First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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With this issue the Organizer begins its fifth year of publication. In our first issue in January, 1975 we identified the tasks of the Organizer in the following way:
“We want to make the Organizer a tool for building a new Communist Party...to develop our particular understanding of how the party is to be built and what kind of political line and program it requires... We see the Organizer as bringing a communist perspective to bear on the various questions that face the worker’s movement... We will be reporting on these struggles with an eye on how to make them stronger, how to bring them together into a single powerful movement against the monopoly exploiters...”
Prior to the publication of the Organizer, the PWOC, regardless of its self conception, functioned in relation to the masses more as a grouping of left trade unionists than as a Communist organization. The Organizer provided the means for our organization to develop more all-sided work...to conduct Communist agitation and propaganda...to bring together conceptually our immediate practical activity and our long term aims. Aided by the Organizer, the PWOC has established itself as a visible and critical presence in the mass movements and accelerated the work of winning the advanced workers to Marxism-Leninism.
In January of 1975 the PWOC was little known outside of Philadelphia and had little connection to the party-building movement. The publication of the Organizer was a major factor in establishing the PWOC as a distinct voice among Marxist-Leninists, enabling the organization to participate in the struggles over party-building and political line that have been central to the development of our movement.
The Organizer has made an important contribution to the forging of a critique of dogmatism and ultra-leftism and has helped to lay the groundwork for the formation of the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center.
The Organizer’s opposition to dogmatism has not simply been a matter of publishing polemics against the dogmatist line. By trying to develop a newspaper that is lively and popular and that is distinguished by concrete analysis of concrete events, we have sought to demonstrate that Marxism-Leninism is a living, relevant doctrine. We may not have always succeeded, but generally we believe that the Organizer has improved over the last four years...in the scope and depth of coverage, in the quality of design and in the clarity and sharpness of style.
Much room for improvement remains. There is too much uneveness in the quality of the paper’s content. Production and distribution are plagued with organizational problems. Some of this is the inevitable consequence of the PWOC being a local organization short on resources and long on overworked cadre. Still much can be done to improve the newspaper even within these limitations.
At present we plan no major changes in the basic format of the paper. We will be concentrating on improving the quality of our coverage – articles that are better researched, more lively in style and more probing in their analysis. Secondly, we are reorganizing our circulation apparatus to boost sales and subscriptions.
We want to thank you, our readers for the material, moral and political support you have extended over the past four years. We have benefited from criticisms and contributions of many readers around the country. Without the financial generosity and support of many readers we would have been unable to make the Organizer a monthly newspaper. We are grateful for this support and hope that you think the Organizer continues to be worthy of it.