Apparently because of internal dissension, the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada In Struggle! declared its own dissolution late in 1982 or early 1983.[119]
Conclusion
Canadian Maoism almost from its inception split into several rival groups. These “parties” took different positions in the face of Chinese internal developments and changes of foreign policy. One group joined the Progressive Labor Party in abandoning the Chinese party and government after President Nixon’s first trip to China. Another joined the Albanian camp when the Albanians broke with the post-Mao leadership in China.
Unlike Maoists in many countries, Canadian Maoists frequently participated in elections. Their vote was very marginal in all of the cases in which Maoists went to the hustings. Also, their influence was almost imperceptible in the organized labor movement, although of somewhat more consequences among students.
Part Ⅱ: Europe
Maoism in Non-Communist Europe
Maoist parties appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in virtually all of the countries of Europe that were not under Communist control. Some of these originated as the result of dissidence in the pro-Moscow parties, others were the product of the New Left upsurge of the period.
In almost all of the European countries in which Maoism appeared, it comprised two or more different—and competing—groups. They assumed a great variety of names. Since parties affiliated with the Communist International had existed in virtually all of the European countries, the Maoist parties sought to picture themselves as direct descendants of those organizations, which had existed in the times of Lenin and Stalin. In cases—as in the Federal Republic of Germany and Switzerland—where the original party had changed its name, one of the Maoist groups assumed the original name of the party of the Comintern period.
The degree of contact between the European Maoist parties and the Chinese party varied a great deal from one case to the other. Clearly, the party headed by Jacques Grippa in Belgium held the “Chinese franchise” in its early years, although it subsequently lost it. Several others sent missions to China and had their activities given at least some degree of attention in the Chinese press. At least in the case of Germany, the Chinese appear to have withheld their full endorsement of any group in a fruitless attempt to get all those proclaiming loyalty to Mao Tse-tung Thought united in a single organization.
The evolution of Chinese policy, first with Mao Tse-tung’s move for the rapprochement with the United States, and then with the internal struggle within the Chinese party following the death of Mao, caused serious problems for the European Maoists. Although some parties remained loyal to the leadership of the Chinese Party through all of its changes of position, others did not. A few joined Albania in its denunciation of the Chinese, following Mao’s death. In at least one case, Spain, there appeared a party which, like the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, declared its continuing loyalty to the late Mao Tse-tung, but repudiated both the successors to Mao and the Albanians.
Clearly, by 1980, Maoism was in decline in Europe. A few of the parties had already gone out of existence. Those which had not were clearly so divided—not only within the various countries, but in their attitudes toward the memory of Mao Tse-tung and the people who took over the leadership in China after Mao’s passing—that they in no way constituted any longer (if they had ever done so) parts of a coherent international movement.
Austrian Maoism
Virtually since their establishment soon after World War I, the Austrian Communists have constituted a fringe group in their country’s left-wing politics, which has been overwhelming dominated by the Social Democrats. As long as Soviet troops controlled a substantial part of the country after World War II, the Communists enjoyed certain prestige and a good deal of patronage from the Soviets, but they never surpassed 5 percent in the post-World War II elections.
After the signing of the State Treaty of 1955 and the withdrawal of foreign troops, the Austrian Communist Party (KPO) suffered the first in a series of splits—in 1956, over the issue of the Soviet invasion of Hungary.[120] Subsequently, it suffered a number of other schisms, including a serious one after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in the suppression of the party’s youth organization and the expulsion of its most famous leader, Ernst Fischer.[121]
The Maoist split in the Austrian Communist ranks was thus one of several schisms in a party, which was itself of minimal significance in national politics.
The Marxist-Leninist Party Of Austria
A pro-Chinese current appeared in the Austrian Communist Party in 1963, and its leaders were expelled from the party.3 In May 1966, the Maoists established the country’s first party of that tendency, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Austria (M-LPO). Its First Secretary was Franz Stroble and it was estimated to have about 500 members. Its periodical was Rote Fahne.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s the Marxist-Leninist Parry of Austria was loyal to the opposition of the Chinese, although we have no indication of whether or not it held the Chinese “franchise.” Dennis L. Bark wrote in 1973 that “The M-LPO believed that the KPO believed that the KPO did not understand the essence of Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence … which the Chinese Communist Party always recognizes, follows and defends, and that capitulationist and counterrevolutionary falsification of this policy which the Khrushchev-Brezhnev clique pursued and continues to pursue.”[122]
In following their pro-Chinese policy, the M-LPO defended the visit of President Richard Nixon to China early in 1972.[123]
In that period, the M-LPO was also very sympathetic to the Albanian party and regime. In July 1973, Franz Stoble visited Albania, at the invitation of the Albanian Party of Labor.
The M-LPO was not itself immune from splits. In 1968, a faction broke away to form the Union of Revolutionary Workers of Austria-Marxist Leninist. Its principal activity seems to have been to publish a monthly periodical, Fur die Volksmacht.[124]
The Communist League Of Austria (KB)
By the latter half of the 1970s, the M-LPO was superseded by the Communist League of Austria (KB) as the principal Maoist organization in Austria. It was established in 1976.[125] It published a daily newspaper, Klassenkampf, and a monthly Kommunist After the fall of the Chinese Gang of Four it sent a message to the Chinese Party attacking the Gang and extolling Chairman Hua Kuo-feng.[126]
The KB held its first National Congress in January 1978. Walter Lindner was elected secretary of the Central Committee. The Congress passed a resolution saying that the party “should struggle against the attempt of the two superpowers to place Austria under their economic, political or military control.” In September 1978 it signed a joint statement with the Worker-Peasant Party of Turkey in defense of Kampuchea, which the statement said “is being attacked by Vietnamese leaders at the instigation of the social-imperialists.”[127]
119
Revolutionary Worker, organ of Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago, March 4, 1983, article on “The Dissolution in Struggle.”
120
Friedrich Katscher, “How Communism Died in Austria,” New Leader, Social Democratic magazine, New York, March 26, 1957, pages 17—18.
121
Intercontinental Press, organ of Socialist Workers Party, New York, November 3, 1969, page 969, and November 10, 1965; see also Le Monde, Paris daily, December 13, 1969.
122
World Strength of the Communist Party Organizations, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, Washington, DC, 1968 edition, page 11.
123
Dennis L. Bark, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1973, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 123.
124
Roman Hoenlinger, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1974, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 115.
125
Frederick C. Engelman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1981, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 356.
126
Frederick C. Engelman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1978, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 108.
127
Frederick C. Engelman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1979, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 116.