This last section will be focused on drawing out the essence of the Bolshevik method of fighting Revisionism, and exposing the Menshevik line, especially the “new theory” of WV, their Anti-Revisionist Premises, which on each of these essential points fundamentally revises Marxism. We will not be able to include a thorough criticism of the article in Workers Viewpoint #3, “The Anti-Revisionist Premises and Party Building,” a criticism which we think is important to be done. The opportunism represented in the article must be refuted point for point, aspect for aspect and we plan to do just that in future polemics, but throughout this speech we will draw out the essence of their menshevism. At this time we will draw out the system of views that makes this yet another new theory of the opportunism, the work of the enraged petty-bourgeoisie.
Based on our study of the science of MLMTT, we think that there are three essential points to the Bolshevik method of struggle against opportunism under the signboard of Marxism. They are: l) the struggle against revisionism is our long term strategic task. There is no easy formula, no quick 1, 2, 3 safeguard against revisionism. 2) Revisionism is a historically developed social phenomenon, with deep class roots. The ideological root of all opportunism is the bowing to spontaneity. 3) We must fight against revisionism in both the international communist movement, as a general trend and in its nationally specific form. We’d now like to lay out each of these three points.
1) We must draw lessons from the contemporary international communist movement on the long term struggle against revisionism. In the People’s Republic of China, since liberation, the Chinese Communist Party has gone through four major two-line struggles, struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within the party itself. The struggle against revisionism was not completed in 1949 with the seizure of power by the proletariat and the peasantry; nor when Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao were exposed and removed from positions of power. This can be clearly seen today in the struggle currently taking place inside the party against the Right Deviationist Wind. This experience has been summed up in the Party’s Tenth Congress documents in the brilliant statement, “To study Marxism and criticize revisionism is our long-term task for strengthening the building of our party ideologically.”
This is a further development of the point made by Marx in his letter to Lassalle in 1852, “Party struggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a party’s weakness is its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomes stronger by purging itself....” History teaches that as long as there are classes, there will be class struggle, and this class struggle will be reflected inside the proletarian party. Therefore, during the period up to the seizure of power, and during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Socialism, we will have to constantly fight the bourgeoisie’s agents within the party, who use the signboard of Marxism as a cover for their class collaborationist lines. It would appear that no one who has even the slightest acquaintance with Marxism, who claim to be anti-revisionist, could think that this class struggle would end soon, that the two line struggle in the party will cease, that we could kick revisionism totally out of our ranks once and for all. Comrades, allow us to present the new theory of WV, which, in word and practice, goes fundamentally against objective law, M-L theory.
WV says,
Having a firmer and stronger grasp of these theoretical premises is the only safeguard against degeneration. The only guarantee is to detect shades and forms of revisionism, defeat its particular manifestations and repudiate it as an integral whole. (their emphasis) (Premises, page 27)
Now comrades what is this but raising the red flag to criticize the red flag, talking about new premises, to fight revisionism, while in fact, revising openly basic principles of Marxism. There can be no repudiation of revisionism as “as an integral whole.” What there is, is a steel to steel struggle on each and every class question, tit for tat, line by line, aspect by aspect.
And what of this new contribution of the only safeguard against degeneration, the only guarantee to detect shades and forms of revisionism? Is this part of the treasure house of Marxism, or the dung heap of the Rockefellers and Brezhnevs? If the answer isn’t already clear, allow us to make it so. The Communist Party of China in a change in their Constitution reflecting lessons learned in the continuation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution state,
The Communist Party of China has strengthened itself and grown in the course of struggle against both Right and ’left’ opportunist lines. Comrades throughout the party must have the revolutionary spirit of daring to go against the tide, must adhere to the principles of practicing Marxism, and not revisionism, working for unity and not for splits, and being open and aboveboard and not engaging in intrigues and conspiracy, must be good at correctly distinguishing contradictions among the people from those between ourselves and the enemy and correctly handling them, must develop the style of integrating theory with practice, maintaining close ties with the masses and practising criticism and self-criticism, and must train millions of successors so as to ensure that the Party’s course will advance forever along the Marxist line. (CPC, Tenth Party Congress Documents, pages 63-64)
This comrades, is the only safeguard for genuine Marxist-Leninist. But the petty-bourgeoisie cannot be satisfied with this, it is too rigid for them, cramps their style, as Lenin said, “ossifies their thought,” so they must develop new safeguards, eclectically taking a piece of Marxism while cutting out its heart, and come up with their new formula. This is exactly what WV has done. Check out this formula, they say that incorrect political lines must be systematized and generalized into their roots. We will see in a few minutes that never, not once do they in their article go to the ideological root of opportunism.
