Issued: July 1, 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The New England Regional Steering Committee (RSC)[1] was formed in August of 1979 to lead the development, of a regional center in N.E. At the time, the OC forces in N.E. consisted almost entirely of members of circles[2]: For The People (FTP), Boston Organising Committee (BOC), New Unity (NU) and the Red Boston Study Group (RBSG – those associated with the Theoretical Review in Boston). The circles and the handful of independent OC members were overwhelmingly white.
It took the RSC 9 months, until June of 1980, to hold the first membership meetings of the OC.[3] The composition of the OC at these meetings (that is, today) is only slightly broader than it was in August. In particular, the new members of the CC are almost entirely white. Virtually no progress, then, has been made in reaching out to the broader tendency, especially to national minority comrades.
Yet, national minority M-Lists are among the most advanced forces in our tendency: both in terms of their grasp of M-Lism and their leading role in the class struggle. Historically, they’ve been excluded from the organized forms in the tendency (circles, the OC) due to the racism of these organizations. The RSC’s practice in U.S. continued the error of white chauvinism and served to block the participation of national minority comrades. The RSC followed a federationist and profoundly racist line.
The main manifestation of the RSC’s racism was its failure to attempt to build political unity with national minority comrades. We did virtually no outreach work in our first nine months of existence. In particular, we did nothing to reach out to national minority comrades.
The root of this error was, in the first place, a racist blindspot as to their existence. When we thought of the tendency that we wanted to unite, we thought of the 200 comrades at the December forum the RSC held with the NNMLC. But 99% of those comrades wore white.
At the first RSC meeting in August 1979, an RSC member made a presentation on the state of the tendency in N.E. The presentation completely ignored national minority forces. The tendency was seen as the predominantly white circles, some predominantly white M-lists active in tendency life (those who attend forums, etc.), and the rectification forces and other organised (and predominantly white) forces standing outside of the OC.
Soon after, we recognised the blatant racism of this view. We started recognizing in words the existence of other forces and the need to draw them in. But, we only paid lip service to the task. We never actually did it. We continued to treat national minority comrades as if they were invisible.
For the first few months of the RSC’s existence we paid literally no attention to national minority outreach. In November of 1979, however, we declared that outreach to national minority comrades was our priority for outreach. We adopted a proposal for outreach to them. Yet we never implemented it! We were only paying lip service to the task.
A careful analysis of our November proposal will reveal the racism of our whole approach to the question. The proposal does not start with an analysis of why few national minority M-Lists are in or close to the OC (due to racism). At the time we were Paying lip service to racism as the cause, but we never specifically targetted white OC members’ failure to raise party-building and theoretical questions with national minority comrades as the central manifestation of the racism. We had no real understanding at all of white chauvinism in the OC. For us, it was just this blank space on our future discussion agenda. We agreed in the abstract that the OC’s predominantly white composition was due to racism, because the only alternative was to blame it on political backwardness among national minority comrades. We knew that the latter would be a racist line. It was actually the line that we held, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to admit it. So we reserved space on our agenda for discussion of “racism in the communist movement”, although we had no idea what such a discussion would look like.
Our only conception of “doing outreach in the context of the struggle against racism” was that we should have a discussion of racism first, to “set the context”, and then do the outreach. We had no idea how the content of this discussion would relate to outreach work.
This discussion of racism in the communist movement was not to happen for several months. But we knew it would be wrong to do nothing about outreach to national minority comrades for several months. So our November plan called for starting this outreach now anyway. In other words, we consciously decided that outreach to national minority forces did not have to proceed in the context of struggle against racism in the communist movement. We decided that we could dispense with this struggle and do good outreach work anyway. The racism of our outreach proposal shows how completely false this was (not to mention our complete failure to actually carry it out).
