[PRWC Party Documents] Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade, April 22, 1972

Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade

Apologia for U.S. Imperialism

Basahin sa Pilipino

Amado Guerrero

April 22, 1972

Revolutionary School of Mao Tse Tung Thought, Communist Party of the Philippines

(This essay originally appeared in the Ang Bayan special issue of November 15, 1971 under the the title "Pomeroy's Apologia for U.S imperialism".)

American Neo-colonialism is an attempt to confuse readers about the nature and development of U.S. imperialism with worn-out social democratic arguments. This book is an apologia for U.S. imperialism, particularly for the direct U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines from 1899 to 1946. It is an incontrovertible proof of the author's role as an agent of U.S. imperialism.

Pomeroy's thesis is that the colonial possession of the Philippines was unnecessary and unprofitable for U.S. imperialism. In maintaining this thesis, he employs the method of jumbling sham anti-imperialist statements, wishful thinking and prevarication against historical facts to futilely impugn Lenin's theory on imperialism and whitewash the exploitation and opression inflicted by U.S. imperialism on the people.

Despite its title, the book does not go at length into any direct discussion of neo-colonialism. As a matter of fact, it deals mainly with the beginnings of U.S. direct colonial rule in the Philppines and with the differences of opinion in U.S. imperialist circles regarding the Philippine colony. It is only towards the end of the book that Pomeroy leaps over to 1970 with certain generalizations derived from an empiricist and lopsided view of events at the turn of the century. He presents the Philippines as an example of a country, colonized to become profitable for a time and then semi-colonized to become profitable for an indefinite period of time for U.S. imperialism.

The revisionist scoundrel observe that U.S. imperialism has consistently fashioned "non-aggressive neo-colonial techniques" which prove to be more profitable than direct colonial domination. he maliciously equates the term "neo-colonialism" to Kautsky's "supra-imperialism" a "phase when wars shall cease", "a phase of the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital".

The book strains to show the background of this "neo-colonialism" by tracing the contradictions in the ranks of the U.S. imperialists themselves: between the "aggressive expansionists" and the "reluctant expansionists" or between "military authority" and "civial authority". The purpose of the revisionist scoundrel is not to expose and oppose the counter-revolutionary dual tactics of an inherently aggressive and bloodsucking imperialist power. It is to peddle the false idea that contradictions in the ranks of the U.S. imperialists themselves are principal to all other contradictions and that all international developments results essentially from the wishes of the imperialists themselves, not from the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution nor between aggression and counter-aggression. It is to peddle the false idea that U.S.imperialism ultimately becomes peaceful due to the "sensibleness" of certain imperialists and that aggression and colonial rule are merely the "preferred policy" of some imperialists which is "reluctantly" adopted at certain periods.

What is deliberately slurred over is the fact that it is in the nature of U.S. monopoly capitalism to seize colonies, spheres of influence, sources of raw materials, markets, markets and field of investments, as much as is it can. As did Kautsky, Pomeroy substitutes the question of form for the question of substance in his ridiculous posture of seeking light from the imperialists themselves, particularly from the "reluctant" and "non-militarist" ones like Jacob Schurman or Andrew Carnegie. On the basis of his obscurantist presumptions, he claims:

There is reason to believe that if the policy advocated by Jacob Schurman and others early in 1899 had been followed, the tragedy of a cruel war of suppression that extended over the better part of a decade might have been avoided.

Chairman Mao teaches us:

The only ones who crave war and do not want peace are certain monopoly capitalist groups in a handful of capitalist countries which depend on aggression their profuits.

The great Lenin said:

Domination, and the violence that is associated with it, such are the relationship that are typical of the "latest phase of capitalist development"; that is what inevitably had to result, from the formation of all-powerful economic monopolies.

To lose sight of the aggressive and bloodsucking nature of U.S. imperialism is to fall for its wiles. It is to deny the unremitting colonial ambitions of U.S. imperialism during the last seven decades and the intensified imperialist wars of aggression in the present epoch when the imperialist powers do not only wrangle among themselves for economic advantage but also have to face the tidal wave of socialist and new-democratic revolutions that deprive them of areas for exploitation.

Chairman Mao has pointed out:

Make trouble, fail, make trouble again, fail again ... till their doom; that is the logic of the imperialist and all reactionaries the world over in dealing with the people's cause, and they will never go against this logic. This is a Marxist law. When we say "imperialism is ferociuos", we mean that its nature will never change, that the imperialist will never lay down their butcher knives, that they will never become Buddhas, till their doom.

Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again... till their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic. This is another Marxist law. The Russian people's revolution followed this law, and so has the Chinese people's revolution.