First Published: El Amenecer Rojo, No. 4, August 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
Proletarian revolutions, wars of national liberation and struggles for socialism are being waged all over the world. In the USNA the working class is in motion and demanding correct leadership to combat the fascist tyranny and oppression of imperialism. The revisionist CPUSA has long held the interests of the ruling class, and struggles to crush the proletarian revolution. Working class people of this country will never realize their potential power to overthrow capitalism and build socialism as long as CPUSA leadership and bourgeois ideology lead their struggles. The most important weapon of the working class in realizing their power is a Communist Party of a New Type that represents working class interests for the overthrow of capitalism. Lenin has said and history has confirmed that a Party of a New Type can only be built on the basis of struggle against revisionism and opportunism. It is with this strategy of party building that the Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists met in May.
The Conference provided an opportunity for all honest revolutionaries to present their analysis of how to apply Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions in the USNA and the discussion of the building of a Party of a New Type. 255 official delegates and some observers attended the Conference, 137 of the delegates being men and 118 women. The national breakdown was 89 Anglo-Americans, 76 Negroes, 42 Chicanos and Mexican national minority members, 16 Puerto Ricans, 10 Ethiopians, 3 Indians, 6 Asians, 1 Filipino, 1 Italian and others. There was excellent regional representation as well as 60% of the attendance being working class in origin. The discussion of Marxism-Leninism was at its highest level in over 30 years.
Workshops were held on the 5 main issues in the class struggle at this time: Party Building, National Colonial Questions (specifically concerning the Negro, Chicano, Indian, Puerto Rican and Filipino peoples), Trade Unions and Unorganized Labour, Woman Question, and the Youth Question. The task of the workshops was common theoretical and practical polemics on the correct line to combat revisionism in the class struggle. The following is a summary of the unity the workshops yielded:
PARTY BUILDING: The party building workshops presented a concrete move toward unity on the main aspects of a Communist Party of a New Type. These main aspects are: education of the workers in Marxism-Leninism, organized proletarian leadership, revolutionary press as a collective organizer for political exposure, and the struggle against revisionism in party building.
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY OF A NEW TYPE!
NATIONAL COLONIAL QUESTION: The national colonial question is the question of completing the proletarian revolution by the emancipation of the colonies. For the unity of the class, the only solution to the national colonial question is maximum democracy, that is the right of secession, the right to choose between oppression and freedom.
Negro Colonial question: The position taken is the call for independence for the Negro Nation and equal rights for the Negro national minority.
Southwest question: Again the resolving of the national question is the job of a multi-national Communist Party. Two organizations presented positions at the Conference as a solution to the Southwest question: 1) the call for regional autonomy for the Southwest and 2) the call for independence of the Chicano Nation within the Southwest. Although unity on this national question was not reached both organizations recognize the uneven development of capitalism in this region and the urgent need for further study and research on this aspect. Keeping in mind that the Party’s goal is the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Conference raised the following demands with the intent to use them to build the Party and fight for democracy and socialism: 1) An end to the border patrol, 2) full equality for the Spanish language, 3) an end to the fascist immigration laws and exposure of the CPUSA’s support of these laws, 4) an end to USNA military installations in the Southwest region, 5) a return of control of the land to the oppressed people in the Southwest, and 6) unity among the industrial proletariat, the rural proletariat and the peasantry.
Philippines: The resolution on the Philippines united the Conference around the call, for proletarian internationalism and the formation of a Party.
Puerto Rico: Representatives from Puerto Rico presented a concrete Marxist-Leninist analysis of the working class struggle against Yankee imperialism. The Revolutionary Socialist Party of Puerto Rico has begun the tasks of building the proletarian revolution there.
Workshops were not held on all aspects of the national colonial question, and the proposal was made for further study on the question of all Indian groups, the Panama Canal Zone, the Samoan Islands, Virgin Islands, Hawaiian Islands, and the Native Americans of Alaska.
TRADE UNIONS AND UN-ORGANIZED LABOUR: In the USNA, the working class is the most revolutionary force and in this period of party building we must work on three fronts in trade unions and unorganized labour: political, economic, and theoretical. The Conference united around the tactical struggle of exposure of ideologies that divide the class. Our overall strategy must be to win over the advanced of the advanced to build an independent Marxists-Leninist Communist Party of a New Type.
WOMAN QUESTION: The woman question is the question of women’s oppression in the capitalist society. The ’fight for Women’s equality must be taken into the working class in order to draw in women and to fight for the unity of the working class. National minority women workers in particular are exploited not only as part of the working class and as women but also because of white chauvinism. This means that as revolutionaries we must also struggle against the ideology of white chauvinism as it relates to the special situation of national minority women.
DOWN WITH MALE SUPREMACY AND WHITE CHAUVINISM FOR UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS!
YOUTH QUESTION: It will be the task of the Party to establish a youth movement that will not only organize the energy and enthusiasm of youth into the evolutionary struggle for socialism, but also expose the counter-revolutionary line of the CPUSA and their agents. In the youth culture the new morality (free love and drugs) further enslaves and causes more degeneration. It is the duty of the Party, through youth fraction, to provide alternatives to such exploitation, and to recruit the most advanced members of youth organizations.
In the building of a multi-national Communist Party of a New Type we are seeing history in the making. The call has been made for a Congress in one year to form a Party of a New Type. It is the duty of comrades to do their utmost in supporting the Continuations Committed of the Conference, which will lay out the steps to be taken toward the building of the Party. We must educate the working class and popularize Marxism-Leninism for the victory of the proletarian revolution.
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY OF A NEW TYPE!