Marxist theoretical work is the study of social development, pursued to enable the working class to facilitate that development and hasten the transition from capitalist to communist society. Thus studying and defending the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism is theoretical work. So is analyzing the particular questions facing the U.S. revolution (which should not be separated from study of Marxist-Leninist principles). And so is studying the details of U.S. social development to enable communist agitators and propagandists to prove the decline of capitalism; the nature of the state; the sources of war, national oppression, unemployment, etc.[1]
The latter two kinds of theoretical work require a great deal of both library research and investigation of current mass struggles, to develop a reliable and concrete understanding of the contradictions underlying the motion of this society. Key topics include the international situation as it has developed and is developing; the history, conditions, and current levels of struggle and consciousness of the various strata of the working class; the same regarding the oppressed nationalities and women; the definitions, interests, behavior, and outlook of the other classes in society, and their relationships to each other and to the revolutionary proletariat; the role and methods of the state, the trade unions, the churches, the ideological apparatus of the bourgeoisie, etc.; and the history of the work of communists in this country.
Such study is required to develop strategy and tactics based on reality, to answer other programmatic questions, and to ground our agitation and propaganda in the facts of U.S. social life. Before considering to what extent this work can and must be taken up before formation of a party, let us look at each of these needs more closely.
Communists need Marxist-Leninist study of the subjects listed above in order to develop a strategy which, based on knowledge of the actual contradictions of U.S. society, identifies those class forces which should be won over as allies of the proletariat (and how reliable they can be as allies), those which must be neutralized, and those which will stand with the enemy. For example, in finance, commerce, government, the communications media, etc., there are large intermediate strata at various levels, mainly “mental workers,” but we know little about their outlooks or political behavior beyond generalizations which we know about the petty bourgeoisie of Marx’s time (small shopkeepers, craftsmen, and farmers). Even among the workers, there are whole sectors, such as office workers, which we know little about.
We all vaguely remember Lenin’s phrases about there being times when we can and must take advantage of contradictions among the enemy; but who among us can describe the different monopoly capitalist groups in the U.S., the characteristics of the non-monopoly bourgeoisie, the relationships among them, and their likely interactions as the economic crisis deepens?
Moreover, we need a great deal of study of the conditions and outlook of different strata in the working class itself. For staring us in the face is strong evidence that there are significant strata–besides the narrow labor aristocracy–that are temporarily in a material position that delays development of the inevitable revolutionary stirrings of the pauperized proletariat described by Marx and Engels.[2] Can we say that “the great majority” of U.S. workers are “scarcely, or even not at all, protected from extreme want”?[3] If not, we must learn how much the relatively low level of socialist sentiment in the U.S. working class is linked to an imperialist superpower’s temporary ability to place sizable strata of the class in a situation of material privilege, relative to the usual lot of workers under capitalism. For to the extent that such a link exists, we must learn in what strata communist work will now bear the most fruit, as well as how to appeal to the more privileged strata and show them that the present deterioration in their conditions of life can only get worse, much worse, as long as capitalism survives.[4]
This question of material privilege and capitalist stabilization is no minor problem, despite U.S. communists’ inattention to it. As a comrade has reminded us, Lenin believed that imperialism was quite literally the “eve” of the proletarian revolution, as his writings at the close of World War I show. Yet in the 60 years since then there has been no socialist revolution in an advanced capitalist country. Nonetheless, communists generally do not even see the lack of such revolutions as a phenomenon requiring investigation. If they recognize it at all, a few phrases about revisionist betrayals usually suffice to explain it away. But neither the historical practice of the proletarian movement nor any theoretical works by U.S. communists of the present or previous generations show that the unique problems of making revolution within powerful imperialist countries have been analyzed and solved.
There are other questions of strategic importance that the U.S. communist movement will have to come to grips with, and now is not too soon to begin, if it turns out that we have the resources to study them. Some comrades argue that there is a need to rediscover and defend basic Marxist-Leninist principles on such fundamentals as proletarian internationalism and the united front, along with several key questions of internal party life.[5] Not having studied these questions ourselves, we do not endorse their conclusion that communists have a legacy of four decades of serious deviations in the world communist movement to overcome. However, that conclusion cannot be rejected out of hand. There is an undeniable need for some deep study and thinking, after a history that includes Stalin’s failure to protest the dissolution of the CPUSA, the rapid rise of revisionism after 35 years of socialism in the USSR, the degeneration of communist parties worldwide, a revisionist takeover in China that came relatively easily (no civil war), the Theory of Three Worlds, and an apparent lengthy history of nationalist deviations that finally culminated in the recent fighting in Southeast Asia.
Of course the point of listing these events, each one alone tragic, is not to spread demoralization. It is to urge comrades to act like Marxists who must study and come to grips with these phenomena, in order to prevent their repetition. Only the bourgeoisie will benefit if we act like faithful religionists who can talk endlessly about the great science of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao, without analyzing communists’ serious failures in trying to apply that science in recent decades.
There are other questions which we must study so that our program can answer them, in order for that program to unite revolutionaries around a consistently revolutionary political line. There are, for example, many unsolved aspects of the national question (school integration, affirmative action and super-seniority, national self-determination). Other examples are the question of what class forces the proletariat can ally with internationally, the correct orientation towards the existing trade unions, and the woman question. These can only be settled by studying the theory that Marxism-Leninism has already developed and applying those principles to an investigation of current conditions.
(Even if correct lines on some of these questions are already understood in some quarters of our movement, it is clear that no more than the first half of the task which Mao called “the creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory” has been completed. The advocacy, the struggle for wide acceptance of the correct line and the isolation of die-hard opportunists, remains largely unfinished on many questions.)
