If there is widespread misunderstanding on the question of theory and of the problems of doing theoretical work in our movement, there is another question which is even more confusing. We are referring to the question of fusing the communist movement and the workers’ movement.
The fusion question, like the question of theoretical practice, has become of increasing importance to the forces within the anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist communist movement. Everywhere the issue is being raised regarding what it means at this time to work in the working class and to bring communist perspectives to the spontaneous struggles. Such questions are not new, however. In particular they are and have been debated by forces, including ourselves, which not too long ago constituted the “new communist movement”. We are referring, of course, to the dogmatist sects such as the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Communist Party (M-L), Workers Viewpoint Organization, and so forth.
Among dogmatist groups, then and now, the question of fusion is usually answered by the mechanical transposition of Lenin’s discussion of this question in 1899 to the US conditions today without an awareness of the complexity of Lenin’s thought. At the same time, forces within the anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist communist movement have begun to disregard the valuable insights in Lenin’s work on fusion on behalf of their own “original analyses” even while paying lip service to the legacy of the Bolshevik experience.
One thing both of these approaches have in common, however, is a romanticization of the work of the Communist Party (USA) in the 1930’s and 1940’s and the conviction that this work is a model of fusion for the future “new communist party”. We, on the contrary, are concerned with critically examining the Communist Party (USA) and its legacy so as to go beyond the current superficial use of history and theory and to lay a foundation for a scientific answer to the problems of fusion in party building in the USA today.
The working class movement grows and develops on the basis of its activity and daily life under the capitalist mode of production; specifically, its place and activity in the economic, political and ideological practices of society. The character of the participation of the working class at these three levels of the social totality determines whether this class challenges the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, by organizing itself and heightening its consciousness, or, on the contrary, continues to acquiese in social relations which perpetuate the domination of the ruling class.
Let us examine these three practices in more detail:[1]
Economic practice – In the economic practice of capitalist society the working class struggles as the owner of the commodity labor power to obtain the maximum price for it. This struggle has taken on an organizational form which is the labor or industrial union. It is a struggle which is conducted within the limits of the capitalist relations of production and exchange, which for the working class, are relations of exploitation. This economic struggle cannot go beyond these limits so long as it is spontaneous, and so long as the bourgeoisie maintains its hegemony. Under these conditions the working class can only temporarily maintain or relatively improve its subordinate position.
It is the nature of the spontaneous economic struggles of the working class under capitalism that this economic struggle is airways also political. Political because state power is in the hands of the same class which the workers are struggling against, at the economic level. However, since the bourgeoisie at all times, strives to conceal its control of state power, awareness of this political link between economics and politics is not spontaneously produced in the course of the struggle itself. The spontaneous politics of the economic struggle is always bourgeois politics, that is, it acts to conceal the political reality of capitalist society and to restrict the political consciousness of the masses. For example, labor laws, minimum wage, repeal of “right to work laws” – in this framework are seen as the only political concerns that relate to the economic struggle.
This concealment also concerns the role of the state in the economic struggle between worker and capitalist. It fosters the idea that the state plays a neutral role, creating fair labor laws that give no advantage to either labor or owner and making certain labor and management do not violate these laws. What is not seen is that the state functions in the interest of the owning class. The owners of the means of production and those who run the state are of the same class and share the same interests – domination of the working class by their class, the bourgeoisie. The workers, because of this concealment, do not see the struggle as it really is, i.e., a political class struggle.
Political practice – The subordinate place of the workers under capitalism and the contradictions flowing from it produce determinate effects at the political level of capitalist society. Under the conditions of bourgeois democracy prevailing in the USA, the struggle of the working class can act to maintain and extend bourgeois democracy within its limits and win reforms to the advantage of the proletariat. In this struggle, however, at the political level for reforms, the working class finds itself alongside other classes and class strata, most importantly the petty-bourgeoisie and sections of the bourgeoisie itself. Although these classes and class strata fight for these reforms for their own interests and reasons, interests which are often in conflict with those of the working class, the nature of bourgeois hegemony is such that these non-proletarian forces subordinate the working class to them and these reform struggles. This is possible so long as these struggles have as their basis acceptance of the system and the desire only to reform it. They are bourgeois struggles and thus produce bourgeois ideology, and the hegemony of bourgeois forces within them.
