First Published:1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Charles River Study Group is an independent Marxist-Leninist study group initiated by the Boston Guardian Bureau in December of 1976. The Boston Bureau provided political direction for our first six months, which focused on basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. When this study plan ended, we decided to continue to study as a group. Since then we have discussed the nature of the M-L party, and current debates in the party-building movement.
We welcome responses to this pamphlet. Write to us at the address below.
The Charles River Study Group
310 Franklin St.
#365
Boston, MA 02110
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What does the Guardian want our tendency to do? What party-building plan does it advocate for the anti-revisionist/anti-dogmatist forces? The most striking feature of the Guardian staff’s statement on “The State of the Party-Building Movement” (10/18/78) is that it offers no answer to this question.
The Guardian staff’s statement tells what they will do, and criticizes the efforts of the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center (OC). But it does not contain a single proposal for the anti-revisionist/anti-dogmatist tendency as a whole. It offers no concrete course of action for our tendency beyond joining the Guardian Clubs and building the “Guardian trend.”
In explaining its refusal to join the OC, for instance, the Guardian staff claims that the OC’s structure “opens the door to a federationist preparty form.” But at the meeting that founded the OC, the Guardian’s representative voted in favor of the proposal that gave it its present structure. And in the months of discussion leading up to that meeting, the Guardian never once proposed a concrete alternative structure.
The Guardian staff further criticizes the groups in the OC for “localism,” and accuses the OC of catering to this error. Now, the material resources of our tendency consist mainly of local organizations scattered around the country. How can we best make use of these resources, while avoiding localism? The staff once again has nothing to say. Is the Guardian criticizing local groups for existing?
This failure to offer concrete proposals is extremely irresponsible. The Guardian is an important part of our movement, and many people look to it for leadership on party-building issues. It has commented on party-building for years, and one would expect it to have a party-building plan to propose for the movement as a whole. But instead, for individuals and groups uninterested in joining the Guardian Clubs, the Guardian has no specific advice. In short, the Guardian has no concrete plan for party-building.
What is the state of the party-building movement? By and large, it is a state of disorganization. Our theoretical struggle is guided only by spontaneity. One group raises this or that question, another takes up completely different ones. The result is anarchy in debate and a splintering of resources in investigation.
We need a common political agenda. Only if groups take up issues collectively, and at the same time, can our tendency move to a qualitatively higher level of unity.
We need mechanisms for joint theoretical work. There are many major questions that no one organization can solve on its own–for instance, the approach to the fight against racism and national oppression; the nature of women’s oppression and how to organize against it; the character of Soviet society. Theoretically skilled cadre must become a resource for our entire movement. We need ways to allow them to work together and achieve a rational division of labor.
Instead of expecting every group to develop its position on every question by itself, joint study teams could do the bulk of the investigation, developing majority and minority positions as a basis for further struggle. This would prevent needless duplication of effort, and would particularly aid the smaller and the less theoretically developed organizations in our tendency.
In short, our theoretical work must be organized, systematized, and centralized. This will not happen spontaneously–we need an organized form to carry out these tasks. That is exactly what an ideological center would be.
It is clear that four, five, or more separate “centers” cannot effectively centralize our theoretical work. We need a single center to serve the needs of the entire tendency. Political differences may well pose an obstacle to the immediate formation of a single center. But we should all be committed to the principle of struggling for one.
Now, one could disagree with this concept of a center and still have a principled position. A different analysis of the state of the party-building movement could lead to different priorities for our work. For example, one could believe, as El Comite-MINP does, that we do not yet have deep enough local roots to move toward centralization of our theoretical work.
What is important, though, is for any group’s efforts to be based on the needs of the tendency as a whole, and to be consciously subordinated to those needs. This is what the Guardian staff fails to do: it ignores the need to bring together our tendency’s party-building efforts in favor of building up the Guardian Clubs. Building the Guardian Clubs is valuable–but it just isn’t a substitute for a party-building plan for our tendency as a whole. This is a classic example of a group elevating itself above the interests of the entire movement. This is why we say the Guardian staff is dominated by the circle spirit, by sectarianism.
This sectarianism is most evident in the staff’s rejection of the need to struggle for a single center. In its statement on party-building, the staff calmly states, “It is not unreasonable to speculate that four, five, or more currents or trends will exist when the consolidation of this tendency begins in earnest.” This may be true, but this statement is more than an idle observation; it is advanced to justify the Guardian’s refusal to join the OC.
The OC is not being established as a “political current” within our tendency; it is an attempt to create a single center that can serve all of the currents within our tendency. This is why “fusion” groups like the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) can coexist within the OC with “unity” groups like the Tucson Marxist-Leninist Collective. It is why the OC has tried so hard to persuade the Guardian to join. And it is precisely this principle of a single center that the Guardian staff rejects, in favor of an almost complacent attitude toward the disorganization and spontaneity of our party-building efforts.
