Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Motor City Labor League

Party of a New Type


Call for a Party of a New Type

Comrades–this is an auspicious evening. It represents the culmination of four long years of struggle. Control, Conflict & Change has been the battleground for many political polemics and the garden for much theoretical fertilization. Tonight is the last night of CCC IV, the end of a long, confusing and difficult struggle, and the beginning of a new, no less difficult but much more exciting struggle–that which leads to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The years of CCC have seen many makers of speeches come and go. They have often used this podium to promote their own careers, to divide the class, or in some cases merely to enjoy the sound of their own voice. But many important political struggles have taken place in CCC; it has often been the crucible for the testing of ideas; the sieve for sorting out the revolutionaries from the opportunists. The testing and the sifting has made us stronger and wiser–more prepared for the task before us. The opportunists have been exposed, the bankruptcy of their politics has been rejected. That is why tonight we can talk about the most important political event in the history of this country–the building of a multi-national anti-revisionist communist party to lead the fight for the overthrow of capitalism.

The makers of speeches are only a very small part of the content of CCC. The essence of CCC is the revolutionary commitment of the strong supporters who have kept us going, who have set up the thousands of chairs, typed the hundreds of thousands of words, who have sat through long hours of meetings of careful planning. All these warriors cannot be mentioned but some have been here from the very beginning missing few if any meetings–Babs Belvitch, Mary K. Belvitch, Sharon Glotta, Jim and Donna Bish, Frank Joyce and Henry Hirsch, the coordinators, and the Planning Committee of this year. They have been here a long time and they have worked very hard. They have provided the very sinew of this program and we should applaud their fortitude.

But tonight we are talking about the burning issue that is gripping the minds of every honest revolutionary in this country–the building of a new communist party. We want to divide what we have to say into three parts:

1) our analysis of the international situation and the national situation which shows the time for a party is now;
2) the dialectical analysis of our own history which leads us to unite with all honest Marxist-Leninists who support the building of a party now;
3) the specific activity that is necessary to prepare for the Party and some theoretical foundations of the Party of a new type which we will build.

Leadership and guidance comes from the masters of Marxism-Leninism who have applied and developed the science of revolution. Comrade Chou En Lai describes the present international situation as follows.

“The danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today.” (from Mao Tse Tung by Chou En Lai) It will be possible to prevent such a war, so long as the peoples, who are becoming more and more awakened, keep the orientation clearly in sight, heighten their vigilance, strengthen unity and persevere in struggle.” This is from the Tenth Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, page 28.

On the international scene the USNA imperialists and the social imperialists now contend, for world hegemony. The desperate barbarism of the imperialists and social-imperialists stands exposed before the peoples of the world. Revolution is a world wide phenomenon and as Lenin says: “the various trends within the socialist movement have grown from national into international controversies.” That certainly is a vivid part or us here because we have all been moved by the courageous struggle of our Vietnamese comrades in their historic defeat of USNA imperialists.

We face another enemy. The USSR today is the base for revisionism on a worldwide scale. The definition of revision as a rule of thumb is revising the basic laws and principles of Marxism-Leninism. Comrade Enver Hoxha has spoken to the nature of the revisionism in the Soviet Union:

“Today all of us are witnesses to the fact that the revisionist Soviet Union has teen transformed into a chauvinist and neo-colonialist state. The foreign policy of the Soviet revisionists is the great Russian policy of the old czars, it has the sane expansionist aims, the same objectives of the subjection and enslavement of peoples. The appetite of the new Soviet revisionist imperialism is insatiable.” This is from the report of comrade Hoxha to the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, page 23.

The single most dangerous aspect of Soviet revisionism is the political line of “peaceful transition towards socialism”. The bankruptcy of the politics of the “peaceful transition towards socialism” is most tragically illustrated in Chile. Allende certainly was sincere in his defense of the political line of the Communist Party of Chile which was backed by the Soviet Union; and he died in his sincerity. But he most assuredly was wrong and he disarmed the working people of Chile leaving them defenseless for open slaughter by the imperialist. Never again can we let this ridiculous political line of peaceful transition gain any authority–it is a tool in the hands of the bourgeois.

But the nature of the political struggle certainly is international in character. It is not limited to Chile or Vietnam or to specific incidents. It’s an international phenomenon and the lines that are being drawn are being drawn internationally. To give you an example, I want to read from a poem that illustrates the point:

I open my eyes and can no longer sleep,
Anderson and Paul sound within me,
and they are not the soft voices of a lullaby.
Let my people go... This was written by a poet from Mozambique by the name of Noemia de Sousa.

