Revisionism is the ideology of the bourgeoisie within the working class. It is an ideology which claims to update the teachings of Marx and Lenin. In reality its aim is to mislead and divert the proletariat from its revolutionary path. Revisionism omits, obliterates or distorts the revolutionary soul of Marxism, usually disguised as a struggle against dogmatism.
First, we consider the question of the STATE. The revisionists of Lenin’s time held that in a democratic society, “ruled by the will of the majority,” that the role of the state was that of a reconci1iator of class conflicts within society. This position was in fact that of the bourgeoisie, who in attempting to deceive the working class also posed the state as an above class reconciliator of social conflict. The modern revisionists of the CPUSA also hold this position and it lies at the very basis of its “anti-monopoly coalition” schemes which they see as the basis for bringing socialism about peacefully.
The CPUSA first formulated this revisionist position while under the leadership of Browder. After Browder’s expulsion from the Party, his line was never thoroughly exposed and repudiated. William Z. Foster carried out a lukewarm struggle against both the revisionism of Browder and the liquidation of the Party. Foster describes his struggle against Browder’s revisionism this way:
...I concluded that it would be folly for me to try to take the question to the Party membership at that time. For to do so would have weakened our general work in support of the war, ruined our current big recruiting drive, interfered seriously with the development of our vital national election campaign, and perhaps resulted in splitting our Party. So I decided to confine my opposition to the ranks of the National Committee, . .. by means of innumerable criticisms, policy proposals, articles, etc., all going in the direction of eliminating Comrade Browder’s opportunistic errors. I was convinced that the course of political events and the communist training of our leadership would eventually cause our party to return to a sound line of policy.
So the question of line struggle took a back seat to recruiting drives and electoral politics. The question of inner party struggle, of line struggle, of arming the party cadre ideologically to carry out the struggle against revisionism took a back seat to Foster’s hobnobbing with the National Committee. The cadre were left to either flounder or to carry out only sporadic attacks against revisionism. It was in the international communist movement, under the leadership of Comrade Stalin and Comrade Mao Tse-Tung that revisionism of Browder was exposed and routed. “However, the revisionist trend represented by Browderism was not thoroughly criticized and liquidated by the international communist movement as a whole. In the new circumstances after the war, the revisionist trend developed anew among the communist ranks in certain countries.”
After the war, Foster traveled throughout Europe speaking to leaders of the various communist parties, and by 1949 with Foster in leadership the party again turned towards revisionism. It was Foster who in fact articulated the line of the anti-monopoly coalition. In his book, The Twilight of World Capitalism, he states
Our Party’s political line is thus based upon the assumption that it is possible, under present political conditions in the United States for the broad masses of the people, militantly led by the trade unions and a strong mass political party, to elect a coalition, anti-monopoly government.
