Published: In the pamphlet, Burning Questions of Party Building with An Outline for the Study of Marxism-Leninism, 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is the science of proletarian revolution. The various debates current in our movement, particularly the two-line struggle on the formation of a new party, cannot be resolved without serious study of this science. We are providing this study program so that comrades can fully participate in these struggles and base themselves firmly on the science of Marxism.
The study program covers a great many areas of debate in the communist movement. But the main emphasis is on the party-building struggle. For this reason, detailed development of Marxist principles, suggested readings, and study questions have been confined to three areas:
* Marxism as a science,
* the struggle against revisionism and opportunism,
* the question of the party and party building.
This is not to deny the other matters. Rather it is a recognition of the principal aspect of the party-building struggle – whether the party should be formed, when it should be formed, and on what basis it should be formed. Once the RU/OL/Guardian’s opportunist lines on party building have been defeated, then we can move on to study and debate matters of program and strategy which will guide the new Communist Party.
Obviously there will be some overlap between the principal questions of party building and other ”burning questions”, especially the matter of the united front and the matter of the national question. We don’t intend to avoid these questions, since many of the opportunists rest their opposition to the party on such nonsense as the notion that the party will arise from united fronts, from the spontaneous movement, etc. Studying what Marxism-Leninism really means by united fronts and their role in the class struggle will help to fully understand this opportunism.
This is also true of the national question. Our central task is to form a new Communist Party, a party which is multi-national. Various opportunists see “multinational” as meaning either a party formed from a merger of socialists and nationalists, or a party merely with members from various oppressed nations and national minorities. On the contrary, a multinational communist party is one which has a multinational composition because it has a scientific program through which it fights for proletarian revolution and national liberation.
It was because other points of Marxist principles are tied up in the two-line struggle on the party that the other readings have been suggested.
Readings: 1) Frederick Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
2) Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Ch. III
3) Mao Tsetung, On Contradiction, Chapter I
The science of Marxism is based on the understanding that class contradictions are the motive force of history, the understanding that inherent in capitalist society are the seeds of proletarian revolution.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to weild those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians. (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.)
The ideology and social laws of a society arise from the mode of production of that historical period.
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that the intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have been the ideas of its ruling class. (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.)
1) Why is Marxism-Leninism proletarian ideology?
2) How has the development of socialism as a philosophy paralleled the historical periods during which it was developed?
Readings:
1) Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, Part I
2) J. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism
3) Mao Tsetung, On Practice
4) Mao Tsetung, On Contradiction
The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice. (Mao Tsetung, On Practice.)
The law of the contradiction in things, that is the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of dialectics. (Mao Tsetung, On Contradiction.)
Thus in order to provide leadership to the proletarian movement it is necessary to grasp dialectical analysis. Only through such analysis can the laws and the motion of society be understood and directed.
1) Why is the application of the dialectical method to the study of social life and the history of society important to a proletarian party?
2) What is the fundamental contradiction in society? What is the relationship of the fundamental contradiction to all other contradictions?
3) Why are the masses the motive force of history?
Readings:
1) Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I
2) Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, Part II
3) Lenin, Karl Marx, Part II
4) Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism
Political economy, in the widest sense, is the science of the laws governing the production and exchange of the material means of subsistence in human society. (Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring.)
Hence the clues to the study of the laws of history of society must not be sought in men’s minds, in the views and ideas of society, but in the mode of production practiced by society in any given historical period; it must be sought in the economic life of society. (J. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism.)
In order to understand the economic basis of socialism and the laws which will change capitalism to socialism it is necessary to study capitalism and the epochs which preceded it.
1) How did society develop into capitalism?
2) What constitutes the mode of production? How does the contradiction within the mode of production move society forward?
3) Why is imperialism the highest stage of capitalism? Why is imperialism moribund, dying capitalism?
Through the struggle against revisionism and opportunism a communist party develops a correct political line and unifies itself as the core and vanguard of the proletarian revolution.
As a political grouping revisionism constitutes a detachment of the bourgeoisie and for imperialism. (Chinese Communist Party, Leninism and Modern Revisionism.)
As long as class contradictions exist in the world it is only through the class struggle against revisionism and opportunism that the proletariat will be able to seize state power, or to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat. The struggle against opportunism and revisionism (social-imperialism) is the main struggle facing the communist movement at this time.
