The 'National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party' (NCMLP) was formed in January 1998 with the aim of establishing a Marxist-Leninist Party in Britain. All organisations known to have declared their support for this aim were invited to the founding conference.

The NCMLP has since become known as NCMLU, the National Committee for Marxist-Leninist Unity.

It was, of course, to be expected that the Committee would encounter opposition not only from open revisionists outside the Committee but also from concealed revisionists who had joined the Committee for the purpose of trying to sabotage it.

The first organisation within the Committee to throw off its false anti-revisionist mask was the so-called 'Communist Action Group' (CAG).

CAG had welcomed the formation of the Committee in its journal in the following terms:

"The 'Partisan' group put forward some proposals some time back for the formation of a pre-party committee to be called 'The Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party'. That committee is now being built with the active participation of the 'CAG' and also the 'Communist League'. The three groups have much that divides them, though it is significant that these divisions have not so far emerged as an obstacle to joint interventions in current campaigns. Soon, this unity will be raised to a higher level with the publication of 'Insurrection', a unity organ. The 'CMLP' has also created a 'Marxist-Leninist Research Bureau', whose job it is guide research into issues which remain unclear to Marxist-Leninists'. ('Communist Action' (organ of the 'Communist Action Group'), Issue 16).

But shortly after the above had appeared, 'CAG' resigned from the Committee

" ... in a cursory late night telephone call from one of their members... . Despite the secretary of the 'CMLP' writing to 'CAG' numerous times, they have refused ... to give any reason for their departure". ('International Marxist-Leninist Review', Volume 1, No. 1 (Spring 1999); p. 13).

In these circumstances, it seems clear that 'CAG' took the step of withdrawing from the Committee in the hope and belief that some members of the Committee would be so demoralised by this early 'split' that the Committee would fall to pieces.

However, this hope and belief were unfounded. Instead, after withdrawing from the Committee, 'CAG' joined forces with a Turkish Guevarist group, a union which fell apart in a matter of weeks. Since then, 'CAG' has been carrying on a campaign against the 'NCMLP' on the Internet.

A few weeks after the above events, two individual members of the Committee -- Harry Powell and Ted Talbot -- walked out of a meeting of the Committee in the presence of a fraternal visitor from India, and later submitted a joint letter of resignation. This letter gave as the chief reason for their resignation

" ... the lack of ideological unity among the Committee members". (Harry Powell & Ted Talbot: Letter to NCMLP, cited in: 'International Marxist-Leninist Review', Volume 1, No. 1 (Spring 1999); p. 85).

although, as the 'International Marxist-Leninist Review' points out,

" ... members had not found differences to be insurmountable obstacles to joint work". ('International Marxist-Leninist Review', Volume 1, No.1 (Spring 1999); p. 85).

As though fate were mocking the sort of hypocritical talk about the need for ideological unity indulged in by Powell and Talbot, the 'National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party' continues to function, while the 'united front' between Powell and Talbot was short-lived. It broke up as soon as the Kosova crisis began, with Powell supporting both the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) and NATO military intervention, and Talbot opposing both!

Powell correctly supports both the claim of the Kosovar Albanians to self-determination and the Kosova Liberation Army. But unfortuately he links this with the demand that

" ... people in NATO countries should pressurise the NATO leaders to send ground troops into Kosovo to protect the people there" (Harry Powell: 'On the Kosovo Crisis -- and the Left's Response'; p. 3).

Powell admits that

" ... the primary concern of the NATO imperialists is not the welfare of the people in the Balkans but the strategic military and political interests of the Western imperialist powers. This is of course true". (Harry Powell: ibid.; p. 2).

but claims that

" ... there are occasions when it is right for revolutionary-minded people to give tactical support to imperialist governments". (Harry Powell: ibid.; p. 3)

citing as an example the alleged fact that, at the time of the Munich crisis in 1938,

" ... the Comintern urged the British and French governments to oppose Hitler". (Harry Powell: ibid.; p. 3-4).

But the Comintern did not urge the British and French governments to bilateral military intervention against Germany. It urged them to accept the offer of the then socialist Soviet Union for a collective security pact. As the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maksim Litvinov, told a press conference in March 1938:

"The Soviet Government is conscious of the obligations devolving on it from the Covenant of the League, the Briand-Kellogg Pact and its treaties of mutual assistance concluded with France and Czechoslovakia. I am, therefore, in a position to state on its behalf that it is prepared, as hitherto, to participate in collective action, the scope of which should have as its aim the stopping of the further development of aggression and the elimination of the increased danger of a new world slaughter". (Maksim Litvinov: Press Statement of 17 March 1938, in: W. P. & Zelda Coates: 'A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations'; London; 1943; p. 585).