We ask ourselves what were the political conditions Foster talks about? At the time of his writing, the world balance of power had shifted in favor of the revolutionary movement. Socialism was victorious not only in the Soviet Union, but in the Eastern European countries, D.P.R.K., and China. The national liberation struggles of the third world countries were rising up around the world like a mighty storm. However, Foster interpreted these new conditions to mean that the spontaneous movement was already leading to Socialism. Foster put it this way:
The struggle for socialism grows inevitably out of the everyday fight of the workers and their allies, especially against the present menaces of economic chaos, fascism, and war. In all good time the American people, on the basis of their existing conditions, will decide how and in what forms they will introduce socialism. (ibid., 3)
Comrades, this is pure right opportunism and the theory of spontaneity. Socialism is introduced to the working class from the outside, i.e. by communists. It does not grow inevitably out of the spontaneous movement. Foster was not always a revisionist. In the years following World War II however, it is clear that revisionism had not been thoroughly routed from the CPUSA and that elements of revisionism still existed within the leadership of the Party. During the years from 1956 to 1959 the struggle against revisionism continued as it had under Browder. By i960 revisionism had been consolidated with the CPUSA and at that point it became the task of Marxists-Leninists to break with the CPUSA and build a new Marxist-Leninist party. There was another reason Foster formulated the anti-monopoly line. At that time it was the view of some of the European C.P.’s that Fascism still presented an immediate danger, despite the reality that fascism had been defeated in WW II. They still held to the basic united front, anti-fascist, anti-war line of the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935. Foster agreed with their analysis, that Fascism presented an immediate danger and thus formulated the line of the anti-monopoly coalition, which to this day remains the party’s liberal reformist strategy. This reformist strategy flows from their line on “peaceful transition to socialism”. They want to elect legislative representatives who they hope will break up the monopolies, nationalize them and then restructure the state to run the economy-while the bourgeoisie sits on the sidelines “peacefully” watching. Comrades, we certainly can all agree that favorable conditions exist nationally and internationally for revolutionary struggle and winning the proletariat to the aims of socialism. However, the revisionists use the new conditions to betray fundamental Marxist-Leninist principles. For example, the CPUSA revisionists cut out the heart of the class struggle i.e. the aim of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. By putting up the smokescreen of an anti-monopoly coalition government, they attempt to disguise the bourgeois dictatorship. In essence, their anti-monopoly coalition is a liberal reformist drive which seeks to make capitalism “acceptable” to the working class. Marxism-Leninism teaches us that in this epoch we either live under the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. No halfway measures such as an anti-monopoly coalition in power will open the door to socialism as the CPUSA believes.
Now, we would like to point out another aspect of this strategy. The CP by pushing their line put the working class on the defensive, just as today the Communist Labor Party’s UNITED FRONT AGAINST FASCISM does. The anti-monopoly coalition and the UNITED FRONT AGAINST FASCISM are a defensive measure against the power of the monopoly capitalist. The CP and CLP, rather than viewing revolution on the rise, see the monopoly capitalists on the rise and thus call for a struggle for democratic rights. This is totally bankrupt. The Chinese comrades aptly describe what is the objective situation in the world today by stating: “Countries want independence, nations want liberation, and the people want revolution.” And as Comrade Mao Tse-tung has stated, “The danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today.” We certainly agreed that this is the historical trend in which the peoples of the world are marching This anti-monopoly strategy of the CPUSA is a policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie. In effect by peddling their bankrupt line, the CPUSA will only facilitate the advance of fascism. By relying mainly on liberals and reformists and the parliamentary path, the CP leaves the working class leaderless, disarmed ideologically, politically and militarily, disorganized, divided, and unprepared for any future all-out fascist offensive. Given the deepening imperialist crisis in the world today, that all-out fascist assault may not be far off. The tragic Chilean experience gives workers everywhere a bitter example of the line of peaceful transition to socialism and of the results of the class collaborationist policies of the revisionist parties. Because of this criminal line, the blood of 20,000 Chilean workers flowed in the gutters of Santiago.
What is the Marxist theory of the state? First of all, what is the state? The state is an instrument of oppression by which a definite class exercises its dictatorship over society. It is composed of the armed forces of the state including the armies, police forces, prisons and courts. Lenin states:
The state is the product and manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises when and where and to the extent that class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled, and conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
It is precisely on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion of Marxism, proceeding along two main lines begins.
On the one hand, the bourgeois and particularly the petty-bourgeois ideologists, ’correct’ Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither rise nor maintain itself if it were possible to reconcile classes...According to Marx the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another...
On the other hand, the Kautskyite distortion of Marxism is far more subtle. ’Theoretically’ it is not denied that the state is an organ of class rule, or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. But what is lost sight of or glossed over is this: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and increasingly alienating itself from it, then it is obvious that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this ‘alienation’.