People will remember that one of the speakers to CCC was Tiago Nato from Angola when he described last year the valiant struggle of the people of Mozambique and Angola in their struggle against the Portuguese. He explained cruel brutality of the Portuguese army and the financial support of Gulf Oil which inspired us immediately to support the boycott against Gulf and set up a general support program for these African revolutionaries. And the most important support that we can now give today is to build a revolution right here–to clarify the political issues and illustrate the absolute consistency of the revolutionary struggle throughout the world. The struggle that is now going on in Portugal is important because it again shows that on a world wide scale the destruction of revisionism is crucial. Last week on one of the back pages of the Free Press, we came up with an article concerning events that had taken place when the liberal army forces had taken over in Portugal opening up the opportunity for communist leaders to return to Portugal. Alvaro Cunhal, head of Portugal’s so-called communist party returned to Portugal and called for union of all parties to bring back a ”democratic regime” to Portugal. Now mind you this is the country that has been guilty of some of the most atrocious acts of aggression against the peoples of Angola and Mozambique. Cuhnal a so-called communist then told the people of Portugal: “Violence now is dangerous. It will only play into the hands of our enemies.”

Of course we unite with the idea that insurrection is an act for which the time must be carefully chosen. But the test is whether this position will become one more sell out of the working class because it is clear that in Portugal, in the USNA or in any country of the world, only the violent destruction of the bourgeois state will lead to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Revisionism is the buffer for the imperialists” it must be destroyed ideologically. But the very international character of the debate indicates that the possibilities for revolution in the world are heightened. The victories in Vietnam, North Korea, China and Albania are being consolidated. The principle contradiction is between oppressed countries on the one hand and imperialism and social imperialism on the other. But the imperialists face other major contradictions: the contradiction between imperialists and social imperialists is on the rise; and the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeois within imperialists countries is also on the rise.

The March issue of the People’s Tribune describes the material basis for the analysis:

While the two superpowers scramble for world hegemony, most Common Market countries and Japan have been squeezed to the breaking point. It was recently reported that inflation in Britain has climbed 27% higher than in the USNA, with its overall production limping along at 70% capacity (Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 22, 1974). Japan’s normal growth rate of 10% yearly has plunged to 2%. With most of the capitalist world heavily dependent upon oil imports (with the notable exception of the USNA and Canada), and having previously suffered the devastating effects of the USNA dollar devaluation, the “energy crisis” sent ambassadors from Europe and Japan scurrying to the oil producing countries to arrange “bilateral” deals to guarantee further oil shipments.

It is the analysis of the international situation which points to the fact that the contradictions that face the imperialists are becoming even more acute. On the national scene these contradictions are even more precise. While the proletariat in this country is on the rise, the national state apparatus is in utter chaos. Nixon’s head is in the noose and everyone is rushing to be the first to tighten the rope. (My six year old daughter gave me a birthday card that she made–it said, “Let’s struggle, let’s win, let’s get Nixon’s head.” It’s dialectical– she had a peace sign at the bottom indicating that’s the only way we’re going to have peace.) On the other hand, the people of this country have seen graphic examples of the power of the proletariat when it even haltingly raises its fist. The Chrysler strikes this summer, the miners in Harlan County, the Farah strikers, the city workers in San Francisco have struggled successfully against immense odds. The number of strikes in 1970 and 1973 were exceeded only once since 1890–in 1919, the year of near-revolutionary struggle when 20% of all USNA workers participated in strikes. Today while unions decay the class struggle reaches an all-time high; 1974 will see an extremely high number of strikes, and general class struggle.

We say all this to say that the time is ripe for the formation of a multinational anti-revisionist communist party. We of course do not contend that the way is easy; on the contrary, every step is precarious, the burden is immense. The ruling class will take more than a hard push to make it topple. It now is moving more and more to repress the working class. Stop and frisk laws, reinstitution of the death penalty, new “crime” laws are all designed to assure that the police will have the necessary license to kill and interrogate. Fascism is on the rise. Its attacks will concentrate in national minority communities and that is where we must struggle most resolutely against this monster. The working class must he united if we are going to successfully defeat fascism. That unification comes through a multinational communist party where communists of all nationalities, armed with the science of Marxism-Leninism learn to fight in the interests of the entire proletariat or for that matter in the interests of all people’s of the world. The working class has only two weapons in its struggle against the bourgeois: theory and organization–the theory of Marxism-Leninism and the organization of a communist party.