And when, in the following year, the British and French imperialists did declare war on Germany, the Comintern characterised this as an unjust imperialist war on both sides:

"In its character and essence, the present war is, on the part of both warring sides, an imperialist, unjust war". (Georgi Dimitrov: 'The Tasks of the Working Class in the War', in: Jane Degras (Ed.): 'The Communist International: 1919-1943: Documents', Volume 3; London; 1965; p. 449).

Furthermore, Powell's whole case for supporting NATO military intervention in Kosova rests on the assumption that the aims of NATO there coincide with those of the Kosovar Albanians. But this asssumption is untrue. While the aims of the latter are

" ... self-determination", (Harry Powell: op. cit.; p. 6).

that is,

" ... the right to secession", (Vladimir I Lenin: 'On the Right of Nationa to Self- Determination', in: 'Selected Works'. Volume 4; London; 1943; p. 290).

from Yugoslavia, NATO's agreement with the Miloshevich government of June 1999 contains

" ... no mention of a referendum", (National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party: 'The Betrayal of the Kosovars'; p.2).

as agreed in the earlier Rambouillet agreement with the Miloshevich government of March 1999. so that

" ... WHEN THE INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING FORCE WITHDRAWS FROM YUGOSLAVIA, AS SOME DAY IT EVENTUALLY MUST, UNDER THE JUNE 1999 AGREEMENT THE PEOPLE OF KOSOVA WILL BE ONCE AGAIN AT THE MERCY OF THE BELGRADE RACISTS, TO BE DEALT WITH AS A PURELY 'INTERNAL PROBLEM'" (National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party: ibid.; p. 2).

The failure of virtually all those who regard themselves as 'on the Left' to endorse Powell's pro-imperialist, pro-NATO stand in support of military intervention in Kosova is one healthy aspect of the present international situation.

But to the revisionist Powell, this healthy aspect implies only the 'end', the 'final collapse', of the Left:

For his part, Talbot is, of course, correct to repudiate Powell's support for imperialist intervention in Kosova. but his opposition to self-determination for the Kosovars places him as far from Marxism-Leninism as Powell, even if in a different direction.

In this connection, Talbot associates himself with the Trotskyist Phil Sharpe, whom he describes as the only

" ... mature Marxist' (Ted Talbot: Letter to Tony Clark (Undated); p. 2).

in Nottingham (apart, of course, from himself!).

Sharpe maintains that

" ... Marxism has never unconditionally upheld the right of nations to self-determination". (Phil Sharpe: 'The Opportunist Political Trajectory of Harry Powell' (June 1999); p. 3).

In support of this claim, Sharpe quotes Rosa Luxemburg, saying:

"Rosa Luxemburg questioned whether there can be a war of national emancipation in a world dominated by imperialism". (Phil Sharpe: ibid.; p. 3).

But the 'National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party' is an organisation, not of Luxemburgists, but of Marxist- Leninists. And Lenin denounced Luxemburg's view as

" ... absolute nonsense". (Vladimir I. Lenin: 'On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination', Indeed, the authoritative Marxist-Leninist work on the national question is Stalin's 'Marxism and the National Question', about which Lenin wrote to Maksim Gorky:

"We have a wonderful Georgian here who has sat down to write a big article for 'Prosveshcheniye' (Enlightenment -- Ed) after collecting all the Austrian and other material". (Vladimir I, Lenin: Letter to Maksim Gorky (February 1913), in: Josef V. Stalin: 'Works', Volume 2; Moscow: 1953; p. 417- 18).

And Stalin's support for the self-determination of nations is unconditional. He writes:

"Social-democracy in all countries ... proclaims the right of nations to self-determination... In fighting for the right of nations to self- determiination, the aim of Social-democracy is to put an end to the policy of national oppression". (Josef V. Stalin: 'Marxism and the National Question', in: 'Works', Volume 2; Moscow; 1953; p. 321, 322).

