First Published: The Communist, Vol. IV, No. 11, April 24, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Is the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist (CPML) a leading center for genuine revolutionaries who have not been united in a vanguard party of the proletariat?
The CPML says that it is: “The CPML has provided these forces with a leading center around which to rally. ...” To facilitate this process they call for a new Unity Committee based on the model of the Organizing Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party (OC).
We reject this call. The CPML is not a leading center of our movement and its Unity Committee will not contribute significantly to the struggle for party unity. A leading center must demonstrate its leadership in line and practice. At this time, it must do so above all in relation to party building. But party declaring is not party building and the CPML has yet to take up the tasks of party building in a serious way.
To begin with the CPML has given no leadership to the principled political struggle to unite the scattered forces of the US movement. In summing up the work of the Organizing Committee for a Marxist Leninist Party, the CPML wrote recently that before unity could be forged, it was necessary to work “for over a year to consolidate the unity trend around its common line and program” (THE CALL, March 20, 1978). Marxist-Leninists are entitled to ask: where are the results of that struggle? What are the issues around which there were differences? How were those differences resolved? What were the majority and minority views on programmatic questions? These are matters which can provide training for the movement as a whole and which should have been carried out openly in full view of the movement. But the OC and the CPML have provided none of this.
The CPML writes that “each group made significant contributions to the OC” (THE CALL, March 20, 1978). But diplomatic flattery has no place here and we do not take such things on faith. Where is evidence of these contributions to the line or program or practice of the CPML?
One of two things – either there was no struggle in the OC and it provided no principled basis for party unity, or there was struggle but it was kept behind closed doors. The question of principle is whether overcoming disunity requires open political struggle over differences. We reject bureaucratic practices which carry out the struggle over differences in secret and we reject unprincipled conciliation. Neither can organize the whole of our movement no matter how many times the process is repeated. We reject practice which pretends to forge the unity of the proletarian vanguard in the US – from Hawaii to New York and from Alaska to Florida – without exposing a single major difference or point of struggle within the ranks of those who are supposed to constitute the vanguard. This makes a mockery of the struggle for unity. It reflects the CPML’s failure to analyze the conditions for our disunity and the basis to overcome it.
Mao wrote that if there were no ideological struggles to overcome contradictions in the party, the party’s life would come to an end. We can add that where there is no open ideological struggle to overcome disunity, the party’s life will not begin!
The disunity of our movement has a material basis in the fragmentation of the class struggle of the proletariat under conditions of capitalist production. We are able to transform conditions of disunity into the class conscious unity of a vanguard party through the conscious dynamic role of revolutionaries. Opportunism on the other hand functions to perpetuate disunity in our ranks and to keep us divided. The CPML cannot claim to be a leading center of the struggle for party unity until it has provided leadership in the struggle against those tendencies which perpetuate our fragmentation. This they have not done because they have never known where to look.
In order to win the masses to our side, we must defeat the influence of modern revisionism among the class and its allies as well as in our own ranks. But within the Marxist-Leninist movement, and under the cover of anti-revisionism, Marxist and bourgeois lines also contend. In order to consolidate the vanguard we must defeat trends of petty bourgeois opportunism which undermine the struggle against modern revisionism.
The main form of petty bourgeois opportunism that must be defeated is the right opportunist tendency to justify theoretical backwardness, political narrowness and organizational amateurishness.
For years the October League diverted honest comrades from the struggle against these errors with its line that “left” opportunist sectarianism was the main obstacle to party unity. In turn, the OC took the position that the struggle against “left” sectarianism had prepared the ideological conditions for the US party. Although in declaring itself the party, the CPML formally took the position that right opportunism had become the main danger (because of the defeat of “left” opportunism), it has never given a comprehensive analysis of why this is so. As a result, they are unable to explain how the party they established in June of 1977 put an end to the circle period. Instead of presenting facts and evidence, they make hollow assertions. Recent history is made to conform to their stereotype of what history should have been if it had followed the line of the CPML. Thus in “Learn from the Organizing Committee” (The CALL, March 20, 1978), the CPML writes: “The OC carried us out of the period characterized mainly by the small, local communist circle,” and out of the period where Marxist-Leninists were “small and scattered, primitive in their work and easily penetrable by the agents of the police and FBI.” Again Marxist Leninists are entitled to ask what evidence there is of this transformation and how it took place. The CPML cannot explain how its struggle against opportunism provided the revolutionary training and experience required to transform the scattered circles and disunited organizations of our movement into a vanguard revolutionary party.
What the CPML does explain is that “all the groups that forged the Party showed a serious attitude towards party building and a genuine desire to put an end to the backwardness of the small circle spirit.” (THE CALL, March 20, 1978). At least this is consistent. Previously, when “left” opportunism was the main danger, US Marxist Leninists could not form a party, according to the OL, because scattered groups of revolutionaries were sectarian and did not want to unite. In that case, all we needed for a party were some “genuine” revolutionaries with a “serious” attitude and a “genuine” desire.
