Today the “three worlders” stand exposed as rabid social-chauvinists, as cheering squads for the Pentagon and for Chinese social-imperialism. They are nothing but a bunch of class traitors who are openly flaunting their alliance with and love for the international imperialist bourgeoisie. Inevitably the question arises: where did this blatant social-chauvinism come from? How was it able to pass itself off as part of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement?
The answer lies in the history of over a decade of corrosion of the Marxist-Leninist movement by the neo-revisionists, by the conciliators of revisionism who hid themselves among the ranks of those claiming to uphold Marxism-Leninism and oppose revisionism. The neo-revisionists originated by adapting the opportunist ideology of “New Leftism,” the negative line inside the youth and student movement, and by translating it into “Marxist”-sounding terminology. The neo-revisionists held revisionist and opportunist views on all major questions: they negated the role of the Marxist-Leninist party, they were profoundly skeptical of the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat, they opposed revolutionary agitation with “militant” economism, they replaced Marxist theory with both pragmatism and idealist sophistry, and so forth. Neo-revisionism was the curse thrown at the Marxist-Leninist movement by Browder and by the “left” wing of the “Democratic” Party. The stern life and death struggle against “three worlds-ism” requires exposing the roots of the social-chauvinist class treason of today’s militarist-socialists in the long neo-revisionist corrosion of the Marxist-Leninist movement.
This series of articles exposes the history of the crimes and anti-Marxist Browderite theses of neo-revisionism. It stresses that the U.S. neo-revisionists were not an exceptional American product, unrelated to anything else going on in the world, but part of an international opportunist trend. The neo-revisionists were systematically fostered and backed by the Chinese revisionists. The mainstream of neo-revisionism has always been followers of Chinese revisionism. U.S. neo-revisionism is, in the main, the American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism.
Part One of this series discussed the general relation between U.S. neo-revisionism and Chinese revisionism. The second article denounced the neo-revisionist negation of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, their Khrushchovite pretext of the fight against the “ultra-left,” and their social-democratic thesis that opportunism is a “middle force” to be united with. This article, Part Three, condemns the neo-revisionist war against the party concept, their negation of the role of the party and of the vital significance of party-building. This was the first point of conflict between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and neo-revisionism, the first point on which the neo-revisionists exposed their revisionist essence. The neo-revisionists focused the main thrust of their attack against the unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement. They cursed and ridiculed the party and counterposed building the mass movement to building the party. They pretended that upholding party-building was sectarian, but time has proven that it is precisely those who negate the party who are the biggest splitters, brawlers and factionalizers and who are responsible for the creation of dozens of ultra-sectarian sects and “parties.” To win time for their dirty work, the neo-revisionists held that unity into one center was “premature” and “unprincipled,” and set forward the path of “developing their own trend.” And lo and behold, today they have indeed developed their own trend, the trend of great-power chauvinism and Browderism, the trend that is reviled and spat at all over the world as counter-revolutionary “three worlds-ism,” as the trend of Chinese revisionism.
Today we are on the verge of the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA. This will be a momentous event. It will be the greatest victory of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism in the U.S. against the neo-revisionist and Chinese revisionist sabotage. The campaign for the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party should be used to inculcate the party concept in the proletariat and among the new vigorous activists coming up to fight social-chauvinism. It is a time to heap scorn on the fashionable Browderite mocking at the party. The history of the neo-revisionist war on the party concept must never be forgotten. All the Chinese revisionist, neo-revisionist and polycentrist negations of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the party must be resolutely condemned.
The 1960’s were a time of great upsurge of the revolutionary mass movements. The monopoly capitalist system was shaken to its core. But this struggle proceeded without Marxist-Leninist leadership. The “C”PUSA had long ago been thoroughly corroded by Khrushchovite and Browderite revisionism and had become an anti-Marxist force. The first anti-revisionist center, the Progressive Labor Party, proved unable to settle accounts with revisionism, stopped fighting revisionism and degenerated into a trotskyite sect. Undaunted, a whole new wave of advanced elements from the revolutionary mass movements persisted in struggle. They summed up their experience of the struggle and came to see that the mass movement could not be oriented correctly without Marxism-Leninism and came to understand the betrayal of the modern revisionists.
The task before these activists was to unite in order to reestablish a genuine revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party. The first principle for Marxist-Leninists is to unite into one party. This is not a matter of abstract moralism, but a burning practical question. Without a single center, the Marxist-Leninist movement lies paralyzed, helpless and open to infiltration. Without a proletarian party, there can be no talk of the independent political action of the proletariat. In a very real sense, there is no such thing as a Marxist-Leninist without or independent of a Marxist-Leninist party. There may be Guardian-ite revisionists who flaunt themselves as “independent radicals,” there may be Titoites, polycentrists, New Leftists, and other class traitors who pride themselves on their “independence” from the party concept, but their “independence” is independence from the proletariat and total dependence of the ideologies and agencies of the bourgeoisie.