Here is what our November plan called for. The plan immediately jumps into a discussion of where national minority M-Lists are. First off, the plan only deals with Boston. The assumption here is that there are no national minority comrades to reach out to in the rest of N.E. This is clearly white chauvinist – but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the plan for Boston, there’s some general discussion of where national minority comrades are at politically. But the main focus is what mass organisations they’re in. This is the error of locking at national minority comrades solely in terms of mass practice, not their politics or theoretical role.
This is the central racist error made in relation to uniting the tendency. It’s rooted in the racist myth that national minority people aren’t thinkers. This is part of the same white chauvinist ideology that is current outside of the communist movement, in sports, white chauvinism says that national minority people are good as football players, but not as coaches, in the communist movement, white chauvinism says that they’re good at practice, but not at theory. The white chauvinist line holds that national minority people are more emotional and “closer to nature”, it holds, that they are stupid, while whites are more intelligent. This line is clearly reflected in the RSC’s November outreach plan.[4]
In addition, virtually all the mass organizations listed in the November plan were national minority organizations or anti-racist groups, This view ghettoizes national minority comrades to organizing “their own kind” and/or to anti-racist work, it doesn’t recognize that national minority people are active in all kinds of struggles (trade union, anti-imperialist, theoretical struggle in the communist movement, etc.).
The focus on mass organizations quickly leads to the conclusion in the plan that the way to do outreach is through doing mass work together with national minority comrades. So the direction is to get OC members to get involved in the coalitions.
In the first place, this is an opportunist view because we didn’t see having comrades take up this work because of the importance of the struggle. It was only to recruit out of them. But secondly, the racist view at the root here is that you can only unite with national minority comrades on the basis of practice. You can’t approach national minority M-Lists directly on party-building.
Barely beneath the surface, we held the racist view that party-building and theoretical questions are “too hard” for national minority comrades. They’re no capable of directly addressing them. Instead we have to unite with them on “easier” questions – question of practice.
The RSC looked at white and national minority comrades in a fundamentally unequal way here. This is demonstrated by the fact that nobody on the RSC advocated we do outreach to whites on the basis of practice.
In addition, the plan discussed coordinating outreach to these national minority activists with cadre organisations. Actually, the 2 processes need to be kept clearly separate. The implication of coordinating the 2 is that recruitment to the cadre organization is a stepping stone to the CC because the cadre organization is mere practice-oriented.
Although we never would state so openly, the implication is that national minority comrades would join cadre organizations and focus on practical work. Here they would follow the “orders” of the predominantly white leadership of the organization. They won’t be involved in developing the political line of the organization. To take part in the OC right away would be “too hard” for them. At some later point they will have learned enough from their “superior” white comrades that they can also join the OC (but certainly not to play a leadership role).
Practice will “be important in attracting advanced workers and activists to M-Lism. But once attracted, national minority comrades and advanced white workers are not inferior to white petit bourgeois M-Lists. They too can be won to party-building and. directly to the OC. In fact, the OC has a much lower level of unity and doesn’t require its members to accept discipline as cadre organisations do. So it should be easier for comrades to join it. But the RSC and other OC comrades have looked at the question in completely the opposite way.
The RSC’s outreach plan came down to a tokenist approach. We were attempting to get a few national minority comrades in – whoever we could. We didn’t focus on taking up the struggle against racism within the whole OC. We didn’t focus on getting the broad ranks of the OC membership to take up party-building with national minority comrades. In fact, the proposal stated that the CC membership is not in contact with national minority comrades. This is clearly a wrong view that comes from a racist attitude towards the comrades OC members are in touch with. Focussing on an ideological campaign against white chauvinism and directing the broad ranks of the OC to take up outreach would have been the correct approach and laid the basis for developing principled multi-national unity.
Finally, the plan saw outreach as recruiting, not uniting politically with national minority comrades. Outreach was seen as a one-way street. There is no emphasis in the plan on the weaknesses of the OC at present. And there’s no emphasis on the important contribution that national minority comrades will make to the process, and how the process will change and develop as we build multi-national unity. There’s also no discussion of the legitimate reasons national minority comrades may continue to stand outside of the OC in U.S. (due to racism) and how we need to build political unity with these comrades too.
