August 19, 1972
Our organization originated and took form as a political and ideological tendency in the SWP. Even years after we constituted ourselves as an independent organization, we still, as a general practice, only rarely referred to ourselves as a party.
We are now going through the difficult process of making the necessary transition from a tendency to a political party. There is a profound and fundamental difference between a mere ideological and political tendency and a party.
What is the difference?
A tendency is basically concerned with propagating, promoting and shaping a political and ideological world outlook. It does not necessarily aim at winning large masses of adherents into a formal political organization. In fact, it may not be able to do so. This could be due to the unfavorable political situation. The objective situation may not have ripened sufficiently to attract large masses of people.
Moreover, the struggle against other ideological tendencies requires time to secure and fortify its revolutionary world outlook. In turn, this may only be possible on the basis of testing the program in the crucible of world events. This again may require a more or less extended period.
When Marx and Engels wrote the celebrated Manifesto, it was called the Manifesto of the Communist Party. But the actual organization (aside from the embryonic Communist League) took several decades to be firmly established, and above all in Germany where it became the party of the working class and in a general way adhered to the principles enunciated by Marx and Engels.
Marx and Engels lived for many years in exile in Britain. They did not attempt to develop a political party of the working class on the basis of Marxist principles. The objective situation there did not lend itself to the organization of the British workers into such a working class party. Marx and Engels were at the time mostly concerned with developing their revolutionary world outlook on the basis of the class struggle and the materialist conception of history.
Of course, wherever Marx really got the opportunity to influence the British workers’ movement, he quickly seized it. Example of this is Marx’s mobilization of the British working class to support the North during the Civil War. At that time the British ruling class was propagandizing for the slavocracy, and spreading lies that the victory of the North would deprive British workers of jobs because a victory of the North would close the South’s markets to British goods.
But by and large, Marxism was only a tendency in Britain. Where Marxism really took hold of wide masses was in Germany and in France, where working class parties, in a general way, adhered to Marxist conceptions.
A political tendency is an embryo party.
To become a party it must go through a torturous, sometimes painful process of development. Under no circumstances can a political tendency seeking to revive revolutionary Marxism-Leninism become a party of the working class unless it acquires, in the course of the transition to a party, a considerable amount of practical political experience in the class struggle. Moreover, it must continually fight a battle to make its class composition correspond to its revolutionary class program.
A political tendency can easily become aborted (as indeed many have) by pretending to be a political party. A political tendency has all the political ingredients necessary for the formation of a political party but they are undeveloped and it lacks both the internal structure and the exterior armor necessary for it to engage in revolutionary class warfare. A party, of course, differs from a political tendency in that the former has developed a formal structure, whereas the latter is characterized by loos, more or less tenuous, organizational ties. This is so because a political tendency seeks first and foremost an identity of political position on its world outlook. Organizational form and character of structure become of considerable importance only after a period in which the basic political and theoretical conceptions have had sufficient time and experience to be tested.
A political tendency cannot make a transition to a political party unless it has accumulated within it a sufficient number of mature and tested cadres. Merely sharing a common world outlook, while indispensable for the formation of a political tendency, is inadequate unless it is accompanied by sharing common experiences in the struggle and sharing a common evaluation of the most critical and important struggles both the tendency and the movement have experienced.
The transition from an ideological tendency to a party also implies that the fundamental political principles of the tendency are firmly established in its literature which, in reality, constitute the program of the party.
If one carefully reads over our literature, particularly the literature which evaluates the principal events and struggle of the decade, he or she will surely find that therein lies the programmatic basis for the formation of the party. No matter how well thought out a revolutionary program may be, or how accurately it depicts the nature of the driving forces of capitalist society and vigorously urges the overthrow of the capitalist system, it will become mere empty rhetoric unless it is geared to and engages in the struggle of the working class and the oppressed people. Without struggle, without everyday participation in every possible form of class conflict no matter how small, dull, routine, or grandiose, the party of the working class will not become a reality. Struggle is the very essence of a revolutionary party.
Marx himself, said Engels, was above all a fighter. Without the element of fight, propaganda for a socialist society is an academic exercise. (Of what good are people who can be agreeable with you on all political points, but who show no inclination whatever to struggle, to fight for them.)
This is illustrated by our own history. When we commenced our existence as an independent political organization, we were faced with a multitude of what appeared to be utterly insuperable obstacles.
When we started in March 1959, we had barely a half a dozen people in New York. Our sole support outside of New York was the Buffalo and Youngstown branches. Aside from the diminutive size of the organization in New York, the most formidable obstacle lay in the character of the political trend at the time.
We attracted any number of people who expressed interest, and some complete solidarity, in ideas, in world outlook, but there was no struggle trend. The more we gave our time and energy to discussion and arguing with the variety of newcomers and visitors, both Black and white, it remained just talk.
Most of them were so deeply influenced by the witch-hunt. They also had their sights set mostly on events in the Soviet Union and in China, and had a very dim outlook on the prospect of struggle in the United States.
The type of people we were attracting were representative of the current mood in the radical movement which was non-struggle. What we wanted most was to demonstrate that our ideological conceptions can only be tested in the struggle, but struggle was not what the current trend was concerned with.
It was only after the Cuban Revolution and the momentous development of the Black liberation struggle that a tendency toward struggle on the part of the youth became manifest. This enabled our political tendency to grow and develop.