Another area of necessary theoretical work is study of trends in the workers’ movement and among the petty bourgeoisie, and in the bourgeoisie’s use of reformist and repressive tactics, in order to develop offensive or defensive tactics that take these trends into account. For years assertions about “the rising tide of fascism” have been thrown around, based on particular examples of repression, films promoting reactionary ideologies, etc., with few facts to allow us to see what the trend is. Bourgeois democracy, however, has always included the use of varying levels of repression and reactionary ideology. What we must know is whether what Lenin called the combination of “the hangman and the priest” or “the knout [whip] and the biscuit” is presently that typical of bourgeois democracy or is changing qualitatively into fascism.
One of the biggest reasons why communists need detailed study of this society is that even if we could somehow have the answers about strategy, tactics, and other political line questions without it, it takes real familiarity with social conditions in their particularity to give the workers the facts they must see if we are to win them away from the illusions which the bourgeoisie as promoted for so long. For this reason, theoretical work is essential for assisting the development of a communist working-class vanguard. We go into s point more deeply here, because it is one of the most important and yet least emphasized aspects of the need for theory.
Most contemporary communist agitation and propaganda which we have seen, if it deals with facts at all, is “example-based.” One or two examples of, say, police repression, are presented, coupled with the assertion that such incidents are on the rise, and capped with the conclusion that the police oppress working and oppressed people in the interests of the bourgeoisie. This can be presented in a fairly lively way, of course, and explained better or worse, according to the skill and understanding of the agitator. But as Lenin had to remind socialist theoreticians in another context, examples alone prove nothing. For they can mean entirely different things depending on their historical context, and they could be atypical of the phenomenon being discussed, rather than typical. What we need are “[f]acts. . . in their entirety, in their interconnection.”[6]
For example, when dealing with a police shooting of a minority person, we must refute the reformist explanation that the shooting was the act of a “rotten apple” on the police force. We can do this far better when we can show how many of these shootings have taken place in the last few years, the universal official response to such shootings (refusal to punish the killers, which amounts to a tacit “license to kill”), the kinds of mass struggle that led to the few examples of punishment, etc.
If we do understand what causes police killings, or inflation, or unemployment, or bad health and safety conditions at work–then of course some of the people faced with these contradictions will be open to our analyses of them, even if we do not have the broad factual data to prove that we are correct. But the bourgeoisie has long experience in “explaining” the same things. And what many comrades forget is that they have, in the main, had long success at it. The fact that communists have truth and the interests of the workers on our side does not make it any less of an uphill battle to prove that most workers’ present understanding of how this society works is largely mistaken. In our opinion, only a relative handful of workers, far fewer than the potential working-class vanguard, will see the correctness of Marxism-Leninism until we can prove it correct on the basis of its detailed, concrete explanations of the realties of this society, of the events they see and experience. And to do this we must take those facts “in their entirety,” not engage the bourgeoisie in a contest between examples that “prove that the system works” and those that “prove” that it only works for the bourgeoisie.
For example, the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee (now the CPUSA/M-L) told workers, in a sentence that could have been written by many others, that “the overwhelming tendency of the courts is to serve the bourgeoisie, as shown very clearly in recent Supreme Court rulings upholding the right of Nazis to terrorize Jewish and Black communities; the Bakke decision; court injunctions against strikes; and right to work laws.”[7] If this is proof of the role of the courts, during the liberal “Warren Era” of the Supreme Court, someone could have easily proved that the courts serve the oppressed!
Comrades’ complacency regarding the theoretical poverty of the U.S. communist movement is so pervasive that we will consider three more illustrations of the pressing need for theoretical work to make our mass work effective. One is the necessity for materials that prove, with facts, the decline of the petty bourgeoisie in this country, the increasing squeeze which they are in. This necessity stems from widespread illusions among workers, and not just the most backward, about starting their own businesses as an individual way out, or at least giving their own children an education and a better life. Such dreams need to be exposed for what they are, with a combination of economic data on the actual decline of the petty bourgeoisie and survey data, if available, on the number of workers who go through most of a career in the factory, nourished by a dream of getting out of it. Often it is the workers most capable of being working-class activists who harbor such dreams, the able, the confident ones, the ones who bridle at the idea of working to line the pockets of capitalists instead of working for themselves. We cannot defeat such powerful hopes by reiterating what the Communist Manifesto says about the decline of the petty bourgeoisie.
A different kind of example of theoretical weakness that badly damages propaganda and agitation is the whole subject of political economy. Comrades are aware, from time to time, of their inability to explain why inflation is now endemic here, despite the vitality of the question as an agitational issue. But the entire communist movement’s failure to grasp the most basic Marxist economic concepts stood right out with the various “analyses” of the Proposition 13 tax-cutting movement. Here was a ready-made opportunity to explain the concept of surplus value. That concept shows that workers pay the cost of government whether the tax bill goes to their employers, who “pay” it from the surplus value which the workers produce, or to the workers, whose average wages would soon reflect the added cost of sustaining themselves. But communists were totally unprepared to teach workers the economics that show that their exploitation takes place not where they naturally feel that it does (where government, landlords, and merchants take their money), but at the workplace, where the capitalists take the products of their labor. And so most of us spread petty-bourgeois socialist slogans like “make the rich pay.”
Our final illustration of the need for theoretical work in order to make practice effective concerns the role of the state in general. Despite broad cynicism about politicians, dislike of police, etc., the presence of illusions about the bourgeois democratic state as a force which could serve the interests of all classes equally and fairly is extremely widespread, even among the most progressive of non-socialist workers. This is evident to anyone who does mass work and who pays attention to what the people are thinking. And no wonder that these illusions are so widespread–with deep bourgeois democratic traditions and a material situation that permits fairly liberal use of concessions and reforms, the bourgeois ideologists can point to all kinds of real-world examples that “prove that the system works.”