In the end, we never implemented the plan. Other things came up and we essentially forgot about our plan. This really shows the priority we placed on the issue in the first place.
The next time we discussed outreach was in late January. An overall proposal on outreach was written on 1/29/80. Once again, the struggle against racism got liquidated. And even special outreach efforts to national minority comrades got downplayed at this point. We dropped the idea of aggressive outreach to anyone except those closest to the OC at this point – an overwhelmingly white group. We decided not to take up outreach in favor of getting the NERC off the ground.
It wasn’t wrong to set up the NERC as soon as possible. But it was wrong to drop outreach. Dropping outreach is a political decision about the importance of the contribution forces can make. We clearly did not see any important contribution that national minority comrades could make to necessitate outreach to them as soon as possible. We were following a racist “consolidate first, outreach later” line (see below for more on this approach).
On the basis of that document, we sent out an outreach letter to OC members on 3/5/8O. The letter continued the racist error behind our approach: that special outreach efforts to national minority M-Lists were the key to multi-national unity (and not the struggle against racism). And because of our “consolidate now, outreach later” approach, we didn’t even ask people to start to do outreach to national minority comrades. They were just asked to send in a report lo a questionnaire on national minority contacts.
Our first racist error of focussing on special outreach efforts was criticised by Jenny F. of Boston and we wrote a self-criticism on it 4/3/80. But the self-criticism was hollow. It declared that we understood that the struggle against racism was key to building multi-nationality. According to our self-criticism, we just hadn’t made ourselves clear – so our statement could be misinterpreted in a racist way.
The fact was, though, that we had a racist line. As was described above, in November we had consciously decided that outreach did not have to proceed in the context of struggle against the OC’s racism (though we continued to pay lip service to the opposite line). Our “self-criticism” was just more lip service. For, while we loudly declared that the struggle against racism was key, we spoke only of our plans to take this up in the future. As for the struggle against racism in the present, there was little said that was concrete and not a word about our own errors on the RSC. Our “self-criticism” was no self-criticism at all. It was a defense of the RSC’s own racism. So, after this “self-criticism” we proceeded to act in the same way we always had. In practice, we continued to focus on special outreach efforts without taking up the struggle against racism in the RSC or OC.
But even in regards to special outreach, which we did declare as a task, we did virtually nothing. The responses to our questionnaire were late to non-existent. Only a few people responded at all. FTP and NU handled the response as an organisation, rather than having the individual OC members respond. Responding to the RSC in this way clearly reflected a federationist approach to our tasks. But more importantly, it indicated that the organizations were approaching national minority comrades primarily in relation to their organization and not the OC. Once again, it’s the racist approach of recruiting comrades to a cadre organization first on the basis of practice.
In addition, the effect of responding as organizations meant that each individual OC member in these organizations was not confronted with their responsibility (and therefore their errors) to take up party-building with national minority comrades.
Finally, in the actual responses to the questionnaire, no one addressed our own errors as the basis for national minority comrades to be distant from the OC. Everything was blamed on the weaknesses of those forces (“under the influence on nationalism,” etc.). The racism of this view has already been drawn out. But this expresses the line of the RSC as well as of the OC rank and file in NE. Implicit in the RSC’s practice of “special outreach is key” is the view that national minority comrades are kept out of the OC by their own backwardness and not by the OC’s racism. Divorced from any organized struggle against white chauvinism, special outreach efforts amount to educational work done for the benefit of national minority people, so that they can become as “enlightened” as the current membership of the OC.
Other evidence that this was the RSC’s view is our total failure to take up the struggle against white chauvinism in this period, if we had really thought that it was key, we would have done something about it. Instead, we consistently liquidated it (more on this in the final section).
While we never implemented our outreach plans, members of the OC (including the RSC) have had relations with national minority corrodes. The racist errors we have been describing (and others) have been made towards these comrades and have concretely blocked their participation in the OC.
