Many groups have begun to see the need for a new communist party, hi the U.S. and as the movement away from the revisionist Communist Party U.S.A. grows stronger, no doubt, many more will join in those efforts. In general, this is a positive development and represents a growing distaste for the reformism and the “socialism through the ballot box” line of the present CP.
But within everything, a struggle between opposites exists. Among sections of the so-called “party-building” groups, there exists a strong tendency towards left opportunism. This trend is characterized by sectarianism, dogmatism and isolation from the working class struggle.
The past decade has witnessed the failure of every group (up until now) which broke organizationally from the rightism of the CPUSA to keep away the influences of “ultra-leftism.” These groups include the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) which split from the CP in the late ’50’s and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) which began in the early ’60’s. Both of these groups at one time represented the hopes of the many honest communists within and outside of the CP that a new revolutionary communist party could be built.
This had to be a party that would not abandon the revolutionary struggle of the working class in exchange for a seat or two in the House of Representatives; one that would not abandon the militant struggles of the Afro-American people and other oppressed minorities in the name of “integration” and one that would speak for the aspirations of the basic proletariat rather than the bought-off union leaders and the middle-class professionals who the present CPUSA aspires to represent.
But both POC and PLP failed to establish strong ties to the mass movement of the workers and minorities. Both soon liquidated the national question and under the guise of fighting the “class struggle” launched an attack on the movement for the national rights of the Black, Chicano and Puerto Rican peoples. Finally, both failed to merge with the developing international movement led by the Communist parties of China and Albania and instead dropped their Maoist disguises and attacked Mao Tsetung and China for supposedly “abandoning the revolution” and “selling out.”
Today, these groups have either died or have become impotent, losing any influence they might have once had. However, the damage they have done has been costly. The wrecking and splitting activity of these super-“leftists” was in large measure responsible for the destruction of SDS, the largest anti-imperialist student organization in the US. It also helped isolate the ideas of Marxism-Leninism from a significant number of minority people and organizations who sadly have mistaken their brand of “leftism” for genuine scientific socialism.
Furthermore, today there are still several groups who cling to this type of thinking. In part, this leftism today stems from a reaction to the rightism of the revisionist party. In part, it reflects the social base of the communist movement at the present time. The fact that a great deal of the present day communists come from the ranks of the middle classes or the intelligentsia is only natural.
It stems from the fact that the mass movement, which so greatly affected the students and intellectuals during the ’60’s brought many of them into the ranks of the working class. These conditions brought to many more the great need to give life to the theory of Marxism-Lenin-ism by integrating it with the struggles of the working people. Many got factory jobs and groups sprung up throughout the country with the purpose in mind of organizing the working class.
However, within the conditions of life of these students and middle class revolutionaries lie the very seeds of these “leftist” diseases: sectarianism, dogmatism and anarchism.
This is nothing peculiar to the United States today. The middle-class intellectuals have always been the first to take up revolutionary ideas. But their small producer’s mentality developed through a life-time of isolation from manual labor and social production gives birth to leftist thinking like sectarianism (“I am the vanguard while everyone else is backwards.”)
This is why communists in all countries have always urged the revolutionary intellectuals to integrate themselves with the masses and have warned them against isolating themselves.
The great upsurge of the Chinese people against foreign domination produced the May 4th Movement in 1919. This student movement actually sparked the movement of the workers and peasants for independence and democracy and gave impetus to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
But, Mao Tsetung was quick to point out:
In the Chinese democratic revolutionary movement, it was the intellectuals who were first to awaken. This was clearly demonstrated both in the Revolution of 1911 and the May 4th Movement... .But the intellectuals will accomplish nothing if they fail to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants. In the final analysis, the dividing line between revolutionary intellectuals and non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary intellectuals is whether or not they willing to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants and actually do so.[1]
“Leftism” has always plagued the intellectuals whose isolation from social production and collective work engenders individualism and purism as well as a distaste for collective discipline.
In writing about the inner-party struggles in the Soviet Union, J.V. Stalin made a class analysis of right and left opportunism within the ranks of the movement.
I think that the proletariat, as a class, can be divided into three strata. . . .
One stratum is the main mass of the proletariat, its core, its permanent part, the mass of ’pure-blooded’ proletarians, who have long broken off connection with the capitalist class. This stratum of the proletariat is the most reliable bulwark of Marxism.