WV goes on to say that their premises, belittling of theory, pragmatism, centrism, chauvinism and bourgeois democracy, “are the basis of deviations that have characterized revisionists historically,“ and ”until these premises are studied and grasped firmly, the communist movement and communist organizations will degenerate as the CP., P.L. and others have.” (Premises, page 29) Finally, they say that the movement should,
struggle with erroneous lines, around burning questions of the day based on the premises. In the process we hope other comrades would formulate and suggest other anti-revisionist premises. (Ibid)
This then is their fairly complete system, their formula for “how our communist movement would mature and prevent its degeneration into revisionism.” (Premises, p. 29)
What does this system lead to, if taken to its logical conclusion? First, it results in diverting the struggle for Party, by belittling the struggle over political line, the key link, and substituting for it the task of studying bourgeois ideology, like reading books on pragmatism by Dewey; reading Thomas Jefferson ’Bourgeois Democracy,’ in order to “deepen the premises.” The study of Marxism is downplayed, since it is only the “premise of the premise,” but not actually of the premises (remember, “the premises are the basis for erroneous lines”), and in the final analysis, all those who uphold this line follow the slogan, “Study Revisionism, Criticize Marxism,” the fundamentally opposite line of genuine Marxist-Leninists.
Second, it further belittles the struggle over political line, since upholders of the premises will be seeking out whether or not someone is affected by chauvinist thinking, whether their thinking is pragmatist or whether their ideas are (mutating) centrists. In short, it leads to fixating on motives, and not actually struggling around x the concrete political lines, seeking to develop the correct in opposition to the incorrect. This is not something we think might happen, WV has already summed this up as a major problem for their organization.
Third, since dogmatism, anarcho-syndicalism, bourgeois feminism, narrow-nationalism, social-pacifism, to name a few, were not listed as one of the premises, and since they have all been important ideological deviations at certain points in history, the list of premises, according to WV’s method of “adding new premises,” should be doubled. So then we’d have ten, maybe fifteen premises, in short a shopping list of bourgeois ideology. And we’re supposed to take this list, study it, go out among the masses and struggle around erroneous lines based on this shopping list. This leads to the total bowing to spontaneity, to chasing the women’s movement, looking for feminism, in the workers movement trying to find pragmatism, searching the communist movement for illusions without the leading role of Marxist-Leninist theory, all the while claiming that the “movement doesn’t understand ideology,” and “the premises are opening up new ground in theory.” Workers Viewpoint, this is madness. You’re the ones who do not understand ideology, who divorce it from political line, and through your consistent resistance to criticism and philistine attitude toward struggle, the only new ground you broke with the premises was the tunnel out of the revolutionary wing and dead into the swamp!
2) We’d like to now talk about the class basis and ideological roots of revisionism in capitalist society. In analyzing the class roots of revisionism we look to Lenin’s classic “Marxism and Revisionism,” which we strongly recommend every Communist and advanced element to study.
“The inevitability of Revisionism is determined by its class roots in modern society. Revisionism is an international phenomenon,” Lenin states, and then elaborates by saying,
Wherein lies its inevitability in capitalist society? Why is it more profound than the differences of national peculiarities and of degrees of capitalist development? Because in every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors... These new small producers are just as inevitably being cast again into the ranks of the proletariat. It is quite natural that the petty-bourgeois world outlook should again and again crop up in the ranks of the broad Workers Parties. (“Marxism and Revisionism” in Against Revisionism, page 117)
We have seen the truth of this analysis many times. An important part of the current anti-revisionist communist movement is composed of former members of the petty-bourgeoisie Many of these forces abandoned their former class stand, adopted the stand of the proletariat, took up its science, and today are part of the Revolutionary Wing. But many of these forces, in leaving their petty-bourgeois positions of privileges, never fundamentally abandoned that class stand; and seizing on certain aspects of Marxism, eclectically combined it with the world outlook of the small producers to produce “new theories.” These new theories are designed to oppose both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; to seek to develop an independent, stable position, “free” from being crushed by the bourgeoisie, and “free” to exploit the proletariat. This is the fundamental stand adopted by the leadership of the organizations in the opportunist wing and political line of the “nation of a new type,” “the united front against imperialism,” and its so-called “ideology of anti-imperialism,” and the “Anti-revisionist premises” are examples of these new theories.