It should be noted that during the entire period of our early existence, we paid the closest attention and gave our utmost assistance to those in the civil rights and the Black and Puerto Rican liberation struggles, above all to Mae Mallory, Rob Williams, RAM, who at the time, were leading the struggle, and later of course to the Panthers.
Moreover, the degeneration of the CP, the SWP, the Sino-Soviet conflict, produced skepticism toward Marxist tendencies in general. This made it all the more necessary to select our friends and adherents on the basis of their activities in the struggle. This became easier as the objective situation changed, and a fighting, activist trend among the youth, Black and white, emerged.
It became clear that the basic differentiation between us and the SWP, CP and PL was that we were also able to attract some of the best and the most serious cadre we now have in the party. The struggle of the sixties served to confirm our tactics and our strategy as well as our political principles as revolutionary Marxists.
The entire period of the ‘60s, and all of our participation in the struggles that took place in that decade, were truly object lessons of our principled politics.
All this leads us to a consideration of whether our organization is now sufficiently prepared and has the readiness and capability of making the transition from a political tendency to a party.
Our greatest, most determined and most resolute effort must be directed toward reaching the workers. In particular, the most strenuous effort must be made to reach the most oppressed and exploited of them, the Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Asian, and Native American. The great upsurge which began towards the close of the fifties and has extended all the way to the present day has, except for the liberation struggles of the most oppressed people in this country, been mainly an upsurge of the middle class and mostly confined to the very youthful elements in that class.
The upsurge in the thirties was, in the main, a working class upsurge and drew to its side huge elements of the progressive middle class.
The workers in the contemporary era began a slow awakening in ’68 and ’69 which has gradually accelerated. It took a real leap forward following the Nixon wage freeze. While the upsurge of the sixties was basically fueled by the Vietnam War and earlier by the Black liberation struggle, it also awakened advanced elements in the youth and anti-war movement to the role of the working class as the key factor in the transformation of capitalist into socialist society.
But by and large the movement was permeated, on the one hand, with anti-Marxist and anti-working class ideology, and on the other hand was encumbered with the legacy of the revisionists, of the CP as well as that of the SWP. Our progress under the circumstances could only have been of a slow development.
The period we are now facing opens up a really great opportunity for the Party. (The difficult period will only be until the election is over.) First of all it is very unlikely that the government can launch a large scale with hunt or repression of the type that characterized the late forties and fifties, even if Nixon is reelected. The détente or accommodation which the U.S. ruling class, through Nixon, is trying to arrive at with both the Soviet Union and China, militates against it. The reformists recognize this very well and hence look forward to a period of very “peaceful,” “legal,” “constitutional” growth of the progressive movement as a whole. We, on the other hand, view the respite from a period of witch hunt and repression as an opportunity to take advantage of the internal contradictions and insoluble problems that the ruling class will find itself incapable of coping with and in which we can boldly and confidently intervene on the side of the workers. The possibility for enormous class battles and consequent politicization of significant layers of the working class is clearly on the horizon.
All the more is it necessary for us to prepare long in advance, firm and confident in our knowledge that the ruling class has no alternative but to unleash an offensive against the workers in order to get out of its dilemma and that we can, we must, and we will be deep inside the ranks of the workers in the critical hours of their need. Our first duty is to prepare ourselves in such a way that we are capable, first of all, of learning to sense the mood of the workers – to develop a dialogue with them, as distinguished from a monologue.
We have already made some significant beginning in that direction. Such steps as the launching of the Veterans March, the Food Price Rollback, and the variety of assaults upon large monopolies initiated by the CULA against ATT and a variety of other public utilities.
In addition, a good number of our comrades are beginning to entrench themselves in factories, demonstrating remarkable patience, endurance, and determination to become part of the working class and prepare themselves for the struggle ahead.
This, however, will not in any way infringe upon our responsibilities in other struggles which daily occupy our attention: the prisoners struggle, solidarity with national liberation struggles abroad, and the multitude of other activities which a revolutionary working class party must always give its utmost attention.
“Mild in Manner, Bold in Matter”
Our effort to make a rapid transition from an ideological and political tendency to a party of the working class can be aborted if we do not learn how to find an avenue to the workers, to cut a path to them no matter how torturous that path may be, and steer ourselves towards the main current of awakening workers.
When we were still in Buffalo and a mere tendency in the SWP – with all its drawbacks – we nevertheless were able to attract more workers than any other radical organization in the area. We were able to draw more Black people from the big plants than any of the others.
We had a slogan at the time which proved to extremely helpful: “Mild in manner, bold in matter.” It meant, cut the cloth to fit the pattern, do what is required of us but do it in such a way as not to go over the heads of the workers. Don’t go beyond their ideological and political level and use a minimum of radical terminology.
If we are attempting to reinstate a discharged worker, the big issue is how many workers, whether inside or outside, we can mobilize to win reinstatement. This may entail a work stoppage, a sit-in, a protest demonstration, or any number of diverse actions calculated to win a specific objective. It may even require the institution of legal proceedings or again it may just require the simple filing of a grievance. All depends on what actions we take and how successful we are, whether we awaken the workers, inspire them, mobilize them and lead them to victory, in this case, winning back a job for a discharged worker.
However, no amount of revolutionary rhetoric, no amount of militant verbiage, will serve a useful purpose at all if we cannot mobilize or interest any of the workers or even get them to listen to us.
