Three Worlds Theory

[Insurgent]

I recently became aware of a certain idea that was attributed to Mao called the Three Worlds Theory.
I also read in the book "Revolution In the Air, by Max Elbaum" that the RCP does not support this theory and claims Mao actually didn't make it up.

I guess my quesiton is, What is it?

I don't mean to troll, I just thought this would be a good point for discussion.

[MundoQueGanar]

Guest-Insurgent said:

I recently became aware of a certain idea that was attributed to Mao called the Three Worlds Theory.
I also read in the book "Revolution In the Air, by Max Elbaum" that the RCP does not support this theory and claims Mao actually didn't make it up.

I guess my quesiton is, What is it?

I don't mean to troll, I just thought this would be a good point for discussion.

From your other post attacking Rosa's decision to remove a post when the person who posted it doesn't have a problem with her removing it, and given the fact that you haven't bothered to introduce yourself and give some kind of an idea of your views and interests, it seems that you DO mean to troll.

I think that if you're going to prove me wrong you should do a little more than post snippy comments that seem like they're only intended as attacks.

[Insurgent]

Gee, I ask a simple question about the Third World Theory and suddenly I'm called all these nasty things. I don't see how this a rude question, and I am curious. I was under the impression that this board was a place for free discussion of ideas, apparently, it isn't because if you ask a simple question about the Three Worlds Theory you are labeled "suspicious".

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, can someone please explain the three worlds theory and what the RCP has to do with it? I can't find the info anywhere else. I would like to know.

[RedWinter]

From PEOPLE'S WAR, YES! ELECTIONS, NO! by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru (http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp/docs_en/elec-e.htm):

...

It is within this framework and its characteristics that Chairman Mao proposed his thesis that "three worlds delineate themselves," realized in this manner in 1974: "In my judgment, the U.S. and the Soviet Union constitute the first world; intermediate forces like Japan, Europe and Canada make up the second world, and we form part of the third world." "The third world comprises a huge population. All of Asia except Japan belongs to the third world; all of Africa and Latin America also belong to it." This thesis is absolutely opposed to the revisionist "three worlds theory" of Deng and his gang. The thesis that "three worlds delineate themselves" is tied to positions upheld by Chairman Mao in 1946, in his "Conversations with Anna Louise Strong": "The U.S. and the Soviet Union are separated by a wide zone in which there are many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. Until the North American reactionaries have subjugated these countries, there can be no talk about an attack on the Soviet Union." And in 1957, in "Talk at a Conference of Secretaries":

Third, the international situation. In the Middle East, there was that Suez Canal incident. A man called Nasser nationalized the canal, another called Eden sent in an invading army, and close on his heels came a third called Eisenhower who decided to drive the British out and have the place all to himself. The British bourgeoisie, past masters of machination and manoeuver, are a class which knows best when to compromise. But this time they bungled and let the Middle East fall into the hands of the Americans. What a colossal mistake! Can one kind many such mistakes in the history of the British bourgeoisie? How come this time they lost their heads and made such a mistake? Because the pressure exerted by the United States was too much and they lost control of themselves in their anxiety to regain the Middle East and block the United States. Did Britain direct the spearhead chiefly at Egypt? No. Britain's moves were against the United States, much as the moves of the United States were against Britain.

From this incident we can pinpoint the focus of struggle in the world today. The contradiction between the imperialist countries and the socialist countries is certainly most acute. But the imperialist countries are now contending with each other for the control of different areas in the name of opposing communism. What areas are they contending for? Areas in Asia and Africa inhabited by 1,000 million people. At present their contention converges on the Middle East, an area of great strategic significance, and particularly on Egypt's Suez Zone. In the Middle East, two kinds of contradictions and three kinds of forces are in conflict. The two kinds of contradiction are: first, those between different imperialist powers, that is, between the United States and Britain and between the United States and France and, second, those between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations. The three kinds of forces are: one, the United States, the biggest imperialist power, two, Britain and France, second-rate imperialist powers, and three, the oppressed nations. Asia and Africa are today the main areas of imperialist contention. National independence movements have emerged in these regions. The methods the United States employs are now violent, now nonviolent is the game it is playing in the Middle East. [Talks at a Conference of Secretaries of Provincial, Municipal, and Autonomous Region Part Committees, SW V. 5, pp. 361-2] "

Mao had a loose, general analysis during the period that Stalin was still alive and the USSR was not social-imperialist, that the United States was the main pillar of imperialism, its imperialist lackeys were an intermediate group compared to the Third World. Deng Xiaopeng transformed a couple of quotes by Mao in interviews into an entire theory of foreign policy called the "Three Worlds Theory," lumping the USSR in with the USA as "first world" and then using that to justify its foreign policy. Mao did play off the imperialist and social-imperialist power blocs against each other to protect the rev in China, which was usually to put off Russian invasion which was a very real possibility at the time.

[flyby]

I think this is an important and valid question.

And there is no simple, pat answer to it.

First, the "Three Worlds Theory" was a formulation by the revisionists in China for denying the need for revolution.

It was justified using bits and pieces taken from Mao's writings and speeches -- but represented a reactionary leap away from the strong support Mao had always extended to revolution around the world.