In examining the class roots of revisionism, we also have to look at that small stratum of workers which, in every imperialist country, is ideologically, and politically trained to be the “labor lieutenants of capital.” The Albanian comrades in Two Opposing Lines in the World Trade Union Movement state,
Historically, the bourgeoisie of every country has brought off some of these qualified workers, the working class aristocracy, and detached them from the masses of the proletariat by providing them with easy jobs and posts with fewer headaches but greater rewards. Fat salaries, favors and advantages brought about their gradual estrangement from the working class, both economically and ideologically. By backing the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy of the working class turned into a fifth column, spreading bourgeois ideology in the ranks of the working class and trade union movement. (Page 68)
It is this strata including both the Meany, Abel type and the Miller, Sadlowoski type, that at every step, overtly or covertly, through militant rhetoric or outright fascist mongering attempts to subvert the proletariat, through spreading the theory of spontaneity.
It is these two groups, the petty-bourgeoisie and the bribed strata of the working class, that as Lenin said, “have proved to be the main social support of these tendencies and the conductors of bourgeois influence into the proletariat.”
Comrades, the identification of these class roots is an essential component of fighting revisionism. It forces us to look at what the actual implications of the policies and programs flowing from revisionist lines are, and what must be the proletarian line, its policies and programs. It helps ensure that the sharp ideological struggle against revisionism does not degenerate into an academic squabble of ideas, into a petty-bourgeois tea-party. It does so by forcing the struggle against revisionism to be always connected to political line. This is not just our view, something we are speculating on. If comrades study the documents criticizing Lin Piao and Confucius, one of the most important of these is the “Social Basis of Lin Piao’s Anti-Party Clique.” This pamphlet does not speak of Lin Piao as an exception, does not see Lin Piao’s revisionist line as a “reflex,” as something that just “jumped out,” that the problem was Lin Piao’s “methodology.” This is the way WV describes O.L.’s Menshevik line on Party Building and reforms. What the pamphlet does bring out is toe fact that Lin Piao was the representative of a class, that he had a social base in the newly emerged bourgeoisie and overthrown landlord and Bourgeois class and that his line served the interest of that social base.
It showed how Lin Piao’s political line attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat, and had as its aim the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This is a fine example of criticizing revisionism.
And what do we get from WV in their premises on the class roots of revisionism, on the petty-bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy? Not one word, not even a good hint. In this safeguard, all the struggle is around ideas, ideas which are divorced from their class roots. The only mention made of objective factors is the existence of political liberties and bourgeois democratic rule. These political liberties are described as “conditions that maintain the separation of the mass movement of the working class from the communist movement.” Workers Viewpoint, your feet must hurt from dropping so many rocks on them. First, no mention of class roots, then when speaking of the objective factors, you fundamentally revise MLMTT again. The existence of political liberties is a good thing that communists struggle for then when they don’t exist (like in Russia in 1905, remember?). They are good because they allow for the fullest exposure of the sham nature of bourgeois democracy, allow us to more clearly point out its class nature and is a condition that allows for the broadest participation in political struggle by the working class. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from this revisionist position that political liberty is a condition that separates socialism from the working class, is that we should do away with this condition, that in fact fascism is desirable for the working class. No wonder WV tries to hide their politics so carefully. Lenin said,
Even the best representatives of democracy confine themselves to bewailing discord, vacillation and renegacy. Marxists, however, seek for the class roots of this social phenomenon.
Workers Viewpoint does not even stand up as one of the “best representatives of democracy.”