The modern revisionists distort the role of the state and in the Soviet Union they speak of a “State of the whole people”. This concept is totally alien to Marxism and is, in fact, a bourgeois concept. If the state is an organ for class rule, an organ by which one class oppresses another, then how can it possibly be a “state of the whole people”? This concept is used by the modern revisionists who are in state power in the Soviet Union and echoed by the revisionist CPUSA. This is their theoretical justification for their attack upon and subsequent destruction of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR.
Engels in condemning a variant of this concept which the anarchists of his day were putting forward stated:
As the state is only a transitional phenomenon which must be made use of in the struggle, in the revolution, in order forcibly to crush our antagonists, it is an absurdity to speak of a peoples’ free state. As long as the proletariat still needs the state, it needs it, not in the interests of freedom, but for the purpose of crushing its antagonists; as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, then the state as such, ceases to exist.
And so comrades, on all three counts, the revisionists strike out. They see the state as a reconciler of class conflicts; they claim that socialism can be brought about peacefully without armed struggle within the structure of a bourgeois dictatorship and they negate the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the state apparatus necessary for defending the revolution once the proletariat has seized power.
But the modern revisionists don’t stop here. Not only do they refute Marx, they also refute Lenin’s contributions to the treasury of Marxism. “Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.” Comrades, the position of ATM is that we are still in the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution and we hold that the science that must lead the international proletarian revolution is Marxism-Leninism. We do not recognize a third era as put forward by the revisionist CPSU, CPUSA, or the RU’s leadership.
It is not within the limits of this presentation to expand on every aspect of Lenin’s theory of imperialism. We wish to zero in on just one – that of proletarian revolution. The three fundamental thesis and conclusions are the following as laid out by Comrade Stalin:
1) The domination of finance capital in the advanced capitalist countries, the export of capital to sources of raw materials as a foundation of imperialism, the domination of a financial oligarchy – all of these revealing the parasitic nature of imperialism.
2) The increase in the export of capital to the colonies and dependent countries, (as opposed to the export of commodities), the expansion of “spheres of influence” and colonial possessions until they cover the whole globe, the transformation of capitalism into a world system of financial enslavement and colonial oppression of the vast majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” capitalist countries – all this has converted the separate national economics and national territories into links in a single chain called world economy and on the other hand split the population of the globe into two camps;
a handful of “advanced” capitalist countries which exploit and oppress vast colonies and dependencies, and the huge majority consisting of colonial and dependent countries which are compelled to wage a struggle for liberation from the imperialist yoke.
3) The monopolistic possession of “spheres of influence” and colonies; the uneven development of capitalist countries, leading to a frenzied struggle for the redivision of the world between the countries which have already seized territories and those claiming their “share;” imperialist wars as the only means restoring the disturbed “equilibrium” – all this leads to the intensification of the struggle on the third front, the inter-capitalist front, which weakens imperialism and facilitates the union of the first two fronts against imperialism. The front of the revolutionary proletariat and the front of colonial emancipation.
From these three theses come the following three conclusions:
1) The intensification of the revolutionary crises within the capitalist countries and the growth of the elements of an explosion on the internal, proletarian front in the advanced capitalist countries.
2) The intensification of the revolutionary crisis in the colonial countries and the growth of the elements of revolt against imperialism on the colonial front.
3) That under imperialism wars cannot be averted, and that a coalition between the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries and the colonial revolution against the world from imperialism is inevitable.
Is Lenin’s theory correct and valid today? We say that it is. Has the world situation caused any basic changes in this presentation? We say NO! Only two changes have occurred since Lenin’s death: A world socialist camp came into existence after WW II but it no longer exists, and secondly, the principle contradiction in the world today is between the imperialist and social imperialist countries on the one hand and the oppressed nations of the world on the other. Another of the main contradictions in the world is between the imperialist and social-imperialist countries on the one hand and the socialist countries on the other. While these are important changes they have not caused any fundamental changes in the presentation of the question, – we are still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and Leninism is still applicable.