The second stratum consists of newcomers from non-proletarian classes – from the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie or the intelligentsia. These are former members of other classes who have only recently merged with the proletariat and have brought with them into the working class their customs, their habits, their waverings and their vacillations. This stratum constitutes the most favorable soil for all sorts of anarchist, semi-anarchist and ’ultra-left’ groups.
The third stratum, lastly, consists of the labor aristocracy, the upper stratum of the working class, the most well-to-do portion of the proletariat, with its propensity for compromise with the bourgeoisie, its predominant inclination to adapt itself to the powers that be, and its anxiety to ’get on in life’.[2]
This in general describes the class origins of this “leftism” But let’s examine some of the ways it manifests itself among the groups working for the building of a new party. Certain of the groups who have taken an ultra-“leftist” course have isolated the tasks of party-building from work within the mass movement of the people. To them, building a party is the task of a handful of intellectuals, working in isolation from the masses. They argue that “the mass movement is meaningless without the leadership of the party.” They have no faith in the people’s ability to learn through the struggle and so they participate in mass work for the sole purpose of “winning the handful of advanced workers” to their organization.
The propaganda put out by these “leftists” is dry, stale dogma instead of lively and vigorous. It is characterized by isolation from the things going on around them and a one-sided leaning towards everything old and formalistic. They know everything about pre-revolutionary Russia but nothing about the U.S. and the lives of the workers.
Most importantly, the present-day ultra-“leftists” oppose the strategy of the united front against imperialism. The united front is based on the objective conditions in the world today. Its purpose is to unite all that can be united to oppose imperialism, headed by the U.S. monopolists and social-imperialism, headed by the revisionists in power in the U.S.S.R. These two superpowers work together to hold back and destroy revolution, while at the same time, fighting among themselves to spread their influence and power.
In each country, the united front has its own characteristics. In an oppressed country where foreign troops have invaded, like Vietnam, the goal of the united front is to drive out the aggressors and establish peoples’ rule, under the leadership of the working class.
In the advanced capitalist countries, where the conditions are different (the U.S. is an aggressor nation, not an oppressed nation) the form changes, but the essence of the united front remains the same. This policy was articulated by the Chinese Communist Party in an exchange of letters with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1963 called “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement:”
The U.S. imperialists have thus placed themselves in opposition to the people of the whole world and have become encircled by them. The international proletariat must and can unite all the forces that can be united, make use of internal contradictions in the enemy camp and establish the broadest united front against the U.S. imperialist and their lackeys.[3]
It goes on to say:
The proletarian parties in imperialist or capitalist countries must maintain their own ideological, political and organizational independence in leading revolutionary struggles. At the same time, they must unite all the forces that can be united and build a broad united front against monopoly capital and against the imperialist policies of aggression and war.[4]
While some of the ultra-“leftists” oppose the united front entirely, others say that united front work cannot go on “until there is a party.” So while supporting the united front in theory, in practice they ignore the work that must be done on a day to day basis and are concerned only with building their own circles, organizations or “parties.” Instead of pushing forward the work in the plants of organizing strikes, working in the unions and building up the caucuses and other rank-and-file movements, these “leftists” can be found only when it comes to selling their own newspapers or giving out their own leaflets.
In this way, they create mistrust among the working class for communists, traditionally the hardest fighters for the workers’ cause. They isolate themselves from the real advanced workers, not necessarily the ones that will come right out and join a Marxist study group, but the real leaders of the working class who emerge through the course of struggle.
We have no doubt that these “super-leftists” will ultimately declare themselves “the new communist party.” But we ask, what kind of a party will this be? How will it differ from the dozens of Trotskyist and previous sects like the POC and PL? The answer is, it will not.
It is true that building a party requires conscious work on the part of the communists. A party is the organized, conscious expression of the working-class struggle and cannot develop out of the struggle spontaneously. It takes years of difficult work, developing an experienced core of cadre, raising the theoretical level and deepening the ties with the masses. While being close with the united front, the communist organization is at the same time separate with an independent life of its own. This is what we call “independence and initiative.”
However, while modern revisionism, or right opportunism, is the main ideological enemy which confronts the world revolutionary movement, within the newly emerging communist movement here the main danger is “leftism” and sectarianism. Without a staunch struggle against sectarianism, dogmatism and ultra-“leftism” in general, all the cries for a new party won’t mean a thing.
[1] Mao Tsetung, “The May 4th Movement,” Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 238.
[2] J.V. Stalin, “Sources of Contradictions Within the Party,” J.V. Stalin, Selected Works, Cardinal Pub., p. 212.
[3] “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement” Foreign Language Press, p. 12.
[4] Ibid., p. 19.