On the United Front.
Keynote address to the Seminar on the Juche idea and the united front called by the Institute for Independence Studies on the occasion of the 83rd birth anniversary of Comrade Kim Il Sung.
London. 9 April 1995.
I would like firstly to express my thanks for being asked to present some ideas to this important Seminar on the united front as an essential weapon in the struggle against imperialism, convened by the Institute for Independence Studies in honour of the 83rd birth anniversary of the Great Leader President Kim Il Sung, the late President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
The united front is always raised as an issue and plays its role wherever there is a struggle for progressive and revolutionary change. Accordingly, it is hoped that tonight’s Seminar will hear from various speakers from this country and various parts of the world who will be able to relate their experiences, outline their theoretical summations and enable us to discuss ideas and exchange experiences.
Both the English revolution of the 17th century and the French revolution of the 18th century posed questions of united front strategy and tactics, particularly in terms of how those political forces most closely representing the interests of the lower order working masses should relate to the various forces of the rising bourgeoisie in the time of decaying feudalism and newly emerging capitalism.
However, we can say that it is the work of Marx and Engels in creating a theory of scientific socialism that also represents the starting point of putting the theory and practice of the united front on a scientific foundation.
We should not forget that Marx and Engels’ basic watchword was one of unity: “Workers of all countries, unite!”
To turn this slogan into reality, they formed the International Working Men’s Association – comrades will have to forgive the linguistic limitations of the time. From the standpoint of the subject of this Seminar, what is most significant about the First International – as it is more generally known – is that it organised and united not only the supporters of Marx and Engels, but also other trends and personalities in the workers’ movement, notably the anarchists who at that time represented a significant left-wing force in a number of countries.
This historical experience is of significance today when we are faced with the task of rebuilding the international communist movement and reorganising the world socialist forces. In this work, a prominent place has been taken by the Pyongyang Declaration, “Let us defend and advance the cause of socialism”, which was initiated at the 80th birthday celebrations of Comrade Kim Il Sung and which has to date been signed by well over 200 parties and organisations in all parts of the world, from different traditions and with varying points of view, including in this country, the Communist Party of Britain, the New Communist Party of Britain, and the Communist Organisation of Britain.
As has often been said, for Marx and Engels, the most important question of the day was to establish the independent identity of the proletariat in the period of rising capitalism. This, without question, they did. But they also sought to support and build unity with every movement, people and historical trend that was progressive, as can be seen from their response to the bourgeois national revolutions against such moribund institutions as the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1847 and in Engels’ writings on the peasant wars in Germany. Particularly after Marx corrected his earlier, mistaken position on Ireland, he and Engels devoted a great deal of attention to support for national and anti-colonial movements, in Ireland, India, China, Afghanistan and so on. It was Marx who observed that labour in a white skin cannot be free for so long as labour in a black skin is branded, and under the leadership of the International headed by Marx, German communist immigrants in the United States took up leading positions in the Union Army to expedite the abolition of slavery in the American Civil War.
The united front presented itself as an essential part of common strategy and tactics particularly after the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution. The need to support and defend the Soviet Union required the strengthening and development of working class unity, both in each country and on the world scale. Furthermore, the triumph of the October Revolution, which itself liberated countless Eastern people, and the existence of an actually existing socialist alternative that made progress at a rate and on a scale without precedent, pushed the question of the national liberation movements to the very centre of the stage of world history. After a complicated struggle, the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 adopted Lenin’s thesis on the need for the communist parties and the working class in the imperialist nations to unite with and support the national revolutionary movements against imperialism.
This policy, of course, was not developed in a vacuum. Ireland’s Easter rising — whose 80th anniversary we will mark next year, at a time when the age-old aspirations of the great Irish people are at last coming to fruition – and which was the spark that set the prairie fires of European proletarian struggle, Irish national freedom and global independence – came as the result of the forging of a national united front between the proletarian socialist forces led by James Connolly and the revolutionary nationalist forces led by Padraig Pearse. The organisational and political contours of the contemporary Irish revolutionary movement date from the formation of this alliance. Just as today’s opportunists of ‘left’ and right rarely hesitate to attack the Irish movement, so it was in 1916. Trotsky announced the rising as a ‘putsch’ and said that the banner of nationalism was redundant even in Ireland. Lenin, however, not only gave the rising his full support, but he also affirmed that it held lasting lessons for both Europe and the colonies, and he scolded the critics of the rising by pointing out that whoever expected to see a pure social revolution would never live to witness one.
