The letters of December 5 are a savage attack into the open with a hostile stand against our Party, against our Party. With these letters, you come out into the open with a hostile stand against our Party.
One of the main purposes of the letters of December 5, 1979 was to oppose the Founding Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA. This was why they had to be written in such a rush. Our letter of December 1 raised serious and weighty issues, but it did not require an instantaneous response. For that matter, you have let years go by and still not answered various of our other letters. In the case of the letter of December 1, it would have been better if you had thought over the issues involved, rather than replying instantaneously. You felt a great “lack of time” and were in such a rush because you wanted to get the letters to us in time to oppose the holding of the Preparatory Conference for the Founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA and the Founding Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA.
Your letters themselves openly avow that they are against the Founding Congress of the MLP, USA. Thus you state in the letters the following views:
We are keeping our comments brief [? – ed.]because of the urgency with which we feel is necessary to reply to this letter and because of the lack of time. The COUSML is soon going to found the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA and we firmly believe that the new Marxist-Leninist Party in the USA will be established on a really firm foundation only if the political and ideological ideas and views you are presenting are thoroughly repudiated and denounced by the Founding Congress. (p. 1)
Thus you openly link up the rush in writing your letters to the Founding Congress. You also talk of repudiation of this or that view. This is just a ruse. Your letters do not contain a repudiation of this or that view, but instead consist of over two dozen pages of insults thrown at the Party. If you were interested in helping the Party and in repudiating incorrect views, you would have written on this or that ideological, theoretical or political question. Since you yourself admit that the differences are not new, and you even talk about an alleged “reactionary campaign” going back more than two years, clearly there was no “lack of time” as you pretend. In fact, what you are doing is setting an ultimatum that a split in the leadership of our Party and a firm commitment to agree to any sort of “special relationship” that catches your fancy is necessary for you to recognize the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA.
You yourselves admit that the issue is not political and ideological clarification for the purpose of having a “really firm foundation” on page 7. Here you drop all talk of “political and ideological ideas and views” and “really firm foundation” and bluntly say that the issue is a “provocation” that must be ended prior to the founding of the MLP, USA.
Now. it is the duty and communist responsibility of the National Committee of the COUSML to thoroughly and severely deal with those responsible for this provocation against our Party and the fraternal relations between our two Parties. ... Because of the extremely serious and grave nature of these charges, this provocation must be ended before the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA is founded.” (p. 7, emphasis added)
Thus you yourselves admit that the issue involved is that of “fraternal relations between our two Parties” and that of our “provocation,” i.e., that we submitted comradely, fraternal criticism of certain of your views and actions to you. You further emphasize that this is the case in your letter to the NC of December 5. It states that you cannot attend the Preparatory Conference and the Founding Congress, not because of any “political and ideological ideas and views,” but because of an alleged provocation against your Party. Furthermore, it states that you will refuse to attend any meeting if Comrade Joseph Green is there – it is not totally clear whether that refers to any meeting of the delegations of the two Parties or to any congresses or conferences of the MLP,USA. But in either case it is blatant interference in our internal affairs, arrogant bullying and represents a hostile stand. You write:
We are writing this note to you to firmly condemn the imperialist gangster and agent-provocateur activities of Joseph Green and to call upon you to firmly repudiate the provocations which he has organized against our Party through the concoction of various lies and slanders. At the same time, we propose that a meeting of the delegation of the National Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists and the delegation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) should take place at the soonest possible time. Until such a meeting can be convened, the CC of CPC(M-L) cannot accept your invitation to send a delegation to your Preparatory Conference for the Founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA or to the Founding Congress of the MLP.USA. Furthermore, we will not participate in any meeting which will include Joseph Green or in any meeting where any provocations [i.e., anyone disagrees with the leadership of the CPC(M-L) – ed.] are organized against our Party. (emphasis added)
Here you openly admit that the issue is the alleged “imperialist gangster and agent-provocateur activities” and “provocations.” You regarded any friendly or fraternal criticism of you, as in our letter of December 1, as “imperialist gangster and agent-provocateur activities.” Thus you insisted as a precondition for the founding of the MLP, USA its absolute repudiation of any criticism of this or that view of the leadership of the CPC(M-L) and the MLP, USA’s choosing of its leadership in accordance with the dictate of the CC of the CPC(M-L).
