The current polemics against opportunism and revisionism going on in China, against the capitalist roader’s distortion of Chairman Mao’s three directives are very instructive for us. The capitalist roader preached that all three directives (studying the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and combating and preventing revisionism; stability and unity, and pushing the national economy forward) are equal and have the same importance. Contrary to that, Chairman Mao said:
What ’taking the three directives as the key link’! Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle; class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it. (Peking Review, #14, 1976, p. 6)
The method that the capitalist roaders use to push this bourgeois line is precisely eclecticism.
This is the method of the Menshevik line on organization. The Mensheviks of PRRWO and RWL scream “there is no overall correct line”, “all organizations in the revolutionary wing are even,” “all have aspects of the correct line but no one has the overall correct line.” This is to deny the question of representatives of correct and incorrect lines, between right and wrong within the revolutionary wing , pushing the wing forward through the resolution of the struggle between them. Lenin’s truth is always concrete. PRRWO’s view denies the concrete relationship between different line struggles, the concrete history of struggle against the RCP and then the OL, as well as the concrete identification of ’left’ deviations as being the main danger. Within the wing, in putting forward “all have correct aspects and no one has the overall most correct line”, these opportunists are only putting forward the notorious line of “on the one hand and on the other hand” without laying out the principal aspects of anything.
To give a historical example to comrades about the nature of eclecticism, this eclectic line was employed once by Bukharin, Trotsky’s buffer, in their struggle against Lenin’s correct line on the Trade Union Question. Bukharin said that the trade union is a “school of communism on the one hand, an economic apparatus and state administration on the other.” Lenin decisively defeated this eclectic line by pointing out that dialectics, in contrast to formal logic, doesn’t merely point out various aspects and treat them as equals. He pointed out that there must be a’ main current, or trend, or a main function for trade unions. That “questions of practical business” must not be confused with trend issues. Other questions flow from it, though they also exist. Lenin said “Why is Bukharin’s reasoning no more than inert and empty eclecticism? It is because he does not even try to make an independent analysis, from his own standpoint either of the whole course of the current controversy (as Marxism, that is, dialectical logic, unconditionally demands) or of the whole approach to the question, the whole presentation – the whole trend of the presentation, if you will – of the question at the present time and in these concrete circumstances. You do not see Bukharin doing that at all! His approach is one of pure abstraction: he makes no attempt at concrete study, and takes bits and pieces from Zinoviev and Trotsky. That is eclecticism last emphasis added ...
Bukharin does not make any analysis for himself, nor does he produce a shred of evidence to prove why it is that we should consider the first two ’facets’ of the question or object, instead of the third, the fourth, the fifth, etc. That is why his group’s theses are an eclectic soap bubble. His presentation of the ’school-apparatus’ relationship is fundamentally eclectic and wrong. The only way to view this question in the right light is to descend from empty abstractions to the concrete, that is, the present issue.”(“Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin”, LCW, Vol. 32. On Trade Unions, pp. 450-451)
That is precisely the question here. First of all, the main question, which both PRRWO and RWL are playing hide and seek with in the communist movement, is their Menshevik line on organization. There is where the whole struggle flared up.
WVO upholds and puts into practice a Bolshevik line on the organizational question following Chairman Mao’s teaching “The correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line decides everything.” WVO is pleased to be “slaughtered” and stands for unconditional liquidation, once sufficient agreement is achieved on ideological and political line. It is the cowardly Mensheviks infested with bourgeois ideology who are scared and start to tremble!
RWL and PRRWO attacked our “Party Building and Anti-Revisionist Theoretical Premises” article, looking around for something to justify their fear and spirit of hesitancy. Since they couldn’t defend their Menshevik line on organization, they had to poke around for some other “line of demarcation.”
Their Menshevik line on organization unleashed a flood of opportunism, which has drowned their originally correct lines on fundamental questions of the character of the party and the necessity to build the party on the ideological plane.
But since the question of ideology is being brought up again in order to justify their opportunist zigzags to reverse the verdict, we are glad to engage in the struggle. As Lenin once remarked to the faction of supporters of Otzovists, “Stop this hypocrisy, gentlemen! You fought on what you thought was your strongest ground and you suffered defeat.” Now the present-day Mensheviks are whining and screaming desperately, looking for words to play on, instead of looking at the essence. “Concealing their ideological kin, afraid to declare their real platform, the new faction is trying to fill up the gaps in its ideological stock-in-trade by borrowing words from the vocabulary of old splits.” (Lenin, “The Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-Building,” LCW, Vol.16.) And now PRRWO and RWL are borrowing the words of the worst marsh force –“hegemonism” – The Guardian – and using them against WVO. Since we’re taking up all their positions, and particularly their Menshevik line on organization, we would like to point out that there is an essential link between these two questions, as we have partially shown and will continue to elaborate.
Another opportunist line of the present wing is their claim that the right danger is the main danger for PRRWO, RWL and ATM. In order to cover up their “left” facade, they do not look at the concrete history of various organizations in the wing, particularly the leading trend, PRRWO, and try to discern what has historically been the main danger. In refuting WVO’s position that the main danger in the wing is “left,” they cry that that’s incorrect. What holds as the main danger for the international communist movement, what holds for the communist movement nationally, must hold for the wing. Therefore (!!!) the main danger in the wing is “right.” This, of course, is another one of those evasive attempts to deny the concrete and specific history of struggle, concrete and specific differences and maintain the Menshevik and opportunist position that “no organization has the overall most correct line,” “all have aspects of the correct line,” etc. They are afraid to seek out and trace what concretely have been the struggles between WVO and PRRWO, the concrete questions of right and wrong and the concrete development and changes in PRRWO’s line around these different political questions, be they Trade Union, United Front from above and below, strategy and tactics, the community control issue, the Busing issue, or the “composite” issue of the OL and its significance as an ideological and political tendency within the communist movement. The Mensheviks can only now yell and scream “WVO hegemonism” but they cannot speak of the concretes and particulars of the development of the line, of the line struggles, the key aspects of the lines,’ and this is all covered up by their repetition of “the right danger is the main danger.”!