Readings:
1) What Is To Be Done?, Chapters I-III
2) Imperialism and the Split in Socialism
3) Marxism and Revisionism
4) State and Revolution, Chapter VI
5) Chinese Communist Party, Lenin on the Struggle Against Revisionism
6) Conditions for Admission to the Third International
Marxism has developed in the struggle against all sorts of anti-proletarian tendencies. Marx and Engels waged the struggle for scientific socialism against idealism and metaphysics, and against various forms of non-scientific socialist movements such as feudal socialism and Utopian socialism. Leninism, Marxism in the era of the defeat of imperialism and the victory of socialist revolution, was perfected in struggle against all sorts of opportunist and revisionist tendencies. Lenin’s first struggle was against the Narodniks or non-proletarian terrorists, followed by struggle against the Economists who wanted to subordinate Marxism and the proletarian party to the spontaneous movement. Finally, there was the struggle against the revisionists of the Second International who tried to revise Marxism out of existence by stripping it of its revolutionary content, making it into a bourgeois reformist movement.
Social-Democracy must change from a party of the social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of symmetrically arranged ’new’ arguments and reasonings. (V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?.)
When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a feature that is characteristic of present-day opportunism in every sphere, namely its vagueness, diffuseness, elusiveness. (V.I. Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.)
1) Why is revisionism the main threat within the world proletarian movement?
2) What are the main features of revisionism and opportunism?
3) What is the class basis for revisionism and opportunism?
4) What is the relationship between imperialism and revisionism?
Readings:
1) The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B)
2) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union(B)
3) Current Writings Exposing Trotskyism
M.A. Miller, From Trotskyism to Social Imperialism, League for Proletarian Revolution, 1973
C. Davidson, Left in Form, Right in Essence, Guardian, 1973.
The fight against the Right deviation must not be regarded as a secondary task of our Party. The fight against the Right deviation is one of the most decisive tasks of our Party. If we, in our own ranks, in our own Party, in the political General Staff of the proletariat, which is directing the movement and leading the proletariat forward – if we in this General Staff should allow the free existence and free functioning of the Right deviators, who are trying to demoralize the Party and demoralize the working class, adapt our policies to the taste of the ”Soviet” bourgeoisie, and thus yield to the difficulties of our Socialist construction – if we should allow all this, what would it mean? Would it not mean that we are ready to put a brake on the revolution, disrupt our socialist construction, flee from difficulties, and surrender our position to the capitalist elements? (J. Stalin, Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B).)
This Right Deviation was reflected in the CPSU by the Bukharinists who were conciliators with the Trotskyists„ Bukharin was a member of the CPSU Central Committee who proposed policies based on the anti-Marxist stand that capitalism can peacefully transform itself into socialism. The Bukharinists were the rightists who covered for the Trotskyists who were the Left deviation from Marxism.
The Bolshevik struggle against Trotsky covered the entire period of the revolutionary struggle in Russia, Lenin consistently exposed Trotsky as adopting opportunist positions on almost every major question of principle. The final struggle against Trotsky led by Stalin and backed by the overwhelming majority of the CPSU arose on the question of firmly establishing socialism in the Soviet Union. The CPSU adopted the policy of socialism in one country, while Trotsky and his followers held that socialism in Russia would have to wait until socialism was first established in the other more advanced capitalist countries of Europe. In essence this line would have liquidated the Soviet socialist system, and replaced it with a bourgeois republic. Rather than a dictatorship of the proletariat there would be the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Wherein lies the danger of the new Trotskyism? In that Trotskyism, according to its entire inner content, has every chance of becoming the center and the rallying point of non-proletarian elements which are trying to weaken, to disintegrate the dictatorship of the proletariat. (J. Stalin, Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B).)
1) How did Trotsky oppose Lenin and Leninism? How did Trotsky stand on such matters as the party, alliance with the peasantry, the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc.?
2) What was the relationship between Trotskyism (left opportunism) and the various right opportunist tendencies in the Russian movement, particularly the Mensheviks and Bukharinists?
3) Why is the struggle against Trotskyism so important?
