Issued: January 1, 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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There is such a party! Let the rich snarl in their drawing rooms. Let the workers in the mines and mills, factories and fields rejoice. There is a Leninist political party of the American proletariat. There is a party opposed to the parties of the rich, a party of the socialist revolution. After decades of arduous struggle against revisionist betrayal, the American working class once again has its genuine communist party. The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA has been founded!
The Founding Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party was convened on the very eve of the new decade. The Founding Congress was a congress of unity and a congress of victory. It took up its historic work with determination and with the utmost faith in Marxism-Lenin-ism and the revolutionary cause. The Founding Congress addressed itself to the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the world and domestic situations, to the historical lessons of the struggle for the party and for the party concept, to the tactical line for the coming period and to the inner life of the party and its Leninist organizational norms. The Founding Congress approved the Political Resolutions, adopted the General Rules of the Party, elected the first Central Committee and charged the Central Committee with its duties. In the midst of the work of the Founding Congress, at 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 1979, the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (COUSML), the militant nucleus of the party whose work prepared the conditions for the Founding Congress was dissolved. At 12:01 a.m. on January 1st, followed by jubilant celebration, the birth of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA (MLP.USA) was proclaimed.
The founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party is the fruit of lengthy and self-sacrificing struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and the growing fascism of the monopoly capitalist exploiters. The Marxist-Leninist Party is a party whose immediate roots go back deep into the revolutionary mass movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. It is a party of revolutionary activists, tested in the class war.
The Marxist-Leninist Party is the advanced detachment of the working class. It brings consciousness to and organizes the proletariat, and everywhere and at all times represents the interests of the proletarian movement as a whole. It is composed of the finest sons and daughters of the working class and of other dedicatee revolutionaries who take up the class stand and the historical mission of the working class. A thousand red threads tie the Party to the working class which gave it birth, nurtures it and gives it strength.
The Marxist Leninist Party is a party of Marxism-Leninism. It lives by the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the revolutionary doctrine which illuminates the path of the proletarian movement for emancipation. It has grown up and taken shape in a fierce struggle against all distortions of Marxism-Leninism, against all revisionism and opportunism including New Leftism, American exceptionalism, Browderism and both Soviet and Chinese revisionism.
The Marxist-Leninist Party is a party of proletarian internationalism. Its slogan is “Workers of all countries, unite!” It fights against racial discrimination, against deportations, against police terrorism and against all national oppression. It gives firm support to the revolutionary struggles all over the globe waged against “our own” exploiters, the U.S. imperialists, as well as those against all other imperialists and reactionaries. It is one column in the world army of labor and stands together with the Marxist-Leninist parties and revolutionary movements of the whole world.
The Marxist-Leninist Party is a party of socialism. It leads the class struggle and stands for the overthrow of the capitalist exploiters. It fights for a new social order, for socialism and communism, for the end to the exploitation of man by man. It stands for the triumph of socialism on a world scale. It firmly upholds the People’s Socialist Republic of’ Albania, the bastion of world revolution and the only genuinely socialist country in the world today.
The Marxist-Leninist Party is a party of revolutionary struggle. It does not lull the masses to sleep with election year fables about the good life allegedly possible with the crumbs thrown by imperialism. On the contrary, it rouses the masses to fight against the exploiters. It organizes disciplined revolutionary Party organizations in the factories, mines, fields, schools and communities. It organizes the mass revolutionary struggle and prepares the conditions for the coming socialist revolution.
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The founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party marks the advent of the 1980’s. It marks the beginning of a decade of great class battles in which the proletariat will be at the center of the revolution. The founding of the Party means that Marxism-Leninism will guide the coming upsurge of the revolutionary workers’ movement.
The Founding Congress analyzed the world and domestic situations. The new decade witnesses the gathering of the storm clouds of revolution on a world scale. The crisis of imperialism is deepening on all fronts. Yet another phase of economic crisis and gloomy stagnation grips the entire capitalist and revisionist world. There is a growing revolt of the proletariat and oppressed masses, who seek a way out of the slavery, oppression and misery of capitalism and imperialism. The strikes, demonstrations and armed uprisings are the thunderclaps heralding the coming world revolutionary storms. The revolutionary ferment is at work everywhere. Revolutions are breaking out in one country after another, overthrowing what were trumpeted as the most stable, impregnable strongholds of imperialism.
