We stated at the beginning of this pamphlet that an effective communist party needs advanced theory, fusion with the workers’ movement, and communist unity, requirements which U.S. communists are lacking at present. (We are not, however, saying that no party should be formed until these conditions are at a high level. We consider further the preconditions for party formation in the next chapter.) Communists’ three kinds of tasks–theoretical, practical, and organizational–correspond only roughly to these three requirements for a strong party, and each task helps promote all three. We will consider these dialectical relationships in some detail, before seeking to identify the key link among them.
Analysis of the relationship between each pair of these requirements for fully effective communist work shows that an improvement in any one will move the other two forward. Put differently, the very low level in each is a serious obstacle to raising the level of the other two. However, to move the work forward, we must figure out which obstacle in this vicious circle of obstacles is most susceptible to an attack which can permit us to move forward on all three fronts. This is the classic situation of the need to grasp what Lenin called the key link.
To begin with, if communists develop greater unity, we will broaden our resources for doing investigation and other theoretical work. In addition, our ability to do agitation and propaganda would be enhanced by our greater resources and our ability to learn from broader experience, so greater unity would also help deepen fusion. Moreover, in any practical struggle, we would greatly improve our ability to win over workers by eliminating the fragmentation and competitiveness that cause so much damage when communists who act antagonistically towards each other are working in the same mass struggle.
Second, the closer our relationships with the workers, and the greater the proletarian presence among communists, the better will be our knowledge of concrete conditions and the more will our theory be enriched and corrected by the workers’ knowledge and class stand. Greater fusion would also give a tremendous impetus to communist unity. Workers generally oppose destructive petty bourgeois and intellectualist tendencies such as sectarianism, squabbling, anarchism, and slavishness. In addition, the demands of intense practical struggles–which greater fusion presupposes our involvement in–will help us all see how those tendencies get in our way.
However, the main obstacle to all our work, and the one most susceptible to attack, is our tremendous theoretical weakness, in the areas of political line, of broader study of U.S. conditions and development, and, all too often, of fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. We will not repeat here our entire chapter on the need for theoretical work but will simply restate its conclusions. If communists unite on a firm and principled basis, it will be on the line developed by our theoretical work (enriched, of course, by practice). As for fusion, only when our agitation among the workers is based on a correct and fully elaborated theoretical understanding of this society can the addition of socialist agitation to the crucible of class struggle bring forward many advanced and intermediate workers. The better that theory is developed, the greater will be our success in using propaganda, sometimes to the masses, but especially in winning the class vanguard to scientific socialism. In sum, for those Marxist-Leninists not tied to sectarian parties,[1] the main obstacle to unity and to fusion is theoretical weakness: ideological confusion and vagueness on political line, and the absence of a comprehensive view of the social phenomena in our country and a scientific analysis of the contradictions according to which these phenomena are developing. While the lack of unity, the separation of the communist and workers’ movements, and also lack of training do hinder communists’ ability to do the theoretical work, none of these is the main obstacle to that work or provides the key to moving it forward. The main obstacle is not an objective limitation at all, but our “left” and right failures to take seriously the need–and our ability–to take up our theoretical tasks.[2] We can make real advances in theoretical work by beginning that work, but our progress in promoting fusion and in unifying communists cannot accelerate substantially until the development of theory moves forward.
These few words do not give adequate attention to the views that deepening fusion is the primary aspect of party-building (PWOC, P.S.O., and others, and the former A.T.M. from another angle), that unifying the communist movement is (P.U.L.), or that unifying a section of the communist movement is (Guardian). However, we did discuss these lines fully in Chapter III (communists’ practical tasks) and Chapter VII (unifying the communist movement).
We said that the three kinds of tasks do not neatly correspond to the three requirements communists must meet for their party to be a real vanguard organization. The relationship between our theoretical task, however, and the development of revolutionary theory is obviously very direct: carrying out those tasks is the primary way of reaching the goal. But our practice will contribute, in an indispensable way, to our ability to understand this society, and organizing ourselves into a network is essential for being able to carry out and propagate the theoretical work. Our practical tasks are primarily aimed at fusing communism with the workers’ movement and are the main means for doing it, but our success in deepening fusion is also greatly dependent on both our theoretical and our organizational work. And communist unity–both in the short run among those who can be united into a party-building tendency now, and in the long run in winning others over–requires a great deal of theoretical struggle, the results of practical experience, and the organizational steps that permit a degree of unification in our work that corresponds to our level of ideological unity.
