(From Discussion on Revolutionary Strategy by the League for a Labor Republic – formerly The New Voice)
. . . The revolutionary goal is the overthrow of monopoly capitalism, the destruction of its state, and the creation by the working people – primarily the working class – of a labor republic. By a labor republic we mean the unlimited rule of the working class, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In general, revolutionaries agree on realizing this goal by taking up the demands of the masses and helping the fight for them, raising the consciousness of the working class, and building a party which will lead the masses both now and when a revolutionary situation develops ....
A long chain of ideas and action connects revolution and a labor republic on one end and daily events in factories, offices, communities and campuses on the other end ....
The LLR’s method of work is summed up in its slogan, Make the Workers’ Struggles the League’s Struggles, Make the League’s Outlook the Workers’ Outlook. The workers’ struggles are their actual battles and movements in all spheres of life, against all forms of oppression, fought at all levels of awareness and militancy. The League and its members give their energy and devotion to these struggles without reservation. At the same time, the LLR relates these struggles to the revolutionary goal – by making patient explanation and using every form of education, but without demanding coalition endorsements of them.
We suggest that revolutionaries have often failed to combine immediate and longterm work. Instead, they have frequently dropped class-consciousness agitation and socialist education. They have made fixed points out of lesser, intermediate principles; they have then isolated themselves from the masses by making false requirements based on these subordinate principles ....
(Note: Reprinted from The New Voice, March 30, 1981.)
The CPML’s semi-public re-examination of its work and its program, now in its second year without firm conclusions, has had two tendencies. Until recently the desire to improve the organization’s revolutionary practice was uppermost. This desire expressed the dedication and seriousness of the many selfless revolutionaries in the CPML. However, the situation today is in doubt. Open moves toward reformism are appearing.
The most blatant support for reformism is stated in an article by CPML member Jim Hamilton, published in the delayed February 1981 issue of The Call, the CPML’s newspaper ....
Let us take up Hamilton’s by-now familiar recital of the failures of the communist movement. He lists the following: the lack of a truly mass revolutionary movement after 10 years of work by hundreds of communists; the decline of CPML membership by several hundred over the last two years; and the failure of the CPML to show vitality and upward motion.
Hamilton then assumes that these results are grounds for 1) dropping the conception of a single, vanguard communist party, 2) seriously considering a parliamentary road to power, 3) accepting the view that Mao caused mass killings and that the Gulags and boat people of the Soviet bloc are sins of socialism, and 4) describing the dictatorship of the proletariat as four vague words which say nothing definite about our final aims.
This adds up to saying that revolutionaries should drop Marxism-Leninism....
What does the communist movement need to get moving again? It needs two things.
For one, it needs real thought and analysis of conditions in the United States ....
Hamilton writes, “We have made no specific analysis of classes in our society. We have no specific program for revolutionary work either in the short term or the long term. . .” By “we” Hamilton refers to “American communists.” We do not like to blow our own horn, but the fact is that the League for a Labor Republic has offered a specific class analysis (in the book Classes in the United States, by Charles Loren), the League for a Labor Republic does have a specific program for revolutionary-work (in its three key points as discussed in our book, Strategy for Revolution) and the LLR has paid special attention to racism and national oppression with an analysis that, to put it mildly, is not identical to the CPML’s, LRS’s or any other group’s analysis.
For years the League for a Labor Republic has been practicing this strategy, offering it to others, and comparing its application with other strategies ....
The League for a Labor Republic is not a big organization. We do not have much money. But we are respected, we have self-respect, and we have revolutionary patience.
That is the second thing we need – revolutionary patience. It means adhering to principle while always staying in this world around us, not in the clouds, helping every thrust toward mass struggle that we can. Communists cannot make the masses move until they are ready ....
(Note: Reprinted from The New Voice, June 22, 1981.)
... By April, The Call informed us that Hamilton had quit the CPML, apparently because the party did not move to the right quickly enough to satisfy his impatience.
Other people are more patient about moving to the right. One of them appears to be John Martin, who wrote another article (April issue) bewailing the real and alleged problems of the communist movement, criticizing ultraleftism as the nearly universal cause of the problems, and paving the way for abandonment of the revolutionary socialist goal.
From beginning to end, Martin’s main concern is to be part of a movement which is “a significant political force” among the American people. Martin never spells out how to measure a significant force, but his criteria can only be numbers, vote-getting ability, publicity in the dominant (bourgeois) press, and principal leadership of coalitions and mass campaigns.
It is fine to have any of these signs of political significance; all communists would accept them. Still, they are not the goal. The communist goal in a capitalist society is proletarian revolution ....
Revolutionaries in the United States should expect to work for revolution without the temporary comforts that might come from being a momentarily significant political force. (The comforts would be temporary, because the bourgeoisie smashes such forces if they are not solid, as Indonesia in 1965, Chile in 1973 and other examples show.) . . .
Instead, the revolutionary movement must find methods of work that help it move forward. If certain methods practiced by the CPML did not help advance the movement, then they are not the ansv/er. But other methods will help advance the movement, and they must be respected even if they do not produce the size and type of gains that amount to Martin’s political significance ....
Unfortunately, an outstanding characteristic of John Martin, Jim Hamilton, the Proletarian Unity League, and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters – the proponents of criticizing ultraleftism as the main danger – is their theoretical poverty. They offer almost nothing in the way of concrete theory for revolution in the United States. They do not create it, they do not criticize those who do create it, they run away from it.