Unfortunately for the CPML, however, overcoming the fragmentation of our movement, which has a material foundation, requires more than a serious attitude and genuine desire. It takes an open and principled struggle against opportunism and a step by step process of revolutionary training.
Because the CPML has never identified the main obstacles to party unity, it could not serve as a leading center to unite the scattered circles of our movement. As a result, in practice it has failed to forge the unity of significant sectors of that movement. Nonetheless, in the face of this, it invented a “unity trend.”
This raises a question with important consequences not only for the policy and activity of Marxist-Leninists, but also for our appraisal of the ability of a revolutionary organization to deal with facts and sum them up in an honest way: is our movement characterized by disunity and fragmentation or by unity?
No doubt it is possible to see a “unity trend” if you limit your perspective to 10 local collectives, over half of which were formed for the purpose of joining the OC, and some of which were formed with the participation of OL cadres. When the CPML concludes that the period “characterized mainly by the small, local communist circle” has been overcome, this is stereotyped party writing divorced from the facts. The CPML also invents facts to fit a preset mold when it says that “the initiative taken to form the OC in 1976 was in accord with the sentiments of the masses” or that “class conscious workers supported the unity efforts” (THE CALL, March 20, 1978). It did not happen that way and in spite of the CPML our movement remains disunited, fragmented and without a vanguard or leading center.
The question of whether you see a unity trend or fragmentation is a measure of how seriously you take the task of struggling for party unity. It is political narrowness to consider that 10 collectives plus a national organization constitute a “unity trend”. Mao said:
By unity we mean uniting with those who have differences with you, who look down on you or who show little respect for you, who have had a bone to pick with you or waged struggles against you and at whose hands you have suffered. As for those who see eye to eye with you, you are already united with them, so the question of unity doesn’t arise. The trouble here is with those who have yet to be united. (PARTY UNITY AND PARTY TRADITIONS, SW, v. V, p. 318)
In order to unite with those who have yet to be united, the CPML will have to propose more than a warmed over version of the OC.
In spite of formal initiatives, the CPML has taken an essentially passive attitude towards the struggle for party unity. They have launched a unity call, but taken few steps to implement it. “If you are genuine,” we are told, “you will come forward.” In December there is a promise to elaborate plans in a few weeks, but there is nothing after several months. Those steps which are taken are discretely chosen and behind the scenes, rather than open to the movement. How is this different from the National Continuations Committee?
Even the carelessness with which the article “Learn From the Organizing Committee” (THE CALL, March 20, 1978) is written reflects the low priority these new unity efforts have for the CPML.
The call for the new Unity Committee itself exposes the passivity of the CPML’s approach to party building. In that call (THE CALL, December 26, 1977), the CPML explains the conditions which favor the struggle for party unity at this time. The history of Lenin’s ISKRA organization teaches that in a pre-party period it is the role of a vanguard organization or a leading center to actively prepare the conditions for party unity. Lenin identified two fundamental conditions which remain valid: the necessity to draw lines of demarcation through open political struggle and the necessity to train a network of professional revolutionaries capable of guiding nationwide political agitation.
For the CPML, however, favorable conditions for party unity occur spontaneously and independently of a leading center.
For example, the CPML identifies the following as conditions favoring party unity:
1) a growing unity trend among Marxist-Leninists internationally,
2) the growing war danger,
3) deepening capitalist crisis,
4) the rise of the strike movement and a turn of workers to Marxism,
5) the self exposure of the RCP and the Guardian, and
6) the self exposure of the Soviet social imperialists due to the sharpening of contradictions internationally (THE CALL, Dec. 26, 1977).
As for the first point, an international unity trend, this also substitutes stereotypes for reality. It is true that divisions in the international communist movement have led to a deeper consolidation among many Marxist-Leninists, yet overall, the sharpening of differences has left a residue of confusion, and vacillation still far from overcome.
What is particularly striking about the CPML’s formulation of the others is that none depends on the active intervention of a vanguard organization and leading center. All are conditions which make it imperative to take up our party building tasks. In themselves, however, without the conscious element, they do not take us one step closer to party unity. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks talked about favorable conditions for a party congress, they had in mind primarily conditions brought about by revolutionaries themselves.
The CPML’s view reflects sentiments of right opportunist passivity in the face of conditions which evolve spontaneously.
This is consistent with the weaknesses which we have exposed in the CPML’s proposals – failure to take up open political struggle for unity, failure to take up the struggle against opportunism required to overcome the obstacles to unity, failure to forge the unity of significant sectors of the movement, and a passivity in the face of the struggle for unity.
Comrades, let us bring an end to this period of superficial party declaring and earnestly take up the tasks of party building. The initiative lies in our hands. Are there still those who would stifle open debate? We welcome it! Are there still those who ignore the struggle against opportunism? We will hold it up to national view! Are there still those who want to restrict party building to a convenient corner of our movement? We insist on the active intervention of every comrade!
We open the pages of THE COMMUNIST to that struggle!
We welcome opposing views on the burning questions of our movement!
Let every comrade take up this fight for a single, common Iskra type newspaper as a vehicle to prepare the conditions for a new vanguard party of the US proletariat!