For example, in May of 1979, Tom Di. (later chair of the RSC) ran into a Puerto Rican communist that he had been acquainted with for over four years (who we’ll call Juan). Juan made some remarks about the importance of opposing the dogmatism and sectarianism that dominated the communist movement. Tom failed to pursue this at the time, but only suggested that they get together some time in the future. He did not put this forward as a meeting to discuss party-building, but instead as a personal get-together for dinner, at which they of course [text missing in original – EROL]
This was a completely racist response. Tom had not had a personal relationship with Juan – they knew each other from several forms of joint mass work and a little joint political study, but in spite of this, Tom’s attitude was that he couldn’t unite with Juan directly at a political level over party-building. Instead, a more “personal” meeting was required. Tom saw Juan as someone who wasn’t really capable of grasping the central importance of party-building, and therefore thought that this topic would have to be “smuggled in” to a social conversation. And Tom’s white chauvinism was so deep that he could think this even though it was Juan who had brought up party-building when they ran into each other!
Basically, Tom thought that Juan was stupid, and unable to really understand how to build a communist party. Tom’s own understanding of party-building was based on white chauvinism– yet he held himself up as the one who really understood the question.
The racism of Tom’s initial response was compounded when he failed to actually get together with Juan. Juan had to cancel the first time they’d arranged, and didn’t show up the second. Torn unconsciously took this as confirmation that Juan wasn’t really interested in party-building– even though all he’d asked Juan to do was have dinner together, not meet to discuss party-building. Tom then made no serious effort to get back in touch with Juan, although he had told Juan that he would. Almost a year later, in a Boston LSC meeting, Tom referred to Juan as having “flaked out” on their dinner date. This reflected Tom’s belief in the racist myth that national minority people are lazy and irresponsible. Tom had failed to contact Juan for a full year– and yet he viewed Juan as the one who had “flaked out”.
Tom also deceived himself and other comrades in order to cover up the depths of his white chauvinism. He said that his initial effort to get together with Juan had been around October, a full five months later than was actually the case, Tom couldn’t face the fact that his white chauvinism had led him to “flake out” on Juan for an entire year.
Tom’s failure to pursue meeting with Juan came from the same source as his failure to approach the meeting from a political standpoint in the first place. That is, Tom didn’t think that Juan was capable of making any contribution to the OC. Tom was critical of some of Juan’s future political plans, and used these criticisms to consciously question whether Juan should be in the OC. Yet Tom had more serious criticisms of white comrades who he had urged to join the OC. This double standard of criticism is one more reflection of Tom’s white chauvinism. The bottom line is that Tom saw Juan as stupid and irresponsible, because he saw all national minority people that way. Tom’s racism excluded Juan from participation in the OC. And Tom then blamed Juan for the consequences of Tom’s own racism.
To take another example: OC members in New Bedford (including Mark W. of the RSC) have had contact with a Black comrade (who we’ll call Bob). They’ve worked with Bob for a couple of years, especially since the summer of 1979. Politically, he has been between the CPUSA and the tendency.
The comrade clearly considers himself a M-List and has views on a whole range of questions facing the communist movement. Yet, until recently, OC comrades have had very little discussion with him about party-building and other political questions. Even revisionism received scant discussion.
And the discussion that was had was all informal – during social get-togethers. No meetings were set up. Virtually no written material was given to him and none solicited from him. And the 18 points of unity and the need for a single center ware hardly ever brought up with him – certainly not in a systematic and all-sided way.
Mark and other OC comrades related to Bob essentially on the basis of mass practice and personal relations. And these comrades (who are members of FTP) were primarily trying to recruit him to FTP, not unite with him politically around the 18 points and the need for a single center. The view was to recruit him to FTP then one aspect of his FTP membership would be participation in the OC. It was a federaticnist and racist approach. The OC should be primary. And the motivation for putting FTP first came from the racist view that Bob could relate bettor to a practice-oriented organization. Mark’s racism and federationism stand out in particular relief – he was a member and then chair of the RSC, and yet never took responsibility for seeing that someone developed a relationship with Bob in relation to the OC.