The hostile stand of the leadership of the CPC (M-L) against the Founding Congress has been continued. Your National Executive Committee sent us a letter via the ordinary internal intra-party channels. We received it on February 4 (although for your own reasons you backdate it to January 19). This informs us of your stand on the MLP, USA in the manner of the smart aleck in a letter allegedly about a literature order to the National Publications Centre. This provocative and hostile letter states:
...neither the National Publications Centre, nor any of the Institutions associated with CPC(M-L) will have anything whatsoever to do with any ’Marxist-Leninist Party, USA’ until such a time as it is clarified what this organization is, what are its relations to COUSML and whether this ’Marxist-Leninist Party, USA’ is interested in establishing relations with us, or merely in receiving literature. (emphasis added)
Thus the leadership of the CPC(M-L) resorts to the pathetic ruse that they don’t know what the Marxist-Leninist Party is nor what its relations are to COUSML. Mind you, this is the same CPC(M-L) whose leadership arrogantly dictates various preconditions for the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA and who can or cannot be in the delegations of the MLP, USA. It is the same leadership of the same CPC (M-L) that has been consulted every step of the way concerning the founding of the MLP, USA. But all of a sudden, the NEC of the CPC(M-L) allegedly has a bad case of amnesia. You have slapped yourself in the face in advance in your letters of December 5 when you raise the issue that someone is “insinuating that there is nothing whatsoever between the CPC(M-L) and COUSML, no history and no common struggle, all with the ulterior motive of rewriting this history and disrupting the relations between CPC (M-L) and COUSML.” (p. 2) Thus the NEC of the CPC (M-L) in its letter of early February (“Jan. 19”) is openly mocking at the relations between the MLP, USA and the CPC (M-L). Strictly speaking, with this letter the NEC of the CPC (M-L) has announced that as far as they are concerned there are no relations between the MLP, USA and the CPC (M-L). Furthermore, the NEC of the CPC (M-L) in the next paragraph of this letter explicitly links this stand with the letter of the CC of the CPC(M-L) of December 5. Such a hostile stand from our fraternal comrades of over a decade pains us. We continue to stand for the continuation and strengthening of the fraternal relations between the MLP, USA and the CPC (M-L). Clearly this is only possible if the most resolute opposition is maintained to such hostile and provocative activity as that of the letter of the NEC of the CPC (M-L) of early February, 1980 and of the two letters of the CC of the CPC(M-L) of December 5, 1979.
The letters of December 5 go all-out to split the leadership of our Party and to discredit it. The letters throw unspeakable filth at Comrade Joseph Green and other comrades of the NEC and the NC of the COUSML. According to your letters, our comrades are “agent-provocateurs,” “agents of the darkest reaction,” “worms,” “mad dogs,” “idiots,” “Charlie’s angels” and “dummies”; they “behave like imperialist gangsters,” have a “criminal mentality,” and are “incorrigible.” You make such fantastic claims as that we give shelter to avowed national and social-chauvinists and you present our internal life as “forc(ing)” someone or other out of the leadership, (p. 10) All these charges are slanderous, unsupported, filthy lies. Their purpose is to apply brutal pressure against the integrity of our Party and to split the leadership of our Party.
