Our condemnation of your letters of December 5 is the unanimous stand of the Central Committee. We have given careful and detailed consideration to your letters of December 5, have gone over these letters repeatedly and have even put aside for a time other pressing work in order to give your letters and the history of relations between our two Parties our complete attention. We have studied both the letters and also the careful and detailed documentation of the course of relations between our two Parties of the last few years and the minutes of the discussions between the two Parties.
The National Committee of the COUSML began the study of these two letters. These two letters were delivered to us after the NEC had already left for the Preparatory Conference for the Founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA. The National Committee therefore discussed these letters immediately after the Preparatory Conference. The National Committee unanimously came to the following view about these letters:
The entire National Committee read and discussed the two letters of December 5 from the Central Committee of the CPC (M-L) to the National Committee and National Executive Committee of COUSML. The National Committee totally disagrees with these letters. These letters are a brutal pressure to split the COUSML’s leadership. They are totally provocative, astonishingly crude and brutal in style, and full of inaccuracies and outright lies. The National Committee decided that the further analysis of these letters and the decision on the appropriate course of action should be made by the Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA.” (Extract from the minutes of an NC meeting of December 1979)
The Central Committee of the MLP, USA also studied these letters. It looked into the historical record in detail. The Second Plenum of the CC took up the analysis of the present situation in the relations with the CPC (M-L) and these letters. The Second Plenum of the CC agreed with the earlier views of the National Committee, quoted above, and further elaborated the analysis of the present situation in the fraternal relations. The views of the Central Committee were unanimous. The CC decided to write this letter to the CC of the CPC (M-L) in order to put forward our views on a number of matters connected with these letters. This letter too is the unanimous letter of the CC, having been read and approved unanimously at the Fourth Plenum of the CC.
An extract from the minutes of the Second Plenum follows:
The Central Committee discussed the two letters of the Central Committee of the CPC (M-L) to the National Committee and National Executive Committee of the COUSML.
The Central Committee agrees with the assessment of the National Committee of the COUSML as expressed in the minutes of the meeting of December 1979.
The basic stand of the letters of December 5 and [the present stand as expressed in those letters] of the leadership of the CPC (M-L) is that of hostility to the leadership of the Party, savage opposition to the Founding Congress of the Party, and contempt for the positions, views and activity of the entire Party. The letters openly call for a split in the leadership of the Party and shamelessly avowal that the leadership of the CPC (M-L) has been working for over two years to that end. The leadership of the CPC (M-L) also declares in the letters that it will act unilaterally in the U.S. without regard for the Party. Such open declarations of hostility written to a fraternal party; such frank avowal that splitting activity, disregard for the Party and contempt for the Party should be accepted as everyday norms among fraternal parties; such an open declaration that the Marxist-Leninist norms should be replaced by a ’special relationship’; has few precedents in the international communist movement.
The letters were written especially to oppose the Founding Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party. That is why [the leadership of] the CPC (M-L) had to rush to complete and send the letters prior to the Preparatory Conference for the Founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party.
The purpose of the letters is not mainly against this or that individual. Over the years, the leadership of the CPC (M-L) has attacked now this and now that individual, even simultaneously attacking one individual to the other and vice versa. A basic purpose of the letters is to destroy the National (Central) Committee as a coherent leading body that ... refuses to give in to this or that pressure.
The present series of problems in the relations between the CPC (M-L) and the Marxist-Leninist Party (and [its predecessor] the COUSML) go back to late 1975. They arose and developed over questions of the practical relations between fraternal parties, over the Marxist-Leninist norms of relations. The leadership of COUSML regarded them as problems in the practical relations between parties that should be sorted out in a professional and business-like way on that basis. The leadership of the CPC (M-L) refused to do this and advocated that this was a matter of principle, that behind every difference in the practical relations lay a political line and that to attempt to solve the problems of practical relations as simply that, problems of practical relations, was a practice of executives meeting in a board meeting of a capitalist corporation. The problems of practical relations festered. At a certain stage, ideological differences either arose or came out into the open between the two fraternal Parties. These ideological differences became intertwined with the solution of the problems of practical relations. The leadership of the CPC (M-L) linked up its attitude to COUSML with whether or not COUSML accepted the views of CPC (M-L), used the practical relations as a method of putting pressure on the COUSML, and thus continually deepened the problems. These problems became acute especially in regard to the struggle against the MLOC/’CPUSA(ML),’ the ’RCP, USA’ and to what could for convenience be called ’centrism’; on the issue of struggle against opportunism in general; and on the question of whether the Internationalists and the parties that historically are related to the Internationalists form a separate or distinct ’trend’ in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement (the question of ’special relationship,’ ’two (or more) trends in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement,’ special discipline and so forth)....
These letters of December 5 of the [Central Committee of] the CPC (M-L) are a black stain on the Marxist-Leninist movement in North America. The entire hostile activity of the [leadership of] the CPC (M-L) against the Marxist-Leninist Party (and [its predecessor] the COUSML) constitutes a black stain on the history of warm, deep and fraternal relations between the two Marxist-Leninist Parties.
As well, due to your traveling down the road of making your differences with our Party public, at a certain point it was no longer possible or desirable to restrict the discussion of the issues involved to the CC. After months of the most rigorous restraint by our side after receiving your brutal letters of December 5, the CC therefore mandated a full discussion of the issues involved with all the members and militants of our Party. They were shown all the appropriate material, including your letters of December 5 and subsequent correspondence. In this discussion, the entire MLP, USA condemned the hostile stand taken by you against our Party and unanimously approved the preliminary draft of this letter.
In order to further demonstrate the iron unity of our Party and its leadership, it is appropriate in this part of our letter to inform you that our letter of December 1 was in fact the letter of our National Committee. In your letters of December 5, you make a great show of pretending that our letter of December 1 was only the personal letter of an individual. Comrade Joseph Green. In this way, you denied the authority of the NEC to speak for the COUSML, opposed the integrity of the leading party committees of the COUSML and put yourself in the position of openly trying to split the leadership of our Party. On page 21, for example, you counterpose the National Executive Committee to the National Committee and the “authoritative Congress.” We reject your mocking of the party principle and tell you frankly that we insist on the rigorous observation of the integrity of the Party in the course of fraternal relations. While as to the letter of December 1 itself the facts are that the November 24, 1979 meeting of the National Committee discussed the draft of this letter. It unanimously approved the letter in the main and mandated certain relatively minor alterations. Thus this letter was actually the unanimous letter of the National Committee. But since the leadership of the CC of CPC (M-L) had several times stated to us your opposition to such matters being handled at the National Committee or Central Committee level, as a matter of courtesy we addressed the letter of December 1 to your National Executive Committee from our National Executive Committee. We must however express our indignation to the fact that the leadership of the CPC (M-L) first repeatedly opposes our practice of bringing certain matters concerning the fraternal relations to our National Committee or Central Committee, and then turns around and tries to split our leadership by denying the authority of the NEC and counterposing it to the National Committee or “authoritative Congress.”
We shall now proceed to elaborate a number of the issues raised by your letters of December 5 in more detail.