What makes this issue complex, is that at the same time Mao held views and took positions on international allignments that the RCP hold (and held) as wrong. So that the revisionist three world thesis was (in some ways) built out of "bits and pieces" that were themselves mistaken, and these mistakes were then resynthesized to become an all-round "theory" for opposing revolutin.

Mao (and the RCP) did view the U.S. and Soviet Union as two imperialist superpowers (and they were.) These two powers build around themselves war blocs, and fought over a redivision of the world (including Europe and the third world).

Mao however thought that the people of the world (led by China) should form a united front aimed at those two superpowers, and then (increasingly in the last years after 1971, aimed at the Soviet Union which was seen as the rising imperialist superpower, a direct threat to china and therefore "main danger" to the people of the entire world.) This view the RCP and its chairman Bob Avakian increasingly opposed. They never supported targeting the soviet union (instead of the U.S.). And they thought that the socalled "second world" (i.e. the second tier imperialists of Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, Scandinavia and so on) were major oppressors, were themselves eager parts of the war blocs (largely of the U.S. war blocs) -- and the ruling classes of those countries should not be viewed as potential allies of the people of the world. (And in particular, in euroe, new zealand and australia, the line the rulers of these countries were potential allies -- against the two superpowers and then especially the soviet union -- was a disasterous line, that led the "Maoist" forces in those countries down patriotic and social-chauvinist and pro-government paths.)

It was also part of the Three Worlds theory that the opposition of reactionary third world governments to the superpowers (and then increasingly, even just to the Soviet Union alone) was a positive factor on the world scale -- so that (in this upside down view) the Shah of Iran, or Marcos of Philippines and so on (who were brutal oppressors and henchmen of U.S. imperialism) were (in the eyes of forces within the Chinese government) potential allies, and potentially positive forces.

Part of the complexity of this is that revolutionary China WAS facing attack (including possible nuclear attack) from the Soviet social imperialists -- who had gathered 3 million troops on the northern borders and were staging border provocations. So the Chinese government was launching a diplomatic offensive to break out of U.S. imposed isolation, and to make it more difficult for the Soviets to attack.

But what Avakian later criticized was the view that "the main danger to the world's main socialist country" was therefore the "main enemy" of the people of the world -- and that there needed to be a strategic orientation (of the proletariat internationally) against that specific main enemy.

This was not a method new to Mao -- itwas the approach taken by the Soviet Union when they faced the "main danger" from the German imperalists of Hitler. They (after 1935) said there needed to be an international United front against FAscism (which in practice meant an international alliance with the ruling classes of Britain, the U.S. and their allies against the Axis Bloc of Germany, Japan, and Italy). Avakian's view has been that while it was not wrong for the socialist Soviet Union to target the imperialists directly invading them (i.e. the Nazis) and it was not wrong to develop arrangements with the states fighting the Nazis (including the western "Allies") that this did not, and should not mean that the proletariat throughout the world should simply and directly have the same policy and subordinate the preparations to revolution everywhere to those state interests of the soviet union.

Avakian argued that the proletariat should strategically oppose imperialism (as a system) in a unified way, and develop allies on that basis. But that an internation strategic united front against one imperialist "main danger" was a mistake (and had been a mistake when the Sovet party and the Chinese communist party had put it forward -- even when they were clearly still revolutinoary parties.)

So, in short, there is a "Three Worlds Theory" -- formulated by the Chinese revisionists which was a full blown counterrevolutionary theory -- opposing revolutin, and calling on people of many countries to make their piece with capitalism and their opporessors.

And there was, coming from a different class basis and outlook, a historic legacy within the ICM that had a wrong approach to "main dangers" and which was then used as an opening by the revisionists to promote their whole program.

The RCP opposed the whole approach of focusing on the Soviet Union as a main danger and refused to do so. They also never held that the junior imperialists of the u.s. bloc were playing a positive role internationaly and were potential allies. (Or that they were mainly being bullied by the superpowers, instead of being major exploiters in their own right).

AAnd then as the reactionary Three Worlds Theory was being put forward more and more crudely by the Chinese government (especially after the overtrhow of the Maoists in 1976, when the "Gang of Four" was imprisoned), Chairman Avakian went through an intense, protracted and even agonized process of seeking to understand the complexity of all this -- and to excavate both the reactionary nature of the revisionists, and also the errors of genuine revolutionaries like Mao (and earlier Stalin and Lenin). After two conjunctures with socialist countries, it became possible to sum up the experience -- and understand how to view the interests of socialists countries, and the fact that their interests (as states) and the interests of the proletariat in the world as a whole were not simply the same -- but rather a contradictory and complex dynamic.

It is also worth noting that it is simply not known (as far as I know) what the stand of the Gang of Four (Mao's close supporters) was on the "theory of three worlds." The revisionists who came to power in 1976 accused them of opposing this "theory" and of putting forward something different. But little more is known, beyond two speeches delivered in public by them that are not widely available (if I remember correctly there was a speech by Chiang Ching to foreignministry cadre, and a speech by Chang in connection with developments in Indochina).