Despite its shortcomings, the thrust of WVO’s party building line, as exemplified in our articles on the RU and OL, is to elevate to the ideological plane the understanding of political lines and deviations, to raise up the ideological task (as distinct from, though related to, political line in fighting and preventing revisionism.
The main weakness in the Communist movement which characterizes both the right (RCP and OL) and the “left” (such as PRRWO and Workers Congress) is that they have no such conception of party building. This conception is crucial since it’s related to the question of the character of the party – whether it’s an anti-revisionist party that follows the theory of MLMTTT on the question of party building, or whether it simply re-lies on schemes (a newspaper in the U.S. as the sole means to develop political line and build organizational ties and ’the party, such as the Workers Congress, or objectively uses organization as the key to party, building (as with the RCP and OL).
We think that, despite its shortcomings (which necessarily accompany all new “shoots,” and especially since the question is also new to us and we’re just studying it) our position represents a distinctly correct ideological and political trend in the communist movement, which is irreversible and is growing vigorously. This approach, which raises to the forefront the question of building the party on the ideological plane, has given us certain’ strengths in analyzing political deviations, as well as in formulating political lines on the trade union question, strategy and tactics, busing, community control and, a most fundamental question, the role of the “C”PUSA, OL, and RCP, a concrete understanding of them as related to the question of revisionism.
We uphold that although some aspects of our line laid out-in various party building forums and articles were crude and incorrect, it is overall the most correct. These articles have drawn fundamental lines of demarcation with RCP and OL. They have concretely aided many comrades around the country in drawing lines of demarcation with them, precisely because these articles dealt with the true ideological and political content of opportunism.
But were RWL and PRRWO able to draw these lines and place them on the ideological plane, as well as place these tendencies into historical perspective?? NO!! It’s precisely because they have no such conceptions but are now in fact rejecting and repudiating them, that they are incapable of fighting, let alone understanding, the right line of the RCP and OL! All PRRWO can do is make general statements, like the “RCP is revisionist” and the “OL is opportunist and revisionist”, or the “RCP is economist,” it’s revisionist because “it revises Marxism,” e.g. the nation of a new type. They are unable to identify RCP’s right opportunism and its significance for us beyond vague, general remarks about their bowing to spontaneity. And they say OL is not yet “revisionist” because it hasn’t “revised Marxism.” These “criticisms of revisionism” are shallow and do not help the communist movement combat and prevent revisionism. That’s why PRRWO and RWL were not able to identify OL’s opportunism for years until now, after OL’s move towards a party. And meanwhile, they have abandoned their duty to fight the right opportunists, despite their cries of “the right is the main danger.”
But comrades, the reason you can’t successfully fight against the right, the reason you can’t historically relate their social and class basis to their political lines and deviations and elevate it to the ideological plane, is because, in essence, you’re all made of the same stuff! This “left” cover is only the flip side of the same opportunism of RCP and OL. That’s why, in essence, the “left” and the right unite. PRRWO and RWL, by playing on a few incorrect polemical statements, only cover up the real opportunism of their clique, only cover up the clique’s refusal to understand the question of the fundamental character of the party that needs to be built.
The over-all thrust of our line is correct. There were a few points which were either formulated incorrectly or phrased incorrectly, though you will find some of these points stated correctly elsewhere. But PRRWO, by picking on these points and by not taking the thrust of our line and our best arguments, the fundamental and strategic questions we raised and applied to analyzing OL and RU, tries to create a whole bogus system out of WVO’s “revisionism.”
But all these lines were laid out over a year ago! The RU article was published in Sept. 1974. Where have RWL’s and PRRWO’s criticisms been all this time?? In fact, only ATM raised some criticisms of the “Anti-Revisionist Theoretical Premises” article in WV Vol. 2, No. 1, pointing out certain weaknesses in linking ideological and political line. They also stated, however, that it was a contribution over-all. PRRWO also said it was a contribution and followed suit, pointing out a few ideological deviations of the Communist movement on their own (centrism, reformism, empiricism, chauvinism, and voluntarism). A leading comrade of RWL even went so far as to say “it’s the last word on party building; the only thing the Communist movement can do now is to elaborate the points in it... ”
We have publically as well as privately pointed out to them that some of these points (chauvinism, illusions of bourgeois democracy, centrism) were laid out by Lenin in laying the foundation for the Third International for parties in advanced capitalist countries. Furthermore, pragmatism and the belittling of the role of MLMTTT are particularly strong and characterize the nationally distinct ideological superstructure of the U.S. We pointed out that the belittling of theory also characterizes other countries, such as England, as Engels and Lenin pointed out.
