ABSTRACT
In this article, Chen retreats somewhat from the reservations he seemed to express in “Once Again on the World Situation” about the usefulness of uniting oppressed nations. Though he continues to insist that some imperialists are worse than others, he also says that all movements of oppressed peoples against imperialism must be supported and oppressed workers and peoples everywhere must unite to that end, in order to bring about world socialism. But only a revolution encompassing “advanced” as well as “backward” countries can lead to the development of the economies of the poor countries; in the absence of world revolution, imperialism will help forge the links that create such unity. National liberation will follow from world socialist revolution, just as the abolition of unequal treaties in China followed on the October Revolution in the years before it degenerated. Struggles for national liberation can no longer proceed in separation and isolation from one another: people everywhere will have to become free together, in an international socialist federation. This argument is the late Chen’s clearest and most trenchant restatement of his commitment to Marxist internationalism and the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution, and of his undying hostility to capitalism and imperialism.
