The U.S. from its earliest days has been unable to escape its origin. Every struggle of any moment in our history has been conditioned in a large part, by the fact that its founding was based on the forcible importation of Blacks from Africa, and that this original outrage has been compounded through 350 years of brutal exploitation and repression.
There have been few struggles in this country that have failed to reflect the continuing drive of Black people to achieve their freedom. And certainly the downfall of U.S. imperialism is already announced in the great upsurges of Black people that, in spite of repression and betrayals, are unceasing, sparking liberation movements within the U.S. of Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Asians and Native Americans, and winning ]increasing support among wide sections of the population, especially the very poor.
That is why the words of Mao Tsetung, in his statement of April 16, 1969, “In Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression,” ring out with special force: “The struggle of black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.”
And “eventually” may not be so far off, if conscious revolutionaries are, with all the patience necessary, working to achieve the development of the strategy and tactics of unity and struggle. And we will have to master all the organizational forms necessary to consolidate and link together the great movements that arise and struggle against monopoly capitalism: the workers’ rank-and-file movements, Black and brown people’s movements, women’s movements, youth and student movements, movements against repression and fascism in and out of prison, and the continuing struggle against U.S. imperialist aggression in Viet Nam and elsewhere.
This issue of Red Papers is devoted mainly to grappling theoretically and practically with the national question as it is developing in the U.S. This article proposes to grapple with some of the obstacles to achieving the necessary solidarity and strategy and tactics to unify revolutionaries in the creation and consolidation of the multinational revolutionary Communist Party.
As in everything in the U.S., this question is deeply influenced by the struggle of Black people. For instance, for some time revolutionary organizations have thought that the way forward was to produce both Black and white revolutionary parties and organizations, and somewhere down the road, these could possibly merge, or, even without merging, agree on program, tactics and joint struggle capable of knocking the monopoly structure over and accomplishing the socialist revolution.
While today this conception seems Utopian and not in the cards, it flourished for two main reasons. One was negative–almost no revolutionary work was being done among the working class, and revolutionary-minded individuals, mostly petit-bourgeois in origin, were looking for revolutionary get-rich-quick schemes, hoping to develop revolutionary enthusiasm into a substitute for hard and patient work. At that time, the Bay Area Revolutionary Union, a relatively small and local organization, was almost unique among anti-revisionist and anti-Trotskyite organizations in trying to direct its work towards the entire working class.
The second reason is far from negative–it flowed from the rapid development of Black struggle and Black revolutionary organizations that did much to change the political map of the U.S. Not only were revolutionary ideas and the conscious study of Marxism-Leninism spread among a large section of Black people, but this impetus was a major force in turning large sections of other Third World people and white youth to the study and practice of Marxism-Leninism. So, just as Black people’s struggle against oppression was a leading force in militant economic and political struggle, so also was Black leadership exercised in the development of revolutionary, communist ideas and organizations.
Nor is this phenomenon over, and we in the RU try to give support to Black and other Third World revolutionary organizations. When we disagree with one aspect or another of their work and program, we do not engage in open and public polemic, but try instead to state as clearly as possible our own ideas to facilitate the exchange of views. Sometimes we also discuss our disagreements privately with these organizations, and, on the basis of mutual support, have held fruitful talks from which we have learned much and, hopefully, have been of some benefit to others. (This approach, needless to say, is not applied to counter-revolutionary organizations such as the revisionist Communist Party and PL or other Trotskyite organizations.)
The RU is a multinational organization and has been almost from the start. It is true that, originally in the Bay Area, it was composed mainly of white youth of student origin. But even then, its birth occurred in response primarily to Black and other Third World struggles. But as we began directing our main activity to the working class, as our members began rooting themselves in industrial work, we met a significant number of white and Third World workers who, as they became revolutionary-oriented, wanted to be, saw the necessity of being, in a multinational communist organization.
