Ultra-leftism has consolidated its grip on the anti-revisionist communist movement in the U.S. However, within this movement, a Marxist-Leninist tendency is emerging which is devoted to breaking with ultra-leftism, rectifying the ultra-left line of the movement, and consolidating a new communist trend which is anti-“left” as well as anti-revisionist. This tendency Ls man of a growing number of organizations, collectives, and individuals all over the country.
Many of these forces have joined together in the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center (OC). This is an effort to build a common center for the tendency which will both focus and provide leadership to the ideological struggle to both rectify the errors of the communist movement and elaborate a theoretical foundation for future practice.
As part of the birth pangs of this new formation, serious disagreements arose as to the correct basis of unity for such an undertaking. Principle 18 of the OC’s principles of unity states:
The working class must practice the principles of proletarian internationalism; it must take up every struggle against imperialism anywhere in the world and champion it as its own struggle. In the present context the practice of proletarian internationalism is impossible without correctly identifying the main enemy of the world’s people. By “main enemy” Marxist-Leninists understand the main obstacle to the consolidation of national liberation, democracy, peace and socialism. Today that main enemy is US imperialism.
However, the level of unity which has been demanded with this principle has heretofore been limited to excluding groups which opposed the content of Principle 18. Some forces within the OC have taken the position that, while they are unsure if they agree with Principle 18, they are firmly opposed to it being a principle of unity of the OC. Many forces, on the other hand, hold that Principle 18 is an indispensible line of demarcation with ultra-leftism in the current period. In order to advance the consolidation of the OC around Principle 18, the Steering Committee (SC) of the OC drafted theses on the question and organized an exchange of views.
We are distributing the theses and the exchange publicly because we think it is a worthwhile contribution to the struggle to build a genuine communist party in the US.
The Steering Committee
Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center
December, 1978