[Marxism] The sad and contradictory life of Wilfred Burchett

[David Picón Álvarez]

I'd like to take issue with a bit about this article:
"Burchett, the anti-nuclear war campaigner, was not repelled and in 1963 
took Mao's side, declaring him "100 per cent right. The fact that some 
high-ranking
Australians have been paid to think otherwise only confirms what I have 
thought for a long time", by which he meant the CPA leadership. Stripped of 
Marxist
rhetoric, the Sino-Soviet split was about Stalinism: Mao condemned 
Khrushchev for revisionism, code for his repeated denunciations of Stalin's 
policies
and crimes; Mao reaffirmed, and practised, Stalinism."

My impression, although I'm not very well read on this matter, is that the 
split wasn't driven by differences about stalinism. This seems an idealistic 
error, in that as far as I know, the split was driven by material 
circumstances, whatever the purported ideological excuses were. We don't 
take the word of capitalist states when they claim they do X "for freedom" 
or whatever, so I'd be also critical of the word of claimants to the label 
"workers' state" when they do similar things that appear driven by national 
interest.

--David.