This does not mean we are opposed to the development of national caucuses in the work place, or Black and other Third World revolutionary organizations. To the contrary, we believe that, because of the uneven development of the national and class struggles at this time, both national and multinational forms of revolutionary organization are necessary. Because our working class is multinational, there are advanced, active fighters among the oppressed nationalities who see the importance of belonging to and building multinational organization now (and we certainly should not leave such people to the Trots and revisionists, with their opportunist brand of “multinational” organization).
And because U.S. history and its present teems with racial and national oppression, there are other Third World revolutionaries who, while recognizing the need for an eventual single party of the proletariat, feel that they can best serve the revolutionary movement by joining and building national forms of organization that carry forward both the national struggle and the struggle of the entire proletariat.
Also on this point, we are firmly convinced that there can be no such thing as a “white” revolutionary organization because white workers have no progressive interests as whites, but only as members of the multinational working class. Their interests are the same as the interests of the entire proletariat, unless someone wants to argue that racism and white chauvinism are really beneficial to white workers. Clearly they are not, and for this reason, in the concrete conditions of the U.S.–and in particular the intensity of national oppression and the depths of racism and national chauvinism–white revolutionaries must be in a multinational organization at this time.
And by being in such an organization together, by working and struggling side by side with each other, white, Black and other Third World comrades will gain vital experience in building a multinational organization, an experience required to build a deep and lasting multinational unity among workers and their revolutionary communist leadership, their Communist Party.
In Red Papers 1 we expressed the belief that, based on the leadership then being exercised, we expected a major section of the leadership of the yet-to-be-created revolutionary Communist Party would be Black other Third World people. This is also our present view. There are sound objective reasons for this. The most significant is the high proportion of Third World people in the industrial working class–making it possible to unify Third World workers and to develop and merge both the national and class struggles.
The RU has recognized this from its inception. In Red Papers 1, we identified the dual nature of Black people in this country as members of an oppressed nation and, at the same time, overwhelmingly members, along with all other workers, of a single U.S. proletariat. Red Papers 2 developed this concept further to establish that the national question in the U.S. can be distinguished from other national questions around the world in that here, the question is, in essence, a proletarian question where elsewhere it is, in essence, a peasant question, and we stated:
Exactly because the Black national question essence a proletarian question, Marxist-Leninist organizations among the Black people are increasingly playing a leading role in these struggles, directing the main blow clearly against the imperialist enemy and pointing the way to the unity of the entire proletariat. This new of Black and brown leadership of the proletarian struggle as a whole is shaking the entire structure of white supremacy which has been a strong prop of the U.S. ruling class in preventing the revolutionary unity of its victims. The success of the ruling class, even during periods of extreme crisis, in getting sections of white workers to support or tolerate the oppression of Black people, beginning with slavery and continuing down to today in the denial of economic equality and democratic rights, is a major reason why the monster of U.S. imperialism has been able to prolong its parasitic life and the suffering of the peoples of the world.
Historically, Third World workers have sought unity with white workers, based on equality and dignity, in recognition of their common exploitation and their common enemy. It has been the virulence of white racism which has too long prevented the coalescing of the working masses into a mighty anti-imperialist bastion.
In the course of struggle, which produced a rising tide of national consciousness and heightened pride, militant Third World individuals emerged to give voice and leadership to long-frustrated demands. As revolutionary organization developed among Third World groups, they were correctly concerned to develop independent leadership in their national struggle and their potential leadership in the revolutionary struggle as a whole.
It was undoubtedly inevitable, given the historical circumstance of super-exploitation and acute oppression and the relatively low level of political understanding of white workers of the source and purpose of racism, that Third World revolutionaries have developed their own revolutionary organizations. Having been dominated, often misled and accorded, at best, token representation in most organizations set up by white people, they demand the right to formulate their own programs, determine priorities and exercise control.
This is a correct aspect of self-determination. As long as national oppression exists, the resistance to it will mount; national organizations–revolutionary, petit-bourgeois, and reactionary–will exist and struggle for leadership of oppressed peoples’ struggle. This is a worldwide phenomenon and, here, the U.S. is not unique.