Although he disagrees with the staff position on other issues, Irwin Silber, too, rejects the need to struggle for a single center. In the March 1978 Organizer, he wrote, “Given the particular circumstances of our own movement, it would seem virtually inevitable that several ’centers’ would emerge.” And in the January 10 Guardian, he wrote that “the existence of several centers in the party-building movement is a fact.” Not only that, but there was no point in trying to change this situation: “Comrades, different centers exist and will continue to exist.”
Silber and the staff should listen to the words of the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee (Organizer, 3/78):
Perhaps it is inevitable that several centers will develop in our trend, given its disparate ideological character. However, those who place the unification of our movement at the forefront of their efforts will, in principle, strive for the development of a single center. They will only support the creation of distinct and competing centers in cases where clear differences in principle make it inevitable.
Those guided by the circle spirit, however, will attempt to constitute themselves into a “center” just to advance the position of their own circle. Most likely, they will use the argument about the “inevitability of several centers” to cover their opportunism. One would assume that, given the history of the party-building movement, Silber would be more in touch with the dangers of the circle spirit.
It is important to understand that we are not calling the Guardian sectarian for not joining the OC. Anyone who has understood us to say that should reread this article. What we are criticizing as sectarian is the rejection of even the principle that it is important to struggle for a single center.
If the Guardian felt it had principled differences with the OC’s basis of unity, but were actually committed to the struggle for a single center, there are a number of steps it could take. It could propose specific alternate formulations for some of the OC’s points of unity, which it felt would allow the Guardian and the groups now in the OC to work together in the same organized form to establish an ideological center. If agreement could not be reached, it could at least seek formal links with the OC and engage in joint activities where possible. But the staff explicitly rejects this course: “We do not envision any organizational ties between the Guardian and Guardian Clubs and the OC” (emphasis added).
The Socialist Organizing Committee is correct when it writes, “Silber and the Guardian have just separated themselves from the process of building an ideological center that can coordinate and systematize.. .discussion among all anti-revisionist, anti-dogmatist forces” (Guardian, 1/3/79; emphasis added). The Guardian could participate in this process without joining the OC. But it cannot if it is unconcerned with building any relationship or joint activity between the two; the OC is, after all, the principal organized effort to create an ideological center for our tendency.
The Guardian staff’s statement on “The State of the Party-Building Movement” contains several serious criticisms of the basis of unity of the OC. Perhaps the most important of these is that the OC’s points of unity are at too low a political and theoretical level. The Guardian statement accuses the OC of a “lowest common denominator” approach toward building an ideological center, an approach which leads to right opportunism.
The Guardian’s attacks would be on target if they were criticizing the formation of a party or a preparty formation. But the OC is neither of these. It is not even an ideological center; it is an organizing committee whose explicit tasks include ”identifying the basis of unity necessary to place an ideological center on a firm foundation and setting forth the manner in which that unity can be prepared.”
The Guardian appears not to understand this, for it speaks of “the establishment of a national ideological center” as something which has already occurred. The staff is dismayed that the OC has not specified what topics will be taken up by an ideological center, or what will be the “guiding strategic concept of this theoretical work.” In fact, the first task of the OC, as laid out in its founding statement, is precisely to struggle over the question of what the tasks and definition of an ideological center should be.
In its efforts to criticize the OC, the Guardian staff seriously misrepresents the level of unity that has already been achieved. The staff statement charges the OC with “making agreements with the principles ’optional’ for groups wishing to join the formation.” This, according to the staff, was a response to opposition by the Proletarian Unity League (PUL) to principle 18 (U.S. imperialism is the main enemy of the world’s peoples).
Actually, the OC is not open to any group which has a consolidated disagreement with any of the points of unity. As PUL pointed out in a recent letter to the Guardian, it has never been a member of the OC, precisely because of its difference with point 18. And far from dropping point 18, the OC is mandated to “organize a broad discussion on why the 18 points are a proper basis of unity.. .particularly highlighting the importance of point 18.”
True, the OC is open to groups which have not yet formulated positions on some of the principles of unity. But an effort to include less theoretically developed groups is a far cry from the “sheer opportunism” that the Guardian staff charges.
Along with its criticisms of the “low level of unity” of the OC, the Guardian staff repeatedly makes disparaging remarks about the “theoretical weakness” of groups in the OC. It seems to us that the Guardian should then feel some responsibility for helping these groups develop further, and to this end should consider joining the OC. After all, the Guardian says it does not see the OC’s errors “flowing out of a consolidated right opportunist political line, but rather the result of political shortcomings and certain objective limitations.” If this is the case, then what the Guardian criticizes as the OC’s right errors are no basis for keeping the OC at arms length, and makes sense only as a smokescreen for the Guardian’s circle spirit.