Readings:
1) Chinese Communist Party, Proposal on the General Line of the International Communist Movement
2) Chinese Communist Party (CCP), More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us
3) CCP, On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World
4) Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China
5) History of the Party of Labor of Albania, Chapters V-VII
The Chinese and Albanian Parties are waging a struggle against revisionism which is an historical extension of the struggles waged by Lenin and Stalin. Modern revisionism (social-imperialism) is an advanced form arising from the intensification of contradictions between imperialism and working class and oppressed peoples, and serves as a cover for the restoration of capitalism in those countries which have undergone socialist revolutions.
Revisionism represents the interests of the labor aristocracy, and hence, also the interests of the reactionary bourgeoisie. Revisionist trends run counter to the interests of the proletariat, of the masses of people and of all the oppressed peoples and nations. Ever since the days of Bernstein, Marxism-Leninism has repeatedly been assailed by revisionist and opportunist trends, each in its day stirring up a commotion. (CCP, More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us.)
The main aspects of modern revisionism are its denial of the dictatorship of the proletariat, negating the key importance of the wars of national liberation, and negating the contradiction between labor and capital–between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They push the lie that capitalism will peacefully transform itself into socialism. Therefore revisionists play the role of conciliators to the bourgeoisie, conciliators with imperialism and fascism as recent events have borne out in Chile. In this country the revisionists of the ”CP”USA are the main detachment of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the working class, followed by its Trotskyite and other opportunist conciliators.
1) What is the relationship between revisionism and social-imperialism? What do the new Russian Tsars have in common with the opportunists of the Second International?
2) What are the main features of modern revisionism, and what is its economic base?
3) How are the ”CP”USA and Trotskyites detachments of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement?
Readings:
1) V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Chapter 4
2) J. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, Chapter VIII
3) CCP, Lenin on the Revolutionary Proletarian Party of a New Type
4) History of the C.P.S.U.(B), Conclusion
Hence the necessity for a new Party, a militant Party, a revolutionary Party, one bold enough to lead the proletarians in the struggle for power, sufficiently experienced to find its bearings a-midst the complex conditions of a revolutionary situation, and sufficiently flexible to steer clear of all submerged rocks in the path to its goal.
Without such a Party it is useless to think of overthrowing imperialism, of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat. (J. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism.)
1) Why is a Party necessary for carrying out the proletarian revolution?
2) How is the Party the “highest form of class organization of the proletariat?”
Readings:
1) V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Chapter 3
2) V.I. Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
3) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (B), Chapters 1-2
4) Various Selections from the American Movement
Communist League, “Build a Class Party, Build a Mass Struggle”, People’s Tribune, March 1971
Communist League, Dialectics of the Development of the Communist League
Charles Loren, The Struggle for the Party, 1973
October League, Party Building in the United States
Guardian, “What Road to a Communist Party”, April 25, 1973
Revolutionary Union, “Plant Our Feet Firmly in the Working Class”, Revolution, 1973
In 1898 the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party was formed, however until 1903 it was not a real Party since it had no central leadership, no common line. Between 1898 and 1903 when the Second Congress of the RSDLP was held, Lenin and other Russian Marxists conducted an ideological struggle laying the basis for the Party. At that time the two main opportunist tendencies were the Economists (right opportunists) and terrorists (left opportunists) who in essence had the same line, the disorganization and liquidation of the conscious Marxist movement into either trade union activity or individualistic acts of terror against the bourgeoisie. Both the Economists and the Terrorists belittled the importance of Marxist theory and the importance of conscious Marxist elements in forming the Party.
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation with the narrowest forms of practical activity. Yet, for Russian Social-Democrats the importance of theory is enhanced by three more circumstances, which are often forgotten: firstly, by the fact that our Party is only in the process of formation, its features are only just becoming outlined, and it is yet far from having settled accounts with other trends of revolutionary thought, which threaten to divert the movement from the correct path. (V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?)
Catchwords like: We must concentrate, not on the ’cream’ of the workers, but on the ’average’ mass worker; ’Politics always obediently follows economics,’ etc., etc., became the fashion, and exercised an irresistable influence upon the masses of youth attracted to the movement, but who, in the majority of cases, were acquainted with such fragments of Marxism as were expounded in legally appearing publications. Consciousness was completely overwhelmed by spontaneity... (V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?.)
...the younger the socialist movement is in any given country, the more vigorously must it fight against all attempts to entrench non-socialist ideology, and the more strongly must the workers be warned against those bad counsellors who shout against overrating the conscious element. (V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?.)
1) What tasks did Lenin see as necessary before the actual Party Congress could take place?