Where do the revisionists of the CPSU and CPUSA stand on this question? They do not believe that we are still in the era of Leninism. They say that nuclear weapons have brought about a qualitative change in the nature of wars. They claim Lenin’s teachings on the inevitability of imperialist wars are not longer valid. That nuclear war presents a threat to everyone including the proletariat. Since all wars, including wars of national liberation, can lead to nuclear warfare they must be avoided at all costs. In other words, they are telling the oppressed nations of the world to remain content with their state of oppression and exploitation or as the Chinese put it:
Khrushchov here sounds like a preacher. Downtrodden people of the world, you are blessed! If only you are patient, if only you wait until the imperialists lay down their arms, freedom will descend upon you. Wait until the imperialists show mercy, and the poverty-stricken areas of the world will become an earthly paradise flowing with milk and honey!
Some people may ask hasn’t the Soviet Union lent support to the liberation struggles of oppressed nations? Let’s look at this question more closely. An example of this support can be seen in the “national liberation” struggle of Bangladesh. The USSR has penetrated India in classic imperialist fashion. The revisionists set up joint USSR-India fertilizer plants which exploit the Indian people. When an internal conflict broke out in neighboring Pakistan, the USSR quickly supported India’s expansionist invasion of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) The “national liberation” struggle in Bangladesh was in fact a separatist movement manipulated by the Indian and Soviet bourgeoisie. The USSR benefited because they expanded their “sphere of influence” to yet another country: Bangladesh.
Second, it was part of its military strategy for domination of the Indian Ocean and the adjacent regions.
Third, it was a part of the world imperialist design to “contain” the Peoples Republic of China, to continue surrounding China with puppet governments that can be used to threaten, invade, or at least adopt a hostile stance towards the Peoples Republic of China. In other word, the “material aid and support” extended by the USSR is not given in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, but as part of its struggle for hegemony and to expand its spheres of influence. We have but to look at the starving millions in Bangladesh to see where this type of support leads to.
Or, we could turn to Chile to see where the peaceful road to socialism leads – to the betrayal and deaths of thousands of workers. On the question of Chile, do the revisionists admit to the bankruptcy of their line? Of course not. They instead point their finger at U.S. imperialism. There is no question of the fact that the U.S. imperialists were behind the overthrow of President Allende. It was not the U.S. but the revisionist Communist and Socialist Parties that disarmed the Chilean proletariat ideologically and politically, that led them onto the road of disaster by creating false illusions about the nature of the State.
Why then, do they point their finger at U.S. imperialism? To absolve themselves and their bankrupt line of blame, and to continue their betrayal of the world proletariat. Today they call for the U.S. to cease its recognition of the Chilean junta, among other things. This demand, in and of itself, is correct. In fact, tactically, it would help to isolate the Chilean fascists if the USNA would cease its recognition of the junta. But we must see this demand or slogan as part of their over all political line which include such gems as the following from Gus Hall:
We say: ’Close the military bases around the world.’ ’Cut the military budget.’ ’Padlock the Pentagon.’ These are all good s1ogans...(aimed at) putting an end to policies of imperialist aggression in general, moving towards world disarmament and establishing plans for conversion to civilian production within an anti-monopoly package.
So here Gus Hall lays it out: the Kautskyite position that imperialist aggression abroad is merely a question of policy. The Social-Democratic position that capitalist production can be planned; the revisionist position calling for WORLD disarmament which of course, must include the disarming of the national liberation forces around the world.