Struggles involving workers are on an altogether different level than struggles of a purely political character. Of course all working class struggles in the final analysis are also political struggles, but we must distinguish between a purely political task such as a Vietnam demonstration and a demonstration to reinstate a group of discharged workers. Both actions are at bottom political, but they are on different levels and require different approaches. The greatest effort must be made to carefully distinguish the different type of actions and the different approaches that may be required, particularly under swiftly changing circumstances.
It is often thought by those new to the working class struggle that this is a watering down of program. In reality it is merely adopting a different tactic to suit a different situation. Knowing when and how to apply the infinite variety of tactical approaches to different phases and different elements of the class struggle is of profound importance.
It is precisely on the Party’s ability to know how to appraise very carefully the concrete situation of each and every type of struggle in which we are involved, that a great deal of the Party’s immediate future depends.
There can be no stereotype and no blueprint on how to do this. But it does lend itself to easy understanding only through experience, careful attention, careful listening, and being able to distinguish different stages of development in which the workers of so many different plants and industries (as well as the unemployed) find themselves in. In one area there could be a tremendous explosion of militancy forcing the workers to strike back against the violence of the scabs, police, National Guard, and other government forces and requiring bold political intervention. On the other hand, in other areas, there may be just the bare beginning of an awakening. Still others have just passed through a struggle. Here patience is necessary before the confidence and fighting ability of the workers is restored.
The slogan of “mild in manner and bold in matter” is also applicable where we take a significant initiative in organizing masses outside of industry, such as the Veterans March, Food Price Rollback, and CULA activities directed against public utilities. All of this can only be undertaken if the Party members are infused with a profound revolutionary determination to reach the workers and win over a section of the most advanced and politically awakened of them. That indeed is a huge and formidable task, but there is no worthier, no more important task for a revolutionary workers’ party.
The opportunities are sure to come and the real question is whether the party is sufficiently tempered and educated in the Leninist approach to the masses and able to overcome all obstacles in the way of reaching the workers, without whom no socialist revolution can take place.
Again and again we hear more and more voices that are raised from McGovern supporters which run something like this:
“McGovern will get the U.S. out of the war. It’s been the one single issue he has campaigned for over four years and he’s gone so far out on it that he couldn’t possibly retreat. It’s true that he may renege on all other promises, but on the issue of the war, he’ll carry out his promise. That’s the most important question. A vote for McGovern is a vote against the war. This is what the Vietnamese comrades would like us to do. To them it makes a difference as to whether McGovern or Nixon is elected.”
In the first place, the argument is based on pure speculation. It presupposes complete faith and confidence in “the personal integrity” of a capitalist politician. His record as a Senator in the past speaks against any such confidence.
It boils down to this: that the ending of this imperialist war is wholly dependent on who is president after the election. Our view is that the war is not dependent on who is president. The war may or may not be terminated before or after the election, but it will not be because this or that capitalist politician is in office. The war will be ended if the ruling class in the U.S. has reached a decision and by consensus or in other ways has determined to terminate the war on the basis that is agreeable to the DRV and the NLF.
If the ruling circles of the imperialist establishment can no longer pursue the mad adventure, then it will be ended. But not because of the fact that one or another candidate occupies the White House. And in this particular case, it is more likely than ever that the personality of the new White House occupation will exert no substantial influence on the issue.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that it makes no difference whatever which president is in office. In the case of the Vietnam war, we have seen five presidents in and out of office, each with varying approaches, but who have followed the same fundamental course – to continue the war. If the ruling establishment, particularly the military, has reached a consensus that the Vietnamese people cannot be broken in their resistance to imperialist aggression, and that the domestic havoc caused by the war makes it impossible to continue further, they will end it.
Notwithstanding the correctness of our position, the overwhelming majority of the progressive section of the population nevertheless will vote for McGovern precisely because of his position on the war. It would greatly facilitate our task in disabusing the masses of the illusions regarding McGovern if we could devise a tactic which would enable them to participate in the electoral struggle in such a way as to vote against the war without necessarily voting for any of the capitalist candidates.
Is a national anti-war referendum on Election Day an appropriate tactic for us to encourage? It has the following advantages:
(1) We could urge the masses to participate in the elections without coming out for any of the candidates. We propose a joint Congressional resolution making it mandatory for all states in the Union to put the anti-war referendum on the ballot on Election Day. It would be a plain, simple, yes-no vote on the question of ending the Vietnam war with no strings attached.
In the light of all the demagogy in the Senate and in the House, such a resolution should be easy to pass, particularly if one takes into consideration the last vote in the Senate. It’s impossible that this idea could not have occurred to them. There is a well-known historical precedent for such a national anti-war referendum. It was proposed by Representative Ludlow in the late thirties. But he proposed a cumbersome, exhausting method through a Constitutional amendment when all it requires is simple joint Congressional resolution. The idea was popular, but pressure for the war soon became so severe that he dropped the idea.
(2) We could by this medium open a dialogue with rank-and-file workers and progressives generally by urging the resolution upon them and asking why McGovern does not introduce it.
(3) Our general slogan would be, “Let the people vote on the war.” Presidential elections are an ideal time for a national referendum on issues because the masses do not trust the politicians anyway. All the presidents have talked of peace and ending the war. They have lost credibility. Now let the people decide the issue. Why should McGovern fear such a vote? Don’t all capitalist politicians talk about “trusting the people”? Can’t they entrust them with this responsibility?