The Guardian’s impatience with the OC is understandable. We all wish that our tendency could develop faster, and that a higher level of unity could easily be attained. Unfortunately, though, the Guardian seems to have only an abstract understanding of how our theory can be advanced further.
There is more to the development of theory than an abstract debate between two already existing political lines, in which one emerges victorious and unchanged. Real struggle is essential to reaching a correct position. And we must recognize that the outcome of that struggle may well not be the Guardian’s line, or PWOC’s line, or any other existing position, but rather qualitatively new theory.
Many of the positions that the Guardian proposes the OC adopt as starting points are exactly the kinds of questions an ideological center should take up for study, investigation, and struggle. For instance, the OC puts forward a short, and certainly incomplete, critique of revisionism (point 9). “But this won’t do,” says the Guardian staff, demanding a precise specification of the nature of revisionism and the Soviet Union in order to avoid the pitfalls of opportunism.
But where is the theoretical work, where is the analysis and how has it been disseminated within the movement so a meaningful position can be formulated? Evidently the Guardian feels that it is unimportant that there are different positions on these questions among the groups in our tendency, or that many groups do not have a full position on these questions. The OC should have gone ahead and, without any further theoretical work or debate, declared a position for the tendency. Is this the Guardian’s idea of communist political leadership? Or is it an example of the staff’s seeking to establish political lines without common struggle and education or reference to practical experience, and without regard for the actual conditions of our tendency or the effect of its actions on the tendency as a whole?
The Guardian further criticizes the OC’s principles dealing with racism and sexism (points 11, 12, and 13). The political essence of these three points is the principle of class unity and a communist approach to the struggles against the oppression of national minorities and women. These are broad principles; and as the Guardian points out, the U.S. left has failed to provide effective leadership in these struggles.
But again, the Guardian staff calls for more detailed positions without addressing the issue of how these positions are to be formed. For instance, it questions whether the OC should include groups which don’t support super-seniority as a way to fight discrimination. If our tendency could come to a quick agreement on such issues, without struggle, merely because the Guardian tells us to, we should have little need for an ideological center. But we cannot. The answers to these crucial theoretical issues cannot simply be declared, nor will the means for answering them fall from the sky. The Guardian staff does not recognize this, and this is why we say the Guardian wants unity around its own line without struggle.
This unwillingness to struggle is further emphasized by the Guardian staff’s criticism of the OC for its alleged “fusion” position. In fact, the OC has very specifically not taken a position on the fusion/unity debate. The Guardian’s statement recognizes this when it charges that “what the OC fails to take up is the nature of the relationship between communists and the spontaneous mass movements in the preparty period” (emphasis added). This question is exactly what the unity/fusion debate is about.
The Guardian actually agrees with the real content of the OC’s point 10: “The goals enunciated in this principle should of course unite all Marxist-Leninists Can the party be built ’in isolation…from the great movements of the working class and oppressed nationalities? Of course not.” And according to the Organizer (12/78), the Guardian staff was explicitly told by the OC that this point was not intended to exclude the Guardian’s party-building line, and that if the Guardian objected to it, the OC was open to rewriting it. Yet the Guardian never proposed an alternative to point 10, and never cited point 10 as an obstacle to its participation in the OC until the publication of “The State of the Party-Building Movement.” This can only be described as sectarianism.
If the Guardian had confidence in its line, it would join the OC or seek close, formal ties with it, in order to help create organized forms within which to struggle to win others to its positions. It has done neither. Either the Guardian staff lacks confidence in its positions, or it does not believe that the correct line will emerge from principled struggle.
Indeed, what the Guardian staff seems to be afraid of is that its views will be in the minority. The staff’s statement speaks of joining the OC as “submerging itself.” Its fears about the fusion position are not that the OC has adopted a fusion line, but merely that a majority of groups in the OC currently hold that position. It would be one thing if the Guardian disagreed substantially with the OC’s points of unity. But to refuse to join out of fear of losing on questions which have not yet been taken up can only be described as an unwillingness to struggle.
The Guardian staff makes one further criticism of the OC which should be addressed. According to “The State of the Party-Building Movement,” the OC incorrectly identifies the main danger to our tendency. The Guardian believes this danger comes from the right, rather than the “left” as PWOC and others believe.
Unfortunately, the break with ultra-leftism is not nearly as easy as the Guardian appears to believe. In reality, the organizational break with the ultraleft has not meant a consolidated or even widely understood political critique of left opportunism. The Guardian, despite its eagerness to recognize theoretical weakness elsewhere, seems unwilling to face up to our vast theoretical inadequacies in understanding ultra-leftism.
