First Published: The Militant Vol. 22, No. 40, October 6, 1958
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Provisional Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of a Marxist-Leninist Party accuses the American Communist Party of having developed, since 1928, an opportunist course at variance with the Communist parties throughout the world. The Committee, whose conference on Aug. 16-17 and consequent expulsion from the CP was reported in the Sept. 22 Militant, published a declaration of principles in its newspaper, the Marxist-Leninist Vanguard.
The CP has become an opportunist organization, says the Vanguard group. This is due to big business pressures to which the leadership has succumbed. The Vanguard people insist that these pressures have produced “mortal, crisis” within the American party on three different occasions. The first crisis resulted in the 1928-29 struggle against Jay Lovestone, then leader of the party. The second, in the 1943-44 fight against Earl Browder. The third, in a fight against the John Gates group in the CP during which, the Vanguard group charges, party officials around William Z. Foster really abetted the Gates tendency.
In the first two crises, “advice” from Communist Party leadership abroad supposedly helped save the party from opportunism and misleadership. But, says Vanguard, the current CP crisis is unsolvable because the Foster leadership ignores the advice of the international Communist movement. It is Vanguard’s thesis that the leadership of the CPs elsewhere holds to the genuine socialist course while the American leadership does not.
This thesis will surely prove to be a stumbling block for the Vanguard group in its fight against the undeniably opportunist course pursued by the American CP leadership. There is no substantial difference in policy between the American CP and that of the parties in other countries. These consequently cannot serve as guides for revolutionary socialist politics.
Let us examine the facts in the 1943-44 crisis as an illustration. Vanguard correctly says that the entire leadership of the party, then headed by Browder, but including Foster, Dennis and Benjamin Davis, championed the idea of “’progressive imperialism,’ according to which imperialism (American Big Business in particular) would proceed in the post-World War II era to raise wages and lower its rate of profit in a program of ’enlightened self-interest,’ in cooperation with the USSR.”
“Advice” then came from Jacques Duclos, French CP leader. In an article printed in the May 24, 1945 Daily Worker, Duclos declared: “One is witnessing a notorious revision of Marxism on the part of Browder and his supporters, a revision which is expressed in the concept of a long term class peace in the U.S., of the possibility of the suppression of the class struggle in the post-war period and the establishment of harmony between labor and capital.”
Browder was expelled in 1946 allegedly because of his revisionism. But the French CP, under Dulcos’ leadership, was pursuing a policy similar to the one for which Browder was denounced. Thus in a speech made to the French CP Central Committee on Jan. 22, 1945 and later printed in pamphlet form, Maurice Thorcz, co-leader of the party with Duclos, stated: “As under the occupation, we want, in order to win the war, to act in concert with all good Frenchmen, workers, employers, employees, intellectuals, peasants. All aren’t Communists, socialists. Why would we want to impose upon them our program of communism?” The French CP, which, at the end of World War II, could have taken state power with popular support and led a socialist revolution, backed a de Gaulle government instead.
Duclos never found anything wrong with that. In a statement to the British Evening Standard on Sept. 15, 1944, he said: “French capitalists are ’idiots’ if they are afraid of Communism.” He explained: “We are not even interested in the question of a 40-hour week. As far as we are concerned the workers will work 60 hours weekly if it is necessary for the rehabilitation of France.” Thorez and Duclos were as good as their word. Up to 1947 – well after Browder was bounced out of the American CP – they were to claim that strikes are weapons of the trusts.
Duclos’ “advice” did not root out opportunism in the American CP in 1945. It has continued to thrive there up to the present. It has also continued to thrive in the French CP under Duclos’ leadership. For instance, last May, the CP leadership rallied to support the Pflimlin government which handed power over to de Gaulle.
But perhaps a genuine socialist policy has been pursued throughout by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union? Unfortunately, this also is not the case. Indeed, the common source of the opportunist policies pursued in France and in America is to be found in the international line elaborated by Stalin and by Khrushchev.