But on top of all this, PRRWO raised this bogus argument to say we think pragmatism is uniquely American (anyone who bothered to read the article could see the charge is false). That’s what we mean by picking on words and a few incorrect polemical statements, inventing a few things and lumping them together to create a system.
Lenin made a distinction between principled struggle and squabbling. Firmly opposed to demagogy, he emphasized the concrete circumstances of struggle and the real issues.
In each of these stages the circumstances of the struggle and the immediate object of the attack are materially different; each stage is, as it were, a separate battle in one general military campaign. Our struggle cannot be understood at all unless the concrete circumstances of each battle are studied. But once that is done, we see clearly that development does indeed proceed dialectically, by way of contradictions: the minority becomes the majority, and the majority becomes the minority; each side passes from the defensive to the offensive, and from the offensive to the defensive; the starting-point of ideological struggle (Paragraph 1) is “negated” and gives place to an all-pervading squabble; but then begins the “negation of the negation”, and, having just about managed to “rub along” with our god-given wife on different central bodies, we return to the starting-point, the purely ideological struggle; but by now this “thesis” has been enriched by all the results of the “antithesis” and has become a higher synthesis, in which the isolated, random error over Paragraph 1 has grown into a quasi-system of opportunist views on matters of organization, and in which the connection between this fact and the basic division of our Party into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing becomes increasingly apparent to all.
The difficult problem of drawing a line between squabbling and differences of principle now solves itself: all that relates to co-optation is squabbling; all that relates to analysis of the struggle at the Congress, to the controversy over Paragraph 1 and the swing towards opportunism and anarchism is a difference of principle. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Progress Publishers, pp. 206-07.
Our few incorrect statements, as well as the accompanying ideological deviations, can be and are being corrected. The question of the character of the party, however, has not been corrected for the last few decades, and will not be corrected by the vulgar habits of opportunists who make a career of lumping words together. Lenin knew these opportunists well, who play with Words to obscure the fundamental question of revisionism and the character of the party, and he exposed them as, the epitome of opportunism in his famous One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. In this work, he drew a line of demarcation with other unfirm Iskraists (known later as Mensheviks), saying, “We fought opportunism on the fundamental problems of our world conception...” (p.199)
Now, since world outlook and methodology are identical, we must seek out PRRWO’s methodology. Lenin said:
...the great Hegelian dialectics which Marxism made its own, having first turned it right side up, must never be confused with the vulgar trick of justifying the zigzags of politicians who swing over from the revolutionary to the opportunist wing of the Party, with the vulgar habit of lumping together particular statements, and particular developmental factors, belonging to different stages of a single process. Genuine dialectics does not justify the errors of individuals, but studies the inevitable turns, proving that they were inevitable by a detailed study of the process of development in all its concreteness. One of the basic principles of dialectics is that there is no such thing as abstract truth, truth is always concrete...
Why is PRRWO now frantically crying injury and indignation against WVO’s “hegemonism?” What’s behind your raving and rhetoric against WVO’s “revisionism?” Why all your heated “polemics” against WVO’s “right opportunism” and your charge that WVO claims to be the “leading circle,” when we heard no criticism of our party building articles from the time they were published in Sept. 1974 and May 1975 until the recent “split?”
Didn’t they concretely, and RWL, the centrist member of the clique, break with right opportunism and the OL? Didn’t you, RWL, publically adopt WVO’s positions on busing, the OL, the international situation, strategy and tactics, among other questions, based on the same, identical methodology we hold now? And do you or don’t you repudiate these lines?’
Since the “split,” we’ve heard PRRWO’s invention and distortion of facts, PRRWO’s philistine explanation of the split. It’s because this is your only line of defense on the “split.” This is the only way you can explain your flip-flop on your assessment of WVO and RWL to your cadres and the only way to consolidate yourselves and other immature elements around you. At heart, you are narrow nationalist and careerist. You whip up dogma and rely on form, rhetoric and words to perpetuate your narrow circle since you fail to grasp the communist spirit, the essence of MLMTTT. There is no scientific explanation of your flip-flop except opportunism!