We are a tendency which has its roots in the spontaneity and revolutionary impatience of the student movement and the New Left. We share with the ultra-lefts a legacy of misreaction to revisionism, a history in which our scorn for any approach that might appear reformist often blinded us to the dangers of left opportunism, and left us with little more than an abstract understanding that there was something wrong with the ultra-lefts. And like the ultra-lefts, we are a tendency mainly made up of people with petty-bourgeois class backgrounds, with all of the tendencies toward individualism, anarchism, and left subjectivism that arise from the material conditions of that class.
The groups and individuals in our tendency share an opposition to left opportunism. But as the Guardian points out, our tendency is fragmented, and our understandings of ultra-leftism are based on a wide variety of different, and necessarily incomplete, experiences. We have no shared understanding of the roots of ultra-leftism or how to combat “left” errors.
None of this means we are doomed to repeat ultra-leftist errors forever. But it does mean that the pressures toward ultra-leftism are tremendous. The example of the Bay Area Communist Union demonstrates that the break with ultra-leftism is no easy matter. BACU began as one of the first anti-dogmatist and anti-ultra-left organizations, but never consolidated its critique of ultra-leftism. It has since made a decided “left” turn; it regards the CP (ML) and the League of Revolutionary Struggle as the most advanced Marxist-Leninist forces in the U.S., and PWOC and the Guardian as the most backward.
We should not forget that we are not the first to attempt this break. Six years ago, the October League wrote, “The past decade has witnessed the failure of every group (up until now) that broke organizationally from the rightism of the CPUSA to keep away from the influences of ’ultra-leftism.’ These groups include the Provisional Organizing Committee which split from the CP in the late ’50s and the Progressive Labor Party which began in the early ’60s. Both of these groups at one time represented the hopes of many honest communists within and outside of the CP that a new revolutionary communist party could be built.” The failure of the OL itself to break with ultra-leftism, despite its recognition of the danger, should make it clear that such a break is a demanding task.
The Guardian’s underestimation of the danger of ultra-leftism comes in part from a failure to understand its nature. Left opportunism is more than a series of incorrect positions on particular questions. It is characterized by dogmatism, a methodological error, an incorrect basic approach to all political questions. Neither an organizational break with the ultra-lefts, nor even a rejection of key ultra-left positions, can substitute for an understanding and a critique of this methodology that lies at the basis of ultra-left political lines.
Instead of recognizing this, the Guardian staff looks at the struggle against ultra-leftism from the narrow viewpoint of formal logic. The Guardian says that we have broken organizationally with the ultra-left–“the ’new communist movement’ no longer exists–and having thereby cast off the ”left,” we must now concentrate on the right errors that have arisen from ’overreaction to the errors of dogmatism and ultra-leftism’. Misunderstanding the roots of ultra-leftism, the Guardian staff reduces a complex struggle to a simple organizational break and the rejection of a few political positions.
All members of our study group agree that there has been an important organizational break with the ultra-lefts, and that we have taken major steps forward in breaking with ultra-left politics and method. Some members are inclined to agree with the Guardian that the “new communist movement” is a thing of the past. Others believe that we are still part of a single anti-revisionist movement, which is divided into ultra-left and anti-“left” wings.
But we all believe that the political break with ultra-leftism is still far from complete. In the absence of a shared understanding of the character and roots of ultra-leftism, developing that understanding remains the most pressing task of our tendency.
None of this means we can ignore the dangers of reformist or revisionist errors in our tendency. Right errors may well be more prevalent than left errors among some groups affiliated with the OC, and such errors certainly deserve attention and criticism.
But the main danger cannot be discovered by determining the quantitatively most frequent error. The main danger is the danger which qualitatively most threatens the development of a full fledged independent Marxist-Leninist movement. Until we have consolidated our understanding and critique of left opportunism, that danger will remain ultra-leftism. This consolidation is not an easy task. But the twenty year history of recurrent ultra-leftism within the anti-revisionist communist movement should serve as a warning to those who seek shortcuts.
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We hope that readers of this paper will not understand it as a blanket attack on the Guardian. The Guardian is an important and valuable part of our movement, with much to contribute. But when any part of our movement makes an error, we have a responsibility to criticize and try to correct that error.
We believe that the Guardian has shown sectarianism and circle spirit in its relations to the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center, and that it has demonstrated a reluctance to struggle over its political differences with the OC. To call for struggle without specifying how it is to take place is to avoid struggle, and to endorse the current anarchy in the party-building movement.
In March 1978, the Philadelphia Workers’ Organizing Committee wrote,
The Guardian should adopt a more unitary spirit. It should prove its dedication to the interests of our emerging trend by forthrightly asserting its commitment in principle to the development of a single ideological center and, in addition, its willingness to join in a common effort to develop one.
We hope that both the Guardian staff and the Clubs will take this advice.