Mark and others also flip-flopped between thinking Bob would join the CPUSA or FTP. On the one hand, there was the racist attitude that national minority comrades can be mere easily misled. So he would join the CPUSA because it was more multi-national at this point (and not because of its politics). Or the comrades, at times, thought he would join FTP. They thought this despite the fact that they never seriously struggled to unite with him politically.
Clearly the OC comrades did not take Bob seriously. They did not think Bob had a contribution to make to the OC. And they didn’t think they had anything to learn from him.
Underlying this underestimation of Bob’s theoretical capabilities and contribution was the common white chauvinist assumption that national minority comrades are not thinkers. Mark and others looked at themselves as superior to Bob, holding information and views that he couldn’t possibly understand. And they thought he could be fooled – either into joining the CPUSA or FTP. What it all comes down to, in its grossest form, is thinking that Bob is stupid.
The errors are more glaring with Bob, given that the OC comrades knew he was a M-List and interested in the party-building movement. But the errors are just as serious with other national minority comrades (and white advanced workers) who don’t so openly express their interests in M-Lism.
For example, OC comrades New Bedford (again including Mark W.) have known another national minority comrade for several years, through joint practical work. They’ve never discussed M-Lism, party-building or the OC with him. But whenever an anti-racist struggle in the city was developing, they were sure to call him.
Recently, as the result of beginning to criticize and rectify racist errors, these issues were raised with him. It turns out he’s been considering M-Lism for years. He’s not a M-List and has real questions about it. But he’s given it a lot of thought and has many intelligent and important things to say about it.
The OC comrades had made the racist assumption that he couldn’t relate to M-Lism, he couldn’t contribute to the party-building movement. How will a comrade like this ever be won the tendency if CC members don’t raise it with them?
The objective impact, then, of the RSC’s racist errors has been to hold back the development of the tendency. We’ve kept the tendency divided by not addressing the problem of white chauvinism and reaching out to build political unity with national minority comrades. In addition, potential tendency forces have been kept from moving closer to the tendency and the OC by a racist and anti-working class attitude that sees them as only capable of mass practice.
There is tremendous potential to unite the tendency and build a single center in H.E. To do so, the RSC and other white OC members have to overcome their racism and anti-working class attitudes that prevent the participation of broader forces in the effort to build a single center.
The N.B./F.R./Prov. LC has already begun to rectify their errors and develop plans for outreaeh. They now have a list of comrades to approach about the 18 points and the OC – only a handful of whom have been approached so far. This list is more than double the size of the current membership of the LC, and one third of these comrades are national minority people. Currently the membership of this LC includes only one national minority comrade.
As we’ve described, the RSC failed to take up outreach work in its first 9 months. And it took the committee 9 months to hold the first membership meetings (LC meetings). The lack of a membership structure is bound up with our failure to take up the struggle against white chauvinism in the region. Without a membership structure, there is no clear forum to take up the struggle. A serious attack on white chauvinism in the OC would have demanded the creation of a membership structure as soon as possible. But even when we had or planned to have a membership structure, we failed to focus on this task. So what did the RSC do during all this time?
The committee remained internal, focussed on its own work in isolation from the whole OC membership. There were several reasons for this. First, the RSC had the view that a leadership group had to work everything out before establishing a membership structure.
The RSC originally proposed (in Sept. 1979) to form a “group of 20” to prepare the formation of a regional center. The group would consist of several members of each of the circles (BOC, NU, RBSG and FTP) and a number of independents. The group essentially brought together the present CC members and the immediate (white) periphery of the OC. No real attempt would be made to reach out more broadly than that.