The world today is divided into two. On one side stands the old world of capital, the world of imperialism, reaction and exploitation. This is the camp of the two rapacious superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, and of the newest warmongers striving for superpower status, Chinese social-imperialism. It is the camp of NATO and of the Warsaw bloc, of capitalism and fascist reaction, of aggressive war and enslaving world empires, of racism and apartheid. On the other side stands the world of labor, the world of the revolution and of the new society. This camp consists of the world proletarian movement, the national liberation movements and the socialist countries, of which today there is only one, socialist Albania. This camp is led by the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement.
The Founding Congress discussed in great detail the program of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. Under the conditions of the deepening crisis, the U.S. monopoly capitalist dictators are carrying out a fascist offensive against the working class and people. The closer the exploiters are to their graves, the more frenzied they become in their deathbed struggles. The program of the rich is a barbaric and reactionary program which means untold suffering for the masses of people, in the U.S. and throughout the world. It is a program of starvation, fascism and war.
The Founding Congress set forward the fighting tasks of struggle against the fascist program of the bourgeoisie. The Marxist-Leninist Party defends the momentary interests and the immediate aims of the working class, but in the movement of the present, it also represents and takes care of the future of the movement. It uses the day-to-day struggle to organize the working and oppressed masses into a powerful force for the socialist revolution. It is the socialist revolution that offers the working masses a way out of the crisis. The only solution is for the masses to wage mass revolutionary struggle against the monopoly capitalist exploiters, to organize themselves in the course of the struggle, to fight against starvation, fascism and war and to overthrow the exploiters altogether.
The coming revolution is a proletarian socialist revolution. It is the overthrow of the oppressors through revolutionary violence. It will replace capitalism by socialism, expropriate the monopoly capitalists, abolish the exploitation of man by man and lead ultimately to communism, the classless society. It will destroy the state of the rich and abolish the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is a terrorist dictatorship of the rich minority over the overwhelming majority of toilers. It will replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is with the working class organized as the ruling class, with the rule of the overwhelming majority over the handful of capitalists and reactionaries.
The socialist revolution has an anti-fascist character. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class is a center of fascism and reaction on the world scale. It is fascizing the U.S. state and society under the banner of so-called “American democracy.” The proletariat fights the growing fascism of the monopoly capitalist exploiters. The socialist revolution will utterly demolish this growing fascism. It will abolish the overgrown oppressive system of a huge army, police and arrogant bureaucracy and replace them with the armed people themselves. The socialist revolution will bring genuine freedom and democracy to the overwhelming majority of the people, the formerly oppressed classes, and vigilant control will be exercised over the small handful of remnants of exploiters.
The socialist revolution carries forward the banner of struggle against imperialism and imperialist war. The U.S. is a monstrous imperialist superpower, a world exploiter, blackmailer and bully, and a center of international aggression. So long as U.S. imperialism exists, the world will be subjected to its schemes for world domination and to the threat of war. The proletariat fights against the imperialist war preparations, against colonialism and neocolonialism and against all manifestations of U.S. imperialist aggression. The anti-imperialist struggle is a powerful force for the development of the socialist revolution. It is the socialist revolution that will put an end to U.S. imperialism once and for all by overthrowing the capitalist exploiters. And it is only the world proletarian socialist revolution that can make possible a just and lasting peace.
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The Founding Congress put in the forefront the leading, mobilizing and organizing role of the party of the proletariat. The Marxist-Leninist Party organizes the working class as the leading and main force of the socialist revolution. Fundamental to the socialist revolution is the constitution of the working class as a class for itself, distinct from and opposed to the rich and all the exploiting classes. The first historic step in achieving this has been realized in the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party.
The Marxist-Leninist Party works to imbue the proletariat with socialism, with the revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism. It fights tirelessly to train the workers in maintaining an irreconcilably hostile stance to the policies and state power of the rich. It advances the revolutionary orientation and tactics and strategy in the workers’ movement. It strives to develop revolutionary mass organizations under Marxist-Leninist leadership. It courageously organizes well-considered and determined revolutionary actions and leads the masses in direct clashes with the class enemy. In this way, the Marxist-Leninist Party brings consciousness to the workers’ movement, leads the workers to take up their class interests and their historical mission, and trains and prepares the working class for the revolution.
