The left errors currently predominant on the U.S. revolutionary left are by no means unique to the 1970’s. Dogmatism, ultra-leftism and sectarianism have plagued the US. left throughout its history. The tradition was established by Daniel DeLeon and the Socialist Labor Party back in the 1880’s and 1890’s, when this party stood aside from the major popular struggles such as those of the Populists and the AFL unions, attempting to build a pure revolutionary organization with a pure Marxist line instead. The style and strategy developed by DeLeon are with the SLP and much of the rest of the US. Left to this day. ”The SLP still refuses to support “reformist” struggles such as the civil rights movement, the demands of women, building trade unions, etc. It insists on one demand – Socialism Now, – and works with no one. The ultra-leftism-dogmatism-sectarianism of the SLP provoked a split in that party in 1900 and the founding of a new group, the Socialist Party, which freed of the left errors of DeLeon, grew rapidly, assuming the leadership of much of the working class movement. In 1912 it demonstrated its strength by Eugene Debs gaining over 6 percent of the vote cast for president. At this time socialists won office in local governments and published a great many popular papers and periodicals. The left errors became predominant once more in the immediate post World War I period, when not one, but three, communist parties were separately created, each highly antagonistic to the others. The three were forced together only by the insistence of the Comintern (which, by the way, called for the two IWW’s, the SLP and the SP to merge into one Communist Party). Sectarian squabbling in the party was a major problem until the end of the 1920’s. Ultra-leftism and dogmatism also plagued the new C.P. until the mid 1930’s, and was manifested in refusal to support progressive farmer-labor party movements, attempts to set up separate revolutionary unions (esp. in the 1928-1934 period) and general isolation from the mainstream of the mass struggles in the U.S. The party did however lead many heroic struggles in the period, including many major strikes of the 1920’s and the very important unemployed workers’ movement in the early 1930’s. It was not until after the Seventh Comintern Congress in 1934 that the C.P.U.S.A. finally got itself together and became a major force within the US working class movement as we’ll as in a wide range of progressive struggles within the U.S. It was in the period 1934-1947 that C.P. influence was at its peak in the working class and in progressive struggles generally. Party membership reached almost 100,000 in this period with millions passing through or close to its organization. The influence it exerted on turning people towards socialism and winning mass struggles was considerable during these years.
There was little that the C.P.U.S.A. could have done to maintain its strength and influence in the working class and among progressives in the 1947-1956 period. The forces of the most powerful ruling class in the world were too strong, and the roots of the Communist Party in the working class were too weak. It was inevitable that Communist influence would be pretty much entirely weeded out of the unions, mass organizations and schools. The strength of the U.S. ruling class is to be found in the economic and military might of the U.S.A. which emerged from World War II as the hegemonic power in the world – there was nothing the revolutionary left could have done that could have significantly affected this. The weakness of the C.P.U.S.A. was caused by the special conditions of the U.S.: a working class composed of highly diverse ethnic groups which can easily become antagonistic to itself, the rapid rate of growth in the living standard of American workers and the victory of the U.S. in both World War I and World War II which stirred up and cemented patriotic pride in the working class (while the U.S. was almost alone spared the emotional and economic costs of warfare). No strategy followed by the CP in the 1930’s and 1940’s could have resulted in a firm rooting in the U.S. working class, nor put the party in a much better position to conserve its strength, analysis and organization through the period of repression. The collapse of the C.P.U.S.A. which occurred in the 1950’s was a product of objective conditions and could not have been avoided. Many were those that stuck with the party through the worst of the repression, in good part only because of their faith in the correctness of its line, rather than because it was leading struggles, who in 1956 lost faith and left the party. Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, as interpreted by the U.S. press, proved to be major blows at people whose faith in the rightness of the Soviet Union and the cause it was behind could be shattered by the lack of a continuing material basis for their party membership. Since the masses of people in the U.S. rejected Communists instead of accepting their leadership, political work became virtually impossible.
Faced with overwhelming repression from above, and demoralizing defection in the ranks, the party wavered, at first attempting a reformist and independent line in 1957 in order to meet the demands of the rank and file disillusioned with Soviet policies, and then shortly thereafter reversing course, it moved to the position it holds to this day – mechanical defense of the Soviet Union, working in the most inconspicuous manner within reformist mass organizations and movements (such as the Miller campaign/the peace movement, etc.), and demonstrating a low level of both energy and discipline. The repression against Communists in the 1950’s was so pervasive and thorough that members of the party almost universally adopted the tactic of crawling up inside of their shells to protect themselves. Denying that they were Communists became second nature and its corollary of not taking public stands in support of Communist analyses and goals necessarily followed. Communists became invisible and as a result ineffective. The defensive protective reaction combined with removal from positions of influence in mass organizations de-energized people. What remained of the Party by the late 1950’s had turned into a ghost of its former self. A Communist Party in name only. Although it continues to give abstract adherence to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and refuses to renounce the possibility of revolutionary violence, in practice, the C.P.U.S.A. has become a thoroughly reformist (or center social democratic) party in its practice, analysis, strategies, mass work, organizational discipline and the level of energy its cadres give to party work.