The struggles around the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment provide us with an example of the divergences of class interest when reforms are sought while working within the limits of bourgeois democracy. Reforms such as the Equal Rights Amendment work to maintain bourgeois democracy. They give credence to the concept that true advances in the struggle for equality can be won through the passage of laws that operate wholly within the structure of the state. Reforms such as these always act to extend bourgeois democracy by their emphasis on legality approved by the state. Implicit in the Equal Rights Amendment, is the idea that the demands of women in general and the needs of working class women in particular can be met by an amendment to the Constitution that grants them a delusory “equality” with the status of men in our society.
The main benefit of the Equal Rights Amendment for bourgeois and petty-bourgeois women is that it will grant “professional equality”. The inducements for working class women are less – the Equal Rights Amendment could provide a legal lever to use in the struggle for equality, but these struggles would always be within the framework of the bourgeois democratic system. The Equal Rights Amendment does not specifically deal with vital interests of the working class, such as day care, pregnancy leaves with full reinstatement of pay and seniority on return, and so forth. While we support the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment we are aware that it has become the only goal for many, neglecting the more important issue of the special oppression of working class women under capitalism.
Thus, while both the working class and the bourgeoisie have interests in the Equal Rights Amendment, they are distinct interests which cannot be reconciled as they represent the interests of antagonistic classes. As long as the struggle is fought as a bourgeois legal struggle, and as long as a communist party is absent, the hegemony of the bourgeois forces is guaranteed.
Ideological practice – The production and reproduction of ideology under capitalism is overwhelmingly the production and reproduction of bourgeois ideology. Bourgeois ideology does not mean only the ideology of the bourgeois class, but any ideology that is produced under a mode of production dominated by the bourgeoisie and which serves that mode of production. Thus trade unionism is an ideology spontaneously produced under capitalism. It is a bourgeois ideology (as Lenin points out) even though it is an ideology appropriate to the working class. Capitalism not only produces such ideology but also the structures and institutions through which it is disseminated. The labor aristocracy and the trade union bureaucracy are examples of key structures. They function in the maintenance and reproduction of bourgeois relations and bourgeois ideology within the working class itself and in the workers’ movement. This privileged strata, the labor aristocracy and the trade union bureaucracy, reproduce bourgeois ideology within the workers’ movement. One such example is the ideological notion that worker and capitalist have basically the same interests and the only purpose of unions is to bargain with capitalists for improved working conditions. The question of the wage system itself is not within the ideological confines of trade unionism. It becomes obvious that, spontaneously, the working class can produce neither the ideology nor the theory for its own liberation.
These are the main social practices in which the proletariat participates, impelled by the class struggle and the contradictions inherent in capitalism. For communists, one question is key: What is required to transform these practices, or put another way, what critical factor is missing in the practice of the working class in order for it to transform itself from the seller of labor power to the collective organizer of social production? History provides us with an answer: the missing ingredient is that theory which having been discovered is transforming the world – scientific socialism.
Scientific socialism is the theory which gives the proletariat knowledge of capitalism and of itself. It is a weapon with which to change the world. At first, the changes brought about by the working class are seemingly insignificant. Out of the process, though, of struggle and the increasing role of Marxist theory, these changes can become fundamental—capitalism becomes challenged and then overthrown.
At present, the activity of the US working class is confined to struggles over busing and education, child care, housing, racism and sexism, health care, and struggles at the work place and in the union. There are, of course, many other areas of struggle, and in all these areas, the class struggle goes on daily. It is necessary that Communists participate in these spontaneous struggles whether it is a trade union or a tenants’ organisation. But what is to guide the actions of these communists, to transform the struggles for reform to struggles for revolution, to unite the workers’ movement with Communism? The answer is theory and the program which must be developed from it. Theory, not just of a technical nature, but theory that explains how American society operates. A theory that can develop a strategy for socialist revolution in the USA based on a correct analysis of classes, of women’s oppression, of national oppression, of all the factors that have held back the American working class from its liberation. However, this theory in all its complexity and revolutionary significance has yet to be developed.