In a four-month period in 1978, the bourgeois press reported the following events: Congress blocked, as too threatening to citizens’ rights, an I.R.S. computerized data bank. The Freedom of Information Act continued to be used o get damaging documents from the F.B.I, about its political police functions. Months before the Three Mile Island accident, California’s nuclear regulatory agency blocked, on safety grounds, all new construction of nuclear power plants in the state, in the face of heavy industry opposition. The Pennsylvania legislature cut off funds to the University of Pennsylvania after the school fired maintenance workers who quit a company union to join the Teamsters. The House Banking Committee publically demanded that six big banks explain why they provided one billion dollars in loans to the Chilean junta after the Carter administration cut off most government credits to the regime. The Olin Corporation, a large munitions maker, was fined $510,000 for selling guns to the South African government and was also indicted on felony charges of concealing its mercury pollution of a river. The British government, in the wake of rising white chauvinist agitation and sentiment against South Asian immigrants, banned U.S. Ku Klux Klan leaders from visiting the country. Tenneco was indicted for bribing a Louisiana sheriff. The F.T.C. moved to restrict television commercials aimed at children.
This is only a partial list, from articles discovered casually as we read the daily newspaper.
With such events before workers’ eyes, along with a life-long “education” about “democracy,” a few counter-examples will win over no one, nor deepen the understanding of those who do have few illusions about the state. What we need to prove is that the concessions are the appearance–ultimately granted to forestall the growth of any threatening mass movement, that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the essence, and that the state is firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This can be done, of course. But to influence more than a handful of workers, we need more than Lenin’s The State and Revolution (and a few current examples) to do it. (Some organizations’ work is a little better, of course, but we are talking about more than the research which backs up particular newspaper articles by, say, the Workers Congress or the CPUSA/M-L.) Communists need a major propaganda piece, an all-sided study that presents an historical and current overview of the role and methods of the bourgeois state in the United States of America. A task force doing a year’s research could produce propaganda, based on U.S. data, which proves the Marxist-Leninist thesis on the nature of the state. A book produced in that period of time would not be the last word on the subject, of course, but it could put into perspective all the opportunities for reform, cooptation, and exploitation of internal contradictions that exist in the democratic republican form of the bourgeois dictatorship. Many of our best worker contacts would read such a book, and it would surely help bring some of them closer to becoming communists themselves. Just as important, communists and our active contacts, armed with the facts contained in the propaganda piece, could do a far better job of producing persuasive agitation than we can do today.
The same need for theoretical work is equally true in seeing how other bourgeois institutions (churches, press, television) serve the existing order and in explaining both national oppression and the oppression of women. We must speak to the workers, including their most progressive and active representatives,[8] coming not only from our knowledge of Marxism-Leninism and an example from the morning’s headlines, but using an all-sided understanding of concrete realities here. And we must also do studies, particularly of the international situation and of political economy, that will permit us to deal with issues that will become burning questions.
We have worked with comrades who do believe that communists basically already have the theory that we need, in our knowledge of Marxism and a little current events. Engels was contemptuous of such attitudes in his time:
Engels’s remark about the “self-sufficiency of the journalist” is particularly apropos, for, as we wrote some time ago, current communist agitation and propaganda also “too often have an ’instant analysis’ quality, rather than being grounded in an all-sided understanding of the society.”
The materialist conception of history has a lot of them nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history.
...In general, the word “materialistic” serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil-law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. . . .[T]oo many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge–for economic history is still in its swaddling clothes!–constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and then they deem themselves something very tremendous.
...You, who have really done something, must have noticed yourself how few of the young literary men who fasten themselves on to the Party give themselves the trouble to study economics, the history of economics, the history of trade, of industry, of agriculture, of the formations of society. . . .The self-sufficiency of the journalist must serve for everything here and the result looks like it. It often seems as if these gentlemen think anything is good enough for the workers. If these gentlemen only knew that Marx thought his best things were still not good enough for the workers, how he regarded it as a crime to offer the workers anything but the very best!...[9]
Engels’s remark about the “self-sufficiency of the journalist” is particularly apropos, for, as we wrote some time ago, current communist agitation and propaganda also “too often have an ’instant analysis’ quality, rather than being grounded in an all-sided understanding of the society.”
Engels’s remark about the “self-sufficiency of the journalist” is particularly apropos, for, as we wrote some time ago, current communist agitation and propaganda also “too often have an ’instant analysis’ quality, rather than being grounded in an all-sided understanding of the society.”
Our emphasis on the need for so much investigation and study of U.S. society is orthodox Marxism. The general principles of the science–which were, after all, derived from study of particular societies–have never in themselves been enough to point the road forward. Lenin stated the theoretical tasks of the “socialist intelligentsia” in Russia in 1894, years before the Russian party was founded:
...[T]heir THEORETICAL work must be directed towards the concrete study of all forms of economic antagonism in Russia, the study of their connections and successive development; they must reveal this antagonism wherever it has been concealed by political history, by the peculiarities of legal systems or by established theoretical prejudice. They must present an integral picture of our realities as a definite system of production relations, show that the exploitation and expropriation of the working people are essential under this system, and show the way out of this system that is indicated by economic development.
This theory, based on a detailed study of Russian history and realities, must furnish an answer to the demands of the proletariat–and if it satisfies the requirements of science, then every awakening of the protesting thought of the proletariat will inevitably guide this thought into the channels of Social-Democracy. The greater the progress made in elaborating this theory, the more rapidly will Social-Democracy grow. . ..
...[For an industrial worker to engage in an organized, sustained, revolutionary struggle, it is necessary] to make him understand his position, to make him understand the political and economic structure of the system that oppresses him and the necessity and inevitability of class antagonisms under this system.[10]
In 1941 and 1942, Mao emphasized that despite the gains made in the study of Marxist-Leninist works within the Chinese party, its theoretical level was still low because there had been so little investigation of China’s own problems. “Just think,” he asked, “how many of us have created theories worthy of the name on China’s economics, politics, military affairs or culture, theories which can be regarded as scientific and comprehensive, and not crude and sketchy?”[11] He proposed,
We should place before the whole Party the task of making a systematic and thorough study of the situation around us. On the basis of the theory and method of Marxism-Leninism, we should make a detailed investigation and study of developments in the economic, financial, political, military, cultural and party activities of our enemies, our friends, and ourselves, and then draw the proper and necessary conclusions.[12]
Lenin, after insisting that, in every country, “[w]ithout revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” added that “for Russian Social-Democracy the importance of theory is enhanced by three other circumstances.” Each one, or a comparable one, exists in the U.S. today as well:
...[F]irst, by the fact that our Party is only in process of formation, its features are only just becoming defined, and it has as yet far from settled accounts with the other trends of revolutionary thought that threaten to divert the movement from the correct path. . ..