(4) Historical Experience of Referendums:
It should be noticed that referendums have been widely practiced in other countries. It can, of course, like anything else under the capitalist system, be manipulated by the capitalist government. This should be carefully explained. Under the concrete historical circumstances we are talking about the present day mood in the United States, a national anti-war referendum can serve as an instrument for heightening the level of consciousness of the masses while explaining its limitations under the capitalist system. However, note this, de Gaulle staked his presidency on the outcome of a referendum, lost, and was forced to resign.
Experience in the U.S.: local referendums are usually so encumbered with legal restrictions that it is hard to get them on the ballot. Anti-war referendums have, however, had impressive results in all the cities where the referendum was permitted.
(5) The chance for something like this being manipulated at this time is minimal. On the contrary, in the current trend of anti-war feeling, if it ever gets on the ballot, it would be a weapon in the hands of the masses even if the next president does not end the war. Reformists, of course, would have their own propaganda, the same way they had in the anti-war movement. Ours would be of course of a class character and thoroughly anti-imperialist.
The tactic we have proposed will be helpful in the education of comrades, especially the new ones. If they seek out McGovern supporters, especially among the young, for the purposes of discussion and getting themselves involved in dealing with representatives of a broad current in the political struggle. If there is a large McGovern rally anywhere in the country, this will enable us to give out such leaflets or petitions with an idea to confront McGovern supporters in such a way as to involve us rather than be cut off from them. Because of such involvement, we will be able to accumulate useful experience in the struggle, also to enable us to anticipate developments in the McGovern rank-and-file.
There are sure to be a great many political changes in the consciousness of the youthful electorate. If we are not close to this current, do not know their mood or orientation, we will not be in a position to take advantage of the disappointment and frustration which is sure to set in after the election is over.
There are a great many militant and progressive youth who scorn the bourgeois electoral process. And that, of course, is a healthy sign. But often that’s a sign of an attitude of non-participation not only toward bourgeois parliamentarism, but toward parliamentary tactics of a revolutionary proletarian character. Often it’s merely an expression of pure negativism which has nothing in common with a working class position of trying to effect changes in the consciousness of the masses in a progressive direction.
Even if nothing comes of all this, it will give us an additional talking point with ordinary workers during a difficult period when most of them are saturated with capitalist election propaganda.
The acid test for a revolutionary workers’ party is its position on the national question. For many years, really for centuries, it has been denied by the ruling class and its ideologists, educators, priests and politicians, that there has existed a national question in the United States. They have also denied the existence of racial and national oppression. Even the most progressive political tendencies have merely confined themselves to the struggle for civil rights and against racial inequality.
The earliest recognition, so far as whites are concerned, of the oppression and super-exploitation of Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Native American as the oppression of national minorities, came as a result of the teaching of Lenin, which became widely known in the United States only after the October Revolution. Just its mere recognition as a theoretical and political truth was an advance over those who merely confined the struggle of national minorities in this country to the civil rights arena.
The consistent pursuit of the Leninist position on Black or Puerto Rican or Chicano oppression, as including the right of self-determination, was hindered by the early shift in the principled position of the CP in this country following the death of Lenin and the subsequent assumption of power for such a protracted period by Stalin.
In the few years in which the CP in this country was still, in a general way, guided by Leninist principles, it was unable, in view of the backwardness of the working class general and the overwhelming prevalence of racism in all layers of the white population, to implement or perfect a principled position on self-determination. Also, the Party was new and relatively inexperienced and profoundly removed from the political and theoretical arena in which the Leninist polemics on the national question and the right to self-determination for oppressed nations was fought out on the vase arena of pre-October Russia.
The subsequent decay of the CP, as a result of false policies, caused that party to embark on a zig zag course in relation to the Black struggle in American from which it has never been able to recover. Notwithstanding all this, the CP was the only political party which fought on behalf of the Black people, however, erroneous its line may have been. By comparison with any bourgeois or social-democratic organization, it stood head and shoulders above them all, and it is no wonder that it was able to attract to its organization some of the best Black cadres in the country.
It can be said without any fear of exaggeration that whenever the CP made a turn to the right, it almost always dropped the slogan of self-determination and ceased to regard the Black people as a nation. Whenever, however, it made a left turn, it almost invariably again raised the question of self-determination – sometimes including the slogan of a Black republic in the South in the Black Belt. At no time, however, has it been able to consistently promote the Leninist principled position of the right of nations to self-determination while at the same time continuing a consistent struggle to unite Black and white workers in the struggle against capitalism.
Throughout the late forties, and especially during the fifties, the CP had a thoroughly anti-Leninist position on the right of self-determination, denial of the existence of the Black people as a nation, along with a class collaborationist line of support for the Democratic Party. It zig-zagged again during the sixties but was violent in its attacks on the development of militant Black organizations such as the Panthers, RAM, Robert Williams and Mae Mallory. It was very hostile to the Muslim organization and particularly Malcolm X for basically reactionary reasons. They were attacked simply because they wanted an independent Black organization and had a perspective of an independent Black state. It was not the class line of these organizations that they opposed at all, but their perspective of a separate state, which they have a right to promote as an exercise of self-determination.
The tremendous upsurge of the Black and other nationalities in the sixties, carried with it also a wave of nationalism. It can be said with very little qualification that most of the radical organizations were very hostile to this very great progressive development. The radical organizations, such as PL, SWP and the CP (with certain limitations), instead of focusing on the positive side of the development, sought on the contrary to concentrate their attack, in most cases in a virulent manner, on what were some of the obvious shortcomings, errors, and just plain lack of definite political program, particularly the lack of any working class perspective.