In fact, you do not seek truth from facts, do not meticulously analyze and re-analyze deviations and political lines of other organizations, and do not elevate this understanding to a higher level to contribute to the Communist movement. Instead, you bow to your own narrow, bourgeois prejudices, your bourgeois ideology, lumpen outlook, to suit your petty bourgeois erratic moods for the day. You pick on a few isolated phrases and lift them totally out of context, time and place, attempting to build up a system of ideas to fit your needs. This is precisely apriorism.
How else but through instability of principles can you explain how you put the Revolutionary Bloc in the revolutionary wing one day, then drew them out, and pulled them in again the next day? How about your flip-flop (four times!!) on the assessment of RWL? In your pamphlet “Party Building in the Heat of Class Struggle,” dated February 1976, which was distributed only after your “split” with WVO, you hadn’t even had time to “thoroughly analyze the line of the comrades of the RWL” and couldn’t say they were in the revolutionary wing. But then, in the Boston forum sponsored by the Harriet Tubman-Nat Turner Collective on Feb. 19th, you were able to clearly draw WVO “out” of the revolutionary wing and suddenly draw in the RWL. Do you call this genuine dialectics that “studies the inevitable turns, proving they were inevitable by a detailed study of the process of development in all its concreteness?”
If you persist in defending your opportunism, elevating it to higher and higher levels, and theoretically justifying it, then inevitably you will drown in the marsh. Comrades, yours is no momentary, subjective outcry. Using genuine dialectics, we have laid out a de-tailed study of your concrete political lines and deviations and related them to your social and class basis. And now we do the same with this latest flood of opportunism. If this is not checked, you (and RWL, if they continue to pursue this reckless path) will inevitably degenerate into the marsh, to the point of no return!
Comrades, we have shown in a brief study of your positions that, in fact, you don’t understand the question of building the party on the ideological plane. You have rejected this understanding for fear it will expose you. Dialectics is merciless in polemics against opportunists. This is so despite our errors and deviations which were made in the course of combating the main weakness in the Communist movement, both right and “left” on this question. Call a halt to this sectarian, vulgar, bourgeois nonsense! To fool around with the question of the character of the party is to fool around with the very course of communism. This is bound to thoroughly rot your organization!
PRRWO and RWL are forming a most unprincipled, petty bourgeois careerist, unholy alliance based on eclecticism organizational opportunism, and an inevitably philistine explanation of the “split.” One thing the clique unites on is subjective methodology, “flexibility” in subjectively “linking up” issues, “the worst kind of bourgeois speculative history (talk about metaphysical idealism!) In concocting their “unity”, the clique has substituted eclecticism for dialectics, the latter which demands concretes and specifics and links cause and effect, which neither PRRWO or RWL can do.
By grabbing onto PRRWO’s demagogic method of subjective “flexibility” and the petty bourgeois crying of “injury” rather than the principles of Communism, RWL has sunk to the revisionist methodology of combining two into one. While adopting the correct slogan of “build the party on the ideological plane, grasp the key link of political line,” RWL has at the same time united with PRRWO, who rejects this conception. This is the height of lack of firm principles. That this sham unity with PRRWO will inevitably lead to degeneration has become quite clear in the last few weeks. Just look at the flip-flops in their lines! One after the other, changes in their political lines confirm this, such as on the question of the advanced worker, unite to hang tactics (particularly as applied to last year’s IWWD), the “co-existence of bourgeois and proletarian ideology” in the Communist movement, and now the international situation.
The principal aspect of RWL’s organizational flip-flops is internal, is opportunism in the RWL leadership. In struggling against right opportunism, which has characterized RWL historically, “left” opportunism has been covered up, which partly explains the flip to the “left.” The opportunism and demagogy of PRRWO provide the conditions. Impressed by PRRWO’s “style” and “form”, RWL grabs onto bourgeois nationalism, other bourgeois trends of thought and “understanding,” and are degenerating fast.
’We are not otzovists,’ cry the members of this clique. But make any of them say a few words about the contemporary political situation and the tasks of the Party and you will hear in full all the otzovist arguments, slightly watered down (as we have seen in the case of Maximov) by, Jesuitical reservations, additional suppressions , mitigations, confusions, etc. (The Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-Building, LCW, vol. 16, p. 40)
How familiar, Comrades!