2) How does the line of the Revolutionary Union, October League, Guardian, that the Party will basically grow out of the spontaneous movement compare to the Economists?
Readings:
1) Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Chapters 3-4
2) Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, Chapter 10
3) Lenin, Tasks of Russian Social Democrats, Collected Works, Vol. 2
4) J. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, Chapter VIII
5) Mao Tsetung, Rectify the Party’s Style of Work
6) Mao Tsetung, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
...agitation among the advanced sections of the proletariat is the surest and only way to rouse (as the movement expands) the entire Russian proletariat. The dissemination of socialism and of the idea of class struggle among the urban workers will inevitably cause these ideas to flow into smaller and more scattered channels. This requires that these ideas take deeper root among the better prepared elements and spread throughout the vanguard of the Russian working-class movement and of the Russian revolution. (V.I. Lenin, Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats.)
1) Why should every Party member be a member of a Party organization?
2) What is the relationship between the movement for democratic rights and the communist movement?
3) Through what means does the Party establish contact with the average and backward sections of the working class?
A. Marx and Engels
1) Communist Manifesto
2) The Civil War in France
B. Lenin
1) The State and Revolution, Chapters I-V.
2) The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.
C. Stalin
1) Foundations of Leninism, Chapter IV
2) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (B), Chapters 9-12.
D. Mao Tsetung
1) On New Democracy
2) On the Peoples’ Democratic Dictatorship
3) Documents from the Cultural Revolution in China.
A. Marx and Engels
1) The Communist Manifesto, Chapter I
2) Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 25.
B. Lenin
1) “Imperialism & the Split in Socialism”
2) “A Great Beginning”, Vol. 29 Collected Works
C. Mao Tsetung
1) Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society.
D. Selections from the U.S. Movement.
1) Communist League: “On Bribery” in Proletariat, Spring 1973.
2) “Communist Party” USA: “The Working Class & the Class Struggle in the U.S.”, in Political Affairs, Nov. 1973.
3) Revolutionary Union:
a. “Revolutionary Youth & the Road to the Proletariat”, in Selections from Red Papers I,II,III.
b. “Revisionism or Proletarian Revolution”, in Red Papers IV.
c. “Marxism vs. Opportunism”, in Red Papers IV.
4) New Voice: Imperialism Today (pamphlet)
5) Black Panther Party: Eldridge Cleaver, Ideology of the Black Panther Party.
A. National Question
1) J. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question
2) V.I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination.
3) J. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, Chpt. VI.
4) J. Stalin, The October Revolution and the National Question.
5) Executive Committee of the Communist International, Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States, 1930
6) Mao Tsetung, On Coalition Government, Section 9.
7) Mao Tsetung, The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, Chapter I.
8) Mao Tsetung, 1968 Statement in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression.
9) Readings from the U.S. Movement
a. Communist League, Negro National Colonial Question.
b. October League, Black Liberation Supplement to the Call, September 1973.
c. Revolutionary Union, “National Liberation & Proletarian Revolution in the U.S.” Red Papers V.
B. United Front
1) United Front in General
a. Marx & Engels, Address to the Communist League, 1850,
b. Lenin, ’Left-wing Communism’ an Infantile Disorder, Chapter VIII.
c. Mao Tse tung, The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War, Section 5.
,The Question of Independence & Initiative Within the United Front.
,Current Problems of Tactics in the Anti-Japanese United Front.
2) United Front Against Fascism
a. G. Dimitrov, United Front Against Fascism
b. R. Palme Dutt, Fascism & Social Revolution, 1934
c. Readings from the U.S. Movement
George Jackson, Blood in My Eye
C. Revolutionary Violence
1. Lenin
a. State and Revolution, Chapters M-III.
b. Lessons of the Moscow Uprising
2. Stalin, Anarchism or Socialism?
, Marxism and Insurrection
3. Mao Tsetung, Selected Military Writings
D. Work in Trade Unions
1. Lenin, What is to Be Done?, Chapters II,III
,’Left Wing’Communism,... Chapter VI.
, Differences in the European Labor Movement.
E. Emancipation of Women
1. Engels, Origins of Family, Private Property, and the State.
2. The Women Question, Selections from Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.
Almost all of the readings listed in this outline may be obtained through China Books and Periodicals on 24th Street in the San Francisco Mission District.