Practically the entire period of the sixties, we spent defending the right of self-determination for the Black people and other minorities. This consumed our energies for such a long time precisely because we were in a virtual constant state of polemical struggle with the other political tendencies who generally denied the character of the Black liberation struggle as arising from national oppression. Most often they went back to the time-honored practice of reducing it to the mere question of racial discrimination.
The classic case in the United States in the recent period which showed the bankruptcy of their positions was the support given by these organizations to the racist strike of the UFT (teachers) in New York. PL and the CP came out against community control and refused to recognize the strike as racist in character. The CP later backed off, but PL, and organizations like Workers League, Labor Committee, Spartacist and all the social democratic organizations, supported Shanker (head of the NY UFT) in this shameless strike. The SWP came out against the strike.
Achieving a multinational party
This background is important towards an understanding of what our problems as a Party are in connection with our effort to implement the Party’s perspective on building a multinational organization while not surrendering an iota on the principled question of self-determination.
It is instructive to recall what we said in our documents for our last Party conference:
“Is there an inherent contradiction between the right of nations to self-determination and the building of a united working class party to attract to itself workers of all nationalities from the oppressing nations as well as from the oppressed nations? The answer,” we said, “is NO!”
“The need of the workers to organized themselves into a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party and to unite them in the struggle against capitalism is an indispensable necessity for a victorious proletarian revolution.
“There are many who deny the need for a Marxist-Leninist party altogether, and with them we have no quarrel because we are going right on building one, since we know of no successful socialist revolution that occurred without one, with the possible exception of Cuba, which can be explained.
“There are others, however, who say that each nation within the confines of the U.S. should build their own party and that since the workers of the oppressing nation and the workers of the oppressed nation have different problems arising from the nature of the oppression, it is impossible, at least for now, to have a single, united party.
“The logical conclusion of this thinking is that the whites should have one organization, Blacks another, Puerto Ricans another, etc. Assume that political evolution in this country favored such a development, the result then would be that we would have several Marxist-Leninist organizations. And if each had a generally Marxist-Leninist program, it would evolve from a loose alliance of these Marxist-Leninist organizations into a federation and finally into a unified multinational political party.
“In the final analysis, if workers are developing revolutionary Marxist-Leninist ideology, it implies proletarian internationalism and class solidarity in the struggle against imperialism. Once the basic assumption is made for the need of all workers to have a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party, the idea that the vanguard elements of all nationalities must unite in a common organization must be seen as the logical outcome, and as an urgent necessity.
“Those who would deny the need of all the workers to unite in a common political organization for the overthrow of the oppressive imperialist system, in reality deny the right to revolution.
“... To carry out this task effectively, we must strive to make our Party a multinational organization, drawing workers from all nationalities ...
“Our Party has consistently advocated self-determination under difficult circumstances and has given the liberation struggle its utmost support.”
In order to make the transition from a mere political tendency to a political party of the working class, we must put at the very top of our priorities a persistent, determined and unrelenting campaign to attract to the Party the largest possible number of Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Native American and Asian workers, women, men, and youth. In the past period, most of our work, so far as the Black and Latin workers are concerned, was of necessity largely supporting activities in the struggle conducted by liberation groups that were fighting political persecution by the capitalist state; or merely fighting for their right to an independent existence, and faced by frame-ups and repression.
A look at the past record of the Party will make abundantly clear how numerous and varied our activities have been to support the struggle of a variety of liberation groups including, of course, the Panthers, the Lords, and others.
But our Party has to, in the interests of the liberation struggle and the working class struggle generally, devote more time and more energy to the task of winning workers from oppressed nationalities into the Party.
There are periods when the task of attracting Black and Third World people is easier than at other times. It was most difficult during the period of the Sixties.
This was characterized by a strong wave of nationalism. Also, our Party was numerically small. However, we have grown considerably larger and should, by that alone, offer more possibilities for getting into our ranks Black and Third World workers. The more we perfect our program and the more we try to develop economic issues, the more we will gain the ear of the oppressed people in the community.
We learned from the Job Fair experiences which the ASU led together with veterans how overwhelming is the number of unemployed Black and Third World youth in relation to whites. More than 90% were Black and Puerto Rican.
We learned further that we could not adequately prepare for the Veterans’ March without winning a considerable number of Black and Third World veterans into the ASU. This was again dramatically illustrated by the Chicago and New York Job Fairs, where the support and composition of the demonstration was about 90% Black and Latin. We still have too few Black and Third World cadres to carry through the Veterans’ March.
There are other areas where we took the initiative and which again demonstrated the same overwhelming number of Black and Puerto Rican people and that we have much too small a number of Black and Third World comrades from the Party to adequately prepare the ground for the launching of such an important economic struggle.
A fundamental turn must be made so as to enable all to realize that a principal task of the Party lies in educating, particularly the white comrades, on how to win the confidence of Black and Third World workers and how to hold their interests in the Party at a time when their number in the Party is still small.
The greatest amount of energy, thinking, and above all, sensitivity, in how to relate to Black and Third World comrades and prospective Party members must be given. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should stay in the way of executing this all-important task.
Gay Oppression
The oppression of national minorities is not the only oppression meted out by a divisive ruling class. There is also the oppression, or rather, extra-oppression, of women, of youth, and of gay people.