In addition to identifying the class roots, the class basis for revisionism, we must also grasp its ideological roots. Lenin repeatedly stressed that the bowing to spontaneity is the root of all opportunism. Comrade Stalin summed up, “The theory of spontaneity is a theory of opportunism, a theory of worshipping the spontaneity of the labor movement, a theory which actually repudiates the leading role of the vanguard of the working class, of the party of the working class.” (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, page 23)
This theory of spontaneity has the conscious elements tail behind the mass movement, “pushing forward” the economic struggle, or “building-up” the struggles for all reforms, or, as clearly stated by the RU, “build the workers movement,” the OL “build the fight back,” or WV, “build the struggle against war and fascism.” As Stalin says, this theory is opposed to the Party raising the masses to the level of political consciousness, to the Party leading the movement and that “It scarcely needs proof that the demolition of this theoretical falsification is a preliminary condition for the creation of truly revolutionary parties in the West.” (Foundations of Leninism, page 26)
Lenin, in criticizing Bernsteinism showed how the bowing to spontaneity was at its ideological root. He said,
To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty-politics to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice the real or assumed advantages of the moment -such is the policy of revisionism. (“Marxism and Revisionism”, page 116)
From this we can see that the theory of spontaneity and the policy of revisionism laid out above lead to an infinite number of forms of revisionism. For example, when the OL pushes support for the ERA they take the “assumed interests” of the moment, passage of legislation, and separate it from the primary interest of proletarian revolution, not grasping the fact that the ERA provides no new political liberties, does not expand the field of struggle of the working class, especially working women. In fact, it abandons our real strategic and tactical duty to expose the sham nature of this reform in particular and the class content of bourgeois democracy in general. The OL consistent with its Menshevik line and petty-bourgeois stand, “adopts itself to the events of the day,” and goes with the motion of the feminists, lesbians, and bourgeois liberals.
In Boston, on the busing question, this same fundamental line and stand shows itself in a different form, this time bowing to the spontaneous struggle of Afro-Americans for equality education and tailing the liberal bourgeoisie, NAACP, Trots, and CP despite their whimpers of no united action.
It is to this ideological root of bowing to spontaneity that we must take all struggles against opportunism. When we do this we heighten our grasp of strategy and tactics, of minimum and maximum program. Going to the bowing to spontaneity in the struggle against revisionism is an integral part of our development of the key link, political line.
Again, comrades, let’s look at the new theorists. In the Premises, WV does not mention bowing to spontaneity. They talk a lot about going to the roots of revisionism, but they do not speak to the Marxist-Leninist position on this, what they elaborate is their own theory, once again. They didn’t even pay lip service to this, didn’t spend a sentence or two on spontaneity as a cover for their revision. No, they come right on out front, standing naked as a jay bird under their long-coat of “creative application,” borrowed from the RU’s vast wardrobe.
And in regard to this infinite variety of forms that revisionism can take, they agree. They say, “For revisionism, based on bourgeois ideology takes an infinite variety of forms.” But, in the next sentence they add, “But these four (? ed.) premises, are some of the most common basis for revisionist’s political positions in the U. S.”
Infinite number of forms, of course. But bowing to spontaneity the root? No! “It’s our premises.” Once again, revisionism, pure and simple.
3) The last part of this section will deal with the general and national character of revisionism. We have already stated that “Revisionism is an international phenomenon.” As proletarian internationalists, we have a responsibility to participate in the struggle against this “bourgeois ideological trend.” The current international struggle is against the camp headed by the “CP”SU and their lackey parties around the world. The struggle in the past has focused around the “three peacefuls.” Since that line has been more exposed among Marxist-Leninist and progressive people among the world, the revisionists have had to drop aspects of this line, and come forward with new formulations, like once again mouthing support for national liberation struggles in order to further their own imperialists’ plans. The focus and forms of this international struggle will change, but the essence remains the same, the class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie.
It is important that we do not belittle this responsibility and see that our own struggles in the U. S. are the only important thing or that we have “an exceptional” struggle in this country, unlike any other. No, comrades, this view is one of chauvinism and American exceptionalism, having a long history in the communist movement in the U.S. from Lovestone to Avakian and his new nations. Our struggle in the U.S. is a particular, part and parcel of the world revolution and the international struggle against revisionism.
But there is another serious deviation that is made on this question. We must be careful not to think that because we criticize Brezhnev and the Soviet Social imperialist, because we criticize Allende and Castro, we have fulfilled our tasks. As is clear with our Chinese Comrades, they could not stop at leading, along with the Party of Labor of Albania, the international struggle against revisionism, it was necessary to fight against this bourgeois ideological trend within their own country, in fact within their own party.