What is this Kautskyite position? It is a bourgeois ideology of revisionism which refutes Lenin’s teaching on Imperialism. These modern Kautskyites see imperialism as a policy, a bad policy of some undesirable elements in the bourgeois government. They propose to counter this with a good imperialist policy by working within parliamentary means to legislate imperialism out of existence. They fail to understand that imperialism is not a policy but a definite stage in the development of Capitalism. They separate politics from economics, the superstructure from its economic base, as if it is independent of that base. Lenin clearly showed that imperialism is not a policy but a definite stage in the objective development of capitalism, where capitalism is decaying, moribund and parasitic and where in order to survive it must plunder, exploit, and oppress the nations of the world. It cannot survive unless it does so. Lenin also showed that the law of “uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism.” He showed that this uneven development among the capitalist countries leads to a situation where some countries surpass others thereby demanding more markets and sources of raw materials. This frenzied struggle for new colonies and “spheres of influence” can be resolved only through imperialist wars. “That under imperialism, wars cannot be averted, and that a coalition between the proletarian revolution in Europe and the colonial revolution in the East in a united world front of revolution against the world front of imperialism is inevitable.”?
They further distort Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence. Lenin’s policy was based on the following:
1) That the socialist state existed in defiance of the imperialists’ will and although it adhered to a policy of peace that the imperialists derived no peace and would seize every opportunity to oppose and destroy the socialist state.
2) That only through struggle would the Soviet state be able to live with the imperialist countries and that throughout these tests of strength the Soviet state would have to rely on the proletariat and oppressed nations of the world and utilize the contradictions among the imperialists.
3) That different principles be adopted with the various types of countries in the capitalist world paying particular attention to wars establishing friendly relations with these countries oppressed or bullied by the imperialists.
4) That the fundamental principle of Soviet foreign policy be proletarian internationalism. He said “Soviet Russia considers it her greatest pride to help the workers of the whole world in their difficult struggle for the overthrow of capitalism”.
5) That it was impossible for the oppressed classes and nations to coexist peaceful with the oppressor classes and nations.
The revisionist CPSU and their running dogs counter Lenin’s policy by holding that peaceful coexistence is the supreme principle for solving contemporary social problems. They believe that imperialism has become willing to accept peaceful coexistence; they advocate “all around co-operation” with imperialist countries and see peaceful coexistence as the basis for both the general line of foreign policy and the strategy for communism is the world. They believe peaceful co-existence is a pre-requisite for the victory of people’s revolutionary struggle and “the best way of helping the international revolutionary movement achieve its basic aims.”
This policy is in direct contradiction to Lenin’s. In The Polemic on the General line of the International Communist Movement, the Chinese comrades point out:
Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence is one followed by a socialist country in its relations with countries having different social systems, whereas Khruschchov describes peaceful coexistence as the supreme principle governing the life of modern society.
Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence constitutes one aspect of the international policy of the proletariat in power, whereas Khrushchov stretches peaceful coexistence, into the general line of foreign policy for the socialist countries and even further into the general line for all Communist Parties.
Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence was directed against the imperialist policies of aggression and war, whereas Krushchov’s peaceful coexistence caters to imperialism and abets the imperialist policies of aggression and war.
Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence is based on the stand-point of international class struggle, whereas Khrushchov’s peaceful coexistence strives to replace international class struggle with international class collaboration.
Lenin’s policy of peaceful coexistence proceeds from the historical mission of the international proletariat and therefore requires the socialist countries to give firm support to the revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed peoples and nations while pursuing this policy, whereas Khrushchov’s peaceful coexistence seeks to replace the proletarian world revolution with pacifism and thus renounces proletarian internationalism.
Comrades, there is only one road to destroying imperialism and imperialist wars. That road is an international United Front against imperialism, a world revolutionary front. This united front is a union of the oppressed nations of the world with the proletariat of the imperialist countries in a revolutionary armed onslaught against imperialism, an onslaught that will forever destroy the evil system of imperial ism and throw it into the dung heap of history.
The CPUSA continues its betrayal of Marxism-Leninism. In its main political resolution of the 20th National Convention of the CPUSA held in 1972, they state:
Here in the United States, Maoist elements are part of the anti-Soviet camp.
They also spread the false notion of armed insurrection as the only road to socialism...they repudiate the democratic anti-monopoly struggles of today, which are basic to the fight for socialism...