Your letters make no attempt to hide your attempts to split our leadership. You arrogantly proclaim that “we will not participate in any meeting which will include Joseph Green” and demand his removal from “the ranks of the genuine Marxist-Leninists,” let alone from “any kind of leadership position.” Actually, in your letter you brag about your activities to split the leadership of our Party. You admit that you have worked to that end for “more than two years.” Thus you state that:
More than two years ago, we communicated to COUSML that, ’Some of you are behaving like imperialist gangsters.’ We are firmly convinced that Joseph Green is one such individual. (Letter of December 5 to the National Committee)
Here by the way you admit that Comrade Joseph Green is only “one such individual” and you intend to keep the charge of “behaving like imperialist gangsters” hanging over our entire leadership like the sword of Damocles. That is why you refer to Joseph Green as a plural, as “these Joseph Greens,” on page 15. But as well you are bragging that your telephone message to us of Monday, August 8, 1977, the message which said that “You are acting like a bunch of imperialist gangsters. The kind of relations you will have with us in the future is up to you.”, was in fact not a mistake but a deliberate attempt to split our leadership. You explicitly endorse this message. This shows that the NEC and NC of the COUSML were a thousand times correct in taking this telephone message very seriously and in refusing to accept that such messages could be accepted as the ordinary norm in day-to-day business. It also shows the complete hypocrisy of your provocative and shameful letter to us of September 9, 1977. At that time, faced with the principled and resolute stand of our NEC and NC that charges of “acting (or behaving) like imperialist gangsters” were serious matters, the leadership of the CPC(M-L) twisted and turned this way and that and wrote:
“We say to you: If we consider our fraternal comrades with whom we have shared weal and woe for so many years as ’imperialist gangsters,’ and you believe that this is what we do, then for what reason do you want to maintain fraternal relations with us?” Clearly this statement of yours was an impermissible and provocative statement. Then, as now, you were threatening us with the rupture of the fraternal relations. The issue was not whether we “believe(d) that this is what” the leadership of CPC(M-L) thinks, but that the leadership of CPC (M-L) had made a serious charge which it neither retracted nor provided evidence for. But the complete hypocrisy of this statement of September 9, 1977 is now fully revealed, when in the letters of December 5, 1979 the CC of the CPC(M-L) explicitly endorses that in fact it does hold that there are “agent-provocateurs” and people “behaving like imperialist gangsters” in our leadership. This shows that the original charges from back in August 1977, were even then a brutal method of bringing pressure on our leadership and a savage attempt to create splits.
Although the letters make savage personal attacks nevertheless the purpose of the letters is not mainly against Comrade Joseph Green and other comrades, against this or that individual. A basic purpose of the letters is to attack the integrity of our party committees. This is not to say that the attacks on individual comrades aren’t serious. Such attacks on individual comrades are deadly serious attempts to discredit and ruin this or that individual. They are attempts to maintain the political equivalent of “dossiers” on everyone for the purpose of political blackmail and to remove anyone who doesn’t submit from “the ranks of the genuine Marxist-Leninists.” But the overriding purpose of this political blackmail and these savage attempts to split the leadership is to wipe out the integrity of the party committees.
Thus the letters of December 5 make a number of direct attacks on the authority of the National Executive Committee. We have already pointed out above how these letters make a great show of pretending that our letter of December 1 was only the personal letter of Comrade Joseph Green. This was linked up by the letters of December 5 with their direct denunciation of the authority of the NEC of the COUSML to speak for the COUSML. We pointed out how on page 21 the letters counterpose the NEC to the NC and the party congress. Of course, this counterposition does not mean that the leadership of the CPC(M-L) has any respect for the NC or the party congress. We have seen above that in fact the letters of December 5 are written directly to oppose the Preparatory Conference and the Founding Congress. But by this counterposition of the party committees and congresses, the letters of December 5 express their opposition to the authority of any of these party institutions. The letters openly defend that in fact it is the leadership of the CPC(M-L) who can decide who represents the COUSML and make whatever agreement they want with that person. Thus the letters state:
“ We have always disagreed with your arrogance and high-handedness in your repeated efforts to try to dictate to us just what we can and cannot say when the representatives of our two Parties meet.” (pp. 14-15) Thus with your own words, you admit that you have “always” given yourselves the right to decide the limits of the competences of our representatives. The leadership of the CPC (M-L) has given itself the right to claim that it can discuss matters with any comrade in the leadership of our Party and come to a decision binding on our NEC and NC. Indeed you have given yourself the right to talk to anyone around our Party, whether in or out of the leadership or even in or out of the formal Party organization, on any question. Our representatives have never refused to hear out the leadership of CPC (M-L), but our representatives have refused to usurp the powers of our party committees. In your letters, you denounce our representatives as “Charlies’s angels” and “dummies” because they have upheld the integrity of our Party and the authority of our NEC and NC. You have repeatedly gone to the extent of simply calling down to our center and demanding that this or that comrade by name travel to meet you, instead of asking for discussion on this or that subject. You have made a point of generally refusing to specify the nature of the discussions in advance, but have demanded this or that comrade and sought to go around the NEC. And it has happened that the NEC has traveled to meet you, yet you have refused to have discussion – either by walking out of a previously mutually agreed on meeting or by refusing to talk to the NEC and instead choosing to talk only to certain other comrades in our delegation. (Meetings of early March 1978 and of early September 1978) This is another proof of the astounding hypocrisy of your letters of December 5, when you deny the authority of fhe NEC by counterposing it to the NC and the party congress, while in fact you have sought to replace the authority of the NC and the NEC by your own arbitrary assignment of authority to our representatives.