The Marxist-Leninists working mainly among the white masses recognize the need for many forms of organization working for progress, but will be specially concerned and supportive of those Third World organizations which combine proletarian ideology with revolutionary practice. And Third World and white Marxist-Leninists will recognize the compelling need to establish the multinational Communist Party in which there is no second-class membership, arrogance and paternalism, a Party rooted in mass struggle and developing the authority and support to lead the people in defeat of the class enemy.
Of course, in recognizing the development of many Third World people into communist leaders of the struggle as a whole, there is no implication that this will happen automatically simply because they are Third World and their peoples most oppressed. It will happen only as Third World communists develop the theory and practice that enables them to unite Third World workers, win the leadership of workers in the national struggle, and, at the same time, to speak in the interest of the whole working class. It won’t happen automatically, but it will certainly happen. No matter the ups and downs of class struggle among Black and other Third World peoples, the lessons will be learned and the goals achieved. This is not due so much to the special virtues of communists; it is the special virtue of workers and other oppressed peoples that they will not stop struggling.
Also, in a similar vein but with a different focus, white communists cannot mouth acceptance in principle of the leadership of Third World revolutionaries in order to cop out of their essential task of winning white workers to the support of Third World struggles and to revolution, cannot wear their personal support as a halo while they fail to generate mass support. This is not just a platitude, but represents a real condition and problem.
The intensity of exploitation and oppression of Third World peoples in the U.S. compelled widespread activities of resistance and rebellion when the greatest overt support came from white intellectuals and liberals motivated by a sense of humanitarianism or guilt. Many of these “supporters” never gave serious thought to U.S. revolution and their relationship and responsibility to the U.S. proletariat as a whole. They viewed the Black movement in isolation from the total context of U.S. bourgeois society, limiting their horizons and initiative, content with a narrowly defined supportive role for a relatively unlimited host of Black demands.
In many instances, such acceptance of this role did not mean simple modesty and willingness to learn from and respect the leadership of others, but an abdication of the responsibility to contribute more positively and constructively as the occasion required. This is not at all to condemn such supporters; they are certainly welcome and helpful. But, however helpful and worthy of commendation, it cannot be considered the fulfillment of communist responsibility.
Many of these supporters, under the impact of the struggle and with the help of Third World revolutionaries, have accepted larger responsibility. But quite a few have, in their practice, elevated this partial practice into principle, accompanying it with the most “revolutionary” rhetoric. And some of these people are very harmful in that they influence others into either a sectarian dogmatism or scatter-brained adventurism, or both at once.
In Red Papers 4 we have dealt with at least some features of adventurism and we will not repeat those arguments here, but we have to consider in the rest of this article our differences with the theory and practice of some groups which we consider quite sectarian, though, in some cases, probably well-motivated. They can be classified roughly together as those who consider that the most important and pressing task at this time is to develop a new anti-revisionist Communist Party and, furthermore, that this can be accomplished by debating theoretical differences.
The RU also desires the creation of this Party as soon as possible, and yesterday would have been infinitely preferable to tomorrow. But we are convinced that it cannot be accomplished by wishing it or declaring it. This is not China in 1921, and a dozen or so can’t get into a room, see the need and declare themselves. Then it was possible (not quite so simply of course) because they had the help of an international communist movement that checked up on them, considered their work carefully, gave criticism and assistance.
Even then, there were false starts and grave setbacks. Today, when many groups are relating to Marxism-Leninism and trying to master its application to U.S. struggle, there is only one test, the test of practice. For this reason, we are convinced that we have to learn how to root ourselves in popular struggle. We have to learn how to advance the United Front against Imperialism, under proletarian leadership, or we will not be able to build a lasting Communist Party.
The consciousness of the need to bring an end to the racism, poverty, disease and degeneration of U.S. imperialism grows among all the peoples of the U.S., as the cost of trying to hang on to and expand its bloody profit forces the ruling class to put the working and oppressed peoples and even the middle classes increasingly through the wringer. Inflation, a 40% tax bite (direct and indirect), unemployment, growing hunger and disease, and a breakdown of almost all essential services in almost every city of any size, are producing more and greater struggles of the exploited and oppressed, and the consciousness of the name and nature of the enemy rises.