They propagate the diversionary doctrine that the basic conflict in modern society is not between capitalism and socialism but rather that between imperialism and oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America… they fail to understand that peaceful coexistence is a form of the class struggle on a world scale and that the alternative to it is all destroying nuclear war.... they misinterpret such disgraceful occurrences as the enthusiastic reception given to Nixon in Romania and Yugoslavia, mistakenly identifying these with peaceful coexistence.”
Comrades, ATM must plead guilty on all these counts. Detente is the continuation of the bankrupt line of “peaceful coexistence.” Detente is supposed to mean the end of imperialist war. Rather strange then that wars have continued and are continuing to this very day – Wars directly caused by imperialism e.g., Cambodia, Vietnam, Cypress, the Middle East and in the recent past, the India-Pakistan War, the 1961 invasion of Cuba, the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic by U.S. Marines, the wars in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the war in Korea in the early 50’s, the French war in Algeria, etc. No, comrades, Marxism-Leninism makes it very clear, and life has confirmed that only after mankind has eradicated imperialism will all wars be eradicated. In the meantime, the only way to prevent World War is through the “resolute exposure of imperialism, strengthening the socialist (countries), from support of national liberation movements and the peoples revolutionary struggles, for the broadest alliance of all the peace-loving countries and people of the world, and at the same time taking full advantage of the contradictions among our enemies...” in other words, only the world wide United Front Against Imperialism directly mainly at the two hegemonic super powers can avert World War.
What has the CPUSA to do with all this? These revisionists constitute the main danger to the development and success of our proletarian cause. How? by attempting to have the USNA proletariat renounce class struggle and armed overthrow of its enemies for class collaboration and pacifism. Let us take for example these sage words of arch-revisionist Gus Hall.
The essence of this moment in history, the balance of its forces, its direction, its currents and trends are all encompassed in the phrase, ’the struggle for detente.’
What has happened to proletarian revolution? What about the heroic armed struggles of the Third World countries. We had thought, along with all other Marxist-Leninists, that the Third World was the storm center of revolution, the focus of world contradictions and the leading force at this time in the world wide struggle against imperialism. But no, Mr. Hall would have us believe that, “...detente is the major factor in determining the course of world events.”!! This statement is incorrect for several reasons, among them:
1) For the imperialists, peace time politics (detente) is the continuation of imperialist wartime-politics. Peace is nothing less than the preparation for war. Detente does not prevent imperialism from being imperialism, a system of plunder and exploitation. The struggles of our Vietnamese and Cambodian comrades has shown us the only effective means of ending imperialist rule – the peoples’ armed struggle.
2) Detente or the “peaceful coexistence” of U.S. imperialism and Soviet Social-Imperialism is to determine the march of history. Well if the march of history is towards socialism than how can this march be determined by two imperialist powers? No, comrades, it is the strength and determination of the revolutionary proletariat and the oppressed peoples which as and will continue to determine the course of world events and not the “wisdom” of the Kennedys, Kissingers, or Khruschevs, or Fords and Breshnevs nor their running dogs of the Gus Hall type.
One last word on Detente; in 1974 Gus Hall was raving that detente meant more jobs for American workers. Since that time official unemployment has soared to its highest level since 1941. Unfortunately even the fine words and Utopian pipedreams of Hall and the other revisionist wizards have not been able to prevent inevitable capitalist crises. Only the overthrow of the capitalist system can do so.