In May 1969 the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) was formed as the single nationwide Marxist-Leninist center. Prior to the ACWM(M-L)’s formation, the comrades from the Cleveland Workers Action Committee carried out work to have the activists and groups claiming opposition to revisionism and adherence to Marxism-Leninism participate in the first Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists in Regina, Canada in May 1969. After this Conference, the comrades from the Cleveland Workers Action Committee took the initiative to found the ACWM(M-L) and to contact all the main anti-revisionist activists and organizations. The ACWM(M-L)’s purpose was to form a single center for all Marxist-Leninists and to prepare for the reconstitution of the party. It immediately took up a big campaign for the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, opposed the ideological confusion of New Leftism, Castroism, modern revisionism and other opportunist ideology, took up Marxist-Leninist work in the mass movement, and grew rapidly to a nationwide organization.
But the ACWM(M-L) was opposed right from the start by an anti-party trend. The big shots and authorities from the leaders of the student movement refused to unite “on principle.” Thus the fight between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and neo-revisionism first broke out into the open on the question of the Marxist-Leninist party and the crucial importance of party-building. And the subsequent total bankruptcy of the neo-revisionists with their emergence as open social-chauvinists and raving “three worlders” is vivid proof that the neo-revisionists negated the party because they were opposed to the revolution and opposed to developing the independent (from the bourgeoisie) political activity of the proletariat.
The neo-revisionist “theoreticians” refused to unite on the grounds that unity would be allegedly “premature” and hence “unprincipled.” They held that the path of disunity, of development via scattered “pre-party collectives,” was the only allegedly “principled” path. This was the anti-party theory of the “pre-party situation,” which called for the development of dozens of scattered, “independent,” “pre-party formations” and “pre-party collectives.”
The Bay Area Revolutionary Union (predecessor of the Revolutionary Union and subsequently of the “RCP,USA”) set forward the “pre-party collective” theory in Red Papers 1. The BARU wrote: “AT THE PRESENT TIME, THE BUILDING OF COLLECTIVES ON A LOCAL BASIS, AND THE EXCHANGE OF EXPERIENCES BETWEEN THEM, CAN CONTRIBUTE THE MOST TO THE CREATION IN THE NEAR FUTURE OF A MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY.” (p. 9, capitals as in the original) The BARU held that “Between the collectives: at first, informal exchanges of information and experience, and occasional joint regional political activity. Ideological discussion, summing up of work, and criticism should be increasingly carried on between the collectives, to achieve ideological unity and the basis for organizational merger. Then the collectives can develop organizational structures to coordinate and supervise work....” (p. 9) On the grounds that the Progressive Labor Party was allegedly “guilty of systematic ’left’ opportunism,” the BARU held that revisionism was the “main long-term danger” but that “’left’ opportunism” was “an immediate danger.” (p. 18)
The Klonskyite October League (the OL and OL(M-L) were predecessors of the “CPML”) tried at various times to pretend that it upheld the orthodox Marxist-Leninist teachings on the party as against the Revolutionary Union. But in fact the OL held to the exact same “pre-party collective” theory to justify its own wrecking and splitting activities. It set forth its views in the three-part series entitled “Building a New Communist Party in the U.S.,” which appeared in the March, April and May 1973 issues of The Call. The article denounces party-building as “ultra-leftism” and says that ”...within the newly-emerging communist movement here, the main danger is ’leftism’ and sectarianism.” It counterposes party-building to ”...the work that must be done on a day to day basis,” and in particular to economism and senile rightism, which was and is OL’s “day to day work.” It hypocritically talks of “The present situation where the forces are largely scattered and locally based,” and then shamelessly demands a continuation of the policies responsible for this situation. Just like the RU, it says “To help forge unity, as much practical cooperation as possible between the different groups should be encouraged. As they begin to develop unity in the course of practical work, organizational unity will become more of a reality.”
The basic features of the theory of “pre-party collectives” were as follows: setting the mass movement against the party, or vice versa; advocating many groups, “many parties”; holding to the theory of “developing our own trend”; and negating the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. We will discuss these neo-revisionist theses one by one.
The neo-revisionists shamelessly mocked the party concept and the calls for unity of the Marxist-Leninists and sneeringly referred to “declaring the Party in a closet.” For the neo-revisionists there were two categories, “party” and “mass movement,” that stood in irreconcilable antagonism to each other. The neo-revisionists counter-posed “building the mass movement” to “building the party.” The revolutionary Marxist-Leninists talked of and carried out the building of the party in the thick of the class struggle, in the midst of the revolutionary mass movement. But the neo-revisionists could not understand this, as they opposed the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the necessity of the party to release the initiative of the proletariat and its allies. The neo-revisionists preferred to follow the theory of spontaneity, that the party springs spontaneously from the growth of the mass movement and hence that the proliferation of numerous “pre-party formations” would allegedly give rise to a unified party.
