p The Maoists regard international tension as a propitious medium for the realisation of their hegemonistic plans disguised with slogans of "world revolution”. Having lost faith 224 in the forces of socialism and in the possibility of defeating capitalism in economic competition, the Maoists now pin their hopes on artificially speeding up the world revolutionary process and abolishing imperialism by war regardless of the consequences. Hence the absolutisation of violence as the cardinal factor of all historical development. Lenin called this absurd and foolish, and "complete failure to understand the conditions under which a policy of violence can be successful”.  [224•* 

p It should be borne in mind that the Maoists regard the policy of "balancing on the brink of war" as a favourable external condition for uniting the Chinese people on a nationalistic basis, diverting their attention from the acute problems facing the country and justifying their militarybureaucratic dictatorship.

p The Maoists have worked hard to justify their concept that international tension and world war are necessary and desirable, a concept designed to give validity to their efforts to sustain and increase international tension and provoke a world war. They declare that far from being a hindrance, a world war would be a boon for the world revolution.

p At the 1957 Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, as though developing his thesis of "settling the issue by war”, Mao Tse-tung suggested testing the strength of capitalism with nuclear weapons, arguing that a thermonuclear war was not so bad as it seemed because it would lead to the "total destruction of imperialism”. He developed his idea of international tension as a favourable factor and a component of general politics in the State Council in 1958 and in talks with foreign representatives, particularly with a delegation from the People’s Vanguard Party of CostaRica in March 1959, to whom he bluntly declared that he personally "liked international tension”.

p In their eagerness to fan and preserve tension in the world, the Maoists are sliding into a position where they in fact justify world imperialism’s policy of aggression. Harbouring no illusions that this position would have any support they are camouflaging it with arguments that international tension and imperialist aggression help to awaken and revolutionise the masses. To this end they use a vast 225 arsenal of means and methods, referring to past history and citing examples from recent years. At a press conference on September 29, 1965 Chen Yi spoke of US aggression in Korea and Vietnam as a ”test of strength" and declared that this "test of strength is greatly beneliting us, the peoples of the world" because, as Jenmin Jihpao explained later, the "peoples become steeled and the revolutionary struggle is developed" only as a result of imperialist aggression.

p Significantly, in recent years Chinese foreign policy has not been given the task of ensuring favourable external conditions lor socialist construction in China. This is fully explained by the nature of the Mao group’s aims in establishing a military-bureaucratic dictatorship, which, among other things, requires a situation marked by war psychosis and the feeling that China was encircled by hostile countries. Even the "cultural revolution" is served up as "preparations for war”. "Another purpose of the great proletarian cultural revolution,” Chou En-lai told Hisao Ishina on January 18, 1968, "is to prepare for war.”

p The Chinese leaders justify violence in international affairs and world war by feigning “concern” for the world revolution. The army newspaper Chiehfangchun Pao wrote that "big upheavals are a good thing because they are a sign that the revolution is on the upgrade”. To exclude any suspicion of ambiguity, it goes on to explain: "The First World War was a very great upheaval and it resulted in the emergence of the first socialist state. .. . The Second World War was also a very great upheaval, and it resulted in the emergence of a number of socialist states.” The newspaper rounded this off with the statement that in our day "the revolution demands great upheavals so that in the course of these upheavals the people can move forward”.  [225•*  Although Chiehfangchun Pao did not venture to dot all its i’s, it is quite obvious that historical parallels and analogies were needed in order to proclaim the desirability of another world war, to justify it as a means of achieving “progress” even at the cost of the destruction of half of mankind.

p The Maoists’ stand on the Vietnam issue shows how much hope they are pinning on an intensification of international 226 tension, on preventing any relaxation. An early cessation of the war in Vietnam evidently does not fit into their plans. They are insistently suggesting that the Vietnamese people fight a "protracted war”. On this point the Tunisian newspaper Action wrote: "Mao Tse-tung’s speculations on the Vietnam conflict are quite obvious. In his eyes this war best of all illustrates his theory that a collision between the two blocs is inevitable. With the least expenditure by China the war sustains tension, which Mao Tse-tung regards as salutary for the success of his policies. The main thing for him is that it should continue.”

p Absolutisation of violence and orientation on sustained international tension predetermine the adventurist foreign policy tactics of the Chinese leaders. Many of their foreign policy acts in recent years are incompatible with socialist diplomacy and have infringed on the interests of other states and peoples. They have unceremoniously llouted and rejected the basic principle of international law, which demands respect for the sovereignty and independence of other peoples and non-interference in their internal affairs. They unscrupulously violate elementary norms of relations between states, arrogate the right to determine which governments are “progressive” or “reactionary” (the sole criterion being the attitude to the Mao group), openly call for a struggle against various regimes (including progressive ones), and make despicable attempts to alienate the socialist peoples from their governments and Communist Parties, which firmly adhere to Marxist-Leninist, internationalist positions.

p The Chinese leadership moves from one adventure to another. One of these adventures is anti-Sovietism, which the Maoists have imposed on the CPC and China as a basic line in foreign policy. The Mao group’s anti-Sovietism is a subject for special study, but here we shall examine only one of its aspects.

p The Maoists regard the Soviet Union as the chief obstacle to their Great-Power ambitions and they disguise these ambitions mostly through anti-Sovietism. They claim they are motivated not by hegemonistic designs but by the desire to “save” the peoples from the "threat of revisionism”, from the "conspiracy of the Soviet revisionists with US imperialism”. The ideological spearhead of the Mao group’s antiSovietism is the thesis of the "two-power supremacy" (USSR 227 and USA) and of none other than China heading the struggle against this “tyranny”.

p While doing everything to keep out of the real struggle with imperialism and evade a confrontation with the forces of imperialism, the Maoists are making every attempt to precipitate military situations outside China in order to draw the Soviet Union into a major war, bring about a military conllict between the USSR and the USA and take advantage of the resulting mutual annihilation to establish Chinese hegemony in the world. In their efforts to intensify international tension and start another world war the Chinese leaders even use the Soviet Union’s readiness to help other peoples in the anti-imperialist struggle.

Exposing the real essence of the Maoist policy, the newspaper NuesLra Palabra, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Argentina, wrote: "Maoism represents total capitulation to the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie. . . . Anti-Soviet chauvinism and the theory of violence, as a means of explaining the course of history, are founded on a policy designed to provoke a world war, which Maoism will watch from the sidelines and then take advantage of its results.”