But why a communist party–why not go out and build a united front against imperialism or a worker’s movement? In order to answer this question we first have to examine the mistakes that we, the Motor City Labor League, have made in the past. Because we have participated in every kind of possible organizing project that can be imagined, we have made every possible mistake. We therefore want to examine that history because it provides important lessons, from which we can draw some important conclusions. It’s the conclusions that we reach which are embodied in the political line that we want to talk about, we want to talk about them in specifics around the formation of a party.

The first conclusion that we have reached is that the time for building the party is now: our base in the class is sufficient; the communist forces are strong, and our understanding of the science of Marxism-Leninism, while certainly not sufficient, it certainly tells us that only a party can properly give us further understanding. The time is now–not tomorrow, not after we have built a “worker’s movement” or the united front against imperialism but right now!

I want to list some of the reasons why we have reached this conclusion:

(l) The rise of fascism. We’ve already talked about the rise of fascism and I don’t want to repeat that but there are some things in terms of the fight against fascism that we do want to talk about. The building of a party now is crucial because fascism is on the rise and not established. It certainly would be a lot more difficult to build or establish a formal party once fascism has already taken power. The party acts as the advanced detachment of the working class. “The party must absorb all the best elements of the working class, their experience, their revolutionary spirit, their selfless devotion to the cause of the proletariat (Stalin Foundations of Leninism, p. 103) In addition, the party is the organized detachment of the working class, it acts as the general staff of the working class. As such it is the highest form of class organization of the proletariat. Only an organization with these attributes can successfully turn the tables against the rise of fascism. No other organization has that capacity. Because only a working class that is unified can successfully defend itself, only an anti-revisionist communist party armed with Marxism-Leninism can create that unity.

(2) The base that exists in the class and particularly in the industrial proletariat is extensive. We in this city have already witnessed the high level of leadership that the proletariat has provided for this country–the organizations that have provided that leadership are the very core of the new party. As Marxist-Leninists we understand that the industrial proletariat can most successfully challenge the power of the bourgeois. The concentration that we have in the large factories has enormous importance:
a. The large factories and railroads are the nerve centers of the economic life of the country.
b. In the large factories the workers are concentrated in large numbers and are the most highly socialized organized and disciplined sector of the working class.
c. These workers have enormous influence throughout the class.

The basic concept is that the party must concentrate on the most exploited and oppressed sections of the working class; it is the dialectical relationship between the exploitation and the oppression that provides the revolutionary content to that sector of the class. In other words it’s not just the exploitation. You can find high levels of exploitation in skill trades or just oppression but it’s the dialectical relation between the two that makes the concentration of those areas crucial. This section of the class has a high concentration of national minorities and their class struggle has been an important point of leadership for us. With a solid and substantial base in that sector of the class, with highly developed Marxist-Leninists from that sector of the class, unity can be forged throughout the class and with other classes such as the petty bourgeois and the peasantry–but all that can only be accomplished through the party–in terms of base building we have gone as far as we can go without a party.

(3) The third reason that the time is ripe for a Party is that the Marxist-Leninist circles and organizations have achieved a higher level of understanding and political grounding in the science and its application to this country than we have ever achieved in the history of this country. This understanding and analysis can only be taken to a higher level by the formation of the Party.

We now have a better understanding of the need for REVOLUTIONARY TRAINING. The regular training of cadre, their understanding of the science and its application can be best achieved through the Party and cannot be achieved through the small circles we now have. Given the upsurges of the 1960’s where millions upon millions of working people were brought into direct confrontation with the state, there are now thousands and thousands of people who are looking specifically for revolutionary political guidance which can only be provided by the formation of the Party. In this context, we have to emphasize one, thing, it is not the immediate size of the Party but rather the political content of the Party which will determine its success. Quoting again from Chou En-Lai –

Chairman Mao teaches us that “the correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line decides everything.” If one’s line is incorrect, one’s downfall is inevitable, even with the control of the central, local and army leadership. If one’s line is correct, even if one has not a single soldier at first, then power will be gained. This is borne out by the historical experience of our Party and by that of the international communist movement since the time of Marx. Lin Pio wanted to “have everything under his command and everything at his disposal, but he ended up in having nothing under his command and nothing at his disposal. The crux of the matter is the line. This is an irrefutable truth. (Chou En-Lai, Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, August 24, 1973, p. 17)

This is also our experience. It is not just some dogma; it is precisely the experience that we have had in this country. Take as an example the history of the Communist League which started 5 and a half years ago with five people and is now the primary leadership for party building in this country. It’s the political line that determines.