This theory of spontaneity is also a key theory of Chinese revisionism. Thus, for example, a major article in commemoration of the centennial of the Paris Commune appeared in the March 19, 1971 issue of Peking Review, entitled “Long Live the Victory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!” This article was written by the Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), Hongqi (Red Flag) and Jiefangjun Bao (Liberation Army Daily). This article was used by the Chinese revisionists to undermine the building of the new Marxist-Leninist parties. While paying lip service to the need for the Marxist-Leninist party, the article blurts out: “The mainstream of the revolutionary mass movement is always good and always conforms to the development of society.” Under the cover of demagogy about the mass movement, this statement in fact takes a position of unprincipled pragmatism, of unbounded opportunism. It sets forth the same economist position denounced by Lenin, namely: “That struggle is desirable which is possible, and the struggle which is possible is the one that is going on at the given moment.”[1] In other words, if the leadership of SDS imposes New Leftism on the revolutionary students, then New Left ideology, the reactionary saboteur of the student movement, can be declared the “mainstream” and hence must be progressive. And if the Marxist-Leninist activists fight hard and win great prestige for Marxism-Leninism, then that becomes the new “mainstream” and one should temporarily change colors and adapt oneself to Marxist-Leninist phraseology. And if mocking at the party is fashionable, then it too is “always good and always conforms to the development of society.”
With such an idea, there is no role for the organizing, mobilizing and guiding role of the party. At most there is room for a party in name, but not one in deed. And in fact the course of the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shows that Mao Zedong and the other leaders of Chinese revisionism believed it possible to do without the party. In this massive struggle, Mao Zedong did not use the party as a mobilizer of the masses. On the contrary, the youth and student masses were to rise up without the party. The party and various mass organizations were actually dispersed in the early stages of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and later on the army was called in to calm down the resulting chaos. We supported the Cultural Revolution because we wished to see the downfall of the diehard revisionist and capitalist elements who had usurped key positions in the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state power. We and other Marxist-Leninists were correct to support the Chinese people at this critical and dangerous moment when China was under a brutal and savage attack from the imperialist-revisionist encirclement. But the question arises: how could the Chinese Cultural Revolution succeed without the leadership of the party or of the proletariat?
It is sometimes rationalized, for example by the “RCP.USA,” that the Party couldn’t be used, as power had been usurped in the Party by the most reactionary elements. But the “RCP.USA’s” argument is simply an evasion of the issue, as in such a case the reconstitution of the party would be the crucial and immediate task for the development of the revolution, but this clearly was not the conception of the Chinese leaders. Indeed the “RCP.USA’s” rationalizations are simply the most pathetic special pleading, since the fact is that nowhere does the Chinese Communist Party or Mao Zedong discuss as a drawback or difficulty of the Chinese Cultural Revolution that the Party was not used to give guidance to the masses. Instead the pattern of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and hence presumably the negation of the party and of the proletariat, is prescribed as something that should be done periodically, as the form finally found to prevent capitalist restoration.
In fact, today it can be seen from the speeches and books in defense of “three worlds-ism” and Mao Zedong Thought by the leaders of the “RCP.USA” that Chinese revisionism regards the party as a somewhat suspect, bureaucratic form. The Marxist-Leninist teachings on the party are denounced as “administrative measures,” “bureaucratic,” “undialectical,” “straight-line thinking,” and so forth. The “RCP.USA” writes that to have had the leadership of the party in the Chinese Cultural Revolution would have meant that the Cultural Revolution would have been reduced to “...merely reshuffling the makeup of the key bodies of the Party and putting out a directive or two....”[2] This is what the “RCP.USA,” this alleged “revolutionary communist party,” thinks is the essence of party work! In this way the “RCP.USA” itself is admitting that its own rationalizations about the Cultural Revolution are an evasion, that the issue is not some unfortunate method of work forced on the Chinese Communist Party by circumstances, but the issue is the conception of the role of the party.
The Chinese revisionists however not only propagate the theory of spontaneity, the theory of setting the mass movement against the party. They also at times propagate the flip side, setting the party against the mass movement. Thus they advise that what the Marxist-Leninists need is detached intellectualism, for example, detailed “class analysis,” and in the meantime stay out of the class struggle. A number of minor sects revel in this aspect of Chinese revisionism. And in fact it is also an aspect of the methods of work of the major neo-revisionist organizations that are well-known for their revelling in spontaneity. The neo-revisionist organizations do not restrict themselves to denouncing the party in the name of the mass movement, but they also feel free to denounce the mass movement in the name of the party. These are not two opposite, alternative positions, as it may seem on the surface. On the contrary, they are both expressions of the same basic neo-revisionist dichotomy, of the same anti-Marxist conceptions of detaching the party from the class struggle, of negating the leading and organizing role of the party, of utterly failing to grasp that only through parties can classes express their political will.
