, leading the so-called Gang of Four and was the most farsighted.

In this regard, an important question may be raised: why didn’t he take any initiative for building a new Communist International, though he had experience of waging historical struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism and conducting the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? In reply, several negative experiences of the Comintern in the latest period might be put forward but that simply can’t be the major factor. As a matter of fact, Mao had been ideologically leading the international communist movement by waging struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism and leading the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and by supporting, co-operating with and disseminating the national liberation, New Democratic and socialist revolutions all over the world. But objectively there were some serious practical difficulties in giving them an organized form. Among the visible ones were dogmatist revisionist, centrist and chauvinist Communist Parties of Albania, Vietnam and North Korea etc. who would reject the universal contributions of Mao. And it was not possible to form the Communist International by ignoring all of them at that time. But today the situation has changed greatly. There is not even a single socialist state in the world. Genuine revolutionaries have upheld Maoism as higher stage of Marxism-Leninism. New wave of revolution appears in the horizon. Now, Marxism- Leninism-Maoism is there as an ideological foundation for the creation of a new Communist International. All the communist revolutionaries need to march forward seriously to give it an organized form through class and ideological struggle. Today RIM has already emerged as an embryo of. Everybody has to attempt to refine and develop it. Special attention must be paid to conduct discussions and interactions with revolutionaries outside the RIM and uniting them in the movement.

While doing so, the communist revolutionaries should seriously look into the experiences of the Comintern and try to resolve the issues of evaluation of 7th Congress of Comintern, Second World War and dissolving of Comintern, suggestions given to the Communist Parties of several countries to form government with anti-fascist bourgeoisie and Lenin’s criticism of Millerandism, the position of Communist Parties of Greece, Italy, France, Spain, India, China etc. and Stalin’s role, etc. These questions lie in front of the international communist movement as challenges. Maoism has already provided the scientific basis for the answers to these questions. Therefore, the communist revolutionaries of the world need to accelerate the initiative to learn from the positive and negative experiences of the past by applying Maoism. - By CPN (Maoist)