When the crisis of imperialism brought forth its most hideous manifestation in the form of fascism, these various strands of communist united front policy were woven together and developed into the Popular Front against fascism, so brilliantly elucidated by Dimitrov at the Seventh Congress of the International. It has been under the guidance and inspiration of Lenin and Stalin’s united front policies and tactics that some of the most epic pages of world revolutionary history have been written, for example the Chinese revolution and the struggle of the Popular Front government and peoples of Spain, supported by the International Brigades and a vast international movement of solidarity, against Franco fascism.
In this 50th anniversary year of the victory over fascism, special mention must be made of the international united front that was forged in the Second World War under the leadership of the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Party and which embraced even the US and British imperialists.
This shows that while united fronts are built fundamentally with one’s friends and allies, there are also times when it is possible and necessary to form them with a section of one’s enemies.
A contemporary example is to be found in the role being played by President Clinton and other sections of the US ruling class and political establishment in the Irish peace process. And just as the struggles of the 1930s paved the way for the victorious alliance of World War Two, so the role being played by Bill Clinton with regard to Ireland rests on the foundation, above all, of the heroic struggle of the Irish revolutionaries, the genius of their leadership, particularly Gerry Adams, and on the developing and maturing national consensus of the Irish people, which has acquired embryonic organisational form in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, as well as on the long struggle wage by the Irish American community, particularly inside the Democratic Party, in the community organisations and in the trade unions.
Much the same evaluation can be made of the efforts made by the Clinton Administration in signing the Geneva Accord with the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea last October, and its efforts to implement it in the face of attempted obstruction and sabotage by the hardline conservative forces who have strengthened their position following the US Congressional elections of last November.
Comrades and friends,
To call this Seminar on the occasion of the 83rd birth anniversary of respected President Kim Il Sung is not a simple matter of sentiment, but because he was an outstanding communist and revolutionary leader who devoted his entire life to the freedom and happiness of his people as well as to global independence and human liberation.
The Geneva Accord that I have just referred to represented a decisive victory in Comrade Kim Il Sung’s last great battle, one in which he mobilised a great united front, of the Korean people in the north, south and overseas, the international anti-imperialist and independent forces and broad democratic circles in the United States itself. On this basis, he successfully forced a wedge in the US ruling class which had been standing united brandishing the threat of war over socialist Korea and nuclear genocide over the Korean people. In this regard, the turning point came with President Kim Il Sung’s meetings and talks with former President Jimmy Carter, so shortly before Kim Il Sung’s sudden and tragic death.
Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary experience, talent and abilities were beyond comparison. They covered many decades, all forms of struggle and every area of life, from armed struggle to agriculture, and from party building and diplomacy to philosophy, art and literature. But within this vast revolutionary panorama, we can identify the united front as one of his key and constant concerns.
Comrade Kim Il Sung’s life motto was “to believe in the people as in heaven“, and according to this standpoint of people-centred socialism, the united front must be viewed not as a tactic but as a part of the science of revolution in its own right and as something to be applied in every area of activity. In his recent treatise, “Socialism is a science”, Comrade Kim Jong Il, who is today the great leader of the Korean Party, people and revolutionary armed forces, points out that the Workers’ Party of Korea views the people from various classes and strata who collaborate with it not as temporary fellow travellers, but as lifelong companions on the road to socialism and communism. Indeed, as, Kim Il Sung noted in Volume 4 of his reminiscences, “With the century”: “The unprecedented history of human relations and comradeship, created by the Korean revolutionaries, indicates that friendship can continue between the living and dead.” In his early years, Comrade Kim Il Sung united with Chinese revolutionaries such as Zhang Wei-hua and Korean religious figures such as Reverend Son Jong Do – and to the end of his days he maintained the closest personal relations with their children, grandchildren and other family members.