On this same point, it is notable that the Communist League (formerly the California Communist League and now the “CLP.USNA”) was a major neo-revisionist organization that made a career of sneering at the mass movement in the name of the party. Far from being opposed to the basic neo-revisionist theses of the RU and OL, however, the CL shared the same basic conceptions with them. The CCL, just like the OL and the RU, gave the theory of “pre-party collectives” in order to sabotage Marxist-Leninist unity in 1969. We shall see later in this article that the OL and the CL also shared the same theory of Browderite “education,” detached from the revolutionary struggle. In addition, the practical work of the CL, for all its talk of theory, was right from the start the same flimsy liberal-labor politics as that of the other neo-revisionists. For years now, the ultra-rightism of the “CLP.USNA” has been its most blatant characteristic. True, the CL was a left-sloganeering agency of Soviet revisionism, rather than of Chinese revisionism. The CL and then the “CLP.USNA” eventually came out openly for the “socialism” of the Soviet social-imperialists and for unity with the official revisionists of the “C”P USA. But for precisely this reason, the CL’s earlier presence in the neo-revisionist trend was very significant. It shows that Chinese revisionism and modern Khrushchovite revisionism are closely related, are variants of each other. Regardless of the differences in form and the rivalries among the modern revisionists, they are all on the same course, with the same objective, and are united in their hostility to Marxism-Leninism and the revolution.
The neo-revisionist leaders paid lip service to Marxism-Leninism. But actually they were for “developing their own trend.” They felt uncomfortable with Marxism and wished to replace it with some other trend. They denounced unity as “premature” on the grounds that one needed time to “develop one’s own trend.” In this way they sought to gain time to split the Marxist-Leninist movement on one or another opportunist program, to factionalize it into a thousand “trends.” In this way, they fought for freedom for spineless eclecticism, for freedom from Marxist principle and indeed from all integral and considered theory, for the freedom to introduce any fashionable deviation into the revolutionary movement. In practice, “their own trend” has turned out in every case to be variants of “three worlds-ism” and liberal-labor politics, under the thin cover of different shades of “left” phrasemongering and different sets of sectarian principles.
The theory of “developing their own trend” was a central point of the program of the Klonskyite October League (M-L). The OL(M-L) was formed through the merger of the October League and the Georgia Communist League (GCL). The GCL circulated to various groups and individuals an internal document entitled “Proposal for Consolidation of Unity with the October League,” dated February 1, 1972. This document claimed that the GCL and the OL “are now a distinguishable trend among anti-revisionists in this country.” It raises the key issue in a section heading entitled “III. HOW CAN WE FURTHER CONSOLIDATE OUR TREND?” (capitals as in the original) The only points of “unity” of this “trend” that the document gives are “1) Against the modern revisionist view of the world situation and their practice of social-imperialism.... 2) Against the CPUSA’s view of peaceful transition and peaceful co-existence as the strategic view of the proletarian revolution in the U.S....we have consolidated our views around the leadership of the industrial proletariat in our revolution.... 3) ...the situation is increasingly favorable for revolutionary activity but that what is principally lacking is the leadership of a firm, communist vanguard party to lead the way to victory.”
The hypocrisy of this document is glaring. The three alleged points of “unity” are only “Marxist” phrases to hide the actual anti-party content of the OL-GCL “trend.” If the GCL or OL had seriously followed these three points, they would not have ever formed their miserable sects but would have united with the ACWM(M-L) which upheld these points from its formation in May 1969. First Mr. Klonsky and his cohorts split the Marxist-Leninist movement on the pretext that Marxism-Leninism is not sufficient as a base of unity and that instead this or that set of special sectarian principles is necessary. Then in early 1972 they still can’t do more than repeat certain basic general principles, but they insist that they must still further “develop their own trend.”
Actually, “developing one’s own trend” means opposing some other trend. OL was “developing its own trend” in order to fight the Marxist-Leninist trend and to develop the neo-revisionist fallacies imported from Chinese revisionism. OL’s “developing our own trend” was also a plan to disrupt the struggle against revisionism by putting forward the plan for the many different anti-revisionist “trends” to struggle against each other.
The Bay Area Revolutionary Union and its successor, the RU, also followed the same principle. In Red Papers 6 (June 1974) the RU rationalizes their previous position on “pre-party collectives” on the grounds that “under these conditions [“that the Communist Party, USA deserted to the camp of revisionism and imperialism” – ed.] different ideas of what revolution meant in the U.S. developed in the course of struggle, and there was no single organization or line that could clearly point the way forward. Since no communist organization existed which upheld a revolutionary line that had withstood some test of practice,...”it was therefore necessary to have the “pre-party collectives.” “In the course of this, practice has been accumulated, ideological struggle has been carried on, and different tendencies have developed. So now it has become possible – in fact, it has become crucial – for the revolutionary forces to...unite all who can be united around a Marxist-Leninist line and Programme, and in this way form the Party.” (p. 4, emphasis as in the original) The RU added that ”It is true that different lines are presented at this time by different organizations.” The different lines are characterized as “the dogmatic tendency,” “the reformist tendency” and “the correct tendency.” (pp. 6-7)
On the face of it, the RU position is a crying contradiction. The RU claims that in the late 60’s and early 70’s no one organization upheld a tested-in-practice revolutionary line and that the “different tendencies” had not yet appeared. From this they conclude that unity was impossible. But if the “different tendencies” had not yet appeared, then clearly the task was unity in the common struggle for Marxism-Leninism against monopoly capitalism and its ideological servants: New Leftism, Castroism, modern revisionism, etc. With unity in a single center, it would be possible for the Marxist-Leninists to wage a better struggle against the deviations, against “dogmatic” or “reformist” tendencies. Having said that the tendencies have now emerged, the RU then gives the call for unity – although precisely at such a time the call would clearly not be for all inclusive unity but for struggle against the negative tendencies. This of course is a basic contradiction in all the theories of “developing one’s own trend.”
