First Published: A Letter to the editor in The Call, Vol. 10, No. 4, June 1981.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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I have been reading the dialogue between Jim Hamilton and company with some amusement and a great deal of dismay. Amusement because of the way his comments have been distorted; dismay because this style of debate can never arrive at the truth.
S.K. (in the April Call offers no explanation of why there have been no proletarian revolutions in the advanced capitalist world. This problem is not so complicated. It should be explicated. But S.K. merely dodges the question by saying that we have to offer “revolutionary political leadership” here at home. What that means precisely she does not say.
Yet more from S.K. with a little help from D.W. Suddenly J.H. is guilty of advocating the parliamentary transition to socialism (D.W.) and regarding electoral struggle as more than “one tactic among many” (S.K.). But J.H. does not advocate the parliamentary transition. He recognized specifically “the need for working class political power ultimately backed by an armed people.”
Rather than conjuring up the bogeyman of parliamentary transition, we need to analyze how the elections may be used to our advantage. Certainly nobody is using elections better today than Bobby Sands. And nobody could accuse Bobby Sands or the IRA Provos of being pacifists.
Even if nobody in the CPML advocates Eurocommunism, the principles and practice of this trend need to be examined by our cadres. Merely denouncing them will not enable us to learn what is positive in their experience, nor will it harden us against their mistakes.
In short, we need a two-sided scientific analysis of our work. Less bickering and less distortion.
The answer to our problems lies in building a movement against Reagan and the imperialists. There is nothing the imperialists would like more than for us to waste ourselves in a futile, endless and ultimately, pointless internal struggle.