The degeneration of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism carries to an extreme all the forms of oppression which the capitalist system, in the previous epoch, had engendered and developed.
As the crisis of the social system becomes more and more apparent, the need of the ruling class to unload its burden on the most oppressed sections of society becomes more evident.
Only by dividing, only by fragmenting and continually pitting different elements of the oppressed masses against each other, can the capitalist establishment maintain its sway over all society, and hope to survive.
It is however the same sharpening of the persecution and oppression, the same divisiveness and fragmentation of the specially oppressed people in society, that has awakened them to struggle, and brought about a genuinely progressive militancy and resurgence of Black and Brown, women, youth and gay people.
There is however a striking difference in the character of the support which has been given by the progressive movement generally to the oppressed nationalities, women and youth as contrasted with the limited support to gay people. A great deal of this can be explained by the fact that the prejudice may even be more deep seated and more profound than in the other cases. Much of it emanates from the religious bigotry of the Middle Ages and little has been done to combat it. On the contrary, it has been reinforced by the entire course of capitalist development.
Some attribute the limited measure of support and sympathy to what they say is the numerically small segment of the population that gay people constitute. This, however, is highly disputable, even by such an authoritative figure as Kinsey.
It is particularly significant that the public change in attitude – such as it is – comes on the heels of a very formidable wave of struggle by gay people, a veritable “coming-out” in a most demonstrative way. Gay Pride took a cue from Black Pride.
Without the launching of the women’s struggle, Freud’s reactionary theory concerning the inferiority of women might still be the prevailing conception. Without the momentous liberation struggles launched in the ‘60s, the racist ideology of Oswald Spengler and his American disciples would still be taught openly, unabashedly and unashamedly. Without the struggle launched by gay people, the prejudices which have been ground into the consciousness of the masses by indoctrination would not ever have been challenged, let alone shaken to its foundations.
All this shows how intimate is the connection between the ideas of a particular time – ever progressive ideas – and the conditions of the time, in this case, the state of the struggle.
Influence of October Revolution
An important influence in the progressive movement insofar as the gay struggle is concerned dates back to the victory of the October revolution in Russia. In early 1917 [sic – probably 1918], the Soviet government annulled all the laws which restricted the rights of homosexuals. It also, of course, annulled all the reactionary laws pertaining to divorce as well as the feudal bourgeois family relations.
What is important about this is that for the first time in history, a workers’ government established equality in law – and to a measurable degree also in fact – between men and women, for heterosexuals and homosexuals. Unfortunately this period of very progressive development was short-lived, and was succeeded by a period of reaction with the rise of Stalin to power.
Wilhelm Reich, author of “The Sexual Revolution,” visited the Soviet Union in 1926 when the reaction was already in its incipient stages, and he was profoundly moved by the revolutionary relations developing between the sexes. In particular he noted the absence of restrictive legislation or restrictive treatment against gay people. (Of course, Reich in his later years turned violently against communism after Hitler took power.)
Our Party, which bases itself on Marxism-Leninism, looks to the early model of the Soviet Union as the embodiment of what our own political position should be in relationship to the struggle of gay people.
Our first, most elementary and fundamental duty as well as objective on this question, is to completely eliminate and abolish all forms of persecution and oppression of gay people. It must also fight against all ideological, political and social manifestations of gay oppression which may be reflected in our own ranks.
We must remember that the worldwide impact of the reaction that followed in the Soviet Union after Stalin took over had tremendous repercussions in all the countries of the world. When Stalin decided in 1934 to jail homosexuals on some pretext, on grounds which differed little from infractions of bourgeois laws against homosexuals, he signaled a turn in what was, broadly speaking, the vanguard elements of the progressive elements of the world.
To this day, if there is little support or sympathy in the revisionist CPs of the world for gay people, it is in no small measure due to the reactionary position taken by Stalin in the early ‘30s and continued to this day in the Soviet Union. It made the formidable obstacles in the way of gay people becoming liberated heavier rather than lighter. For if the advanced guard, the most enlightened section of the progressive people, takes a turn to the right, it bodes ill for all other segments of the oppressed people.
As we said, our principle objective, insofar as gay people are concerned, is the abolition and elimination of any and all oppression and persecution they suffer. It is really an elementary democratic demand which a bourgeois democracy should be able to grant along with all other democratic demands. But imperialist democracy tends to restrict the elementary rights of all people – not only gay, women, youth, Brown and Black. It is only the struggle that can wrest concessions. In the long run, only the abolition of the capitalist system can produce a lasting free and equal treatment of all peoples.
The gay issue is unique in comparison with the women’s, youth or national struggles. With respect to the national struggle and the women’s struggle, the revolutionary Marxist movement has made a fundamental theoretical as well as political analysis of the origin of the oppression, its social and class roots, and has posed the ultimate solution by way of the socialist revolution.
How is it with the gay question? No special Marxist study or theory has been advanced as far as we know. Marxists, of course, should reject any variety of bourgeois psychological theories. Most of these psychological approaches are in reality extensions of the general bourgeois ideology. Marxists on the other hand are historical and dialectical materialists who seek the basic causes of all social phenomena from material conditions, of which psychology is a mere reflection.
Marxism deals with social phenomena and the struggle of classes. We know of no theory which explains the gay question from the point of view of the historical class struggle. It is entirely possible that there may be any number of schools of thought that are developing along this line.
