Events in China after the death of Mao Tse-tung brought about a much more fundamental division within the CPNZ, and a realignment of forces among those who had been Maoists in New Zealand. This process began with the removal of V. G. Wilcox as general secretary in March 1977. He was “removed from all posts of responsibility.”
Wilcox’s demotion was not officially announced to the party members. However, the Chinese party was informed. The first concrete information about what had occurred was provided by Vanguard, the organ of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). It commented in an article entitled “Unite All Marxist-Leninists in Oceania” in March 1978 that Mao’s “three worlds theory” was “the touchstone of the Marxist-Leninists,” and excoriated “all those who in the name of communism oppose the revolutionary essence of communism, either by silence, attempted suppression of comrades like comrade Wilcox, lies, slander, intrigues and conspiracies.” This article, which was circulated surreptitiously among members of the CPNZ, was republished in Peking Review. Then in April 1978, the Chinese party canceled all subscriptions to People’s Voice and New Zealand Communist Review. H. Roth noted that “Since substantial quantities were involved, the CPNZ characterized this action as ‘a deliberate blow at the economics of the People’s Voice and hence of our Party.’”[615]
The leaders of the CPNZ struck back. The National Committee answered the Australian Maoist periodical, saying that “The basic construction in New Zealand, a developed capitalist country, is that between the working class and the capitalist class headed by monopoly section. Consequently, the working class faces a directly socialist revolution. Any attempt to try to insert an intermediate stage between capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat is opportunism and revisionism.”
Meanwhile, ten of the 12 branches of the CPNZ announced support of the party’s leadership against Wilcox. For his part, Wilcox joined with three other members to set up a Preparatory Committee for the Formation of a CPNZ (M-L). In a further meeting, they decided to postpone the establishment of such a new party until they had gained wider support. Wilcox claimed that “leadership of the CPNZ is now in the hands of an ‘Albanian Gang of Three’—R. C. Wolf, H. Crook and R. Nunes—who form the National Secretariat located in Auckland.”[616]
Thereafter, the leadership of the CPNZ firmly allied themselves with the Albanians. Their statement of position was greeted with approval by the Albanian party journal Zeri y Populit, as well as by some other pro-Albanian parties.[617]
In January 1979, the CPNZ had a national conference, its first since 1966. Present were 34 delegates, who gave “a resounding rebuff to the local followers of the new revisionist leaders of the Chinese party and all other revisionists and opportunists who have tried to disrupt and divert the CPNZ from its Marxist-Leninist line and make it collaborate with the class enemies of the New Zealand working people—the imperialists or social imperialists who all collude and contend for world control and plunder.”[618]
However, the CPNZ leadership at first found it hard to swallow the repudiation of Mao by the Albanian leadership after its split with Mao’s successors. H. Roth noted that the CPNZ “was thrown into confusion when Enver Hoxha’s books downgrading Mao reached New Zealand. In August 1979 a CPNZ delegation led by H. Nunes went to Albania to discuss ideological differences. After its return, the Political Committee adopted a pro-Mao resolution, and articles in the party’s theoretical journal … reflected this independent stand. In February, however, a Central Committee meeting returned to the anti-Mao line, which avers that Mao was not a Marxist-Leninist and the communist victory in China in 1949 was not a socialist but merely a bourgeois democratic revolution.”
Roth went on to note that “The CPNZ now maintains that Mao Zedong Thought is ‘a dangerous form of revisionism that is most harmful to the working class because it replaces the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with a hodge-podge of idealism and pseudo-Marxism.’ The Chinese Communist Party, it is now revealed, never treated the CPNZ ‘in the manner of a fraternal Party with correct internationalist attitudes and action.’” The CPNZ leadership claimed that Albania was “the only socialist country remaining.”[619]
This endorsement of Hoxha’s attack on Mao engendered considerable conflict within the CPNZ. This was shown in a polemic between that party and the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, a group adhering to Maoism and to the so-called Gang of Four eliminated from power in China soon after the death of Mao Tse-tung.
The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) had issued a statement about the CPNZ, denouncing what they called a “coup d’etat within the Party carried out by the President of the Party and others in the high leadership.” In reply to this charge, the Political Committee of the CPNZ wrote the CC of the RCP that what had occurred was that a group of “scabs and divisionists recently left our party.” It claimed that “The position of the Party always has been that the APL is a fraternal Marxist-Leninist party and that Albania is a socialist country. It was the enemy faction of the Party … who wishes to force a full and complete change in the position of the party.”[620]
In 1987, Barry Gustafson summed up the situation of the New Zealand Communist Party by that time. He wrote: “The factional infighting and splits that accompanied each realignment reduced the CPNZ to an aging handful of members who exert no discernible influence even on the extreme left of New Zealand politics. The party still admires Stalin. It raises, by donations, about $6,000 annually and publishes from its Auckland headquarters a small weekly newspaper, People’s Voice. The introduction to the CPNZ’s constitution, adopted by the Twenty-third National Conference in 1984, claims that ‘"the CPNZ has maintained a clear and unequivocal stand in opposition to the … Khrushchevite revisionists … and Chinese revisionism.’ The party sees itself as a revolutionary vanguard that rejects as impossible the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism by gradual parliamentary means.”[621]
Regrouping of the Pro-Chinese Forces
The New Zealand groups that continued to support the post-Maoist Chinese leadership were badly divided. They apparently consisted in large part of those elements which had been thrown out of the CPNZ during the 1969—1979 period, culminating in the ouster of Wilcox himself in the 1979—1980.
H. Roth, writing in 1981, indicated that a process of consolidation of these pro-Chinese groups that was then under way. “The pro-Chinese groups consolidated their forces during the year (1980) in a series of mergers that reduced their number from five to two. The Wellington Marxist-Leninist Organization and the Northern Communist Organization combined in February to form the WCL (Workers Communist League), which in July absorbed the small Marxist-Leninist Workers Party. In February the groups around the theoretical journal Struggle joined the Preparatory Committee, which visited China in March at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party.”[622]
Barry Gustafson noted in 1987 that the WCL “is located primarily in Wellington.” He went on to say that “It is the most secretive of New Zealand’s Marxist-Leninist parties and does not reveal its leaders’ names, although it is known that the leadership consists of an equal number of men and ‘women. The WCL’s most influential member, Green Clarke, visited China and the Philippines in April and May. The party has some influence in the Wellington Trades’ Council, in the Wellington Unemployed Workers’ Union, and among some university graduates. Its objective is the building of a strategic alliance between the working class, the struggle for women’s liberation, and the struggle for Maori self-determination.’… The WCL national conference in June agreed that the central strategy of the WCL over the next two years will be to promote the conditions for, and the development of, political unity among communists and other revolutionary groups and individuals.’”
615
H. Roth, in Yearbook on Intemaional Communist Affairs, 1979, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif, pages 275—276.
618
Cited by H. Roth, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1980, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 287.
619
H. Roth, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1981, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 187.
620
Obrero Revolucionario, organ of Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago, October 3, 1980, page 13.
621
Barry Gustafson, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1987, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 231.