This ingredient, theory, and the organizational form it requires, the Communist party, can transform the working class movement if it is correctly fused with it. We emphasize the word correctly here because the results of Communist participation in the class struggle in the USA, without correct theory, presents us with a clear picture of incorrect fusion and its disastrous consequences. If we are to make a qualitative break with our past, we must understand the errors of that past. We are referring in particular, to the CPUSA and its work in the 1930’s. We by no means consider the following to be any more than a schematic presentation of the mistakes of the CP in those years, nor do we mean to slight the real contributions which it made during the depression period. Yet the lessons we are drawing here appear to us to be of topical importance for the party building process of today.
As we will be using the word “fusion” throughout this paper, a clarification is needed. The word, specifically for communists can be very ambiguous as it refers to many contradictory concepts The two types of fusion we will talk about in this paper are the fusion of the workers’ movement with communists (simple integration) and the fusion of the workers’ movement with communism (correct fusion). In the first type, the workers’ movement stand side by side with communists, undergoing no real change. The second type, however, requires a transformation, a qualitative change of that workers’ movement and the communist movement. It necessitates their merger at the level of Communist theory and practice.
Let us briefly look at the interaction of members of the CPUSA and the workers’ movement in the 1930’s.
Economic practice – The integration of CPUSA members with the working class in the 1930’s did not, in the main, work to transform the spontaneous economic struggles so much as it sought to lead those struggles which they developed along spontaneous lines. The party failed to seriously combat economism and neglected to introduce communist politics in the trade union movement which it influenced and led. The politics that did play a role in communist activity in the trade unions were the politics of the New Deal and the Roosevelt regime. Further, in its dealings with the trade union bureaucracy, the communists failed to break not only with the bureaucrats themselves (a good example of this is John L. Lewis)[2] but with the style of work typical of the bureaucratic unionism of the American Federation of Labor.
Even more seriously, the Communist Party (USA) did not require its trade union militants to become any more advanced. Instead, it encouraged them to remain within the confines of “trade union concerns” and leave the theorizing to the party leadership. When the party came under attack in the late 1940’s, this failure to develop communist cadre out of trade union militants played a major role in the liquidation of the party’s trade union base and the widespread desertion from its ranks.
Political practice – The revisionist political practice of the Browder period was such that the fusion of Communist Party (USA) members acted as a brake on the development of an independent working class political outlook. Rather than fight for a separate proletarian position in both advancing and transcending bourgeois democracy, the Communist Party (USA) played a leading role in the subordination of the working class to the bourgeois alliance and strategy which was the New Deal. All the good work the Communist Party (USA) did in the construction of mass working class organisations came to nothing once the party insisted that they subordinate themselves to the requirements of the Roosevelt administration and the class forces for which it spoke.
Ideological practice – During the 1930’s, the slogan which set the tone for the ideological struggle of the Party was the famous “Communism is 20th Century Americanism,” first coined by Browder. Rather than challenge bourgeois ideology, particularly bourgeois nationalism, the party was intent on showing that communism was nothing more than the continuation and development of traditional US bourgeois ideology, as initiated by Jefferson, Lincoln, and others. In the context of the thirties, this meant the tailing after the New Deal’s radical phraseology rather than the conscious articulation of socialist ideology in the service of the working class.
For us, these are some of the most important negative lessons of the fusion of communists with the working class, implemented by the Communist Party (USA) in its period of greatest influence. They are lessons which show that successful fusion of communists with the working class is not itself proof of a correct line or any guarantee of a strong movement. (We recall how quickly anti-communism spread through the workers’ movement in the McCarthy era.) On the contrary, it shows that just as trade unionism can serve to protect and promote the hegemony of the bourgeoisie so too incorrect fusion with the working class can serve to reinforce rather than counteract bourgeois domination of the workers’ movement.