Secondly, the Social-Democratic [communist] movement is in its very essence an international movement. This means. . . that an incipient movement in a young country can be successful only if it makes use of the experiences of other countries. . ..
Thirdly, the national tasks of Russian Social-Democracy are such as have never confronted any other socialist party in the world.[13]
Communists in this country can no more dispense with such theory than the communists of Russia and China could. It need not all be “completed” before the situation will move forward, of course. But our movement’s un-Marxist ignorance of the particulars of the contradictions and motions of the society in which we live is a tremendous obstacle to the unity of communists, the development of a program, the creation of a strategy that unites the proletariat with its friends and isolates its enemies, the elaboration of tactics suited to current conditions, and the carrying out of the truly effective agitation and propaganda required if we are to fuse communism with the workers’ movement.
Thirdly, the national tasks of Russian Social-Democracy are such as have never confronted any other socialist party in the world.
We have stated the need for a very large amount of investigation, along with struggle to unite those who can be won to correct analyses, concerning both U.S. capitalist development and key questions in the history of the international communist movement. Clarity on basic issues of Marxism-Leninism must also be achieved. Finally, one of the goals of investigating U.S. society is the elaboration of a political line for its revolutionary transformation. All this study and struggle cannot be carried out at once, nor need it all take place before a party capable of becoming the proletariat’s vanguard organization can be formed. Some priorities must be determined.
What must take place before a party should be formed is theoretical work and ideological struggle to permit adoption of a correct program. In fact a program is the statement of the required unity for a party, its “principles of unity.” (We go into this more thoroughly in Chapters IV and IX, where we discuss the preconditions for party-formation.)
Therefore, since a pre-party organization must create the conditions for forming a party, one of its priorities for theoretical work and line struggle will be work which helps settle controversial programmatic questions, some of which have been mentioned previously. Chief among these, in our opinion, are:
(1) an integral picture of present and predictable capitalist development in this country,
(2) the class forces that can be reserves of the proletariat and the demands we support on their behalf (e.g., urban and rural petty bourgeoisie),
(3) the internationalist duties of the U.S. working class and the world situation which gives rise to them,
(4) various aspects of the national question,
(5) other questions of democratic rights,
(6) the basic orientation towards the trade unions (whether the strategy is to ’move them to the left,” try to destroy them and replace them with entirely new organizations, or work to take them over and convert them into either militant and democratic unions or into revolutionary mass organizations), and
(7) the concrete meaning of equality for women.
Out of all the theoretical work we have listed, there will be differences of opinion on the conclusions °f various studies. We have been asked whether we think that unity on all those conclusions is required. The answer is, certainly not. Our program, our required unity–within which differences are tolerable–will state our basic agreement on the nature and development of the U.S. social formation, the strategy of the proletariat, its attitude towards other class forces and political trends, and the basic political and economic demands for which it should fight, but not the details of every issue which agitation and propaganda will address. To illustrate, we will need unity on the communist orientation towards the state and democratic rights, but not on a particular propagandist’s conclusions about whether government regulatory agencies are a concession to popular demands for controls on business, or simply a tool of the “regulated” corporations. The process of party-building, combined with study of other parties, will give us all a more concrete grasp of what a program must cover.
There is another consideration, one which should be given a weight equal to that of the program in a pre-party network’s theoretical priorities. In the next chapter we explain why, though lacking a party, communists must carry out agitation and propaganda in the working class to help the development of a proletarian vanguard, a corps of socialist workers who will join, and preferably help create, a new communist party. If we are correct in asserting the need for such mass work in a pre-party period, then the second factor in determining priorities for investigation and study is the absence of materials to convince workers of the need for socialist revolution in the U.S. We already gave examples of such materials on pp. 15-18, above.
The work on the programmatic questions and the general social investigation needed for better agitation and propaganda will be overlapping and complementary. Giving balanced attention to those two priorities would improve our mass work as it helped settle key differences among us.
Later, when we are closer to formation of a party, another priority will come to the fore, viz., questions about the nature of the party itself. The main issues are probably how much disunity is tolerable within a single party and how to combat over-centralization and the underdevelopment of rank-and-file party members, but there will be other questions of organization as well. The struggle over such matters can be postponed for a time, because unity on them would not be essential until we near the point of party-formation. Moreover, by then our experience within the pre-party network could help us grasp questions of party organization in a much more concrete way.
We are purposely attempting only a sketchy answer to the question of theoretical priorities, by saying that particular proposals for study should be compared according to the contribution each could make to developing a program, making our agitation and propaganda more effective, and, later, establishing correct norms for internal party life. Beyond these general observations, we must say that the particular allocation of resources to theoretical work will depend largely on what the resources of the pre-party organization turn out to be, after it is formed. Moreover, making that allocation wisely requires a broader perspective than that of a single West Coast collective.
It is possible to overrate the need for such theoretical work, to argue that we can engage in no meaningful practice until it has progressed much more, or to demand, as a precondition for forming a party, far more study and struggle than that required for agreement on a correct program and line on questions of organization. As later chapters show, this is not our position.