Take the experience we have in CCC. That organization called From the Ground Up, or LDC, has received thousands and thousands of dollars from the bourgeoisie (New Detroit, the Cummings Foundation, Bernstein Foundation, the Stern Foundation) yet with all this money and with all the people that they initially started with, they are now a small and irrelevant group in this city, their opportunism stands exposed in this city and they will soon dwindle away.

Finally, we should indicate that certainly in Detroit the size, the power and the respect of the Party will he indisputable–that will grow however only if we successfully adhere to the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

(4) The fourth reason that the time is ripe for the formation of a new communist party is because it will represent culmination of a high level of political and theoretical debate throughout the communist left and throughout the “left” for that matter. The opportunists have been flushed out; they can no longer avoid the debate. For too long we have had unity without political struggle which always led to its opposite–that is, all struggle without any unity. Most of the debate has centered on the necessity for a new political party. Just last year Staughton Lynd came to CCC III to call for a new mass labor party. He prefaced his remarks by saying that most of the people in the room differed with the form of the party he would suggest (and he certainly was correct there) but he did say that the debate must continue. Of course, the type of party he suggests is a loosely knit organization that promotes unbounded opportunism necessarily led by the petty bourgeois instead of the proletariat. Marxist-Leninists across the country know that the new Party must be a tightly knit, disciplined democratic-centralist organization following Leninist principles.

Apparently, we now face a new form of opportunism. Groups that used to say that we should not build a party but should instead build a worker’s movement or a united front against imperialism now realize that history is passing them by. It is very possible that they could opportunistically change their position and immediately form a party without either the necessary grounding in the class or theoretical understanding of the politics of the Party. But that merely speaks to another reason why we must continue to struggle for higher theoretical understanding so that we can expose these opportunists. Their practice and political line of the past helps to expose them. They have until now contended that the “worker’s movement” or the united front against imperialism must first be built–they have repeatedly bowed to the spontaneity of these movements–or to be more colloquial they have always pimped off the strength and power of the movement. We in the city of Detroit have heard much about the need for “practice” or “organizing” but we in the Motor City Labor League finally understand that only a “practice” that is led by theory can lead to successful organising. Lenin attached these so-called thinkers as follows; ”That struggle is desirable which is possible, and the struggle which is possible is the one that is going on at the given moment. This is precisely the trend of unbounded opportunism, which passively adapts itself to spontaneity.”

The MCLL cadre have a long history in the class struggle of this country. On one occasion last year we generally counted up the years of “practice” that we bring to our work and it was an accumulated practice of over 150 years. Every struggle that can be envisioned (and some that need not be mentioned) has been the work of MCLL people – labor strikes, rent strikes, welfare strikes, strikes for peace, civil rights sit-ins, anti-war sit-ins, school sit-ins, Shell boycotts, lettuce boycotts, grape boycotts, Gulf boycotts, progressive religious struggles, Marches on Washington, Chicago, the Chrysler Tank plant, free clinics, free music, the cultural revolution. But we must today criticize this practice because it was not led by theory, and therefore, was and is insufficient.

Last year the MCLL realized that “practice” alone was insufficient; so we postulated that theoretical knowledge was absolutely necessary. That formulation was itself insufficient. “Theory” is not enough; revolutionary “theory” is not enough; only the science of Marxism-Leninism, carefully studied end more carefully applied to our concrete situation is the only “theory” which serves the interests of the proletariat. There are only two ideologies - that of the bourgeois and that of Marxism-Leninism. It was a difficult lesson but we learned it well after much pain. The “movement” that our sweat and blood supported kept ending up in the hands of the bourgeois. The anti-war movement became dominated, dispersed and undermined by the organized power of the revisionist CPUSA and the Trotskyist SWP. Just as the women’s movement began to express concretely the felt oppression of women and articulate the absolute need for a struggle against male supremacy, it was lead to an ideology that defined men as the enemy. Likewise, the national liberation struggle of negro national minorities was led back to defining anglo-americans as the enemy; and on and on and on.