However, in practice the RU’s position was very consistent. To give the call for “developing one’s own tendency” means to fight against what one considers incorrect. The RU fought against the Marxist-Leninists on the question of the necessity for and the role of the party. That is a major reason why the RU had opposed the call for unity. As the Red Papers 6 admits, they had in the past “the tendency in our organization...to almost make a PRINCIPLE out of NOT HAVING a Party.” (p. 58, capitals as in the original) That is, the RU had taken up disrupting the party. It is significant that the RU did not call its “tendency” the “Marxist-Leninist tendency” but awkwardly avoided the name “Marxist-Leninist” by using the name “correct tendency.” This is because the RU was conscious of trying to develop “tendencies” or splits within the Marxist-Leninist movement, conscious that it developed its “tendency” in order to fight against Marxist-Leninist unity.
Thus the neo-revisionists replaced Marxism-Leninism, which they denounced as too abstract, untested in practice, or unclear, with what they regarded as very concrete, well-tested and precise, “their own trend.” In this conception, the neo-revisionists were fully in line with Chinese revisionism. The Chinese revisionists regard the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as incomplete and unworked out. In Mr. Avakian’s exposition of Chinese revisionism entitled Mao Tse-tung’s Immortal Contributions, over and over again he repeats that in one field after another, whether it be military affairs, culture, or the socialist economy, that allegedly Stalin was basically wrong and that allegedly Marx, Engels and Lenin failed to work out a systematic line.
From this conception of “developing one’s own trend” it is not far to the theory of the party having many different headquarters with their own platforms. The party is supposed to develop through this clash of platforms, through the development of a multitude of different trends or tendencies, undoubtedly exercising “long-term coexistence and mutual supervision” over each other. In this way, Mao Zedong is alleged to have worked out and systematized the correct line and to have brought Marxism-Leninism to “a new stage.” This process reduced the Communist Party of China to chaos, to a party without Marxist-Leninist backbone, that says one thing today and another tomorrow. And its duplication in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement factionalized and scattered the movement.
The theory of “pre-party collectives” is openly a theory of “many centers,” “many parties.” It openly calls for the development of dozens upon dozens of different groups and openly negates the fact that the proletariat, if it is to express its interests as a class, needs a single center, a single political party. While this polycentrist theory is a negation of Marxism-Leninism, it is however a description of the usual situation in bourgeois, revisionist or fascist parties. Such parties are riddled with groups, factions and splinters, representing different financial groups, various “outstanding” personalities, unprincipled cliques, etc. Furthermore, any bourgeois or revisionist party that wishes to have influence among the workers consciously allows room for “left” factions or groupings. Thus the neo-revisionist “pre-party collective” scheme is a typical part of social-democratic politics. The Chinese Communist Party raised this to the level of an explicit theory. They hold that a party should have many “headquarters” with their own platforms and that the party develops through the mutual struggle of these “headquarters.”
However, the neo-revisionists were faced with the constant work in favor of the basic principles of Leninism by the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists led by first the ACWM(M-L) and then the COUSML (and now the MLP.USA). Therefore the neo-revisionists went over to the declaration of their “parties.” The question therefore poses itself. By declaring themselves “parties,” did the neo-revisionist groupings abandon their anti-Marxist theses negating the party concept?
The answer is no. To begin with, although the neo-revisionists declared various “parties,” they still maintained the same anti-Marxist ideas concerning the role of the party. They still held that party-building was simply the fusing together of various “pre-party formations” and they failed to grasp the crucial role of party-building in the class struggle. Thus the RU in Red Papers 6 explains its conception of the change from the RU to the “party.” The RU writes: “The creation of the Party on this basis, [“the development of the Programme” – ed.] then, has become the central task of U.S. communists for a brief period ahead.” However, this is simply a brief, unpleasant interlude before again taking up the real task. “In the past, when it was correct, as it will be again, to formulate the central task as building the struggle, consciousness and revolutionary unity of the working class and developing its leadership in the anti-imperialist struggle, there was the tendency to downplay the importance of the other major tasks, and the importance of building the Party, in particular.” (p. 5, emphasis added) Thus the RU admits that “in the past” it counter-posed “building the struggle, consciousness and revolutionary unity of the working class and developing its leadership” to building the party, that it did not understand what the party had to do with either the leadership, unity, consciousness or struggle of the working class. But the RU blandly adds that it will continue to counterpose these tasks in the future.