If such a theory is developed, we will study it. For the time being, however, we are not advancing any special theory regarding the gay question.
It is most unfortunate that the Cuban government and its leadership, which has given such splendid examples in the revolutionary transformation of a virtual colony into a tremendous socialist fortress, has adopted a negative and regressive attitude in relation to gay people. As we said earlier, their current position in all likelihood stems from the Soviet ideological legacy bequeathed by Stalin. The socialist revolution is a permanent revolution, one of continuous change. Along with many other changes that need to be made in the socialist countries, the gay question is surely one of them. In the meantime, we ought to concentrate on preparing our own revolution, of which the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people, including gay people, is an indispensable condition for the victory of the revolution.
In order to understand the difference between the bourgeois and proletarian form of organization it is good to examine one of the basic trends in the evolution of the political structure of the bourgeoisie in the recent period.
The trend toward a two-party bourgeois political system in the leading capitalist countries of the world has become much more pronounced since the Second World War. Thus, the two-party system is not only characteristic of U.S. bourgeois politics, but also of Britain, West Germany, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. It is less pronounced in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Holland.
Only in France and Italy has the bourgeoisie been unable to coalesce the various bourgeois factions into two large competing though fundamentally similar parties. This is accounted for by the existence of two very formidable Communist Parties, which command the general support of the working class. Support by the CP has proven necessary to constitute a stable bourgeois parliamentary majority in Italy. In France, the CP is again trying to form a popular front coalition with the SP and smaller bourgeois groupings on a virtually bourgeois basis.
The strengthening of the bourgeois state in the epoch of imperialism has subjected, in the most thoroughgoing fashion, all the varieties of subordinate class formations and class groupings to the sway of monopoly capital.
None of these intermediate class groupings can free themselves from dependence on the huge monopolies who in turn control the state.
Hence, all of the bourgeois class groupings must of necessity ally themselves in the political struggle with a major political organization of the bourgeoisie in order to share, to some degree, whatever crumbs are thrown from the table of the monopolies, and also to protect themselves against complete ruination at the hands of the capitalist state.
In the United States, a particular form of dependence by relatively small manufacturing companies upon subcontracts from prime “defense” contractors has become very widespread in the last two decades. There are literally thousands of subcontracting firms who depend on the mercies of large prime contractors for their existence. Even the so-called civilian (government) prime contractors also subcontract to thousands of small firms who become dependent upon them.
The building of the Comsat made this trend particularly clear. Such a huge, multi-billion-dollar contract as the recently awarded space shuttle contract to North-American Rockwell Corporation is the most current example. Thousands of small firms will participate in it as subcontractors.
Finally, the fact that monopoly capitalism has really become converted into state-monopoly capitalism means that the basic sections of the capitalist economy are so intimately interwoven with the capitalist state as to be merged with it.
Most bourgeois economists now recognize this. Many of their texts as well as most literature on the capitalist economy now divide the economy into two sectors: the uncontrolled, so-called private sector, and the more significant public sector, that is, the state-controlled section of the capitalist economy.
No area of economic life, however, can wholly escape the influence or control of the omnipotent character of the modern capitalist state.
This more than anything else also explains the developing trend towards two big bourgeois parties. Each of them represents the interests of monopoly capitalism in general, but each is also a replica of all the factions and sub-factions within the ruling class. The lesser ones, naturally, being subordinated to the greater monopolies, but all sharing, all fighting, within the confines of the capitalist state – and outside of it, within the framework of a major bourgeois party. The object of it all, of course, is the division of the surplus value (profit) extracted from the hides of the oppressed and exploited workers. Thus the factionalism within the capitalist state, which takes a multitude of varied political forms and varied demagogic approaches, in reality, is an avaricious struggle for a proportionate share of surplus value extracted from the exploited masses.
It is not for nothing that the biggest monopolies subsidize both big parties in the U.S. Their financial contributions to either (or more frequently to both) of the parties is appropriately called “an investment.”
And no matter how many factions or groupings within a bourgeois party, when it is in office or out of office, the trend towards greater and greater centralization of the means of production and of the economic system, generally under the control of the capitalist state, continues unabated.
No small faction of the ruling class can hope to hold exclusive power of the state. It is only a coalition that can generally do this. The capitalist state is much too big an object of plunder and graft for just one grouping to exploit it.
Thus we see that the centralist tendency of the bourgeois economic system is expressed politically in the enormous role and power of the capitalist state. The participation of a variety of bourgeois factions within the state creates the illusion of democracy, when in reality this democracy is merely the forum, the political expression, of the plutocratic struggle, first of all of the largest ruling class factions, and secondly of the subjugated factions to attain their “just” share of the rewards of exploitation.
The social-democratic form of organization closely approximates, or rather apes, the bourgeois parties and the bourgeois state in the form of its organization.
Instead of opposing the centralist character of the bourgeois state and its enormous centralized repressive apparatus with a centralized working class organization, democratically controlled by its members, it in reality almost always is a reflection of the form of a bourgeois party.
The Leninist conception of democratic centralism was born to weld together the most advanced, most developed, most class conscious, and most determined elements of the working class. Its aim is to represent, promote and advance the revolutionary independent class interests of the workers and all the oppressed nationalities in the struggle against the monstrous centralism of the imperialist state – shatter it and destroy the system of capitalist exploitation and slavery.