Though our diagram on the goals of party-building work (theory, fusion, and unity) may be easy to remember, if comrades wish to keep in mind a fairly simple crystallization of the Pacific Collective’s party-building line, what they should emphasize is the tasks of communists in this period: theoretical practical, and organizational, for this is the list of things that we must be doing. Theoretical work is, in our opinion, definitely the key link among these, but this concept should not be misued to belittle the other tasks or exaggerate our ability to do theoretical work apart from the others. Thus we would never substitute the statement “party-building is essentially developing theory” for others’ statements that “party-building is, in essence, fusion” or “party-building is uniting Marxist-Leninists.” Real inattention to either practical or organizational work would, for as long as it prevailed, be fatal. Even noticeable neglect of our work in either sphere would damage the whole.
In addition, our statement that theoretical work is the key link among party-building tasks should not be confused with our position that party-building line is, in the most immediate period, the key link in moving all communist work forward. Effective party-building work will not take place until the forces that can unite on the correct party-building line do so, and until they translate that unity into an organizational form. What we are stating in this chapter, however, is part of our analysis of what is the correct party-building line that comrades should unite on. That line holds that among the tasks of a pre-party network, theory is primary.
The implications of the primacy of theory cannot be spelled out very concretely, since one must visualize the work of an as-yet nonexistent party-building organization. But we can make some general observations. Making theory primary does not necessarily mean that, of the human resources available for communist work, a greater quantity should be devoted to developing and struggling over theory. For one thing, any serious mass work is extremely time-consuming and, for reasons explained in an earlier chapter, such work cannot be dispensed with. Moreover, the resources which we can devote to theoretical projects at any given time will depend on how many people are qualified, or can be trained, to do such work.
But what is crucial is that we keep reminding ourselves that our practice, as demanding of our time as it seems to be, is a part of party-building, and that the longer we lack a party, the longer the period when the political effectiveness of our practice will be extremely limited. More particularly, we must remember that our practice cannot accomplish very much for as long as we limp along without a tremendous qualitative improvement in the theory that should both guide the practice and make our agitation and propaganda far more effective than they can be now. These are harsh words, but they state a conclusion that is inescapable if one grasps the meanings both of the principle that the vanguard party is indispensable for leading the class struggle of the proletariat, and of the fact that the key link among the tasks needed to build that party is theory.
An organization thus conscious of the primacy of theory will do its utmost to train and mobilize those capable of doing theoretical work. It will support and criticize that work by insisting that those comrades engaged mainly in practice be given time to contribute their knowledge and opinions. Finally, it will urge its constituent circles to try to support some of their members as full-time cadres who can concentrate on the network’s theoretical work, while remaining linked to practice. (To us it is clear that neither the theoretical nor the organizational work will receive anything near adequate attention without full-time, or nearly full-time, cadres. If there is controversy over the necessity and the advisability of such a division of labor, we can elaborate our views on this later.)
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The immediate goal of the theoretical, practical, and organizational work is to enable us to form a communist party, guided as much as possible by a correct line, including as many worker-communists as can develop in the pre-party period, capable of rectifying its errors, and capable of continuing the work of party-building so that it can become in fact the leading organization of the U.S. working class. In the next chapter we return to the question of when the transition to the party form can be made.
[1] For those who are tied to such organizations, the sectarianism itself is generally a major barrier to struggle over other line differences and the opportunism which they often reflect. As we explained in the previous chapter, a serious struggle with the members of these groups can only be effective once we develop a more consistently Marxist trend. Thus the unification of all communists cannot be the key link in party-building in the present period, because such unification is impossible.
[2] Again, we are speaking of the main obstacle among the potential party-building forces. The existing parties’ inattention to theory, or their development of bad theory, takes different forms with each group and is beyond the scope of the present discussion.