As we have seen, the united front is not a fixed or static concept, but rather a fluid, creative, dynamic and developing one. Accordingly, Comrade Kim Il Sung applied, developed and practised it in each stage of his revolutionary career. In 1926, he founded the Down With Imperialism Union, with a three-point program corresponding to the different stages of the revolution:
First, to defeat Japanese imperialism and realise Korean liberation and independence; secondly, to build socialism and communism in Korea; and thirdly, to defeat world imperialism and realise the global triumph of communism.
To carry out the first stage of this three-point program necessitated a united front of all Korean patriots. In common with Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Kim Il Sung believed that the peoples of an oppressed nation needed three magic weapons if they were to achieve victory in their struggles, namely a revolutionary party, a people’s army and a national united front. In the introduction to Volume 5 of “With the century” he wrote in his own calligraphy:
“A historical lesson of the arduous revolutionary struggle against the Japanese imperialists is that the destiny of the country can only be shaped by the united efforts of the whole nation.” In this spirit, he founded the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland on May 5 1936, as “a standing body of the united front“, whose ten-point programme aimed at mobilising the entire Korean people into a broad united front aimed at overthrowing imperialism and establishing a genuine peoples’ democratic government. It united not only workers and peasants, but all those who were prepared to fight the Japanese, including national capitalists, patriotic landlords, religious forces and patriotic personalities of the upper strata.
Besides the leftist tendency in the communist movement that openly negates the united front, there is also an unfortunate trend that views the united front as a temporary little arrangement, to be dispensed with as soon as humanly possible. According to proponents of this view, one should unite with people in order to seize power only to cast them aside and suppress them after liberation. In this country, there are some tiny groups who adopt this standpoint so as to attack and denigrate such brilliant and successful revolutionary leaders as Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. It was such people that Kim Il Sung had in mind, when he wrote of those who had gulped down Marxism-Leninism as opposed to chewing and digesting it.
The Workers’ Party of Korea developed its thesis of lifelong companions in contrast to this shortsighted and destructive view. When Kim Il Sung returned in triumph to Pyongyang at the age of 33 he outlined his vision of a new society where those with money would donate money, those with skills would donate skills, and those with strength would donate their strength, and all would unite to build a new democratic Korea. Following victory in the Fatherland Liberation War in 1953, through intermediate stages of cooperative and joint state-private enterprises, former landowners and national bourgeois traders and industrialists were progressively and peacefully transformed into socialist working people, thereby adding to the international proletariat’s theory and practice on the transition to socialism.
Today, in the complex international situation, the Korean communists are striving to realise the great unity of the whole nation – north, south and overseas – to defend socialist gains, force the withdrawal of US occupation forces from south Korea, achieve the independent and peaceful reunification of Korea and ensure the freedom, happiness, dignity, and prosperity of all the 70 million Korean people. In pursuit of this goal, Comrade Kim Il Sung worked out and published the “10-point program of the great unity of the whole nation for the reunification of the country” on April 6 1993. Together with the struggle against the United States over the so-called ‘nuclear question’, this struggle to realise the great unity of the whole nation may be considered as the last great battle of the great leader.
In an August 1 1991 talk, “Let us achieve the great unity of our nation” Comrade Kim Il Sung said:
“I have been fighting all my life for the independence, sovereignty, and prosperity of our nation, for the independence of the masses of the people. I am fighting for the independence not only of our people but also of people throughout the world and for the abolition of exploitation and oppression of people by people not only in our country but also throughout the world… As I always say, only a genuine patriot can be a true internationalist who is loyal to the world revolution. So I can only say that I am a communist and, at the same time a nationalist and internationalist.”
In this spirit, throughout his life,, Kim Il Sung spared nothing to strengthen unity not only among the Korean people but also on the world scale. In his early revolutionary activities this meant unity with the Soviet Union and the Comintern, and most importantly with the Chinese communist and other revolutionaries. Based for a considerable period in Manchuria, Comrade Kim Il Sung became a cadre of the Communist Party of China and he helped forge the Anti-Japanese Allied Army, consisting of Chinese communist guerillas, the Chinese National Salvation Army and the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army.
