Some people, from the look of their work, are reducing the question of building a party to uniting everyone who says they are in favor of Albania and who are taking part in the mass movements. Others are tending to reduce party-building to empty & large-scale theorizing carried out in separation from the actual struggles going on and the tasks that must be carried out. What kind of parties can such work lead to? Certainly not the kind of party the working class needs to carry out the violent revolution to transform society from capitalism to socialism. Such a party can certainly not be either a league of progressive democrats without discipline and filled with bourgeois illusions, or a cabal of obscurantist intellectuals hiding in a closet – also with flowering bourgeois democratic illusions. And these are just the types of organizations that result from the types of party-building mentioned above.
What is needed is a party of the new type, of the type developed by the Bolsheviks under Lenin’s leadership. Comrade Stalin, the continuer of Lenin’s work, provided the following assessment of this type of party, of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, based on the experience of the CPSU(B):
The history of the Party teaches us, first of all, that the victory of the proletarian revolution, the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is impossible without a revolutionary party of the proletariat, a party free from opportunism, irreconcilable towards compromisers and capitulators, and revolutionary in its attitude towards the bourgeoisie and its state power.
The history of the Party teaches us that to leave the proletariat without such a party means to leave it without revolutionary leadership; and to leave it without revolutionary leadership means to ruin the cause of the proletarian revolution.
The history of the Party teaches us that the ordinary Social-Democratic Party of the West-European type, brought up under conditions of civil peace, trailing in the wake of the opportunists, dreaming of ’social reforms’ and dreading the social revolution, cannot be such a party.
The history of the Party teaches us that only a party of the new type, a Marxist-Leninist party, a party of social revolution, a party capable of preparing the proletariat for decisive battles against the bourgeoisie and of organizing the victory of the proletarian revolution, can be such a party.
The Bolshevik Party in the USSR is such a party. (London: Red Star Press, 1972 – as quoted in “The Ideas of K. Marx Are Immortal”)
The Party we need must be “irreconcilable to compromisers and capitulators”. How then can it be built by using our precious resources to unite with revisionists and centrists to form an Albania “friendship” organization, as a number of groups are doing by working with a certain “Friendship” Society, whose leading members claim that it is not time to build the party because the mass movement is not at a high enough spontaneous level, and that Enver Hoxha’s ideas are alright for “backwards” Albania but they would not work here where we have “democracy”? How can such work aid us in “forming – as Marx and Engels advocated from 1847 on – a separate party distinct from all others and opposed to them, a class conscious party”? (Engels, slightly reworked, IKMI p. 53). It cannot. It can only form a party of compromise. Such action must be stopped.
The Party we need must be a practical revolutionary party, must use theory only & precisely to guide and direct the raging flow of the real mass struggle. How can such a party be built by spending long hours producing a tome on the Chicano National Question completely divorced from the actual struggles of the Chicano/Mexicano masses; for their rights and culture; and against the savage assimilationism and chauvinism of the imperialists who are trying to develop a separate Apartheid-type state and police to crush them?
The Party we need can not be built thru such work. And only the Party, after its formation, can and will address the whole series of line questions that we don’t have the forces or the capability to deal with now. This type of work must stop.
The Party we need must be the voluntary militant union of all the US Marxist-Leninists, of all the most far-sighted, fearless, and dedicated members of our class and of the progressive broad masses, armed with the most scientific theory and practical guide lines. What then is the point of producing newspapers that are essentially agitational, that aim to teach a few basic points to the average worker? How can this aid us in our main task of the time, the finding of the advanced workers, now separated from the Marxist-Leninist Unity Movement and the teaching of all the major theses to those already eager to take up Marxism-Leninism? This type of literature can not do what is needed and was never intended to.[1] What is needed is literature that covers all the main points of Marxist-Leninist theory that are being opposed and confused by the different opportunist groupings; which points out the main ideas being spread to keep the advanced from taking up Communism and Unity; and defeats them by showing how the actual struggle going on in front of the activists proves the absurdity and pro-management splitting character of such ideas.
Work that has not been carefully thought out and subordinated to the central task of the time must be stopped and a methodical directed activity set in motion to replace it. We must always have before us a view of the revolution that must be won and the type of party that is necessary to win it. And aim all our work at creating such a party.