Kosova at present forms, politically, part of Serbia. The question as to whether the Kosovars form part of the Serbian nation is simply determined. If the Kosovars do not speak the language of Serbia, which is Serbo-Croat, they do not form part of the Serbian nation. As Stalin says:

"There is no nation which at one and the same time speaks several languages". (Josef V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 304).

But

" ... ethnic Albanians ... make up nine-tenths of Kosova's population", ('New Encyclopaedia Britannica', Volume 6; Chicago; 1998; p. 969).

so that clearly the people of Kosova do not form part of the Serbian nation and have the right to self-determination.

As far back as the 1960s, the Party of Labour of Albania was asserting that the Yugoslav policy of national oppression of the ethnic Albanians had been continuing since the 1940s:

But, according to Talbot, these sixty years of Yugoslav genocide have not given rise to any genuine movement of national liberation in Kosova, and what appears to be the military wing of this national liberation -- the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) -- is only an artificial creation of NATO! He speaks of the

" ... NATO imperialists and their KLA Mafia stooges", (Ted Talbot: op. cit.: p. 1). and depicts the KLA in the same way as imperialists have always -- at least at first -- described national liberation movements, as

" ... gangsters, ... really violent and evil people, ... the world's largest drug running outfit . . ., people (engaged in -- Ed.) smuggling and white slave prostitution". (Ted Talbot: ibid.; p. 1).

But Talbot's theory that the KLA is merely an artificial creation of the NATO imperialists cannot be reconciled with the fact that the aims of NATO differ from those of the KLA (see pages 3-4).

Talbot produces not a shred of evidence in support of his allegations against the KLA, and these allegations must, therefore, be dismissed as unfounded political slander.

Talbot expresses the belief that the NCMLP will remain a small organisation

" ... because that is the whole structural impetus of the thing". (Ted Talbot: ibid.; p. 3).

Whatever this may mean, Talbot has already published his advice on how the NCMLP ought to increase its size in his article entitled 'Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?. The way forward, he suggests, is to repudiate Lenin and Stalin and the materialist conception of history! The NCMLP has already published this article in its journal 'The International Marxist-Leninist Review', Volume 1, No. 1 for Spring 1999), together with its considered reply decisively rejecting Talbot's advice. It is the aim of the NCPML to build a Marxist-Leninist Party, not another revisionist party!. But in other ways too, Talbot's campaign against the 'NCMLP' is qualitatively different from that of Powell, He accuses the 'NCMLP' of

" ... supporting imperialism in Kosovo", (Ted Talbot: op. cit.; p. 2). 7

that is, of supporting the

" ... sending of some sort of UN protection force on the ground into Kosova (sic)". (Ted Talbot: ibid.; p. 2).

Talbot's 'sic' is apparently intended to rebuke the NCMLP for its 'ignorance' of the fact that the official name of the province is Kosovo. But since the NCMLP, unlike Talbot, recognises the right of Kosova to self-determination, it would hardly be logical for it to employ the name given to it by the Serbian occupiers!

Talbot bases his charge that the NCMLP supported imperialist intervention in Kosova on a passage from its leaflet 'GENOCIDE IN KOSOVA', which denounces the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia and declares it to be contrary to interational law. The leaflet goes on to say:

"There are other legitimate alternatives (i.e., alternative courses of intervention which would at least not be contrary to international law -- NCMLP) such as . . . the sending of some form of UN protection force in the ground into Kosova".

Talbot proceeds to put his own interpretation on this passage, namely:

"One must presume that the NCMLP agree with . . the sending of some form of UN protection force on the ground into Kosova".
(Ted Talbot: 'Blandinistas bite back', p. 2).

Talbot is, of couse, free to 'presume' that the earth is flat, if he wishes to do so. But that his 'presumption' of the line of the 'NCLMP' has not the slightest validity is clearly shown by an earlier passage in the same leaflet, which he refrains from quoting.

Talbot's claim that the NCMLP supported imperialist military intervention in Kosova is thus an outright lie, and this fact cannot be disguised by kindergarten insults.

Talbot's attacks on the 'NCMLP' thus have nothing whatever to do with a search for truth, which all honest Marxist-Leninists pursue, whatever their differences may be.

Conclusion.

THE 'NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY' COULD HARDLY WISH FOR ANY BETTER TESTIMONIAL THAN TO BE ATTACKED BY REVISIONISTS LIKE THESE.