A far more serious problem in our movement is downgrading or liquidating the need for theoretical work, and it can come from either the “left” or the right. Many “lefts” do not underestimate the importance of theoretical differences in the least, but they often see little need for serious study and investigation of the way this society functions. There is a wide range of groups which recognize the importance of doing work in the workers’ movement. They try–with varying degrees of consistency and in different settings–to raise a communist analysis of different questions. But they fail entirely to see how badly we are hindered in this work by our lack of detailed Marxist studies of concrete conditions in the U.S., studies that would permit us to do our agitation and propaganda based on facts. Regardless of whether their deviations on political line are right or “left,” such groups are making a “left” error, the overestimation of the ease with which the masses, or their most developed representatives, can accept our ideas.
We would include in this category most of the parties and party-like groups, with the exception of the Communist Labor Party.[14] Some (the MLOC, the former organizations of “the Revolutionary Wing”) used to talk a lot about the importance of study of concrete conditions. Now they no longer even list this as among their major tasks. We cannot try to refute their position on this any more than we have above in explaining our own views, for, as far as we know, none of them has put words to paper to justify their belittling of our theoretical tasks. They just do not mention those tasks, and in the main they do not do them. Certainly we see no major organizational efforts bent in this direction; they clearly think that it is sufficient to go to the workers with the kind of agitation and propaganda which communists can produce now.
Inattention to theoretical work is also tied to the “left” sectarianism which these organizations and parties typically manifest towards the rest of us and towards each other. To adopt a correct line on party-building, a political question, or a tactical issue, mistaken comrades must, of course, be willing to struggle against their own opportunism, but they must also be presented with a well-reasoned and fully-documented analysis. (Often they must learn from their own experience, as well.) But we are in a movement filled with organizations which are willing to draw lines of demarcation between themselves and all the other “opportunists” based on positions stated in one or two newspaper articles, positions that are justified with a few “classical” quotations and a few contemporary facts. This is like the “leftism” of believing the masses can be won over to a half-baked analysis, presented with few facts. It iS wrong to make the same assumption about communists, too, and to write them off as opportunists if they do not display the same readiness for instant “consolidation to the line” that is so typical of each group’s own rank and file.
The classic model of right opportunist belittlement of theory was the Economists, whom Lenin opposed in What is to be Done?,[15] They opposed the theoretical struggle among revolutionaries, seeking to shield themselves from attacks on their “criticisms” of Marxism (a ploy which “lefts” have used as well). Moreover, they argued that confining the workers’ movement to the daily, local struggle for trade unionist gains was the path to socialism. Therefore they had little need for study of the objective development of Russian society, for they had no intention of explaining that development to workers, nor of intervening to radically accelerate that development.
We think that contemporary examples of this deviation are the Guardian, the Bay Area Communist Union, and the Movement for a Revolutionary Left, all of which, in our opinion, promote rightist lines on our mass work and concurrently say little or nothing about serious study of this society.
Another form of the right deviation appears in the Proletarian Unity League’s analysis of the level of clarity which we can and should have on political line questions before uniting into a single party. While correctly opening the debate on what level of unity is necessary and possible for communists to work together in this period, they end up concluding that a party can be formed, apparently organized along democratic centralist lines, based on little more than unity on our party-building tasks, and the broad principles on which political line will eventually be based. The P.U.L. bases its argument largely on our supposed inability to take up many theoretical tasks and to settle disputed line questions before the formation of a party. They suggest the need for agreement on these issues:
the nature of the main danger to the communist movement, the tasks of communists in this period, the character and functioning of a Marxist-Leninist party, and, in order to orient the work of the newly-formed party, a rudimentary programmatic, strategic, and tactical line treating principally the relationship between democratic and socialist struggle in the U.S., as well as the basic features of international line [later explained as basic principles of internationalism, and agreement on the social-imperialist nature of the USSR]. . . .Our program will represent the ideological foundations upon which the Party rests, not the specifics of its political activity (as do some present Party programs).
To be taken up by the party after its formation are such questions as
other questions of the international situation, certain specific features of the various national questions in the U.S., the woman question, the character and history of the CPUSA, the tendencies of U.S. capital accumulation, the trade union question, and strategy for revolution in the U.S....[16]
We think that an organization which agrees generally on party-building line should be formed to implement that line, but that a Leninist party needs much more than what the P.U.L. lists here. The P.U.L. omits too many questions of political line, of the content of what a party must teach the workers. What kind of united work can it do if some of its members insist that calling for the right of self-determination for the Black Belt South is mandatory, while others are sure that under present conditions it is chauvinist? Is it a matter of indifference what the party press says about NATO? Can half of the new party criticize but support the next Sadlowski, while half opposes him? Or must we all remain silent? Or are these things to be settled by the leading body, or by majority vote, soon after party-formation, without an opportunity for the study and struggle which they deserve?
The P.U.L. has so little confidence in the ability of the most consistent Marxist-Leninists to do our theoretical work that it has stepped into the right opportunist trap of saying that we must have “unity,” and the consequent expansion of our forces, at the price of compromise on principle. They may not be all that attached to this line, since at least once their text on conditions for party-formation refers instead to “communist unification in a Party or other organizational form.”[17] So perhaps they will recognize that there are other organizational forms, short of the democratic-centralist party, that are appropriate when we have unity on our immediate party-building tasks but not programmatic unity. But if, at the point where the level of line agreement that they describe has been reached, they persisted in pushing for unification into a democratic-centralist party, we do not see how they could do so without relying on classic arguments that belittle the significance of important theoretical differences.
This position’s denial of the necessity for theoretical work essential in the pre-party period is discussed more thoroughly in Chapter IV’s exploration of the unity needed in a party. But here we must take up the other prong of the comrades’ argument, for the P.U.L.’s position is based on an extremely unambitious, or rather defeatist, view of our ability to solve major questions of program and strategy before formation of a party. (We take up several of the arguments in some detail, because the line of mainly postponing theoretical work until after the formation of a party is in fact very influential. The P.U.L. puts forward the stron8est arguments for that position that we have seen.[18]
We should say from the start that we agree that the party form of organization permits communists to do more and better theoretical work than more primitive forms. The fact remains, however, that much of that work must be done before a politically reliable party can be formed, both to put our unity on a solid footing and to win over workers who will help us unite. So the problem is to devise ways of overcoming the obstacles to doing such work now, rather than to absolutize them.
