First Published: Workers Viewpoint, Vol. 2, No. 4, May 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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People all over the country turned out to commemorate International Working Women’s Day this year at events sponsored by the WVO. Working women, workers from all trades, people of oppressed nationalities and national minorities, students, progressive foreign student organizations, as well as other Marxist-Leninists, all celebrated with Workers Viewpoint Organization in militant and revolutionary style. From North Carolina to Chicago, from New York to Hawaii, this year’s International Working Women’s Day was a tremendous success. It holds rich lessons for us in giving revolutionary leadership and improving our methods of work.
In mass events, Workers, Viewpoint Organization along with comrades and friends held events which included potluck dinners, slideshow for IWWD, speeches, skits, songs sung by children and discussion groups on child-care and on youth and degenerate culture.
The highlight of this year’s International Working Women’s Day were the militant and lively programs put on all over the country. Overall, they reflected the revolutionary spirit of the advanced workers and other comrades and friends who took part in the celebration. The direct participation of the workers, who were a major part of the audience, and other comrades close to Workers Viewpoint Organization was very important in making this year’s events as successful as they were. It also shows the growing fusion between the working class movement and Workers Viewpoint Organization, and our attempt to carry out the task of winning and training advanced workers for the party. In many areas there were large turn outs of women workers in garment and electronic industries, some of whom studied with WVO on the women’s question in study groups before the events.
In Honolulu, worker comrades chaired the events, and, helped to keep them rolling along by summing up for the audience after each part of the program, by agitating and keeping the enthusiasm of the audience high. In other places, workers and other comrades gave speeches which won the hearts and minds of the masses. In Honolulu for example, a comrade from the Hawaiian national movement gave a very moving speech which laid out how her life showed the concrete national and class oppression of U.S. imperialism, and how her striving to fight this oppression led her to socialism and the Workers Viewpoint Organization. Some events included songs written especially for the event.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the speech of a woman worker drew a warm response from the comrades and friends at the event. Writing and rehearsing the speech with comrades from the Workers Viewpoint Organization, the comrade denounced the capitalist system and how it thrived on the exploitation of women workers, as well as the whole working class. It was presented in a lively agitational way, with many concrete examples. It was short and to the point. She said: “No matter how much we produce, we get paid a certain amount--a wage, and the rest of the money from the selling price for products goes right into the pockets of these money-hungry capitalists! So while we subsist on our weekly wages – week to week – from paycheck to paycheck, trying to keep our families eating and clothed and educated, these fat-cat capitalists live in mansions, eat like pigs, and ride around in limousines – the only time we get to ride in a limousine is on the way to the cemetery!... This is why we say that the system of capitalism creates its own gravediggers. It is struggles like this directed right at the heart of capitalism that will bring its criminal rule down, and in unity, we will bring it down!” The audience roared with applause!
The speech given in the San Francisco Bay area event is one example, and there were many others around the country.
In most areas, leaflets for the event were written with advanced workers way before the event, which gave our leaflets a lively style and included many concrete examples of capitalist oppression which the workers provided. By intently listening to them we were able to understand what questions they had and what they were concerned with, to make our leaflets really speak straight to the hearts and minds of our fellow workers. For instance, workers we talked to provided us with many examples from their daily lives of how under the guise of the Equal Rights Amendment, the bosses are making women take on the hardest jobs that men usually did (like mopping large hospital floors) and the therefore speeding them up, or how one company, General Electric, was taking away women’s maternity benefits because “men can’t get pregnant.”
This was a lesson in using the mass line – drawing the ideas from the workers and other comrades we know, asking them about their ideas, taking the good ideas and using the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, concentrating them and taking them back to the masses to put them into practice.
In many areas, the comrades also made a concrete attempt to involve working class families in building the events which is necessary to win the advanced workers. A special feature of this event was a separate program especially for the children which included a skit, singing in the program of “Union Maid” and “Cotton Mill Girls”, a puppet show, the drawing of a mural, as well as stories and games. It showed a concrete attempt to deal with the family question in revolution and giving leadership to it, involving families of workers and other comrades in our political activities.
By planning in detail, thinking things out beforehand and tightly organizing the events overall, our events went off smoothly and really inspired the revolutionary spirit of those who came. Almost everywhere, the speeches were rehearsed, making sure that they were clear and concrete, with examples understandable to our audience which was mainly workers and other comrades new to Marxism-Leninism-Mao- Tsetung Thought. It is clear that now we cannot use the kind of speeches that we used to give in communist forums.
We can’t give speeches that are stuffed full of different ideas all strung together – the “stuffed duck approach” we call it, and expect our fellow workers to swallow them whole. Our speeches and leaflets have to be clear. The character of our speeches in the last two years or so (the third period in the communist movement) was largely determined by the fierce polemical struggle for clarity with genuine communists, and to demarcate ourselves from opportunist political lines. The speeches in many instances suffered deviations of stereotyped character in the attempt to fight for orthodox Marxism-Leninism- Mao Tsetung Thought. In some of our events, the speeches still reflected this old period and this made them dry and stereotyped. We have entered a new period where no longer is uniting Marxist-Leninists the main focus of our work in building the Party.
Some events were exemplary this year in starting and ending on time, with one starting five minutes late and ending fifteen minutes late. Others still showed that this aspect of proletarian organization and discipline has not been grasped, not only did they begin and end late, but they were much too long – some lasted 5-6 hours! Not only does it make the program tiring rather than enjoyable and inspiring, but it also fails to carry out its purpose of politically educating our comrade workers and others. In some instances, because of petty bourgeois looseness of the program, it turned off some comrades, and especially some newer contacts, which we must now work harder with to win them closer to us.
In one area, the program and spirit of the program was poor, suffering from lack of planning and grasping seriously the task of carefully organizing the program. Right now we are working hard to make the May Day Dinner events (taking place before May Day) a concrete show of our rectifying the errors, as well as building on the strength of International Working women’s Day.
While overall, the International Working Women’s events were overwhelmingly successful, there were still major shortcomings in our work.
We had originally written a speech to be used nationally which did not consciously take into account who we were speaking to. Therefore the speech tended to be abstract and long, which overall did not address the concrete questions that advanced workers and friends had on their minds, such as the fundamentals on what is the scientific explanation of capitalism and socialism. We attempted to change it and many comrades took the initiative to do so, greatly improving the speech.
Another self-criticism we would like to make is on the slideshow. It was put together in a hurry, and the quality of the slides and text was poor. We think that sloppy methods of work showed the lack of deep concern for our working class brothers and sisters and we must deeply criticize the roots of this, and concretely improve. We think the work we have done on our May Day slideshow will show a great improvement. We must continue to carry out struggle to grasp more deeply the great styles of work of linking theory with practice applying mass line, practicing criticism and self-criticism, and rectifying our methods of leadership in the course of winning over and training the advanced workers as professional revolutionaries. This must be raised to the level of line, as a party’s definite style of work corresponds to and serves a definite political line.
With this deeper understanding and rectification, our work of building up the party and its leadership over-all in revolutionary struggles will develop step-by-step and push forward fusion on all fronts!