What kind of party do we need in the US? We need the kind of party that they have in Albania; we need the kind of party they already have in many of the nations of the world, which were developed in unrelenting struggle against modern revisionism and opportunism of all hues. We need a party of the type the Canadian Communists have built. A party they themselves describe in their Party Constitution as follows:
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is the militant voluntary union of the Canadian Marxist-Leninist communists who vigorously and with great revolutionary enthusiasm and vigilance implement the Marxist-Leninist ideological and political) line of the Party on all questions; who defend its unity and Marxist-Leninist communist quality; who unswervingly carry out the struggle against imperialism, capitalist exploitation and wage slavery; who defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism and are the loyal pupils of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin; who firmly and uncompromisingly carry out the struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all hues and against social democracy in the Marxist-Leninist Communist and Workers’ Movement; and who are resolute fighters for the triumph of the revolution and socialism and are fearless and undaunted in their mission. (Section 2.1)
Such a party can only be made up of a special type of member whose fearlessness, dedication and wide knowledge/gained in study linked to struggle, make him or her absolutely intolerant to any attempt to weaken the subordination of the individual to the collective, make him or her expect and demand a widespread well-organized discussion on scientific principles of any problem before a policy is collectively set;...and then insists that everyone – without exception – use the maximum initiative in carrying out that and only that policy. Such members are only chosen on the basis of long experience with their revolutionary work and discipline. The rights and duties granted to a member so that she or he can develop and display these necessary characteristics are described as follows:
The rights and duties of the Full Member of the Party are:
To elect and be elected to the various levels of leadership of the Party;
To work in a basic organization and come under its full discipline; To pay regular dues;
To study the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin conscientiously and become an able disciple of these great leaders and teachers of the international proletariat, study the History of the CPSU(B)-Short Course(1938) and the History of the Party of Labour of Albania and the works of Enver Hoxha and the experience of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement.
To actively participate in the full life of the basic organization and set a good example of proletarian discipline and morality, of collective spirit, of Marxist-Leninist communist consciousness, proletarian courage and self-sacrifice;
To implement all the decisions of the Party conscientiously and participate actively in working out concrete guidelines in order to implement the decisions of the higher organs of the Party;
To vigorously participate in criticism and self-criticism and defend the integrity of the Party and the purity of Marxism-Leninism;
To disseminate the theory of Marxism-Leninism widely and carry out vigorous propaganda and agitation for the Marxist-Leninist line of the Party;
To recruit new members to the Party; and
To courageously lead the mass struggle and fear no hardship and be always ready to make any sacrifice, including the supreme sacrifice, for the cause of the revolution and socialism and show the indomitable spirit of the proletariat in a practical way in order to defeat the class enemy.
The Party member has the right to criticize the Party organizations and leading members at all levels and make proposals to them. If a Party member holds different views with regard to the decisions or directives of the Party organization, he is allowed to reserve his views provided he does not form a faction and does not hold views which are revisionist and opportunist or are in any way detrimental to the interests of the Party. Every member has the right to by-pass the immediate leadership and report directly to higher levels up to and including the Central Committee. The individual with divergent views has no right to propagate or implement the views and has no right to violate the discipline of the Party under any circumstances. The member vigorously participates in working out the line of the Party and dealing with the problems of the Party,(subs.41)
From these descriptions we can see the kind of people that are needed and the type of collective that we must build from them. Thorough-going communists can only develop inside a party, but we must have individuals of this general type, tempered in the struggles of the masses, and especially in the struggle for founding the party, in order to start. And we must unite them under collective centralized discipline. The point of our everyday work must be to find such people and to unite them around Marxism-Leninism in action, to find out what ideas are holding the activists back from taking up Marxism-Leninism and uniting and to unmask those ideas and defeat them. This is the practical revolutionary struggle of the time.
The present situation is like a super-saturated solution; there is a tremendous latent energy to precipitate out into a crystal, an organized form – the party –, but first there must be a seed crystal, a bit of material already organized by the crystaline order, then there will be an explosive growth of the crystalization everywhere. In the same way, we need to put together a certain critical mass of democratic centralism in unyielding self-sacrificing struggle against the imperialists... a group of disciplined men and women of the various nations and nationalities in the US working class carrying out a fearless determined fight to tell the masses the scientific truth and unite them in the struggle for their livelihood and rights with the conscious aim of overthrowing capitalism thru Revolution and ushering in the bright future of mankind. Once the pessimism, spread by the enemy that this can not be done, is disproved by our act of building such a group, then people will come forth, all over; heroically to join us in our, and their, sacred task.
[1] It tries instead to teach “anti-imperialism” not Marxism, to stir up the masses against the 2 superpowers but not against wage-slavery