On strategy and tactics, they hold that, before we have a party, line on such questions must “confin[e] itself mainly to the reaffirmation of strategic and tactical principles as applied to the U.S.” They argue that many important questions cannot be decided in the absence of a mass upsurge, without which the questions are not even before us. We agree that hypothetical questions should not be a focus for debate or used to keep our forces divided. But does this category really include questions of strategy–e.g., whom does the proletariat unite with; whom does it seek to neutralize; whom must it oppose; are there regions of the country where the people must first pass through a new democratic revolution? Surely a Marxist analysis of class forces has never had to wait until a period of mass upsurge, although obviously one of our means of developing that analysis is to study what has been the political behavior of the different classes and strata in periods when they were in dramatic motion.
On tactics, are we unable to decide now whether communists should focus their own work and the work of the most developed workers in the trade union movement, or whether we should pull the few workers we may have in each plant into a Fightback or National United Workers’ Organization so we can feel like we are leading a mass movement? Are communists unable to settle the question of whether we should make use of bourgeois congressional elections to put forward our views?
The P.U.L. supports their position with an incontestable quotation from Lenin: “a correct revolutionary theory. . . assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.” Other readers might (correctly) interpret the reference to “final shape” to mean that, at an earlier time, we can produce a basically correct revolutionary theory that is not yet in final shape, particularly if they read the sentences which the P.U.L. omits. In fact, Lenin pointed out that a correct revolutionary theory helps us create the class consciousness of the vanguard, build the party’s links to the masses, and provide correct leadership to the mass struggle. Then he added that the theory that performs these functions will get its “final shape” in connection with a mass revolutionary movement.[19] So, unlike the P.U.L., Lenin obviously thought (and showed) that much of the theory can be developed in advance and brought to the upsurge when that upsurge takes place.
Can the theory be developed earlier and tested, in part, through study of many different local experiences in mass struggles? Not only did Lenin speak as if it had been, but a glance at the History of the CPSU(B)[Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik)] shows that among the ideological struggles which preceded formation of a party were those on such questions of strategy and tactics as the proletariat’s relationship to the peasantry, its relationship to the liberal bourgeoisie, and forms of mass work (widespread economic and political agitation, or tailing the trade-union struggle).
The P.U.L. also argues that “it is hard to speak of a proletarian political line” since political line guides the independent political struggle of the working class “in the field,” and we are not only not guiding such a struggle but lack the general staff (the party) that will. But why can we not develop such line before we are in a position to implement it?[20] First the P.U.L. says, “The working out of a battle plan rests on a force capable of analyzing the theater of operations, the enemy’s fortifications, and the strength of the people’s militia.” (The context makes it clear that this “force” can only be the party, the “general staff.”) The military metaphor makes the reader think of times of revolutionary upsurge, when we need a party that can rapidly analyze the state and motion of all the class forces in the country to make immediate tactical decisions on critical moves. Thus the metaphor obscures the question of why it would take a whole party to map out the general strategy for the revolution and the overall tactics for current conditions. Lenin and Mao both made such analyses of the revolutionary paths for their societies without having that kind of organization to assist them. Instead, they did what they could through reading, correspondence, travel, talks with people, and participation in the practical struggle, to learn about conditions throughout their countries.
The comrades also quote Stalin’s statement that, until the 1905 revolution in Russia, before which the party was not able to lead a truly mass movement, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party’s “strategy. . . was necessarily narrow and restricted,” and its tactics “were also necessarily narrow and without scope.” But this refers to the implementation of strategy and tactics. This time the P.U.L. gives us enough of the quotation to refute their own argument, since they also include the sentence: “The Party confined itself to mapping the movement’s strategic plan, i.e., the route that the movement should take. . ..”
Finally,[21] the P.U.L. argues that “the real implications of any strategic or tactical positions will only emerge through their implementation on a wide scale under a centralized direction,” although they concede that “[j]oint ideological struggle will doubtless clarify some of these differences.” Since a line cannot be proven correct or incorrect until implemented in practice, we should not let disagreements over lines not tested by a party divide us:
[D]ifferences over a comprehensive strategy and tactics should not have decisive importance in the struggle for communist unity.” This position disregards the extent to which many issues have been proven by the experience of the proletariat elsewhere, and it ignores our ability to sum up experiences of different groups trying different lines in this country (and the possibility of forming a pre-party organization to do this). The logical consequence of such a view is that it is better for all communists to unite in one party and implement a disastrous strategy in a united way (if such a strategy happens to be favored by a majority of leadership), and then learn from our experience and rectify our mistakes, better this than for separate lines to be tested by different parties so that a more correct one can be proven simultaneously.
The P.U.L. is putting unity above all, a right error. And it is relieving us of the necessity of struggling to develop strategy and tactics by underestimating our ability to do so under present conditions, again a form of the rightist’s conservatism and lack of initiative.
Similarly, they limit the needed programmatic unity to “a rough program” which “must largely content itself with summarizing the level of unity achieved in the ideological struggle for party-formation.” This is because, they say, a more developed program depends on wide-scale social investigation, and such investigation requires actual participation in the class struggle. We agree on the need for social investigation, and that practice is a part of it. In the next two chapters we will consider the views of the P.U.L., and many others, who hold that a substantial commitment to such practice and the gathering of the knowledge gained in the course of it can come only after formation of a party. Here we only point out that in 1899 Lenin called for Russian Marxists to struggle over the points of a party program and he put forward a draft, and that at the 1903 Congress which formed a united RSDLP (Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) a detailed program was adopted.[22] (Throughout this book we raise such historical examples not because we think that U.S. communists must mimic past experiences, but because so many comrades have convinced themselves through pure reason that we cannot do various things without a party, in the face of historical experience which disproves their reasoning.)
