During the period preceding the 16th Convention of the CPUSA, certain elements in the Party grew increasingly concerned about pressure from rightist elements to formally abandon aspects of Leninist theory, practice and organisation. These forces on the Left soon became disenchanted with the manner in which William Z. Foster(the titular leader of the Left) capitulated to the revisionist decisions arrived at by the 16th Convention. They began to distinguish themselves from the “left;” led by Foster and became known as the “Marxist-Leninist caucus.” For a little more than a year they remained in the CPUSA and attempted to convince other comrades in the Party of the disastrous nature of the policies and proclamations which the 16th Convention endorsed. They privately printed and circulated documents which made attempts to analyze the situation in the CP and provide direction in the necessary struggle against the revisionist line of the Convention. Their attempts met with little success and they were expelled from the Party and thus founded the “Provisional Organizing Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party” in New York in August of 1958.
It did not take long, however, for the real practice of the POC to become crystallized into that of ultra-left sectarianism. Within only a few months, the POC, which had had nearly 400 members at its inception, was pared down to only 40, a number which it rarely exceeded all through the 60’s and into the 70’s. The history of the POC is of particular importance to the party-building movement today because the Club Network (formerly the Guardian Clubs) has taken the position that the CPUSA was still a revolutionary party In the Leninist sense until the 16th Convention. The analysis of the CP which the POC and the Club Network share offer a remarkable coincidence of elements in that both allow their analyses to remain on the surface of the empirically visible. Neither is able to go under the surface to see how the CP went revisionist because both are content to assume that the “facts” speak for themselves. By studying the POC we can begin to gain some insights into the unfortunate continuity between the anti-revisionist movement and organisations which proceeded us and those of the present. In doing this the magnitude of what we are up against and the practice necessary to struggle with it will become clearer to us and help us go forward.
(Incidentally, the 12 Party Declaration which is mentioned so frequently in the documents we will read, is a highly contradictory compromise which attempted to reconcile the dissatisfaction of the Chinese Party over the revisionism of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. In it, certain sections are clearly written to appease the Chinese so as to facilitate a statement on which there could be common agreement. It is noteworthy that the POC viewed this document without seeing that it still contained a multitude of revisionist formulations which could not be reconciled, in any rigorous way with genuine Marxism.)
I. The POC saw petty-bourgeois elements and influences in the CPUSA and the repression of the ruling class against the Party as the basis of revisionism. Would we consider this an adequate explanation which would help us combat revisionism in the long-run? If not, how would we see revisionism as being produced?
The Club Network (formally the Guardian Clubs) sees the revisionism of the 16th Convention more as an event and not as the logical culmination of a process of long duration. Given their perception of how the CPUSA became revisionist and ours, how would our practice of the primacy of theory line differ in scope and practice form theirs? How would we use our primacy of theory line to defeat revisionism?
II. How did the POC approach theory? Did they see theory as valuable and, if so, what kind of theory was it? How did the POC, in practice, see the relationship of dogmatism and revisionism? Was dogmatism even seen as a problem? How did they view the nature of the world communist movement and the relationship of the CPUSA to it? Would we agree? How do these ideas and practices find reflection in the “New Communist Movement?” Have the various wings of this movement gone beyond the ideas and practices characteristic of the POC? Explain how they have and how they haven’t.
III. How do the positions of the POC on: the dictatorship of the proletariat, the peaceful transition to socialism, the vanguard role of the party, proletarian internationalism, democratic centralism reveal a genuine Marxist-Leninist approach and how do they not? How might we support, qualify or discard their above discussed ideas on those issues of great importance?
“Two Roads,” by Milton Palmer (Ted Allen)
“Marxism and Revisionism,” (the Main Report of the National Conference of the Founding convention of the POC)