The group was to discuss a whole range of issues prior to the formation of the center: Theoretical Review’s criticisms of the national OC conference, the struggle against racism and its significance for a NERC, point 18 struggle, and the nature of an IC and LCs. It would then finally adopt a plan for a NERC. The idea was that this group would be a “core group” to provide leadership to the rest of the OC forces in the formation and leading of a regional center.
This was a federationist and racist approach. The ideological struggle was being confined to a small group of “leaders” mostly from circles. These leaders would struggle and attempt to reach unity separate from the broad ranks of the OC. But this view contradicts the basic strategy of the OC. We need an open, movement-wide process of ideological struggle. Only by involving the whole OC (and tendency) can we make real advances.
We don’t have real ideological leadership today. That’s why we need an Ideological Center – to forge leadership through a process of open ideological struggle. We didn’t apply this strategy to the regional center. Instead, we took a commandist view of forging leadership. We set up the leadership first. Essentially, we wanted to control the process. The racism of this approach becomes clear as the “group of 20” was overwhelmingly white.
In addition, the “group of 20” plan started the racist “Consolidate first, outreach later” strategy that was a thread that ran through our whole history. We said we needed to consolidate the present CC members around the politics of the OC before we could reach out to broader forces.
But what were we consolidating people around? Without the contribution of forces outside of the OC (especially national minority forces) our politics will be significantly less developed and contain important weaknesses. In particular (although not exclusively, since national minority comrades have a crucial contribution to make to the development of all our politics), we’d be consolidating the OC around white chauvinism. In fact, the RSC began to do just that – consolidate the OC forces around a racist practice (that we’ve been analysing in this paper).
We justified the position of “consolidate first” by saying it would be “confusing” for new forces, especially national minority forces, to come in until consolidation had proceeded. This is a paternalistic view that attempts to shield comrades from the problems of the OC. Pore fundamentally, though, it denies that these comrades have a vital contribution to make to overcoming the confusion and consolidating the OC on the right course. Our “confusion” grows out of ideological weaknesses and deviations, which is related to the narrowness of the forces involved. Solving the complex problems facing the class struggle in the U.S. will require the broadest possible participation, especially from comrades with an advanced understanding of M-Lism and experience in the class struggle.
Finally, underlying this line of “consolidate first” is a fear of the kind of changes these forces will demand of the OC. It’s a desire to keep things the way they are – a predominantly white petit bourgeois movement – and keep our control over it.
When applied to the OC itself, the “consolidate first” line led to having a leadership group consolidate first in isolation from the rest of the OC.
After criticism from JF, the national Steering Committee member in charge of our region, we eventually dropped the “group of 20” plan. We recognised that it set up an unnecessary intermediate process, rather than taking the issues to the whole regional center as soon as possible. So we decided that the RSC should focus on directly developing a plan for the NERC.
However, we didn’t thoroughly break with the error of remaining internal and not reaching out to the broad OC forces. Only this time, it was the RSC itself that remained internal, and would “consolidate first.” The result was that it took us 7 months from the break with the “group of 20” idea to the first LC meetings.
We had the attitude on the RSC that we had to work everything out ourselves before we could hold membership meetings. First, the “group of 20” would do it. Now it was just the RSC. But the error was the same. Basically, we wanted to set up the regional center “our way.” It was a real underestimation of the contribution the OC members could make to the process. This elitism is actually rooted in a fear of the contribution of OC forces and those outside of the OC. We wanted to control the process.
In addition, our approach showed an incorrect understanding of the relationship between theory and practice – in this case the theory and practice of building a regional center. Everything cannot be worked out beforehand. The actual practice of the working of the center is necessary to develop the theory to advance it. Our theory must address the concrete questions that arise out of our practice. In its dogmatic error, the RSC fell into a long period of abstract and not very fruitful, internal struggle.
Going hand-in-hand with wanting to work everything out was an overestimation of the organizational tasks required to set up a center. We spent 7 months developing and implementing a proposal. But the proposal is not all that elaborate. It’s not much to show for 7 months work.
