Since the end of WWII, there has been an upsurge of revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggles that have sharply shaken imperialism. In spite of setbacks and repression, national liberation movements have advanced and achieved victory in many parts of the Third World. As the internal contradictions of US imperialism have further developed, the people of the US have become engaged in many mass movements: the historic civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the rebirth of the women’s movement and advances in the rank and file trade union movement.
Both the international anti-imperialist upsurge and the ripening of contradictions within the system of monopoly capitalism, with its subsequent increase in class struggle, have caused the relative decline of US imperialism. At the end of WWII, the US imperialists stood as the undisputedly dominant force in the world. This is no longer quite the case, as the tremendous victory of the Vietnamese people has shown, and as the increasing advances of the people of southern Africa are illustrating today. This relative decline of US imperialism’s power will cause the contradictions within the US to sharpen even more, as the US ruling class attempts to prop up its declining system by increasing its exploitation of the US working class and by cutting back the standard of living. However, the ruling class will not be able to implement this scheme if met by determined resistance by a united working class.
The historic period we are in holds two possibilities for the American working class. Potentially, this period holds untold suffering: unemployment, increased racial and national oppression and oppression of women, and attacks upon the rights of the people with the long term possibility of fascism. At the same time, this period offers the opportunity for the US working class to emerge as an independent and powerful political force which understands that nothing short of full-scale socialist revolution can solve the fundamental problems of the American people. Armed with this understanding, and the correct strategy for revolution, a united US working class can build a future free of exploitation for ourselves and our children.
In order to fulfill its historic task of creating a socialist society, the US working class must overcome a number of basic weaknesses. Most importantly, it must overcome the racial divisions and segregation which, for centuries, have prevented the development of a unified working class movement. It must also overcome the sexual divisions and oppressions which exist. It must reject individualism and anti-communism. It must overcome its ideological, political and organizational underdevelopment.
Many obstacles stand in the way of the working class’ accomplishment of these goals. US imperialism is strongest in the US, where its ideological and material domination are of incredible strength. The imperialists have used their abilities to create a labor aristocracy and to divide the class along race, sex, age, religious and social lines. But, we know that their oppression will not reign indefinitely. Despite their seeming strength, they are not as strong as the people of the US, who will eventually abolish the system of capitalism, and build in its place a socialist society.
The key link in increasing the working class’ ability to combat US monopoly capitalism is the re-establishment of a leading center of the working class. For many years, the US working class has been without a revolutionary vanguard, and the lack of such a leading core is the principal reason why the working class has not overcome its weaknesses. At one time, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) provided the working class with the most advanced ideological and practical leadership. However, for reasons to be explained further, the CPUSA ceased to play this role and have, in fact, turned into its opposite, putting forward a class-collaborationist line within the working class movement. Thus, deprived of a vanguard revolutionary organization, the working class was denied the ideological and practical leadership it needs to seriously challenge capital.
Therefore, our primary task is to rectify and re-establish the revolutionary vanguard party of the US working class. The vanguard party must be guided by proletarian ideology, by the most advanced, scientific philosophy of working class revolution, which in this era is MLMTT. It is the only guide to action which has historically been proven successful in establishing and maintaining socialist societies with working class control.
The primary obstacle holding back the re-establishment of a vanguard party in the US is the relative isolation of the most advanced ideology, MLMTT, from the working class. It is, therefore, the primary task of MLists to bridge this gap, to fuse the working class and ML movements; and to develop our ideological and political understanding of MLism to drive this process of fusion forward and to improve our ability to lead class struggle.
In addition to this primary obstacle, the ML movement faces a number of secondary obstacles in its attempt to build a vanguard party in the US. Many of us come from petit-bourgeois class backgrounds, and retain aspects of the individualist world-view typical of that class. Our work is carried out in isolated and localized collectives. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, our movement is more white than multi-racial. Tendencies toward domination by men also remain quite strong. In addition, our movement is plagued by dogmatism and sectarianism. However, as Chairman Mao Tse Tung stated in On Contradiction,
At certain times in the revolutionary struggle the difficulties outweigh the favorable conditions and so constitute the principle aspect of the contradictions and the favorable conditions constitute the secondary aspect. But through their efforts the revolutionaries can overcome the difficulties step by step and open up a favorable new situation; thus a difficult situation yields to a favorable one.
This is our task: to overcome our weaknesses step by step and open up a new period favorable for revolution in the US.