The Marxist-Leninist Party works to weld all of the revolutionary currents into a single torrent with the proletariat at the center. The revolutionary mass movements which periodically sweep the country embody the growing revolt of the proletariat and other downtrodden masses against capitalism and growing fascism. These movements, which bring the masses of people into open conflict with the rich and the state power of the rich, are schools of revolution. In these movements, the masses of working people gain rich experience, become convinced through their own experience of the need for the revolution and of the correctness of the policies, slogans and orientation of the Marxist-Leninist Party, and become organized and prepared for the revolution.
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The Founding Congress set the orientation for the struggle against the liberal-labor and social-democratic politics which is used to attach the workers as a tail to their own worst enemies, the capitalist exploiters. The aim of the liberal-labor politics is to prevent the formation of the proletariat as a class for itself. It is the tool of the rich to destroy the political independence of the proletariat. It is the politics of class-collaborationism, of alliance with the rich and of begging crumbs from imperialism.
Ever since the mid-1930’s, liberal-labor politics has treacherously presented the Democratic Party as the alleged “party of labor and the minorities.” The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are ruling parties of monopoly capital, parties of imperialism and rabid reaction. They have a common program, but while the Republicans are the open party of the rich, the Democrats are the main party for the deception of the workers. For decades, the reactionary program of big capital, the fascination of the state and society, and the savage attacks on the workers’ movement and the oppressed nationalities has been carried out repeatedly on the basis of liberal-labor politics and under a signboard of “pro-labor” and “pro-minorities” demagogy. All the opportunist and revisionist parties and sects are in a yellow front with the Democratic Party and are prettifiers of and a vehicle for its fascist program. The Democratic Party in essence plays the role of a liberal-labor or social-democratic party, and the various revisionists and avowed social-democrats form its “left” wing.
The social basis for liberal-labor politics is the alliance between a soldout stratum of the workers and of the oppressed nationalities with the monopoly capitalist exploiters. This stratum is in the main drawn from the labor aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie, and it includes the labor bureaucracy and the myriads of petty functionaries of the state.
The Founding Congress analyzed the growing activation of social-democracy by the capitalists. Today there is mass disillusionment with the parties of the rich. Once again, the monopoly capitalists are turning more and more to social-democracy to keep the masses under bourgeois influence, to wipe out any spirit of revolt and any revolutionary sentiment, to solve the “crisis of confidence” by keeping the masses attached to the Democratic Party and to convert any independence from the capitalist parties into a mere formality or a sham. Social-democratic campaigns are being organized, a deeper tinge of social-democracy is being given to the labor bureaucracy, and the “three worlders” are on the path of merger with social-democracy. The Founding Congress held that it is essential to step up the war on social-democracy.
The Founding Congress declared: To hell with the political parties of the rich! The workers must build their own independent political movement, independent of and against the parties and political program of the rich. The mass disgust with the two capitalist parties must be oriented onto the path of proletarian, class politics. The only path of salvation for the toiling masses is the path of revolutionary struggle, whose red banner is held proudly aloft by the Marxist-Leninist Party.
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The Founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party marks a tremendous victory in the struggle against revisionism and opportunism.
The Founding Congress analyzed in detail the development of the counter-revolutionary trend of modern revisionism and gave a scathing criticism of its general features and its main currents. It showed how Chinese revisionism had crystallized and come out into the open with the “three worlds” theory and the warmongering U.S.-China alliance. It denounced Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological and theoretical basis for all the multitude of factions of Chinese revisionism. At the same time, the Founding Congress emphasized the great danger of Khrushchovite Soviet revisionism. Modern Soviet revisionism is the most comprehensive and highly elaborated theory of modern revisionism. The Founding Congress also denounced the other currents of modern revisionism, including Titoite revisionism, Eurocommunism and Browderism.
The founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party is the greatest victory of the historic movement against social-chauvinism. The reconstitution of the party has required a fierce struggle against the anti-party trend trying to hide inside the Marxist-Leninist movement. This trend is neo-revisionism. From the start the neo-revisionists, while claiming to oppose revisionism, in fact opposed the party concept, scoffed at the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat, and conciliated the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. The neo-revisionist trend collapsed into total bankruptcy with its coming out into the open as raving social-chauvinists, with its Pentagon-socialist thesis of “directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism,” with its rabid adherence to the counter-revolutionary theory of “three worlds” and with its gangster-style attacks on socialist Albania. It has sought to drown the whole revolutionary movement in a shameful alliance with U.S. imperialism and a disgusting morass of social-chauvinism. The movement against social-chauvinism has been a powerful expression of the anger and indignation against the neo-revisionist class traitors of all those who preserved their revolutionary honor. This movement has been a great outpouring of support for revolution and proletarian internationalism. The social-chauvinist and anti-party trend of neo-revisionism is in the main an American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism. But the movement against social-chauvinism has struck heavy blows not only at the followers of Chinese revisionism, but at the followers of Soviet revisionism, the social-democrats and other opportunists, who are all American chauvinists to the core, rotten through and through. The movement against social-chauvinism has been a powerful rallying center to unite all that is alive, honest and loyal to Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. This movement has proved indispensable in eliminating the anti-party and social-chauvinist filth from the Marxist-Leninist movement and in clearing the way to the reconstitution of the party. The Marxist-Leninist Party has been successfully founded without the social-chauvinists and against the social-chauvinists.
The founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party was a stunning victory against Soviet and Browderite revisionism. The Party has been founded in the year of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the USA. The necessity to found a new party springs from the utter degeneration and corruption of the once revolutionary CPUSA. Browderite revisionism was a forerunner of Titoite and Khrushchovite revisionism. It liquidated the revolutionary character of the CPUSA, capitulated totally to liberal-labor politics, prettified American imperialism, glorified the counter-revolutionary Democratic-Party and progressively liquidated the very structure of the part) itself. Although the CPUSA was reconstituted in 1945, it never fully recovered from Browderistn and fell easy prey to Khrushchovite revisionism. Today the CPUSA is a betrayer of the working class, an enemy of the cause of the revolution. It is no longer a communist party, but a counter-revolutionary capitalist party. It is a “left” party of the rich, a social-fascist shadow and echo of the Democratic Party. Today its only distinction from the other parties of the rich is that it also defends the interests of Soviet social-imperialism as well as those of U.S. imperialism.
The revisionist takeover of the CPUSA subordinated the workers’ movement to a witches’ brew of liberal-labor and social-democratic politics. For decades since then, the burning question before the workers’ movement, the only way to break through the curse of class-collaborationism, was the reconstitution of a genuine communist party. Many proletarians fought against the revisionist betrayal. The working class never lost faith in Marxism-Leninism. But the legacy of revisionism and of decades of Browderite liberal-labor politics is such that there is no direct continuity between the Marxist-Leninists of today and the revolutionary CPUSA of the past. It fell to the advanced section of the activists from the revolutionary movements of the 60’s and 70’s to assert anew the Marxist-Leninist traditions and principles and to reconstitute the genuine communist party of the proletariat. A decisive step forward was taken in May 1969. The historic nucleus of the party came into being with the founding of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) as the single nationwide Marxist-Leninist center. The struggle for the party further deepened with the campaign around the “Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists,” a campaign that did tremendous work to propagate the necessity for the party and that led to the founding of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists in 1973. Ten years of unrelenting work of the Marxist-Leninist nucleus, of first the ACWM(M-L) and then the COUSML, have led to the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party.
* * *
Today, once again, the American proletariat has its own political party. There is such a party! The Marxist-Leninist Party is the reconstituted communist party of the American proletariat. It is the party of the proletarian revolution, the party of the class struggle, the party that carries forward the revolutionary banner from the American communist movement of the past. It is the loyal contingent of international communism. It is the duty of all Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries to rally around the red banner of the Party. This is the great road for giving revolutionary direction and orientation to the great class battles of the 1980’s. The momentous victory of the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party is not the end of the struggle for the Party, but a new beginning. It opens up a new period of struggle on a yet broader scale for the imbuing of the proletariat with the party concept and for the building and strengthening of the proletarian party.
Let the rich tremble at the proletarian revolution. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Led by its Marxist-Leninist Party, the American working class will advance shoulder to shoulder with its class brothers throughout the world. The proletariat will smash its chains to dust. The proletarian revolution will build a new world, a world free of misery and oppression, free of the exploitation of man by man, the new world of socialism and communism.
Long Live the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA!
Glory to Marxism-Leninism!
Workers of All Countries, Unite!