Because the Chinese maintain that the national liberation movement is a focal point of the struggle against imperialism at the present time, Dutt asserts that they are, therefore, separating the national liberation struggle from the socialist camp.
To argue thus is surely to throw Marxist analysis to the winds and to suggest that the different contradictions are not subject to the laws of uneven development but are of equal prominence and importance in every period.
By this method of argument, Dutt creates his own “Gospel of Separation” and proceeds to attribute it to the Chinese without the slightest evidence or justification. This is, in fact, to turn the Chinese position completely upside down.
Indeed one of the Chinese criticisms of Krushchev’s revisionist policy is that it holds back support for the revolutionary movements in the liberation areas.
The working class in every socialist country must truly put into effect the fighting slogan, ’Workers of all countries, unite’! (Chinese Letter of 14th June 1963, p.14)
The essence of the Chinese position is that closer relations between the oppressed peoples and the socialist camp and the international working class – not separation – are essential. They quote with approval Stalin’s statement made in 1925:
The colonial countries constitute the principal rear of imperialism. The revolutionisation of this rear is bound to undermine imperialism, not only in the sense that imperialism will be deprived of its rear, but also in the sense that the revolutionisation of the East is bound to give powerful impulse to the intensification of the revolutionary crisis in the West.
To accuse the Chinese of advocating a policy of separatism can only be wilful misunderstanding or gross misrepresentation.