We should have set up a membership structure immediately last fall. It would have a rudimentary structure and errors would certainly have been made. But the real process of ideological struggle would have started. And the center itself would develop through the participation of all its members.
In fact, the development of the center is a political process. We looked at it as an organizational one. So we focussed primarily on developing an organizational plan. We didn’t discuss the political contradictions in the region (white chauvinism for ex.). And we didn’t see the need to establish LCs immediately in order to be able to deal with political struggle.
Another reason the RSC remained internal for so long was our conciliation with GH, the member of the RSC who was also a member of the RBSG.[5] GH holds a circle spirit approach to the ideological struggle. He doesn’t think all members of the OC should participate in OC centers. Instead, it should be delegates from circles along with independents. And he doesn’t necessarily see a problem with circles exerting discipline over their members in the ideological struggle.
These views are clearly wrong. But we made the mistake of debating them in the RSC. Really, these questions need to be settled in open struggle involving the whole tendency. But GH demanded we address them in the RSC. The rest of the committee conciliated him and went along.
The disastrous consequences of conciliating him are as follows: we dropped the “group of 20” idea on 11/4/79. We then proceeded to meet on 11/l6, 12/2, 12/9, 12/15 and finally on l/7. The majority of time at these meetings was spent on struggling with GH’s line. Papers were written. Objectively we placed a priority on the struggle with GH.
Meanwhile, this struggle was occurring divorced from the OC membership. The broad ranks weren’t drawn into the struggle and involved in the process. It was an ultra-democratic approach – discuss whatever anybody raises, just because they’re on the RSC. Put it undermined real democracy in the OC as a whole in N.E. No analysis was done of the overall needs of the OC process in N.E. and what issues were key to moving it forward. In the end, the needs of the whole OC were sacrificed to address the concerns of one person.
It was federationist because it prolonged a situation of predominantly “delegates” of 3 circles meeting together over political issues. In fact, the committee itself became a circle of sorts as it had no real connection to the OC membership. Instead of debating GH, we should have voted as a majority to set up a regional center and struggled with him (and others who held a similar line) there.
At the same time as we were caught up in an internal process of struggle with GH, we paid no attention to uniting with tendency forces, especially national minority comrades. So in practice what has been the RSC’s view of the important forces in the tendency we’re trying to unite? We’ve spent all kinds of time getting into whatever issues the TR comrades care to raise. And we’ve completely ignored the many advanced forces lying outside the present circles.
Underlying this practice is white chauvinism, pure and simple; we didn’t “see” the national minority comrades – that is, we didn’t take them seriously as communists with definite contributions to make to building the party. This attitude segregated them out of the OC. Consciously or not, it was an attempt to preserve the present terrain of debate in the OC. And to preserve the dominance of predominantly white circles and the NERC’s current leadership (us).
The consequences of the RSC remaining internal for 9 months are very serious. The task of uniting the tendency was ignored. No progress was made in developing the ideological struggle in the OC in N.E. (around racism and other important questions). Errors (racist and otherwise) were made by the RSG with no form for criticising them in the tendency as a whole. Circle life (and the isolation of forces) has continued. All the work of the OC has been held back. It’s crucial for the RSC to make a break with its federationist and racist practice to begin the process of uniting the tendency in N.E.
But the racist errors by the RSG that we’ve described are very serious. A protracted struggle will be necessary to root them out. Up until this point, however, there’s been a consistent blindspot on the RSC on racism in the OC and in the RSG itself. The struggle against racism has been virtually liquidated both in the OC and in the RSC.
For example, comrades from NU raised a criticism to the RSC in March that the proposed agenda for the 1st 6 months of the NERC did not adequately treat the struggle against racism, especially in relation to uniting the tendency. The agenda called for taking up the question after 4 or 5 other topics. While the comrades did not present a clear plan for correcting the error, the thrust of their remarks wore correct and to the point. The white chauvinism of the RSC and its total blindspot on the importance of the question, prevented the RSC from uniting with the criticism and taking leadership in developing a specific plan to address the white chauvinism of the OC. In fact, the chair didn’t even take the concern very seriously and there was no substantial discussion about the criticism in the whole RSC.