The Klonskyite OL(M-L) had exactly the same line. When the OL decided to declare their “party,” they too declared that party-building was solely a question of organizational fusion. The 1977 New Year’s Editorial of The Call stated: “While the task of uniting the Marxist-Leninists and winning the advanced workers will go on long after the first Congress, the organizational building of the party is the most crucial step at this point.” They stated that “Most importantly, communist groups, including the October League, united together into the Organizing Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party (OC).” It is quite clear that the OL regarded the task of party-building in 1977 as being equivalent to the task of negotiations for mergers carried out prior to the first Congress or prior to some new fusion. This is the same narrow view of party-building as the RU expressed prior to the First Congress of the “RCP.USA.”
Thus the Klonskyites made no advance at all in their conception of the party. They continued to detach the party from the class struggle. At their two-day conference in April 1977 that focused on how to develop the type of social-chauvinist press necessary for the imminent founding of the “CPML,” the editor of The Call, Dan Burstein, stressed that the OL regarded the task of party-building and “revolutionary education” as separate from the revolutionary struggle. He stated: “It is true that the workers also learn from their experience in life, from the class struggle. ... But we must recognize that we are in a period of building the party.... This is the chief characteristic of the present period.
“It is still in the future that our party will pass into a period of active leadership of mass revolutionary struggles.... Therefore,...today we must still see this period of our development as one chiefly of revolutionary education, rather than mass action.”[3] Thus Mr. Burstein admits that the social-chauvinist “party” is simply a Browderite educational association, a loose amalgam united only by the anti-Marxist formulas of the “three worlds” theory. He has not the faintest idea that, for a Marxist-Leninist, education means education in the course of the revolutionary struggle and that a Marxist party is built up in the thick of the class struggle. Mr. Burstein’s conception of “revolutionary education” is precisely that of the pro-Soviet neo-revisionists of the CL. Before the founding of the “CLP.USNA” they put forward the slogan “In this crucial period of party-building, education is our main task.”[4] What the CL meant by education is apparent from their denunciation of “the quicksand that the ’new Left’ calls practice.”[5] For the CL, as for the OL, party-building and scholastic “education” were one thing, the revolutionary struggle something else.
Thus the declaration of the neo-revisionist “parties” meant no change whatsoever in the liberal-labor and social-democratic ideas about the party held by the neo-revisionists. The neo-revisionists still had no idea of what the building of a Marxist-Leninist party meant. They still separated the party from the revolutionary struggle and counterposed the two. Nor did the declarations of the neo-revisionists’ “parties” mean that they had given up the theory of “many centers” and were no longer against the factionalization of the Marxist-Leninist movement. On the contrary, the declarations of the neo-revisionist parties meant that the neo-revisionists were stepping up their disruptive and factional work. The bitter fruit of the plan of “developing one’s own trend” was reaped in the founding of “many parties” based on “many programs.” Previously the neo-revisionists waged their struggle against the party concept under the guise of an alleged “unity of the left,” under the oh-so-reasonable (for liberals) Togliattist polycentrism. Then the bigger neo-revisionist sects switched over to Khrushchovite mono-centrism, to the attitude of “if you are not in my party, then you are dirt,” to the open flaunting of the most bureaucratic and sectarian conception of the party. Each of the “many parties” took up the intensified splitting and liquidation of the mass movements and mass organizations. The neo-revisionist Khrushchovite mono-centrism was just the flip side of their previous “pre-party collective” style of polycentrism.
This shows that it is a characteristic of the neo-revisionists to use the pretext of having declared their “parties” to escalate splitting and wrecking activities. For years the neo-revisionists denounced the Marxist-Leninists as sectarians and dogmatists for working for a single Marxist-Leninist center. But it is now proven for all to see that it is the neo-revisionists, those who lack all sense of party concept, who conceive of party leadership and proletarian hegemony in the most sectarian and factionalist manner. Meanwhile it is the Marxist-Leninists who uphold the interests of the class and who use the Marxist-Leninist organization to uphold the revolutionary unity of the fighting masses.
Thus the “RCP.USA” in their gangster-style article “Beat Back the Dogmato-Revisionist Attack on Mao Tsetung Thought” fume up and down about how such concepts as ”the ’purity’ of the party and of Marxism-Leninism” and the “’monolithic unity’ in the party” are undialectical and bureaucratic.[6] The article eulogizes the negation of the leading role of the party as “rely(ing) directly on the masses.”[7] But simultaneously the article puts forward as the correct definition of the role of the party the arch-bureaucratic and trotskyite formula that “...the party must exercise all-round dictatorship in every sphere of society....”[8] The “RCP.USA’s” formula of the “all-round dictatorship of the party in every sphere of society” is a totally anti-Leninist formula. It is a formula that negates the dictatorship of the proletariat and replaces the leading role of the party with respect to the working class with the dictate by force over the working class. The formula of the “dictatorship of the party,” used in the way the “RCP.USA” does, in fact implies the dictate of the top leadership of the party over all of society through forcible administrative means. Comrade Stalin showed in detail that this formula about the “dictatorship of the party” has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism, that this formula is at best only inexact and figurative, hence is almost never used in Marxist literature, and never in such contexts as “in every sphere of society.” Stalin showed how equating the “dictatorship of the proletariat” with the “dictatorship of the party” then gives rise to further equating it with the “dictatorship of the leaders.”[9] Thus the “RCP.USA’s” negation of the party concept and of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the party and its leading role has led it to the most mechanical, bureaucratic, administrative and bourgeois dictatorial distortions of the leading role of the party.