To deny the authority of the party committees is a hostile stand against a party. A party must rigorously insist on its organizational integrity. Friendship with a party is not just a question of abstract moral sentiments, but is also a question of respecting the organizational integrity of that party. By striking at the organizational integrity of our Party, the letters of December 5 do grave harm to the fraternal relations between the two Parties.
You openly declare in your letters of December 5 that the leadership of CPC(M-L) will act in the U.S. independently of the Marxist-Leninist center in the U.S. You wrote:
Besides pulling out his hair, Joseph Green goes on lashing his body and flagellating himself in true masochistic fashion: ’Our two Parties may not always agree on certain tactical issues, but that does not give you the right to unilaterally undertake actions such as the selling of the rights to the Palacios’ book that affect us first and foremost and undermine our stands and struggle’. This is not a Marxist-Leninist, fraternal comrade seriously and sincerely trying to correct his wayward, fraternal comrades, but a dyed-in-the-woor trotskyite, who is speaking with a forked tongue, and whenever he thinks he has gotten a little opening, he wriggles into it. Our Party will never seek ’approval’ from any fraternal Party for any of our actions, either before taking actions or after taking actions. ”(pp. 11-12, emphasis added)
And for what type of action is the leadership of CPC (M-L) so fiercely asserting its independence? The action under discussion is of the following nature:
A) It is an action concerning the struggle in the U.S. between Marxism-Leninism and the “three worlders.” It both immediately affected this struggle and objectively involved a political contact with the“RCP, USA.”
B) It is an action which unilaterally cancelled agreements with our Party without even notifying us. The agreements concerning the distribution and promotion of Palacios’ book, Chile: An Attempt at “Historic Compromise, ” were a complicated set of agreements between the RCP of Chile and CPC (M-L), the RCP of Chile and COUSML, and CPC (M-L) and COUSML.
C) It is an action in the U.S. taken independently of and without even notifying, to say nothing of consulting, our Party, which you have worked with and recognized as the Marxist-Leninist center in the U.S. for over a decade.
D) It is also worth mentioning that the action was a tactical blunder. And it is not at all surprising that actions taken in the U.S. independently of the Party run the risk of fiasco.
Your declaration that “Our Party will never seek ’approval’ from any fraternal Party for any of our actions, either before taking actions or after taking actions,” means that you have declared that you will act in the U.S. independently of your fraternal party. Thus you are in fact denying the necessity for a single Marxist-Leninist center for the U.S. and the necessity of the application of the party principle in the U.S. By giving yourself a free hand in the U.S., you are denying the existence of the party in the U.S. or denying the party principle.
In fact, you go on in your letter to mock at the necessity for a single directing center in the U.S. by mocking at the need for consultation and cooperation. Still defending your self-proclaimed right to act in the U.S. independently of the Marxist-Leninist center in the U.S., you write:
In the final paragraph on page three of his Part Two [of our letter of the NEC of the COUSML of December 1 – ed.], Joseph Green again uses demagogy in the most shameless fashion in order to serve his pragmatic ends. He writes: ’This question of consultation and cooperation is, in our view, one of the most important questions of principles involved in the issue of the selling of the rights to Palacios’ book to the RCP,USA’ Why is this ’one of the most important questions of principle’? It is because this worm has found out through this so-called ’consultation a ’fact’ through which he can wriggle with to nail the CPC(M-L). There is no other reason whatsoever. (p. 13, emphasis added)
With this statement, you shamelessly mock at the necessity for cooperation and consultation between fraternal parties and at the norms forbidding interference in each other’s affairs. According to your statement, no one but worms could raise such issues, only shameless demagogues intent to “nail the CPC(M-L).” But the more you mock at the necessity for consultation and cooperation, the clearer it is that this is a very serious issue of principle. No, fraternal comrades, it is not “dyed-in-the-wool trotsky(ism)” to adhere to the party principle. On the contrary, the trotskyites oppose the party principle. It is Marxism-Leninism which teaches the necessity of the single leading center for the revolutionary movement, the necessity of the general staff of the proletariat. Your declaration that you are free without any limits to act with regard to the U.S. independently of your fraternal comrades is a gross violation of principle and displays a hostile stand to our Party.