It is correct to raise the question of what is knowable before we unite in a party and to consider the questions on which disagreements are tolerable. This is what Lenin called “introduction of the programme question into the polemic,” since it is precisely the program which states the points on which party members must agree.[23] it is certainly correct to oppose exploitation of every difference as a “line of demarcation,” but the P.U.L.’s struggle against the “left” line takes them to the right. We think that to unite in a centralized Leninist party, Lenin’s general description of a program is correct:
The programme must formulate our basic views, precisely establish our immediate political tasks; point out the immediate demands that must show the area of agitational activity; give unity to the agitational work, expand and deepen it, thus raising it from fragmentary partial agitation for petty, isolated demands to the status of agitation for the sum total of Social-Democratic [communist] demands.[24]
The Chinese formed a party without such a clear program, but it was a much looser organization that the RSDLP or what we need here to do consistent work “”educating and organizing the working class. Without such a program, as we pointed out above, the party must either keep silent or speak with different voices on many important issues.
The forces to do the theoretical work which our movement requires do exist. Many comrades shrink from these tasks and consign them to a future when “the party can do them.” But “the party” can neither unite many of today’s communists nor win over many workers without significant progress in accomplishing these tasks. Lenin and Mao, while not perfect, certainly showed that even a single person who combines tremendous intellect, unflagging energy, a firm grasp of Marxism, and close ties to the masses and their movement can, in concert with a few comrades, play a tremendous part in analyzing their societies and charting the revolutionary path. Our movement has yet to produce such leaders, but the combined work of a number of people can lead to a qualitative leap in the application of science to an analysis of the U.S. None of us can do it alone, but we can do it in an organization that divides some of the labor and permits the nationwide exchange of the lessons of practice and social investigation.
The forces who would join such an organization are largely untrained in theoretical work. Doing that work will not be easy, especially at first, but it is not impossible, either. We will give two examples of what the process might look like. Our purpose, of course, is to provide illustrations, not a blueprint for the work of as-yet unknown forces.
First, let us say that the steering committee of a pre-party network, implementing the organization’s unity on theoretical priorities, decides to organize work on a class analysis. It could coordinate the formation of a small working group, after local circles recommend individuals who have already done such work or at least whose research skills and grasp of dialectical materialism are thought to be well developed. The steering committee should see to it that the working group, though kept small, represents the main political tendencies that exist within the network.
We would expect the group to put together, and use, a study list of materials from the classics on classes and class analysis; frame the questions which a U.S. class analysis must answer; read analyses that have been written by Marxist-Leninists in other advanced capitalist countries; implement a division o labor for studying and reporting on relevant materials from bourgeois sources, Marxist academics, and other U.S. communist organizations; investigate the current outlook and behavior of different classes and strata fusing, among other things, questionnaires sent to the circles in the network, to get their reports on what can be observed locally); and study relevant historical and current materials to be found in basic library research (concerning, for example, various ways members of the petty bourgeoisie have organized themselves and acted, in the class struggle).
While original research will no doubt be essential, the working group certainly will not have to start from scratch. Lenin was able to write Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism largely through critical analysis of bourgeois sources, i.e., using a great deal of their facts, those that are reliable, to inform a Marxist analysis. We will undoubtedly be able to do the same as we familiarize ourselves with the relevant literature. Moreover, there is a wealth of material being published all the time in many books and in journals such as The Insurgent Sociologist and the Journal of Radical Political Economy by Marxist academics and other left critics of capitalist society, material which communists are entirely incapable of studying, criticizing, and using, in our present state of fragmentation.
The class analysis working group should make periodic progress reports to the entire network, particularly at the beginning of each stage in its work, as plans are being drawn up, so that other comrades can contribute their suggestions.
If its ideological unity were unusually high, such a working group could produce a single report analyzing the various strata in U.S. society, and explaining their interests, their typical conduct and outlooks, and their predictable reactions to the deepening crisis of capitalism and the initiatives that will be taken by both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But it is quite likely that more than one such report will be produced and that a series of polemics will develop within the network. Such differences, and the need to resolve them through ideological struggle, are unavoidable among revolutionaries who are a product of bourgeois society, who bring different experiences to the movement, and who vary in their ability to embrace consistent Marxism-Leninism and resist opportunism. But at least the network will permit the study to be done and the debate to take place in an organized way, rather than leaving its members exposed to only one point of view or none at all. Unity on disputed questions will come in the only ways ever possible in political movements, as we move closer to the formation of a party: through ideological struggle ending the influence of the incorrect line (e.g., Lenin’s defeat of Economism), a split at the time of party-formation (the Jewish Bund’s leaving the RSDLP at the congress which constituted a real party), or the minority submitting itself to the majority on secondary issues (Lenin and others staying, when the same congress adopted a vague and incorrect formulation on party membership).
Theoretical projects less ambitious than a class analysis could be handled differently. Investigation and struggle over the forms and effects of various affirmative action programs, for example, might take place in the form of a few comrades’ individual contributions to a debate in the network’s theoretical journal. The network steering committee should provide some organization in the choice of questions to be taken up, using its authority to decide for what purposes the theoretical journal will be available at a particular time.
Again, nothing we say here, in suggesting how a pre-party network can organize theoretical work, is meant to obscure the fact that the party form of organization will permit us to do more and better theoretical work than more primitive forms. The fact remains, however, that much theoretical work is needed to unite communists into a party, as well as to deepen the fusion with the workers’ movement that will also enhance our ability to unite around a correct line.
Communists in this country face tremendous theoretical tasks that we should begin to take up in the pre-party period. This essential work means not only developing and struggling for general lines for carrying out trade union work, understanding the international situation, knowing what demands of the oppressed nationalities should be supported, etc. It also means analyzing fundamental questions concerning the obstacles to revolution in imperialist countries and what can be learned from apparent weaknesses in the internal party life and the internationalist perspectives of parties in the international communist movement for many years past. And this theoretical work means intensive investigation of “the economic, financial, political, military, cultural and party activities of our enemies, our friends and ourselves” (Mao), the study of history to help illuminate these, and especially an analysis of the classes in this society and their relationship to each other.