This is not to say that the rulers are no longer able to promote division, disunity, and confusion, or that they are without resources among the masses. But it is to say that these resources shrink as they are hemmed in by the peoples of the world and meet a mounting resistance here, so that their ability to confuse and control the minds of their subjects weakens to the point where, increasingly, repression must do the work normally left to propaganda, and where the wielders of repression stand exposed.
Still, the consciousness of the exploited and oppressed is relatively undeveloped–in the face of the very real, almost desperate crisis of the imperialists. Unity and organization, while growing somewhat, is very low, far behind the general understanding of the disease of the system. It is here that the conscious work of revolutionaries among the masses, developing the politics, organization and unity necessary to smash imperialism, demands that we bring into effective existence the vanguard party of the working class to lead all the oppressed people, the general staff of a sustained offensive against the exploiters leading to the destruction of their power and their end as a class.
But the building of this party, the development of the revolutionary practice, and the winning of political authority among the people, is, in the light of recent and past history, certain to be a complicated and difficult process. This process has been made especially difficult by the retreat of the left through the years of McCarthyism in the 1950’s and the exposure of the revisionists’ seizure of power in the Soviet Union–a retreat that turned into a rout as the Communist Party of the U.S., riddled by defection and the absence of revolutionary leadership, became and continues to be thoroughly revisionist and liberal-reformist.
This failure of the left in the fifties and early sixties meant that an entire generation was lost to the revolution. And with the new revolutionary upsurge, sparked by the mushrooming Black struggle and the revolutionary resistance of the Vietnamese, culminating in winning many young people, Third World and white, to the study and practice of revolution, it was perhaps inevitable that, shorn of intimate connection with the past and with inexperienced leadership, the many successes could not be consolidated in the face of mounting attack. Thus, division and desperation led to the splitting of many political organizations that had made important contributions to anti-imperialist struggle.
Of course, this splitting activity was accelerated by counter-revolutionary obstruction by Progressive Labor and other Trotskyite groups, but the truth is that we revolutionaries cannot blame our failures on the enemy, neither on the direct actions of the class enemy nor its counter-revolutionary puppets who operate under a left umbrella. Our major criticism has to be directed against our own work and our proven inability at a trying time to consolidate our ranks, unify our ideologies, and advance to a higher level of unity in struggle.
It is from this history that many around the country are learning. Thus, it is possible to forecast, even though the splitting is still continuing and the level of organization is still quite low, that the current pessimism among past movement activists is less significant than the continuing determination of a growing number of revolutionary groups, as yet not united, to forge real links with the working and oppressed peoples of the U.S., to plant themselves in the mass struggles of the people, and to remold their own ideology, so that they are prepared for long, arduous and patient struggle. It is along this path of learning from mistakes that we will certainly develop a new revolutionary unity, and a new revolutionary party.
And in case there is still some doubt, the RU does not consider itself to be that party, nor does it see itself as developing into it. The party will have to come from a merging of forces now in motion and from forces not yet in motion. The RU is a multinational communist organization seeking to apply Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the realities of U.S. life, is firmly dedicated to helping bring that party into being, and certainly hopes and intends to be part of that necessary transformation that will lead to victory.
In Red Papers 1, we took note of the growing interest in Marxism-Leninism among the active groups in the Black and youth movements and, feeling optimistic about the rising tide, postulated the coming together of these forces so that we then prescribed: “At the present time, the building of collectives on a local basis, and the exchange of experiences between them, can contribute the most to the creation in the near future of a Marxist-Leninist Party.”
Since then, of course, the way has not seemed so clear. Many collectives have formed, have tried to work among the working class, and there has been a high casualty rate among them. Black revolutionary organizations, beset by ruling class terror and split by internal division, no longer present such a clear guidepost as class struggle in the Black nation sharpens.
And while we then simply noted the development of an anarchist trend, it is apparent today that this trend grew for a period and produced setbacks to the movement. So we have to acknowledge that, while in some ways the level of activity has remained high, and among the working class has shown considerable increase, the level of organization has seriously declined. And as the divisions have multiplied, the influence of the revisionist party and the right-wing Trotskyites, the Socialist Workers’ Party, has grown somewhat.