We realise from this, that to pose the question as “For or against fusion?” is not to pose the problem correctly at all. The real question is “What kind of fusion?” Fusion on what basis? To begin to answer these questions we need to examine the thinking of Lenin on the problem of party building and the fusion between communism and the workers’ movement.
We, in the U.S. Communist movement today, cannot simply say, “Let us examine what Lenin had to say,” and leave it at that. What is important is not so much reading Lenin, but how Lenin is read. During the period of the “new communist movement,” when our forces were dominated by dogmatist sects, this was not yet an issue. Lenin’s words were read, taken as dogma, and mechanically transposed to the USA whether they were remarks of a general character or only specific to Russian conditions.
Since the break between the dogmatist and anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist groups (first prominently raised by the Guardian newspaper over the dogmatist line on Angola and soon afterwards treated theoretically by the Ann Arbor Collective (ML’s) paper TOWARD A GENUINE COMMUNIST PARTY), the question of how to read Lenin has become increasingly important. The correct approach to reading the classics of ML can perhaps best be summarized by quoting Lenin himself on how he read the works of Marx:
We do not regard Marx’s theory as something complete and inviolable. On the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.[3]
For us, this approach suggests that we read Lenin the same way – critically; and that we draw from him that which is valuable, particularly his scientific method. On the basis of this method, we need to develop the science of Marxism in keeping with the conditions and demands of our time and our own situation.
Lenin’s writings on fusion and party building are not complete and inviolable, but are a foundation stone from which we must develop our approach to fusion and party building. Let us therefore begin with a brief summary of Lenin’s remarks OR the history of the Russian socialist and working class movement.
In the early years of the Russian proletarian movement, Lenin wrote, socialism existed only in embryonic form, as did the movement of the workers, which was inscribed within the narrow limits of economic agitation. The socialist movement existed in general isolation, and was dominated by Utopian (pre-scientific) conceptions of its tasks and its role in society. A decisive change was brought about in the socialist movement only with the introduction of a new factor – the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels.
The adoption of Marxist theory by the Russian socialists and their development from it of a specific program for revolution under Russian conditions, led, said Lenin, to the qualitative transformation of the socialist movement and their turn toward the working class, the formation of a communist party, and the fusion of the working class and socialist movements.
Whereas both movements had stood apart and weakened as a result of their isolation from each other, the creation of a party was the “biggest step” toward their fusion and the overthrow of the Russian autocracy and capitalism. Let us attempt to amplify some of the essential points of Lenin’s narration so as to arrive at a theoretical understanding of the fusion question
1) A first and essential requirement of fusion is the existence of a communist party or, preliminary to it, a communist organization developing toward a party. This does not mean, as it is commonly assumed, that it is enough for a group to proclaim its loyalty to ML and its opposition to dogmatism in order that it become a member of a communist organization. In fact, two tasks are required of the communist movement of a country before it has developed to the point where it is capable of initiating fusion with the working class movement. One is that it break decisively with all forms of bourgeois ideology and master the science of Marxism-Leninism in an advanced and creative manner. The other is that it produce out of the application of Marxism-Leninist science to the particular conditions and contradictions within that country, a solid analysis and revolutionary program with which to lead and guide its practice.
2) A second and equally essential requirement of fusion is the movement of the working class. Marxism, in keeping with its analysis of the divisive and stratifying effects of the social and productive relations of capitalist society on the working class, recognizes that both these relations and the struggle again them produce within the working class definite and historically determined divisions. Some of these divisions manifest themselves in the spontaneous struggles of the working class, for example the division of the class along racial lines or the divisions between those sections organized in craft unions and those organized in industrial unions. Another example manifests itself at the ideological level; this is the division between those workers who incline to class collaboration and those who are in fact militant unionists.
At the ideological level all of these divisions can be seen as existing within a single, complex, ideological structure – bourgeois ideology. For Marxism-Leninism has always insisted that trade union consciousness is bourgeois consciousness, because it is a consciousness which restricts the workers’ struggle to the bargaining with employers for a better sale of the commodity labor power. In its political aspect (and the spontaneous economic struggle always has a political aspect) it is a consciousness which seeks reforms from the bourgeois state, within the system rather than against it. Within this ideology and practice of trade unionism the most militant fighters, the most advanced fighters for trade unionism are advanced workers of the trade union type.