These letters are a brutal ultimatum. With them, you are opposing discussion on the burning questions of interest between our two Parties. That is also why you ridicule the question of “consultation and cooperation” and say that “There is no other reason whatsoever” why we raise it as one of the most important questions of principle except our alleged desire to “nail the CPC(M-L).” These letters openly replace the Marxist-Leninist norms of fraternal relations and of consultation and cooperation with brutal dictate, with one side imposing its views on the other side and even dictating the composition of the other’s leading bodies by sheer fiat.
In your letters you stress that you are delivering an ultimatum by your talk of losing patience. You write that:
We returned your despicable letters [despicable in your eyes solely because they opposed certain of your erroneous actions – ed.] then. But, this time, the cup is now filled to the brim. We have no more patience with the likes of you two-faced and double-dealing elements. This is the reason why we have organized a meeting of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L) regardless of the effort and expense and this letter [N.B.: the letter of December 5, not our letter of December 1 – ed.] has been fully and in detail discussed and deliberated in this session and is formally the letter of the CC of CPC(M-L) in reply to the letter of December 1, 1979, written by Joseph Green ’for the’ National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.” (p. 15)
Thus you explicitly state that you refuse to have any patience for normal fraternal relations. You have even lost the patience necessary to reject our letters offhand without any serious consideration (as you did in the past) or to simply return them. Therefore you put forward the ultimatum: either accept the December 5 letter – or else! Either split the leadership of the COUSML – or else!
Now, what is it you have lost patience with? You lost patience altogether and decided that “the cup is now filled to the brim” after our letter of December 1. This letter opposed the sale of the rights to the English translation of the book by Palacios, Chile: An Attempt at “Historic Compromise,” to the “RCP, USA” and put forward, or more properly reiterated, our previously verbally expressed views on certain questions of tactics and principles. Hence it follows that you lost patience with comradely criticism and with listening to our views. This time even returning the letters will not suffice. This time you must ensure that, as you say in your letter, our “defeat will be final, ”(p. 10)
In the passage we have quoted, you talk of careful and detailed consideration of the issues. But it is obvious that the whole purpose of the letters of December 5 is to oppose careful and detailed consideration. Our views are called a “provocation” and they are to be banned from discussion in future meetings between our two Parties on the plea of avoiding “provocations” (you already put this into practice in the meeting of early March 1978 when you walked out). You call our views “devoid of any content” (p. 10) and thus indicate that you found nothing in them worthy of any careful consideration. You parody our letter and over and over again repeat the vile and out-and-out lie that we have charged that “CPC(M-L) advocates the “United front with the ’three world-ers’.” (pp. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 20, etc.) You set out this red herring and straw man in order to inflame passions and to avoid at all costs any serious consideration of the actual issues we have raised. For the same reason, you shout over and over that we are allegedly out to “NAIL CPC(M-L)” (pp. 13, 14, 15, 16, 25, etc.) which you usually put in big capitals. What a frenzy to avoid the real issues at stake! Furthermore, you seem to have surely done things in record time. You called together the CC “regardless of the effort and expense” (which means that the CC was not otherwise meeting at the time and had to be gathered at considerable effort and expense); you considered the issues raised by our letter of December 1; you presumably would have had to study and consider the history of our relations of over one decade or at least consider the last few years in order to make the decision to launch your ultimatum of December 5; you accused Comrade Joseph Green and others of being agents provocateurs; you wrote, revised if necessary, “fully and in detail discussed and deliberated” on them and approved your letters of December 5 which are over two dozen pages long – and did all this between December 3 when you received our letter and December 5, the date of your letters – that is, in a space of not more than 48-72 hours, including transportation and notification time for gathering your CC. Can it be that you wanted to make up for not answering certain of our other letters for literally years, or for “losing” the promised solidarity message in support of the campaign to found the Marxist-Leninist Party and not finding it ever in the period between May, 1979 and the present, despite innumerable promises to us? We have been criticized by certain social-democrats for having said “when there’s a will, there’s a way,” but life itself provides such convincing examples! The real reason for your haste, however, is that you are opposed to considering our letter and that you wanted to make haste to oppose the Founding Congress of the MLP, USA.
We have already shown in II-A that your ultimatum is delivered against the Founding Congress of the MLP, USA. You have threatened our relations. But our Party does not agree with the method of ultimatum and bullying. We shall build solid and powerful fraternal relations only by following the Marxist-Leninist norms. The only way to build such relations is to oppose such ultimatums, which are hostile acts against our Party.