Comrade Lenin struggled against one form of revisionism in the international communist movement which was called Bernsteinism. Bernstein was best summed-up, “The movement is everything, the final aim nothing.” He was ruthless in his exposure of this bourgeois line. And he also ruthlessly struggled with those inside Russia inside the ranks of the Social-Democratic movement who refused to struggle against revisionism in Russia, in its nationally specific form. He said,
To talk of freedom of criticism and of Bernsteinism as a condition for uniting the Russian Social-Democrats and not to explain how Russian Bersteinism has manifested itself and what peculiar fruits it has born, amounts to talking with the aim of saying nothing. (What Is to Be Done? page 131)
He went on to criticize this Russian Bersteinism which he summed-up and called economism. This is scientifically laid out in What is to Be Done?
We believe that the forces in the Revolutionary Wing have, proceeding from a lower to a higher, carried out this task, especially around the revisionists, opportunists lines on party building. We think that our criticism of OL’s strategy and tactics in the March 1976 Palante, is a contribution to this.
And what of WV? Do they see the need to develop this criticism of nationally specific forms of revisionism? They say that we must sum-up the experiences and resolution of line struggles internationally and in America. They go on, “Particular importance should be attached to ferreting out the nationally specific forms of revisionism in the histories of the “CP”USA, the POC, and PLP. That’s what it takes, and what’s necessary to end this particular pre-party period in order to build an anti-revisionist party that would be safeguarded from degeneration. This safeguard is what we call anti-revisionist premises.”
So we see that they have already summed-up the international class struggle, and the nationally specific forms of revisionism, a tremendous task, and what’s more, they did it all by themselves. They say,
We derived these four (? ed.) premises from specific struggles with the R. U. and 0. L. and other communist organizations.
We derived the premises of bourgeois democracy from studying the implications of O.L.’s Boston busing plan...
We derived the premises of pragmatism from the experience and study of the PLP and other organizations which have degenerated. (Premises, page 29)
Comrades, let us look a little closer at these premises to see whether they are nationally specific forms, as they claim to be, or the frantic concoctions of the anarchistic petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
Pragmatism, Bourgeois Democracy, Chauvinism, Centrism, none of these are nationally specific. All of these are general ideological deviations found in every advanced capitalist country. None of these represents a summing-up of a specific system of views on particular questions of politics, organization, military affairs, etc. To take the specific system of views developed in the area of political economy by the arch-Revisionist Browder, or the comprehensive revision of Marxist-Leninist principles on the national question contained in the RU’s nation of a new type, or the “two stage revolution in the U. S.” strategy, with corresponding ideology and tactics: to take these and replace them with general deviations, all of which can be found in each of these specific forms, amounts to replacing the struggle against economism with criticism of Bernsteinism, which was precisely the object of the polemics in What Is To Be Done? Here we see how WV rendered Lenin “more profound,” with their Anti-Revisionist Premises. In fact they so thoroughly “contributed to theory” that they develop the “Anti-Theoretical Revisionist Premises.”
Comrades, we must staunchly struggle with this new theory, thoroughly expose its revisionist content, and strengthen our understanding of how to build the party on an ideological plane while firmly grasping the key link of political line.
In closing, comrades and friends, we’d like to thank you all for the revolutionary dedication that it took to sit through tonight’s long and at times complicated presentation. We attempted to lay out the Bolshevik line on our central task and point out the Menshevik character of the opportunist wing’s line on this question, especially that of the OL and WV. We anxiously await criticism and struggle, both here tonight and in the future, through discussion and writings. We’d like to close with a quote from WITBD which most accurately sums up the proletarian indignation we feel for the pus of the opportunist wing and dare any of them to respond:
We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies and we have to advance under their almost constant fire. We have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now several among us begin to cry out; let us go into this marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: how conservative you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road. Oh, yes gentlemen. You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word “freedom” for we too are “free:” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh. (What Is To Be Done? volume 5, page 355)
COMRADES, FOLLOW THE THREE DO’S AND DON’Ts
PRACTICE MARXISM AND NOT REVISIONISM
BE OPEN AND ABOVEBOARD, DON’T INTRIGUE AND CONSPIRE
UNITE, DON’T SPLIT
BUILD THE PARTY ON AN IDEOLOGICAL PLANE, GRASP THE KEY LINK OF POLITICAL LINE
UNITE WITH THE REVOLUTIONARY WING TO FORM THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM MAO TSE-TUNG THOUGHT!