The fight against revisionism and yet I will study Cuba, the last genuine Marxist-Leninist country in the world

By សតិវ​អតុ

Maoism and Stalinism are almost anti-revisionist by definition. Most of us Maoist oppose revisionism. This was real important, during the cold war, when there was a Soviet Union and the many pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninist (ML) parties and/or groups. In general they never like us Maoist very much if they liked us at all. And over the years we have made a point to letting folks know that we are not aligned with the Soviet Union and its supportive ML parties. Another revisionism is Trotskyism, which is also a faction we don't usually get along with. But we are living in a new era and revisionism has to be looked at a little differently than it has in the past. There are those Maoist who claim we must fight revisionism as much as we fight against imperialism and the bourgeoisie order. While I agree over all that we should struggle against revisionism and opportunism, these struggles can go too far.

There are times we must oppose revisionism. Clarifying our positions is important. But we don't need to fight actual wars with those MLs whose opinions differ with us. We do have to take into consideration such things as a revisionist party's willingness to cooperate with us. If an opportunist is overtly trying to take advantage of us, we need to act accordingly. If we are being openly attacked by a rival ML group, we need to defend ourselves. We don't want to be door mats.

But we don't need to attack small parties who are different, but not actually working directly against us.

In two weeks I will be going to Cuba for the first time. It will be my first trip to a Marxist-Leninist country. In many ways Cuba is the only real ML country left. Cuba is trying to be a socialist country. For much of the Cold War, it was dependent on the Soviet Union. Despite not having a large country to support it, Fidel Castro and his country's party have kept the same basic socialist (or at lest they have kept that as a goal) economy they had before the end of the cold war. Most ML countries, Vietnam, China, Laos and a few semi-ML countries, such as Zimbabwe, or more concerned with fitting into the world's capitalist economy (the "free market") than they are concerned with building socialism. And Democratic People's Republic (North) Korea has actually dropped all references to ML. It is a country that believes in socialism, but based on the first two Kims (Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il) with no references to Marx or anyone else.

While Cuba is a revisionist country, owing to Soviet leaders for some of their ideological leanings, it is remarkable in that it gives the world its only real ML promoting nation. I don't know how the Cuban will react to a Maoist trying to learn first hand about their system, (there will be many non-MLs going with me) but I will take what I learn seriously. I won't be treating the country as simply "state capitalism" as other Maoist used to say. I would love to travel to a Maoist country and learn about their systems, but none of those exist right now. Of course we Maoist would do things differently than they do in Cuba. But Cuba is a real country. It exists and until something better develops in another country, we need to be supportive to some degree. We don't need to be enemies of the Cuban government. They have a history we can learn from. They've made mistakes and they have won victories. We must learn from both. 

I also think there are times when we need to form alliances with groups we don't normally work with. There are times to fight and times when we don't need to. It is important to know the difference. Spending too much time attacking a Marxist group that is not working directly with us, will drain us of resources and possibly confuse people we hope to reach. Alliances, truces and joining coalitions are not automatically a bad thing. Coalitions are not a form of surrender.  And at times it doesn't hurt us to just ignore some small splinter groups that seem to get in our way. We have to have some tolerance for other tendencies in order to move forward.

We can continue to oppose revisionism, but revisionism isn't as bad as complete defeat. We are not better off when a revisionist group like the Armed Forces for Revolution in Colombia (FARC) are defeated.

We have our agendas and we have our ideology. They are correct and we must uphold them. But we should not allow our ideology to blind us to making treaties and alliances when they may help us in the short run. What we really need is flexibility.