Anarcho-syndicalism was a specific struggle that we had last year. Each and every time we began motion we ended up in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

This dispersion of our movement, this undermining of the revolutionary potential of our people is not some accident that is limited to the USNA. Everywhere that revisionism and opportunism takes hold, the people face this problem. And we can be assured that this will continue so long as we do not have a multinational anti-revisionist communist party because without that you have the CPUSA and it’s going to lead you right back where we’ve come from. Comrade Cami and Hoxha from Albania state precisely the indispensable role of the vanguard party: “In his report delivered at the 6th Congress of the PLA comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out that “it has already been historically proved that without it’s party, the working class, no matter what the conditions in which it lives and acts, does not become conscious by itself. That which transforms the working from a class in itself into a class for itself is the party.” Of course a certain level of revolutionary socialist consciousness does emerge from the objective conditions themselves or from the revolutionary struggle itself, but this is only a very low level; it is as Lenin has called it a trade union consciousness. The high level of socialist consciousness is not formed spontaneously, but by the Marxist-Leninist Science, and this is the first mastered by the most advanced part of the class, which organizes itself into the proletarian party and then educates the entire class with it, clarifying the revolutionary aims and objectives, indicating the correct road for their attainment and leading it in its historic struggle. The party is not only indespensible for introducing socialist consciousness into the working class and the labouring masses and for coordinating their actions, but to it belongs the leading role in the revolutionary movement, it is the theoretical, political and practical leading staff of the revolution in all its fields–political, ideological, economic and military. To deny the leading role of the party means to leave the working class unarmed before the bourgeoisie and reaction. History has provided no example whatsoever to show that the proletarian revolution can win and socialism can be built without the communist party of the working class, without its leading role, let alone in opposition to the communists. It can happen that where communist parties are weak or have slipped into revisionism or reformism, the lead of the revolution is taken by other political forces, but in this case we have to do with democratic or national liberation revolutions which can be transformed into socialist proletarian revolutions only if the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party place themselves at their head.” Cami, The Subjective and Objective Roles in Revolution, Jan., 1973, Albania Today.

We have been thrashing about as a headless monster denied the guidance of our general staff–the vanguard revolutionary communist party. At an instinctive level we understood that principle three years ago when we began to call ourselves Marxist-Leninists, we were drawn to consciousness as moths to light. We sought out one educational after another. Those educationals that were given had little actual socialist material, as if we were too dumb to understand the actual material so we had to be given some watered down version and every time it was a revision of the principles, or even Trotskyist version. These mistakes are a part of our history and if we had 10 hours we would run them out.

We have taken the principle of trial and error to the ultimate extreme. We have had many trials and made many errors before we turned to and began to use Marxism-Leninism as the guide to our action. But as Mao Tse Tung says: “We have made many detours. But error is often the precursor of what is correct.”

CCC I ended with a speech by John Watson where he outlined the importance of education in the victories of the Vietnamese and the Chinese. But in those days we idealized the place of education. We assumed that any knowledge was better than none, and we therefore merely accumulated empirical knowledge year after year; and that is incorrect. There is specific knowledge that must be obtained if we are to move forward. As Comrade Mao says: “The method of studying Marxism-Leninism statically and in isolation should be discarded. Moreover, in studying Marxism-Leninism, we should use the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), short Course as the principal material. It is the best synthesis and summing-up of the world communist movement of the past hundred years, a model of the integration of theory and practice, and so far the only comprehensive model in the whole world. When we see how Lenin and Stalin integrated the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice of the Soviet revolution and thereby developed Marxism, we shall know how we should work in China.” (Vol. 3, pg, 24). And the same applies right here.

Education is a form of class struggle – for us it represents a way to focus our struggle. Through education we become better fighters, we learn to avoid the mistakes that we have made before, we develop a world view and thereby struggle against bourgeois influence such as white chauvinism, male supremacy, individualism; etc., Through the process of channeling our struggle we can thereby raise the level of class struggle in a more precise way. And let me tell you education is a struggle – one of the most intense struggles that we have ever participated in. Our slogan which we repeat at every juncture is: fight for education. It is clear that it is more enjoyable to be handing out leaflets or organizing a demonstration. It is more fun and it is not more fun, because after you have done these things so long without any percept-able purpose or direction, it gets tiresome and demoralizing. That is one clear example of opportunists. They get people to do the work of leafleting, etc., because it is easier without carrying out the intense struggle to get people to study–some opportunists assume that the working class as a whole is probably to dumb to learn anyway.