How much of this work can be begun now and how fast it will proceed depends entirely on what forces combine for this and other party-building work, but priorities should be set to permit concurrent progress in the resolution of major programmatic controversies and in the development of propaganda that will improve our ability to bring worker-communists into the party-building process. Later in our work priority should also go to study that will help resolve questions of the internal functioning of a party.
Our lack of understanding of the issues identified above is a major barrier to our unity, to our ability to win workers to communism, and to our ability to chart the course of the revolution in this country. As we will explain later, we think that progress on the theoretical front is primary for moving all our work forward. But first we must consider communists’ practical and organizational tasks.
[1] Some comrades understand the term theory to refer only to general principles of Marxism-Leninism, and not to detailed studies of concrete conditions. The point, however, of distinguishing between theoretical and practical activity is to distinguish between work aimed primarily at knowing and work aimed primarily at doing, and the investigations we speak of clearly fall into the former category. Lenin and Mao both used the term as we do, as passages quoted below demonstrate.
[2] The term labor aristocracy refers to a fairly stable stratum of the working class which, as a group, supports the interests of the bourgeoisie. Historically, it has been composed of both labor bureaucrats and skilled tradesmen who are thoroughly corrupted by high wages and other favorable conditions, which capitalists bloated with the superprofits of imperialism can let them have.
They are different from those broader strata of the class which can temporarily be given enough privileges, relative to the impoverished workers typical of capitalism, to be rendered fairly compliant while a particular imperialist enjoys superpower status. As the class struggle intensifies, the aristocracy will consistently stand for compromise and collaboration with the bourgeoisie, while temporarily privileged strata losing that status will, with some vacillation, move to struggle in their genuine proletarian interests.
[3] F. Engels, “Introduction” (1891) to Wage Labour and Capital, MESW 70.
[4] The major communist groups ignore the possibility that important sections of the ass are temporarily inclined towards opportunism because of their material situation. They justify their “revolutionary” optimism by claiming that any different assessment is the same as the “bribe theory.” (E.g., Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee, Unite!, 10/77,, pp. 5 & 16.) Some socialists, like the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, do deny the utility of communist work in the working class. They believe that workers, or white workers, are so “bribed” that there is little we can do here until after a series of revolutions in countries oppressed by U.S. imperialism. This is not the P.C. position. But we do insist that the focus, pace, and content of communist work must be based on the real position and outlook of the workers. These are social facts which cannot be known without investigation.
Those who would rather use the pure truths of Marxism about the proletariat as a revolutionary class to shut their eyes to the problems of working within an imperialist superpower should consider what happened–temporarily–to the English working class during the Nineteenth Century period of Britain’s hegemony among the capitalist countries: “... The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois.. .
[T]he workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.” (Engels, quoted in “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” LCW 23: 112.) “. . .[H]istory made slow organizational and educational work the task of the day” because of several factors, including the fact that “the worker of Britain [was] corrupted by imperialist profits…” (The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, LCW 24: 86.)
[5] See, e.g., the book, On the Roots of Revisionism, distributed by Revolutionary Road Publications.
[6] “Statistics and Sociology,” LCW 23: 272.
[7] Unite!, 10/77, p. 7.
[8] I.e., those whom some would call “the advanced.” We take up the question of to whom that term should be applied in Chapter III.
[9] Engels to C. Schmidt, Aug. 5, 1890, MESW 689-90.
By way of example of the practical value of theory, we note that Engels elsewhere urged another Marxist to complete his historical work on the rise of the modern German state, explaining that
“[t]he dissipation of the monarchical-patriotic legends, although not really a necessary precondition for the abolition of the monarchy, which is a screen for class domination. . . is nevertheless one of the most effective levers for that purpose.“ Engels to F. Mehring, July 14, 1893, Marx and Engels, Selected Letters (FLP: Peking, ly77). p. 93.
[10] What the “Friends of the People” Are. . ., LCW 1: 296-97, 299.
[11] “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” MSR 211-12.
[12] “Reform Our Study,” ibid., 206.
[13] What is to be Done?, LCW 5: 369-70.
[14] We exclude the CLP because we know little about them, and what we do know appears fairly consistent right opportunism in the last couple of years. The former A.T.M. used to fairly consistently commit the “left” disregard for theory which we discuss here but now they combine “left” sectarian anti-Bakke work with, locally at least, trade union work that is too reformist to require much theoretical backup.
[15] Many comrades think that since the Economists belittled theory from the right, all belittling of theory is rightist. Even a clear statement of this proposition makes its logical fallacy apparent. For works discussing “left” disdain for theory and preoccupation with “action,” see p. 8, fn. 6, above.
[16] P.U.L., pp. 200-01, 204, 216-18.
[17] Ibid., p. 216.
[18] Ibid., pp. 201-04. Note that the P.U.L. considers it wrong to form a party unless it really is the party uniting the scattered and divided forces of the communist movement (pp.88-91). One the one hand, the low level of line unity which they propose makes the idea of all joining a single party at least more feasible; but the demand for such unification before taking the deferred questions still implies a very long delay before they are addressed.
[19] “Left-Wing” Communism–An Infantile Disorder, LCW 31: 24-25.
[20] One wonders how the P.U.L. thinks communists can get into a position to implement correct line. The working class will follow communist leadership not because it knows at communists are supposed to be the general staff, but because it will have learned, through experience, that the communists largely do have the answers on how to conduct the proletarian class struggle.
[21] We have omitted some of their points which are secondary and, in our opinion, easily refuted.
[22] See History of the CPSU(B), pp. 37-41, which also states that the program remained in force until 1919. (However, Lenin proposed major revisions in 1917.) See also LCW 4: 227-54.
[23] “A Draft Programme of Our Party,” LCW 4: 231.
[24] Ibid., p. 230.