COMMUNIST INTENTIONS
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the"argument, at any rate to the extent of quoting Marx and Engels
as well as Lenin, that he is really able to score. But then he does. For
he recalls to us that statement of Engels, in
his
mature and mellow
old age, to the effect that he and Marx had always been against
"trying to make people happy by force." They had, Engels claims,
always opposed "exporting" the Revolution forcibly by means of
conquering some neighboring country, the people of which might
or might not be ready for it, and imposing socialism on them by
military power.
It can hardly be claimed that the young Marx and Engels had
in fact always lived up to this eminently wise view. This was not
because they would have dissented from it consciously but because
they had dogmatically believed that the workers everywhere and
always were "really" passionately anxious to revolt and throw off
the chains of their oppressors. Thus, in practice, it might be quite
legitimate to liberate them with an invading army, if they could
not do the job for themselves. It may be surmised that this is the
present (1962) standpoint of the Chinese Communists. No doubt
they too would say that they do not believe in exporting revolution
or "making other peoples happy by force." Nevertheless their view
of the world is as one-sided as was that of Marx and Engels in the
1840's and with, on the whole, less justification. They are sure that
all peoples everywhere in the non-communist world, are desperately
seeking for the opportunity to revolt. Therefore any and every form
of armed assistance which can be given them is fully justified. The
Chinese make little distinction between movements of colonial revolt,
such as those of Angola and Algeria, which not only they, but also the
Russians, and for that matter many people in the West (including
myself) consider justified, and non-existent movements of revolt
which they affect to see in the highly developed non-communist
societies. It is this extreme lack of ,any discriminating and objective
appreciation of contemporary social reality which distinguishes the
Chinese from the Russian communists in 1962.
Not that the Russian communists are free from distortions of
reality, especially when what they suppose to be their own vital
interests are concerned. We may be sure that many Russian com–
munists were, able to persuade themselves that the Hungarian workers
were "really" on the Russian side in 1956. The fact that
phenomenally