These are certainly negative features, but these failures, these shortcomings in theory and practice, are leading to a serious summing up of experience on the part of many revolutionaries and revolutionary collectives. And while there is division and disruption, there is also the certainty of consolidation and realignment, and there are already such developments and new growth.
This certainly is based on the increasing determination of many of the collectives around the country to more thoroughly proletarianize their practice and, at the same time, to rid themselves of individualism, arrogance and other bourgeois hangups. The RU is also determined to sum up its experience and the experience of others, in an effort to fulfill the prediction made in Red Papers 1: “The Marxist-Leninist Party is the general staff of the working class struggle. There is one enemy, monopoly capitalism, and to defeat it we will need, and will achieve, a unified general staff.”
The most important thing we want to emphasize is that this unified general staff can only be created through active participation in class struggle. It cannot be created, as the groups we referred to earlier seem to think, by theoretical debates or, as some of these groups have done, by simply declaring themselves to be the Party or the sole basis of the Party. For the most part, the activity of these groups in any particular struggle is to relate to it by giving advice instead of diving into the fray. Because their concentration on their single objective of forming the Party prevents them from learning from the struggle, their advice tends to be thoroughly defeatist to the strugglers, telling them in effect that their struggles are useless, are bound to be sold out and liquidated, and that they ought to be struggling only for a Party to lead them to the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism.
They have read Mao and, accepting the correct thesis that any group is divisible into advanced, middle, and backward elements, they decide, correctly, to first focus on the advanced workers. The catch lies in who they consider advanced. In general, their idea is that an advanced worker is one who accepts a piece of communist propaganda and says, “right on!”
Our conception is quite different. To us, the advanced worker is one who has the respect of fellow workers, to whom they come when they are in trouble and need to discuss their problems, whom they rally around when they face a collective problem, and who provides leadership in struggle. And this is true even if the individual professes some anti-communism. His anti-communism is socially and media-conditioned and can be overcome through his work with communists, precisely because of the devoted practice he has shown toward others.
Of course, the one who says “right on” should not be neglected and should be brought into the work, but will not become an advanced worker until accorded that honor by co-workers. In general, also, these groups accept the idea of the United Front against Imperialism and don’t particularly quarrel with the RU’s five spearheads, but insist that the building of such a United Front has to wait for the creation of the new anti-revisionist Communist Party, We believe this Party can only be created by all of us working together to further build and consolidate the United Front under proletarian leadership.
The genuine revolutionary forces must begin to engage in common practice, side by side, and, on the basis of summing up that practice, engage in comradely and constructive ideological struggle to forge a unified line, strategy, and tactics, to develop various kinds of workers’ organizations–national and multinational forms, etc. That, we believe, is the correct, non-sectarian way to build the Party.
We think a major reason for a sectarian and dogmatic tendency to develop among some groups is that it is much easier to maintain an ideological position than to effect a result, and this tendency divorce oneself from practice is protective because practice can blow one’s pet schemes sky-high.
Perhaps the root cause of most of the problems we face lies in individualism, sometimes manifesting itself in “group individualism.” This has been an international problem, of course, but here the U.S. certainly leads the world. There is that overwhelming tendency to consider oneself or one’s group the center of the universe, and it is only honest to say that it is problem also in the RU and we do not always fully succeed in our struggle against it.
Here we have much to learn from Albania and China; their principled polemics and victories again the sell-out of Marxism-Leninism by Soviet revisionism has given courage to us who try to grasp historical an dialectical materialism not to be shattered b temporary setbacks and serious deviations along the winding road. And their principled determination to thoroughly overcome the dead hand of the past, right down to the level of the individual, expressed in the Chinese slogan, “Fight self, combat revisionism,” has to be the method by which we fight through to unit and victory.
We, the people of the U.S., are certain to win. The peoples of the world are our powerful friends who both weaken our enemy and teach us. We also learn from the blows of the class enemy and are inspired b the resistance of our peoples. Nothing on earth can stop us.