Why is the fight for education such an intense and difficult struggle. Several reasons: First, the bourgeois gives us no ability to read, no desire to read, a fear of reading and studying, a fear of reprisals for study. As we grow up through the indoctrination process called school, we collect many scars, the accumulation of which means that even picking up a book can bring back some painful experience or another. Second, we are taught so many lies about communism and Marxism-Leninism that we have to struggle internally to bring an open mind to the study. Let’s look at one concrete example – Joe Stalin. Stalin’s writings are clear, precise, and almost always directly to the point. Yet, from the day we are born we are taught to fear this man as if he were a madman. So we must fight to study Stalin, fight against that bourgeois influence for he was a great proletarian fighter and a great Marxist.

But of course study is not the end of all activity – given the nature of the class struggle that would be an impossibility. It merely is absolutely the primary activity and the thing that requires the most intense struggle because the other is so much a part of our life– we did have a May Day celebration this weekend and a good one.

The next thing I want to talk about is the continuations committee. The next primary activity of Marxist-Leninists is the ideological struggle around the program of the new communist, party. The MCLL of course understands that its political line as it presently stands is merely a peek at what must be done in this area. But we are beginning intensive study to contribute as much as possible to the development of the new program and rules of the Party. The form of that struggle and study is the continuations committee. We have formally joined the local continuations committee and we intend to join the national continuations committee. All honest Marxist-Leninists have the responsibility to join the continuations committee and carry out the polemics to clarify and heighten the level of understanding that we all bring to class struggle in this country. The requirements for joining the, continuations committee are:

(1) adherence to the science of Marxism-Leninism,
(2) a struggle against revisionism which is headed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the CPUSA,
(3) the struggle to build a Multi-National, Marxist-Leninist Communist Party to lead the U.S. working class to overthrow Capitalism and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and scientific socialism in the USNA,
(4) the resolutions which were approved by the May Conference and printed in Marxist-Leninists Unite! (this includes the minority position on the National question, dealing with the issue of ”racism”, which was accepted as a minority position by the body as a whole).

These four points are the basis for minimum political unity for all organizations on the National Continuations Committee, for local committees- and for individual Marxist-Leninists who are interested in participating in the Congress. These points of unity also act as the organizational guide for the democratic relations between organizations on the Committee and other Marxist-Leninists.

We understand that a particular struggle of an increasingly intense nature must now be waged against opportunism – that will manifest itself as the power and clarity of the forces around the hew Party becomes more obvious to people. Different forces will find it necessary to unite with us, even though they do not actually agree with our politics. Others will attempt to move ahead of us in forming a different party in order to “be there first” even though up to now they have called for a workers movement or united front against imperialism. But we come well armed for dealing with these forces, Lenin spoke precisely of the principles used in analysing their motion:

When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a characteristic feature of present-day opportunism in every sphere, namely, its vagueness, amorphousness, elusiveness. An opportunist, by his very nature, will always evade taking a clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course, he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view and try to “agree” with both and reduce his differences of opinion to potty amendments, doubts, innocent and pious suggestions , and so on and so forth, (Vol. 7, pg. 404 of Coll. Works, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back)

There are opportunists in questions of programs, in questions of tactics, in questions of organization. Each deviation must be analyzed carefully and exposed. It will be a difficult and tedious struggle but every indication is that we will win in this struggle.

We have talked long tonight, but certainly the subject deserves a long discussion. The MCLL took almost two months of intense, painful struggle in its convention to reach these conclusions so you may be assured that they do not come easily nor have we been impetuous in deciding to take the course we have chosen. You might say that we had no other choice because we have tried collectively all the other alternatives and they have all failed us.

But we are excited. We now know that our struggle can and will reach new and important heights, that the course that we have chosen is the correct course. It is with this resolve and clarity that we will become a part of the glorious communist history of revolutionary struggle going back over 140 years. And now our slogans must be:

MAKE EVERY FACTORY OUR FORTRESS!
ARM THE CLASS WITH ITS GREATEST WEAPON – THE IDEOLOGY OF MARXISM-LENINISM!
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL COMMINIST PARTY!
WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORLD UNITE!