For communists, however, there is another division which is qualitatively different. Not a division within bourgeois ideology, but the distinction between bourgeois ideology on the one hand and socialist ideology on the other. To what does this distinction correspond? It corresponds to the difference between the kinds of consciousness which the working class can produce out of its own economic struggles and the kind of consciousness which developed out of the conscious struggles which are guided by Marxist study and ideology.
Socialist ideology does not develop spontaneously; consequently the worker cannot produce it nor come to it solely on the basis of their economic struggle. Lenin illuminates this point when he insists that workers, as workers, do not participate in the creation of socialist ideology because “class political consciousness” can only come from outside the economic struggle. Workers participate, said Lenin, as “socialist theoreticians” to the extent that they are able to acquire and develop socialist knowledge. (What Is To Be Done?)
Those workers who become conscious Marxist revolutionaries as a result of their efforts, and who utilize this knowledge to lead the working class movement and at the same time develop both their own theory and the consciousness of the workers’ movement are advanced workers of the socialist type whom Lenin describes above.
The trade union militant (advanced worker – of the trade unionist type) is the most advanced product of the spontaneous working class struggle, the most determined fighter for the working class, working within the capitalist system. The Marxist revolutionary (advanced worker of the socialist type) however, has made a decisive break with the capitalist system as a whole. He is the most determined fighter not only for the present, but for the future as well. The trade union militant has the potential of developing into an advanced worker of the socialist type, but the Marxist revolutionary is that element in the working class movement which has already reached the point where it is capable of actively participating in the fusion process.
3) We thus have two indispensable elements of the fusion process an organization of communists and the advanced workers of the socialist type. What do they have in common and what is the basis for fusion? The answer to this question points up another crucial factor for fusion. Both have in common the one element which gives them a common purpose and a common goal and shows them their need for each other. This element is Marxist-Leninist theory in its three aspects: a) dialectical and historical materialism, which is their break with all forms of bourgeois ideology; b) a concrete strategic program which is the concrete application of theory to the specific social formation in which they operate; and c) the tactical and technical knowledge necessary to implement this program.
To the degree that such theory is present in all its aspects, the possibility of fusion is greater and its actual practice assured of greater success. To the degree that such theory is absent, there is either no grounds for the coming together of these two movements or there is a different ground, other than Marxism-Leninism, which serves as the basis for a different kind of fusion. Historically this different kind of fusion has been economist fusion, that is, fusion whose basis has been a common experience in the spontaneous economic struggle.
In the economist view of fusion, communists go out and get jobs, in shops and factories. In the course of struggle there develops theory which serves those struggles (economic, trade union), they recruit some workers and they win recognition as leaders of the working class on this basis. The historical experience of the struggle against economism has shown that this definition of fusion does not require a qualitative transformation of the workers movement, for the workers bring to this fusion only their presence in the economic struggle. Economist fusion does not produce a communist workers’ movement; on the contrary, it produces a trade unionist communist movement.
Clearly, this conception of fusion has nothing in common with that which is held by Marxism-Leninism. Lenin made this point when he wrote:
Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is only from without the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. (What Is To Be Done?)
What this means is that in the spontaneous economic struggle “bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater degree” than the working class can combat it. The spontaneous economic struggle is thus unfavorable by its very nature to either the bringing of class and socialist consciousness to the mass of workers or the development of advanced workers toward fusion.
Only outside the exclusive sphere of relations between workers and employers can this work be carried out on favorable ground. The new sphere in which genuine fusion takes place, said Lenin, is the sphere of the interrelations of all classes of society. The means by which the working class comes to understand these interrelations and the way to fight for proletarian hegemony is Marxist-Leninist theory and socialist ideology. Communists and advanced workers of the socialist type come together and fuse into a single movement and a single party by subordinating the spontaneous struggle of the working class and the ideology which it produces to conscious activity and to socialist ideology.