The neo-revisionists practiced flabby conciliation towards revisionism and opportunism, while placing in the forefront the struggle against what they regarded as “ultra-leftism” and “dogmatism.” And, according to the theory of “pre-party collectives,” it was the party concept that was “ultra-left” and the revolutionary doctrine of Marxism-Leninism that was “dogmatic.”
Part Two of this series dealt with the neo-revisionist opposition to the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, and in other articles we shall deal with this question again. Therefore we will leave it aside here, except for one remark. The theory of “pre-party collectives” is the theory of the factionalization of the movement. It is this theory that justifies the extreme splitting and wrecking activities of the neo-revisionists and at the same time opposes the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. This is vivid proof that the main cause of factionalism and splitting activities is not the exaggeration of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. On the contrary, the source of factionalism, sectarianism, and squabbling is the opportunist and neo-revisionist elements themselves. As Comrade Enver Hoxha teaches: “Revisionism is synonymous with splits, lack of unity, chauvinism and anarchy.”’[10] A principled Marxist-Leninist fight against revisionism and opportunism is absolutely essential to the elimination of factionalism, sectarianism and squabbling.
Lenin’s classic work What Is To Be Done? has inspired many U.S. Marxist-Leninists and taught them to take the path of party-building. This brilliant work exposed the opportunist practice of trailing the spontaneous movement, brought out the great role of Marxist theory and taught the necessity of a truly revolutionary proletarian political party. In particular, this book helped many to see the crucial importance of party-building and the fallacious nature of the theory of “pre-party collectives.”
Hence the various neo-revisionists and opportunist elements had to work overtime to deal with the impact of What Is To Be Done? They introduced one distortion of it after another. Instead of learning from the general principles elaborated in the book and giving up the theory of “pre-party collectives,” they speculated on such odd theories as: that the economic struggle is allegedly valueless, that the key question is that you can’t hold the party congress until after a modern-day Iskra is published, etc. Therefore it may prove of value to point out some of the major issues raised by Lenin in What Is To Be Done? and other writings of the same period and to refute the opportunist distortions.
1) First of all, Lenin always regarded himself as a member of the proletarian party. Although the First Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1898 failed to achieve its objective and truly weld the Russian Marxists into a solid party, yet the announcement by this Congress of the formation of the RSDLP “played a great revolutionary propagandist role.”[11] Lenin did not mock the Congress as “premature” or “dogmatist,” but instead he talked of “Regarding ourselves as members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party...[12] He denounced the Economists for, among other things, that ” ...they even go so far as to refuse to recognize the fact that all Russian Social-Democratic organizations laid the foundations of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1898, published its Manifesto, and announced Rabochaya Gazeta to be its official organ, and that these publications stand by the ’old’ programme [i.e., Marxism as opposed to Economism or Bernsteinian revisionism – ed.] of the Russian Social-Democrats in its entirety.”[13]
2) Secondly, Lenin stood for the unity of the revolutionary Marxists right from the start. What Is To Be Done? is written against the view that the individual local organizations can by themselves solve the theoretical and political tasks facing the Russian Marxists. Turning things on their head, certain neo-revisionist pundits have argued that the fact that Lenin was not for the immediate calling of the Second Congress of the RSDLP shows that he too regarded unity as “premature.” But this is sophistry. Not only the Second Congress but also the all-Russian newspaper with its network of agents all over Russia and its connection to all the local organizations represented a form of all-Russian work. Both were forms of centralized party work. Lenin did not call for local organizations (or other types of pre-party formations) to prepare the conditions for future all-Russian work, but instead believed that the struggle against economism had to be waged immediately on an all-Russian scale. He held that there must be “joint work for a common newspaper” and that the newspaper could act as a “collective organizer.”’[14]
Just because this idea pervades the entire work, it is sometimes shuffled over. Let us therefore refer to a related work which explicitly denounces the “pre-party collective” plan. Lenin says: “It would also be an error to wait until ’local groups grow stronger, increase their membership, and strengthen their connections with the working class milieu – such reinforcement often leads to immediate collapse.
On the contrary, we must immediately set about the work of unification and begin it with literary unity, with the establishment of a common Russian newspaper....[15]
3) Lenin held that the struggle against Economism, i.e. against the Russian variety of international opportunism, the Russian supporters of Bernstein’s revisionism, was essential for the consolidation of a truly united, solid party. Thus Lenin put the struggle against revisionism and opportunism in the forefront.
