First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 10, 1977.
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.
New Year’s Day 1977 is marked by a situation in the world that is excellent for the working-class movement and all the forces for socialism, anti-imperialism and revolution. The past year saw these forces make giant strides forward on a road marked by complicated twists and turns.
Internationally, the factors for both war and revolution continued to increase throughout 1976. All of the basic contradictions in the world continued to sharpen. The two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, revealed themselves even more clearly to be the main enemies of the world’s people.
Superpower contention over spheres of influence and the frenzied arms buildup are among the factors driving the world closer to war. All the imperialist chatter about “detente” cannot cover up this growing reality. U.S. imperialism has in no way changed its reactionary, aggressive character.
In the last year alone, the U.S. sponsored the bloody coup in Thailand; continued to prop up the racist regimes in southern Africa; armed the Israeli Zionists; tried to subvert the struggle of the Puerto Rican people for independence and the Panamanian people for control of the Canal; and frantically stepped up war preparations in Europe.
But the other superpower, the Soviet Union, has shown itself to be the most dangerous force internationally, as well as the main source of a new world war. The dangerous character of Soviet social-imperialism stems especially from the fact that it carries out its fascist and aggressive assaults on the people by posing as a “natural ally” of the anti-imperialist forces under the mantle of “socialism.” As a latecomer to the imperialist feast, the USSR is even more aggressive than the U.S.
Faced with this growing contention and the threat of war, the peoples, nations and countries of the world have drawn even more closely together in the past year to resist the two super-powers. The people of the third world countries in particular have heightened their unity and political consciousness. The third world is today the main force combating imperialism and the superpowers.
With the armed struggles of the masses in the forefront, the third world movement has also seen many countries and governments take positive steps to defend their sovereignty and natural resources and to speak out against imperialism. Throughout the world, 1976 saw a powerful upsurge in the movement of the working class. As the capitalist economic crisis reached new depths, strike waves swept Europe, the U.S. and all capitalist countries. In the heat of this growing class struggle, the communist movement developed rapidly, constantly fighting modern revisionism, which is still the main danger within the working-class movement internationally.
The past year saw many new parties get on their feet and deepen their ties with the masses. These parties, armed with the great banner or Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, are preparing themselves for leadership in the coming wave of proletarian revolutions.
But the working class cannot develop its struggle except through the most difficult trials and hardships. The year 1976 was one of sadness as well as joy. The loss of our great communist leader and teacher, Comrade Mao Tsetung, the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our time, has filled the people with deep grief. This loss, combined with the death of Chou En-Iai, Chu Teh, and other leaders of the Communist Party of China has placed great tasks before the people of China and the whole world in carrying on the legacy of Chairman Mao.
Despite these losses to the world communist movement, the bright banner, of socialism is still waving proudly in China, Albania and the other socialist countries, pointing the way to the future for those who still live under the exploitation and oppression of capitalism.
In China, the Party, under its new Chairman Hua Kuo-feng, smashed the attempts by the “gang of four” to seize power and restore capitalism. The whole Party and the 800 million Chinese people are uniting even more closely than ever before to defend their country and the socialist system from internal and external attacks and to defend the legacy of Chairman Mao. In this cause they are supported by the working class internationally.
In the U.S. too, the struggle of the working class made great advances in 1976 and the new year looks bright. The year which the U.S. ruling class hailed as the Bicentennial celebration of capitalism saw that system grow even more rotten with decay and crisis. As the rain washed the red, white and blue paint from the billboards and the blare of the election campaign subsided, millions found themselves still faced with, massive unemployment, falling wages, speedup and brutal racial discrimination.
In the midst of this “celebration” of exploitation, millions of workers responded with the largest strike wave in years. From the Ford auto assembly plants in Detroit to the coal mines of West. Virginia, the growing strike movement targeted not only the bosses, but the traitors in the leadership of the unions as well.
As the ruling class launched new attacks on the living standards and rights of the people, a powerful fight-back movement grew in resistance. The demand to free young Gary Tyler, who faces the electric chair on a racist frame-up in Louisiana, grew to massive proportions and attracted widespread international support. Demonstrations at unemployment offices heard thousands of workers and unemployed shout their demands of “Jobs or Income Now!”
The growing trend of communist unity made its greatest gains yet in the U.S. the last year. Although the new Leninist party was not formed in 1976, as many had hoped, the conditions for founding in 1977 were firmly laid. More importantly, communist groups, including the October League, united together the Organizing Committee for a Leninist Party (OC). The OC has grown larger and politically more unified in recent months and has now laid the plans for first Party Congress to be held within a months.
The actual convening of the Party Congress in 1977 will mark the translation the high level of Marxist-Leninist unity, which has developed through years of anti-revisionist struggle, into a corresponding high level of organization. The vanguard political party of the working class will be dedicated to the overthrow of imperialism, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and ultimately, the realization of communism, a classless society.
For more than two decades since the degeneration of the CPUSA, there has been no party to uphold these high ideals or lead the working class in struggle. While the task of uniting the Marxist-Leninists and winning the advanced workers will go on long after the first Congress, the organizational building of the party is the most crucial step at this point.
Currently the OC is engaged in the drafting of a party program which will be issued early this year. This program will build the firmest foundations for party unity and will clearly distinguish the new party from the revisionist CPUSA and other opportunist groupings.
The program will make a concrete application of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the conditions of the U.S. revolution. The process leading up to its adoption will be one of deep-going study, ideological struggle and mass discussion to ensure its correctness.
Carrying out a resolute struggle against revisionism and constantly deepening mass ties, the Marxist-Leninist forces can look back on the last year as one of victory. In the heat of many important class battles; an unprecedented number of advanced workers were won to communism and the party-building efforts.
Organizational advances such as the publication of the weekly Call and the strengthening of communist factory nuclei have also created favorable conditions for setting the party on its feet once it is built and increasing its influence among the masses.
Along with the advances of the genuine communists in 1976 came the increased exposures of the revisionists, the anti-party opposition blocs and the centrists. They have all revealed themselves to be bankrupt opportunist trends in the service of capitalism. Class conscious workers and revolutionaries are seeing through their own experience that this swamp of opportunism offers no real revolutionary leadership.
From conciliating with the revisionists and with the Soviet Union, to prostrating themselves before the liberals and the labor bureaucrats, the opportunists of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Workers’ Viewpoint, the “Revolutionary Wing” and the Guardian all now find common ground in their attacks on the party-building forces and the October League at home and against China and the Marxist-Leninist movement internationally.
Rather than weakening the communist movement, the fight against opportunism has helped to steel it in struggle. The new party will be born in the process of fighting revisionism and purging its ranks of all but the staunchest class fighters.
As the new year dawns, we look into a bright future in 1977 and are filled with confidence. The enemy forces are growing weaker. They are, wracked by divisions and find it tougher going every day. The working class and revolutionary forces on the other hand are increasing their unity, developing their leadership and increasing their fighting capacity.