For us, fusion can only be defined by recognizing the elements involved in it, their relationship to each other, and the process of fusion itself. The elements are a growing working class movement led by a strata of advanced workers consciously fighting for socialism, and the communist movement engaged in unified theoretical production and political leadership. In the process of fusion to form a single vanguard communist party these two elements are transformed, each contributing its characteristics to the other. Thus, the advanced workers increasingly become theoretical and political leaders while the theoreticians and political leaders assume more and more real leadership of the working class movement.
To what degree are the factors and conditions for fusion present in the USA today? With regard to one factor, the communist movement, we are burdened by a hundred year old tradition the effects of which still dominate, our movement today. Two aspects of this legacy have immediate relevance to this discussion. The first concerns the relations between American communists and theory. The second, between American communists and the US working class.
Since its inception in the 19th century, the American Marxist movement has been characterized by the failure to either master historical materialism or to apply it to American reality. While this was perhaps understandable in the period dominated by the Second International, the birth of the Communist Party in the 1920’s contained the promise that this would come to an end. By the Great Depression, however, particularly after the campaign against “American Exceptionalism”, all attempts to take account of the specific features of US capitalism in Marxist theory were blocked, and theory was reduced to vague and universally applicable generalities.
Paradoxically, at the same time that Marxist theory was being kept “pure” and uncontaminated by ”exceptional” conditions, the ideology of the Communist Party (USA), under the leadership of Browder and later Foster, became more and more permeated with bourgeois conceptions. To this day American communists have lacked an essential requirement for their own development – namely a firm grasp of Marxist theory understood as a living science, and a program and analysis embodying the application of that science to conditions in our own country.
The second aspect of the legacy bequeathed us by American Marxism is the relationship which has existed between Marxist and the multinational US working class. This relationship has historically taken one of two forms. Either Marxists have functioned! in virtual isolation from the workers, or they have interacted with the workers’ movement in such a way that they became subordinated to the spontaneous character of that movement, and the bourgeois ideology which accompanied it.
US Marxists have never developed a scientific analysis of capitalism in general and its role and significance in changing the character of the working class. They have never been able develop a strategic and tactical knowledge of how to intervene the workers* movement in such a way as to transform it into the conscious political-economic struggle of a class conscious proletariat. Lenin’s insistence that “the role of the vanguard can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory” speaks to the heart of the failure of the Marxist movement in the USA.
Turning to the current situation, a host of organizations and individuals within the anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist communist movement prefer to continue this legacy rather than challenge it. The practice of the economists subordinates our theoretical task to an effort to integrate themselves in the factories and mills. It is no accident that these forces take the economist fusion achieved by the Communist Party (USA) in the 1930’s as their model and are actively replicating it in their own way. The dominance of these economist forces within the anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist communist movement seriously threatens the ability of our movement to initiate genuine fusion.
The situation with regard to advanced workers of the socialist type in the USA is equally unsatisfactory. Again American tradition weighs heavily here. In no other developed capitalist country does there exist a working class movement so thoroughly hamstrung by a corrupt labor aristocracy and a parasitic trade union bureaucracy. These unfavorable conditions have even prevented the widespread development of advanced workers of the trade union type.
Equally severe is the effect of American pragmatism and anti-intellectualism. The production of advanced workers of the socialist type, worker intellectuals, and worker theoreticians, implies a certain respect for theory and a desire for real knowledge on the part of the workers. This respect and desire is rejected by pragmatism and anti-intellectualism. These bourgeois ideological conceptions have served to severely limit the number of workers who could become advanced workers of the socialist type.
Another important factor has been the general absence of works of Marxist theory and socialist ideology accessible and relevant to those proletarians who potentially could become advanced workers Where are the contemporary and popular equivalents of the Marxist classics? Where is the US equivalent of Lenin’s The Development of Capital ism in Russia? Where even is a sound work on the development and character of the US imperialist state, or even a sophisticated Marxist-Leninist history of the US working class? At a different level, where are the studies of contemporary US trade unions, and a program derived from them? Where are the works clarifying the special structures of oppression and the programmatic demands required for proletarian hegemony in the struggles against the oppression of women, minorities, foreign workers, and other groups?