In the late 1950’s a number of revolutionaries within the party were either expelled or voluntary left in reaction to the dissipation of revolutionary energy and direction. Some of the first set of defectors from the party formed into a group calling itself the Provisional Organizing Committee – within a short time this grouping disintegrated into ultra-leftism and sectarianism without even beginning to play a role in mass struggles or establish roots in the working class. Around 1960 a second set of leftists within the party left or were expelled. These people founded the Progressive Labor Movement which within a few years changed its name to the Progressive Labor Party. The PLP identified with the Chinese critique of the Soviet Union and of the pro-Moscow parties (such as that of the U. S.), actively supported the Cuban Revolution and the Vietnamese war of national liberation, and because of its militant activities and its Leninist analysis became an important force in the student movement in the period 1965-1968. However, ultra-leftism, dogmatism and sectarianism became predominant in the PLP at the very time of the growth in its influence. Thus the PLP came to attack progressive movements among minorities such as the Black Panthers and the majority leadership of SDS. (through organizational manuevering they took over SDS in 1969). At the same time PLP denounced the Cuban revolution, shortly thereafter the Chinese (they sided with the ultra-left in the Cultural Revolution), and finally the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Following a rule or ruin policy of relating to other revolutionary and progressive organizations, isolated from all progressive and revolutionary forces internationally and domestically, PLP very soon sunk into irrelevance (no different from a Trotskyist sect) claiming to be the only true revolutionaries in the world.
Out of the mainstream of SDS emerged a tendency hostile both to the PLP’s dogmatism, sectarianism and ultra-leftism and to the crazy adventurism of the Weather-people and their sympathizers. The so called Revolutionary Youth Movement-II tendency included the leading cadre of what were to become both the Revolutionary Union and the October League. The unity of RYM-II included support of Marxism-Leninism, seeing the centrality of working class struggles, the necessity of working with progressive and revolutionary groups in the women’s and Third World movements in the U.S., on giving’ unconditional support to Third World liberation movements overseas, and avoiding adventuristic actions. The RYM-II tendency held to the late SDS policy of looking to China, Cuba and Vietnam as sources of inspiration while adopting the PLP policy of focusing organizational efforts on the working class. The most important organization to emerge directly out of RYM-II tendency was the Revolutionary Union. Founded while SDS still existed as the Bay Area Radical Union it came to include a few ex-members of the C.P., but consisted almost entirely of students and, ex-students radicalized in the struggles of the 1960’s who were increasingly seeing the need for revolutionary struggle in the U.S., and who were increasingly coming to understand what being a Marxist-Leninist meant. There were two major tendencies within the RU (which until around 1971 remained a West Coast organization) a tendency similar to that of the Weatherpeople that tended to support guerrilla warfare and terrorism and to reject the mainstream of the working class as not revolutionary, instead glorifying Third World struggles, and the tendency which was rapidly moving to an orthodox Leninist analysis and line of the Third Period variety. In 1971 those that supported the first tendency split and formed themselves into Venceremos. In 1973 Venceremos itself split into two factions on the question of guerrilla warfare vs. organizing among the most oppressed segments of the working class. The mainstream of the R.U. meanwhile became a national organization establishing itself as the leading supporter of the People’s Republic of China as well as the most promising and energetic revolutionary organization in the U.S. The R.U. in 1973 began actively pushing for the unity of various revolutionary forces into a single communist organization and opened up negotiations with a wide range of groups for this purpose. However, in the course of 1973-1975 the R.U. became increasingly ultra-leftist, dogmatic and sectarian, isolating itself from virtually all revolutionary and progressive forces especially in the Third World movement in the process, until finally in October 1975 it unilaterally declared itself to be the party of the working class. In 1975-1976 it publicly denounced Cuba, stood aloof from the Portuguese revolution, and attacked the revolutionary movement in Angola.
If the ultra-left, sectarian and dogmatic tendencies in the RCP become fully consolidated, and especially if the tendency to distance themselves from the Chinese becomes predominant the October League will probably eclipse it in the U.S. in the short run. The O.L. has been (1) somewhat less sectarian than the R.C.P., working with many progressive and revolutionary groups and tendencies that the RCP attacks, especially among Third ”World people. Its work style is also a less arrogant and sectarian than that of the RCP. (2) The OL has tended to be somewhat less ultra-leftist than the RCP and more willing to support progressive struggles and united fronts. However, in 1976 this tendency seems to have been reversed with the OL becoming more hostile than even the RCP towards working with progressive movements such as that of Sadlowski in the USW and refusing to participate in actions which include the “revisionist” CP. (3) The OL is considerably more dogmatic than the RCP and mechanically follows the Chinese in everything, doing no independent analysis of their own. In some ways this is a great weakness; but to the extent that the Chinese are a revolutionary force in the world (and especially to the extent that China corrects the errors of its foreign policy) it is a great strength. If the RCP consolidates its left errors and especially if it becomes critical of the current Chinese leadership the OL will pick up many members from people around the RCP as well as many people recruited into the movement because of identification with China, and who are looking for some kind of a revolutionary organization to join. However, because the left error is part of the OL constitution, they will be doomed to go the way of the previous ultra-leftist splinters. Ultra-leftism, whether in the PLP, RCP or OL varieties is as bankrupt as the ultra-leftism of the 1930’s and 1940’s – Trotskyism. The road of all ultra-leftist grouplets is essentially the same. Trotsky paved it in the 1920’s and 1930’s and many are those that have followed it since – it leads to irrelevance, isolation and impotence, its terminus is the dust bin of history.