President Kim Il Sung led the Workers’ Party of Korea to oppose modern revisionism and to defend the principled positions adopted by the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania. At the same time, he fought for the unity and solidarity of the socialist camp and the international communist movement. As he recalled in his 1986 lecture, “On the historical experience of building the Workers’ Party of Korea”:
“Even when differences occurred between socialist countries we encouraged them to try for unity but did not do anything detrimental at all. We have maintained that the socialist countries should, first, oppose imperialism; second, support the national liberation movement in colonies and the working class movement in all countries; third, continue to advance towards socialism and communism; and fourth, join with each other on the principles of non-interference in internal affairs, mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, putting aside the differences between them even when these exist, if they observe these four principles.“
In the 1960s, the Workers’ Party of Korea combined the struggle against opportunism and for unity in the communist movement with the struggle to expand and develop the forces of the world revolution. Together with the Communist Parties of Cuba and Vietnam, it advanced the line of developing an anti-imperialist, anti-US joint front. In concrete terms, this meant extending real and effective solidarity to the fighting people of Vietnam and, in Che Guevara’s words, creating “two, three, many Vietnams”.
In the article he wrote for Tricontinental magazine, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the death in battle of Che Guevara, Comrade Kim Il Sung advocated that such a joint front should involve people in one part of the world chopping off the arms of US imperialism, while others chopped off its legs and still others pulled out its teeth. But he also reminded people that the anti-imperialist front should be constructed on as broad a basis as possible and that it would include more and less advanced, and more and less consistent components.
To successfully build a united front, the work should proceed without prejudice or preconceived ideas and in a broad-minded fashion. In this context, the personality of King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia comes to mind. Despite his monarchical position and heritage, he wholeheartedly joined the anti-capitalist joint front from the mid-1960s onwards, forged lasting and solid relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Peoples’ Republic of China and extended great support to the Vietnamese people, allowing the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail to pass through his country whilst shutting the door to the Americans. Above all for this latter reason, the US aggressors engineered his removal in a coup in 1970. At that time, it was socialist Korea and China that stood by him and he has never forgotten this. Sihanouk always describes President Kim Il Sung as his greatest friend and also recently stated that the days when he met Premier Zhou Enlai of China and President Kim Il Sung respectively, were the days when his eternal friendship with their two countries began, adding that for so long as he is alive, Cambodia will never establish any official relationship with the pro-imperialist regime of south Korea.
Such an alliance with Norodom Sihanouk may be considered as the progenitor of the slogan President Kim Il Sung advanced in the last phase of his life: “All anti-imperialist, independent forces, unite!” In accordance with this slogan, People’s Korea became a full member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1975 and has consistently worked to strengthen this body of well over 100 former colonial and oppressed countries on the basis of safeguarding the movement’s adherence to its founding principles and core values of independence, anti-imperialism, South-South cooperation and collective self-reliance. In this sense, the Non-Aligned Movement can be seen as a kind of standing body of the international united front against imperialism.
Together with, primarily, their own experience, the theory and practice of Comrade Kim Il Sung on building the united front has served and is serving as a valuable teaching and great inspiration to people around the world engaged in the anti-imperialist struggle for independence and the building of a new society, from the Middle East to Southern Africa, and from Central America to Ireland.
For the Institute for Independence Studies, one of our central tenets is that the lessons taught by the national liberation movements and the oppressed nations do not stop at the gates of Europe, or, indeed, the shores of the Irish Sea. We seek to learn from them and apply them to our struggles. If we are to make progress in Britain, then we must also take up the weapon of the united front. Progressive change here can only come by uniting the broadest forces – in their diverse composition – with an interest in such a change.
In this regard, the developing situation in Scotland holds particular interest for us. Events there highlight a developing reality whereby organised political expression is being found for an emerging national consensus with the following characteristics: for an act of self-determination, in the form of either devolution or independence; and an almost total rejection of the Tory Party and the twisted values it espouses. This rests not least on the working class socialist tradition that gave us the Red Clyde of John Maclean and that, in a recent referendum in the Strathclyde area, saw some 98% of the people oppose the privatisation of water.
Although less consolidated, a similar trend can be seen in Wales, particularly in terms of the movement to demand a People’s Parliament for Wales, which draws support from the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, the Communist Party of Britain, Democratic Left (Cymru), Cymdeithas – the Welsh language society, and other social and cultural organisations of the Welsh people.