In the original agenda for the 1st local Center (LC) meeting on federationism (which was later changed), there was no clear focus or priority on the struggle against racism. Only 30 min. out of a 4 hr. meeting was to be devoted to the question. And the resolution proposed by the RSC for the meeting included no mention of racism as an obstacle to uniting the tendency.
What it comes down to is that the RSC had no concrete understanding of the problem of racism in the OC and how it blocks the participation of national minority comrades. In fact, we didn’t think we were making any racist errors. We wrote a 6-month sum-up of our work that contained not one word on racism. And we spent another two months re-writing and “perfecting” this sum-up, which focused mainly on our struggles with GH. Thus, even after GH left the RSC we continued to elevate our struggle with him over the struggle to unite the tendency. And while racist errors like this have been plentiful, we never had a single RSC discussion of white chauvinism. Blind to our racism, and the racism in the NERC generally, we made no effort to organize a struggle against it.
The RSC is beginning to break with these errors and struggle against its white chauvinism. However, the white chauvinism runs deep and it will be a protracted struggle. For example, when we first began to break with these errors (after the chair of the RSC attended the Midwest Regional OC Conference on federationism and racism), the chair made a presentation to the first LC meetings, the chair spoke articulately about the lessons from the Midwest. But the analysis of the RSC’s errors here was superficial. It contained only a very beginning analysis and was not drawn out concretely.
The presentation reflected a real underestimation of the problem of racism by the chair, and a real underestimation of the kind of aggressive rooting-out that will be necessary.
The chair’s attitude was, “I’ve made the break with the errors, now it’s up to you.” It didn’t call on comrades to deepen the self-criticism with the RSC. It didn’t point to the presentation as only the beginning of a long rectification process. The chair basically didn’t think OC members would have anything to say about the RSC’s errors. This is an elitist attitude that is also related to racism (denying contribution of national minority comrades).
What the presentation came down to was an attempt on the part of the chair to show how anti-racist he now was. It was a defense of his racism and racist errors – so they wouldn’t be analysed and criticised.
The chair’s racist errors here demonstrated the depth of white chauvinism in the OC and the RSC in particular. This sum-up is a first step in rooting it out. We’ve begun to identify the problem: treating national minority comrades as if they didn’t exist; underestimating or ignoring the vital contributions of national minority comrades to the theoretical struggle; and the underlying racist assumption that national minority comrades are too stupid to take up theoretical questions and are only good at mass practice. We call on all OC members and tendency forces to deepen this self-criticism with us.
– New England RSC
7/1/80
[1] When formed, it was called the Regional Coordinating Committee. The RCC changed to the RSC in April 1980 to reflect the fact that it in attempting to lead the development of a center, not just coordinate it. To avoid confusion, we will use the term RSC to refer to the committee throughout its history.
[2] By circles in N.E., we mean cadre organizations and collectives.
[3] 3 Local Centers (LC) were formed and held their first meeting in early June: the Boston LC, the New Bedford/Fall River/Providence LC and the Springfield/Conn. LC. All OC members in N.E. at this point are in one of the LCs.
[4] This error is very widespread in the OC. One example is the experience of Dave, a leading national minority comrade in Detroit. He is well read in Marx and Lenin and holds developed views on a range of theoretical questions. Yet he has never been asked by a white comrade for his advice on any question that isn’t related either to auto work (the mass practice he’s involved in) or racism.
Another example is that in a Connecticut outreach study group, a national minority comrade who has done intensive theoretical work on the question of racism was described as having a “gut level” understanding. Again, this reflects a racist attitude of national minority people as more emotional, “closer to nature,” more practical and not thinkers.
[5] This was not the only reasons, however. GH left the RSC in January 1980. And it still took the RSC four and a half months to hold the 1st LC meeting.