The importance of a centralized, democratically organized, revolutionary party is that it can and does weld together the diverse strata of the working class and the oppressed people into a single fighting force capable of coping and successfully overcoming the multitude of varied and complex problems thrust upon the working class in its daily struggle against the ruling class.
This is one of the great achievements of the communist form of organization.
The social-democratic form of organization tends to dissolve the revolutionary essence of the class into it component narrow, diverse, hostile craft groupings. Instead of unifying the proletariat, it makes more pronounced and sharpens the inequalities within the class, and in the case of oppressed minorities, tends to favor the more privileged and aristocratic among the workers as against the underprivileged and oppressed.
The convention or congress is the highest or supreme governing body of a proletarian Party. It elects a national committee which acts between conventions or congresses of the Party.
It is distinguished from a bourgeois or social-democratic convention in that decisions made by the convention are fully binding on all members of the party and failure to abide by the decisions is considered a violation of discipline.
Not so in a bourgeois or social-democratic form of organization. You just have to look at the recent convention of the Democratic Party. The only decision that has any significance are the nominations for president and vice-president and even that is not considered binding. It is a rare case where bolting from the party to vote for another candidate or to abstain is penalized.
In social-democratic organizations decisions of the convention are also disregarded at will and it is just as rare for a national committee to take disciplinary action against members or groups who violate the national decisions. Caucuses and factions continue to operate openly and publicly in disregard of any decisions the convention may have made.
The concept of democratic centralism means the subordination of the minority to the majority. It means that all lower Party organizations submit to the discipline of the higher Party organizations and that all Party organizations are under the discipline of the national committee which in turn is responsible to the convention or congress.
On a branch basis, the highest governing body in the branch is the branch membership meeting. The leading committee of the branch, or the executive committee, is responsible to the general membership meeting. Decisions made by the leading committee in between membership meetings are binding on the membership. The leading committees of the branch are generally elected by the branch. In the larger cities it is possible to have several branches, which in turn elect a citywide committee which is responsible to the city membership as a whole.
Depending upon the size of the party, it is possible to have any number of factory, mine, mill and district committees covering large production units or even industries in a special locality. All are under the jurisdiction of the constituted district, city or state body of the party. No organization of the Party acts autonomously. This is particularly important where there are units of the Party in a mass organization, or where there are units of the Party which are attempting to build a mass organization, although there may be only a few non-party people within its ranks.
All leading bodies of the Party and all levels of leadership ordinarily are established by the elective method where that is possible and practical.
Before a convention or congress of the Party it is generally necessary to have a period of internal discussion regarding matters to be taken up at the convention. It is generally considered a breach of discipline to discuss matters of an internal character outside the Party.
Those are some of the basic characteristics of a communist form of Party organization. There are many others. They vary from time to time depending upon circumstances and changing conditions. The more developed the Party, the more numerous the membership, the easier it is for it to make timely changes in its structure. A constitution which sets forth the basic rules governing the Party and its membership is a desirable and frequently indispensable need for Party organization and procedure. The constitution generally is adopted by the convention after a previous convention has appointed a committee to prepare a constitution. Amendments to the constitution are made only at conventions.
As any member of the Party who has been in the organization for a period of time knows, our Party is not yet a Party in the full sense of the word. As we said earlier, we have been an ideological and political tendency. We are now trying to make the transition to becoming the Party of the working class.
Our Party, for instance, has held regular, annual conferences, but not a convention. A convention is a delegated body. Its delegates are elected in certain proportions to the membership of each branch. Our conference in fact has been a nationwide conference of the Party membership. Moreover, not all at the conferences are members, but only friends. If we made it a delegated body, it would be small indeed. The conference has elected and added to the membership of the National Committee of the Party.
In the branches of the Party generally, the leadership has developed spontaneously or by consensus. Furthermore, even the largest branch, the New York branch, is only now in the last stages of having developed a formal leadership. (There are now three branches in New York City, called sections, each with its own steering committee and a City Committee that is responsible for the basic function of the city organization.)
For the first time, there has been established a division of labor in the national leadership between the City functions and the National functions. It was not too long ago that the leading national comrades were wholly in charge of city functions. But we now have a National Staff as well as a City Staff and that in itself is a big step forward, which also indicates the growth of the Party.
In Engels’ famous address at the funeral of Karl Marx where he summarizes the contribution of Marx – “Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history” – Engels then makes this pertinent observation: “He [Marx] discovered the simple fact (heretofore hidden beneath ideological excrescences) that human beings must have food and drink, clothing and shelter, first of all, before they can interest themselves in politics, science, art, religion, and the like.”
What Engels is saying in the second part of the sentence is that there must at least have accrued a certain minimum requirement in the struggle for existence before other, more complex, tasks can be undertaken. This especially applies to our organization. It first of all needed the implements to establish itself as a tendency in the political struggle before it could take on the tasks of a full-fledged party.
Before we could possibly undertake the task of a 16-page paper of Workers World, we first had to make sure that we could issue a four-page paper on a regular basis. Before we could have a national headquarters, we had to make strenuous efforts to maintain a mere office for all the organization’s work. In fact, everyone who knows the development of our organization knows that it has been steadily and consistently growing, but only because it has not sought to falsely hold itself out as a full-fledged Party when in reality it had not yet reached that stage.
Everyone in the organization, however, is cognizant of the fact that we are developing, slowly but surely, a national structure that is commensurate with the growth of the organization, and this will surely help us become the Leninist Party of the American working class.
- The End –
Last updated: 11 May 2026