There are those on the left and in the working class movement who are in the habit of attacking the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. These attacks, from sections of both the right and left of the Labour Party and in parts of the communist press, accuse these two parties of dividing the working people. But it is those who attack these parties who are being divisive. The SNP and Plaid Cymru stand for the self-determination of their countries and people – and this is a legitimate democratic demand. Moreover, they are not chauvinist parties – many of their members are on the left, and both parties share with the Labour Party a formal commitment to socialism. Indeed, on questions of nuclear disarmament and world peace, both the SNP and Plaid Cymru leaderships defend positions considerably more advanced and progressive than those of the present Labour Party leadership.
In united front work, there is also a lot to be learned from the national minority communities in Britain, particularly those of African, Asian, Caribbean and Irish origin. They have built and are building diverse forms of the united front within their individual communities, between the minority communities collectively, and between those communities and the working class, anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements here. These fronts have been directed in particular to supporting the winning and consolidation of independence by their countries of origin – and their building of new societies – and against racist and fascist attacks, not least the racism of the British state itself, in terms of its immigration and nationality laws and other discriminatory legislation such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
By no means all of the politically and socially active people in the minority communities are socialists. But within these communities there is a broad sentiment of sympathy and support for socialism, even among the upper strata, which takes various forms, from the support extended by many leading Asian business people to the Labour Party, to the deep and widespread sympathy and pride, combined with concrete acts of practical support, of the Chinese community for the People’s Republic of China.
In the spirit of Dimitrov, everyone has the duty to support the national minority communities in their struggle against racism and fascism. The minority communities are at the cutting edge of these struggles, but fascism threatens all working class gains, all democratic rights and everything that is cultured and civilised in society. As already recorded, this year is the 50th anniversary of the victory over German fascism and Japanese militarism, and the 50th anniversary of VE Day, which followed the hoisting of the red hammer-and-sickle flag over Berlin by the heroic Red Army, is just a few weeks away. If would therefore be timely for all comrades to resolve that differences on the left should never be allowed to stand in the way of firm and determined united action against fascism wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.
We should also strengthen unity with those in the Labour Party, the trade unions and elsewhere who are defending Clause 4 Part 4 of the Labour Party constitution. We do not adopt this position because we believe that this radical democratic clause represents some sort of program for revolution; nor because we believe that any future Labour government might seriously try to implement it, just as no previous Labour government has ever tried. We stand in unity with those who are defending Clause 4 because they are resisting the final conversion of the Labour Party from a reformist party to an open party of capitalism, and because they represent a large section of this country’s politically active people who believe in and support socialism. We stand together with all those who have taken a stand in support of Clause 4 and socialist ideas, whether they be Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill, Bill Morris, Bernie Grant, Diane Abbott, the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, the broad lefts in the unions, activists in the constituency Labour Parties and in community struggles, and so on. We hope that, whatever the precise outcome of the Labour Party’s Special Conference on April 29, these comrades will continue their activity, increase their coordination and move towards the construction of a broad campaigning organisation arguing for socialism and anti-imperialism in the wider movement.
Such a campaigning organisation should not be seen as a kind of factional ‘party-within-a-party’, nor as a substitute for the Labour Party or the various communist parties that presently exist, but as an intermediate organisation aiming towards the strengthening and unity of the socialist forces.
In this context, a particularly important role needs to be played by the different sectors of the left media, and especially by the Morning Star, as the daily paper of the left. The Morning Star needs to reflect and provide a platform for different currents of the left and for debate within them. In return, the broad left should help to build the circulation of the Morning Star, strengthen its readers’ and supporters’ groups and assist in the stabilisation and consolidation of its financial position.
Comrades and friends,
Shortly before he passed away, respected Comrade Kim Il Sung told a leading official of the International Institute of the Juche Idea from Japan that it was his great wish that people throughout the world would apply and develop the Juche Idea to their own struggles, and that they would build parties based on an application of the Juche Idea so as to advance their liberation struggles to victory. It is in that spirit that tonight’s Seminar has been called and it is in that same spirit that I have tried to share my, in places tentative, ideas with you. Thank you for listening to me. I look forward to hearing tonight’s other contribution contributions, and hope that we can take this work forward in the form of future meetings, publications and, above all, practical activity. This is certainly what President Kim Il Sung would have wished from us.