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Mao Tse-tung

TELEGRAM TO COMRADE WILLIAM Z. FOSTER


From the
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung,
Foreign Languages Press
Peking 1967

First Edition 1965
Second Printing 1967

Vol. III, pp. 287-88.

Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo, djr@marx2mao.org (October 1999)
    TELEGRAM TO COMRADE WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

    July 29, 1945

    Comrade William Z. Foster and the National Committee of the Communist Party of the United States of America:

        We are glad to learn that the special convention of the Communist Political Association of the United States has resolved to repudiate Browder's revisionist, that is, capitulationist line,[1] has re-established Marxist leadership and revived the Communist Party of the United States. We hereby extend to you our warm congratulations on this great victory of the working class and the Marxist movement in the United States. Browder's whole revisionist-capitulationist line (which is fully expressed in his book Teheran ) in essence reflects the influence of reactionary U.S. capitalist groups on the U.S. workers' movement. These groups are now doing their utmost to extend their influence in China too; they are supporting the erroneous policy of the reactionary clique inside the Kuomintang, a policy which is against the interests of the nation and the people, and are thereby confronting the Chinese people with the grave danger of civil war and jeopardizing the interests of the peoples of our two great countries, China and the United States. Beyond all doubt the victory of the U.S. working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party of the United States, over Browder's revisionist-capitulationist line will contribute signally to the great cause in which the Chinese and American peoples are engaged, the cause of carrying on the war against Japan and of building a peaceful and democratic world after the war.


    NOTES

      [1] Earl Browder was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States of America from 1930 to 1944. During World War II, the Rightist ideas in the Communist Party of the U.S.A., of which Browder was the chief exponent, developed

    page 288

    into an anti-Marxist revisionist-capitulationist line. From December 1943 onward, Browder advocated this line in a number of speeches and articles and in April 1944 he published Teheran as his Right opportunist programme. Revising the basic Leninist thesis that imperialism is monopolistic, decadent and moribund capitalism, and denying the imperialist nature of U.S. capitalism, he declared that U.S. capitalism "retains some of the characteristics of a young capitalism" (Browder's italics) and that there is a "common interest" between the proletariat and the big bourgeoisie in the U.S.A. Thus he pleaded for the safeguarding of the system of monopolist trusts and dreamed about saving U.S. capitalism from inevitable crises by means of class conciliation. Basing himself on this absurd appraisal of U.S. capitalism and following a capitulationist line of class collaboration with monopoly capital, Browder in May 1944 presided over the dissolution of the Communist Party of the U.S.A., the party of the U.S. proletariat, and formed a non-Party organization, the Communist Political Association of the U.S.A. From the very beginning, Browder's wrong line met with opposition from many members of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. with Comrade William Z. Poster at their head. Under the leadership of Comrade Foster, the Communist Political Association in June 1945 passed a resolution denouncing Browder's Iine. In July the association held a special national convention and decided on the thorough liquidation of this Iine and the re-establishment of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Browder was expelled from the Party in February 1946 because he persisted in his stand, which was a betrayal of the proletariat, and because he openly supported the imperialist policy of the Truman Administration and engaged in factional activities against the Party.    [p. 287]