4) Lenin stood for work along the lines of a definite trend or tendency, and he identified this trend clearly as Marxism. He was not for “developing one’s own trend,” but for defending revolutionary Marxism from international opportunism. He talks of conducting Iskra “in the spirit of a strictly defined tendency. This tendency can be described by the word Marxism, and there is hardly need to add that we stand for the consistent development of the ideas of Marx and Engels and emphatically reject the equivocating, vague, and opportunist ’corrections ’for which Eduard Bernstein, P. Struve, and many others have set the fashion.”[16] The two trends that had taken shape in international socialism at that time were international revolutionary Marxism and international opportunism, which had come out against what it called “dogmatic” Marxism.
The neo-revisionist theorists of the “pre-party collectives” go against all these ideas of Lenin.
1) First of all, they do not regard themselves as members of the party of international communism, nor do they regard themselves as members of the proletarian party in the U.S., seeking to revive that party and give it a united, solid form. On the contrary, they have no party spirit at all. They have invented the idea of the “pre-party situation” and the “pre-party formations” precisely in order to mock and ridicule the party. They constantly seek to weaken the party spirit among the activists and the proletarian and toiling masses.
2) They stand against unity in a single center and for development in scattered, factionalized groups. Since Lenin flays amateurishness, they are forced to pay lip service to this and to admit that the scattered “pre-party formations” are amateurish, weak, organizationally diffuse, etc. But they draw the opposite conclusion from this that Lenin drew. Lenin deduced from this the need for the single, countrywide party, while the neo-revisionists deduced that therefore the party could not be built yet and would be “premature” until the “preparty formations” should first correct all their amateurishness, elaborate and apply Marxism-Leninism, become organizationally firm, etc.
3) The neo-revisionists aim their blows not at revisionism and opportunism, but at “dogmatic” Marxism-Leninism. And this despite the fact that modern revisionism remains the main danger in both the international communist and workers’ movement and in its American contingent. The neo-revisionists neither wished to fight New Leftism, Castroism and other opportunist trends fashionable among the mis-leaders of the revolutionary youth and student movement of the 60’s, nor did they have any spirit to fight against the underlying curse in the U.S. movement, the decades of corrosion by Browderite liberal-labor and social-democratic politics. Yet in the U.S., the party concept can only be maintained in the course of a fierce struggle against revisionism and opportunism. The neo-revisionists make a show of fighting “dogmatism,” but actually it was precisely the neo-revisionists who introduced the fanatical right-wing dogmatism and who made great play with all sorts of idealist sophistry in order to give a faint “left” tinge to their basic Browderite politics. For the neo-revisionists, the fight against the “ultra-left,” against the “dogmatists,” against the “crazies” who actually fought the bourgeoisie and the state, was simply their code-word for the struggle against Marxism-Leninism and against those who took up genuinely revolutionary struggle.
4) The neo-revisionists oppose developing along the path of a strictly defined tendency, Marxism-Leninism. With their theory of “developing their own trend,” the neo-revisionists fought for freedom from all integral and considered theory and especially against the Marxist-Leninist theory. The neo-revisionists can’t understand how Marxism can be regarded as a strictly defined, consistently elaborated doctrine. They mock at Marxism-Leninism and prefer the vague, contradictory and thoroughly-compromised formulas of the counterrevolutionary theory of “three worlds.”
Thus the Marxist-Leninist principles elaborated by Lenin in What Is To Be Done? provide a clear and convincing refutation of the neo-revisionist theory of the “pre-party collectives.”
[1] V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Ch. II, Sec. C.
[2] RCP.USA, “Beat Back the Dogmato-Revisionist Attack on Mao Tsetung Thought,” The Communist, No. 5, May 1979, p. 54.
[3] Dan Burstein, Class Struggle, #7, Spring 1977, p. 106, emphasis added.
[4] CL, in the publication el’ draft resolutions titled Marxist-Leninists Unite!. 1973, p. 4.
[5] People’s Tribune, August 1973.
[6] RCP.USA, ”Beat Back the Dogmato-Revisionist Attack on Mao Tsetung Thought,” The Communist, No. 5, May 1979, pp. 66-70.
[7] Ibid., p. 52.
[8] Ibid., p. 86.
[9] J.V. Stalin, “Concerning Questions of Leninism,” Sec. V. “The Party and the Working Class in the System of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” Problems of Leninism, pp. 178-207, and in Works, Vol. 8. pp. 33-64.
[10] Enver Hoxha, Report to the Seventh Congress of the PLA, Ch. VI, p. 218.
[11] History of the CPSU(B), Ch. 1, Sec. 4.
[12] V.I. Lenin, “Draft Declaration of Iskra and Zarya,” Collected Works, Vol.4, p. 323.
[13] V.I. Lenin, “A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy,” Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 277.
[14] V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Ch. V.
[15] V.I. Lenin, “Apropos of the Profession de Foi,” Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 295-96.
[16] V.I. Lenin, “Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra,” Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 354-55.