In truth, we are lacking all of these and the host of popular pamphlets and other pieces of mass distribution literature which ought to accompany them. This low theoretical level not only adversely affects the communist movement, but also those workers actively seeking a way out of the dead end of bourgeois ideology. In contrast, another approach sees any advance in the workers’ movement, any development of advanced workers, as being tied not to theory but to the direct presence of communists among them. While we agree that close contact with communists will speed up the development of the workers movement, we assert that workers are capable of developing socialist consciousness through their own study and ideological activity provided that advanced theory is available to them.
Such activity on the part of the workers still implies the importation of theory into the working class inasmuch as the theory in question is not the product of their daily practice as workers. It is rather the product of a separate scientific practice (Marxist Leninist theory) and is absorbed by the workers to the degree that they strive to master this practice as well. This view contradicts the widespread but unspoken assumption that workers require theory to be spoonfed to them and then are willing to accept only that theory which has immediate relevance to their most narrow practical concerns. On the contrary, we insist that if Marxist literature, answering the questions facing advanced workers were readily available, we would see the development of the workers’ movement increasingly takes on a tempo of its own, not directly linked to the numerical growth of the communist movement nor to the direct presence of communists within it.
In the absence of such literature at the present moment it is unfortunately correct that the workers are largely lacking the tools with which to independently come to a socialist consciousness and thus are dependent on the presence of communists to aid their efforts. Yet without this literature, even the best practice of communists in the working class can achieve only limited results.
These factors, the strength of trade union bureaucracy, the oppressive weight of bourgeois anti-intellectualism, the absence of a body of relevant and contemporary Marxist theory and socialist ideology, and the isolation of communists from the workers movement has all acted to severely limit the development of a strata of advanced workers of the socialist type capable of participating in the fusion process.
In the present period the theoretical practice of communists must develop sufficiently and be elaborated and made available for the working class in order that the strata of advanced workers begin to break with the hegemony of bourgeois ideology and become advanced workers of the socialist type. Only when the development of advanced communist forces in the leading strata of advanced workers has matured sufficiently will it be possible for genuine fusion to begin to occur.
This understanding enables us to see that the question of fusion cannot be confused or reduced to the immediate problem of the foundation of a genuine communist party in the USA. The fusion question is far broader, it is a fundamental problem for a communist party at every stage of its development even after the seizure of state power. Were not the problems of the Bolshevik Party, immediately after the seizure of state power, as so excellently presented by Charles Bettelheim in his book Class Struggles in the USSR, precisely problems of the lack of the fusion of the party with broad masses in the urban and particularly the rural areas?
This understanding also shows us that fusion cannot become a serious question until the formation of a national communist party is a reality, a party which can both produce advanced theory and organize its dissemination and practice in the context of the working class. Only such a party can systematically produce on a national scale the theoretical and practical basis from which spontaneously produced advanced workers can begin to develop into advanced workers in the Leninist sense. And finally, only such a party can organize and lead a struggle against economism, the main historical deviation which has plagued the US communist movement in its relation with the working class.
[1] the recognition that any social formation operates at three basic levels, the economic base, the political-legal superstructure and the ideological superstructure, was first put forward in Marxism in the Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy by Marx. It has since been repeated by Lenin and Mao Tse Tung. Louis Althusser has shown how the activity of classes at these three levels can be considered as practices (economic practice, political practice, ideological practice).
[2] A good example of this is the manner in which John L. Lewis used the organizational talents of members of the Communist Party (USA) to build the CIO, all the while keeping control of the organization and its economic and political line in his own hands and those of the CIO bureaucracy. The failure of the Communist Part) (USA) to challenge this situation prevented it from translating its leading role in the CIO into actual leadership of the CIO unions (with several notable exceptions), and limited its ability to raise questions of communist politics and consciousness in the unions.
[3]V.I. Lenin. “Our Programme.” Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp.211.