Revisionism is not limited to the sniveling of the CPUSA. A study of the development of Marxism shows us that once Marxism had proven victorious over bourgeois ideology among the most advanced revolutionary elements, the bourgeois intellectuals then had to pose themselves as Marxist in order to ascertain some credibility among revolutionaries, and from this position began their attacks on Marxism. Today the modern revisionists must pose as Marxist-Leninists to carry out their role as agents of imperialism and Soviet social imperialism. After the betrayal of the CPUSA, and after the revisionists line had been consolidated within it, it became the duty of all honest Marxist-Leninists to break away from the CPUSA and begin the task of building a new Marxist-Leninist party. Within this period, grew the anti-revisionist communist movement in fierce opposition to the revisionism of the CPUSA. Since the beginning within this anti-revisionist communist movement, there has been fierce two line struggle on various questions: Party-building, United Front against Imperialism, National Question, the Leading Role of China and Albania in the international communist movement, and other burning questions. In the course of this struggle, some organizations developed their Marxist-Leninist political line. Others degenerated into the swamp of opportunism. Progressive Labor Party degenerated into Trotskyism and the Revolutionary Union became revisionist. The RU degenerated only after a long period of struggle between proletarian ideology and bourgeois ideology. In the late 1960’s and early 70’s the RU played a progressive role in the development of the anti-revisionist movement. They opposed the revisionism of the CPUSA, they upheld the leading role of the working class, they brought forward the United Front Against Imperialism as the revolutionary strategy, they supported the anti-imperialist struggles of the Third World, they also upheld the leading role of China and Albania in the international communist movement.
Why then, do we call RU’s leadership revisionist? First of all, comrades, this characterization of RU’s leadership is a serious charge. We make it not to slander the RU, the overwhelming majority of whose cadre we believe to be honest revolutionaries, but out of our communist duty to defend the foundations and universal principles of Marxism-Leninism. We want to warn all honest Marxist-Leninists of the Right danger RU’s leadership poses to the communist movement. To refuse to do so would be unprincipled on our part and a negation of our responsibilities as communists.
Comrades, the question of RU’s political line, must be examined as Marxist-Leninists examine every political question: Within the context of concrete historical conditions. For there is no truth in the abstract, only truth in the concrete. The RU1 s leadership claims to be based on the revolutionary science of the proletariat. They too, concede that the state must be destroyed, they too claim to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat. But comrades, this is not enough, for communists must be judged not by what they say, but by their political line and concrete practice around the problems facing the proletariat. The RU’s leadership knows that the armed seizure of power is not the immediate task facing the USNA communist movement within the present period, no more that the question of consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat is. Plekhenov, Kautsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev too, took “revolutionary stances” but when revolutionary questions posed themselves demanding immediate revolutionary action, they shrunk from their responsibilities and, in fact, condemned those revolutionaries who carried the revolution forward.
Since CPUSA consolidated around revisionism, the central and most urgent task confronting the communist movement is the creation of a new Marxist-Leninist Party. Without the Party, there can be no successful armed seizure of power by the working class, and no proletarian dictatorship. Another of the most burning questions in relation to this is a correct Marxist-Leninist analysis and line on the national question, which is a fundamental question for proletarian revolution in the USNA. These are the most urgent tasks facing the USNA proletariat. On these two burning questions, then we must judge the RU’s political line.
On the question of the party, Lenin’s teaching are clear; the party is the vanguard of the working class, the conscious and organized detachment of the working class, it is the highest form of class organization of the proletariat, it is the weapon of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is the conscious expression of the unity of will of the proletariat. Comrades, a Leninist party does not fall from the sky, nor is it built by chasing picket lines. A Leninist party is built in theoretical, political, and economic struggle. In this pre-party period the theoretical struggle is primary.
Why do we say this? We must look at the development of the anti-revisionist communist movement today and also learn from the history of Marxism-Leninism The first reason is that we represent a break with- the revisionism of the CPUSA. This calls for clarity on the question of revisionism and also on the Marxist-Leninist theory and strategy of proletarian revolution i.e., the science of Marxism-Leninism. The upsurge of the masses both at home and internationally places us in a situation similar to what the Bolsheviks faced when Lenin wrote, “the mass movement places before us new theoretical political and organizational tasks, far more complicated than those that might have satisfied us.”
In order to lead this movement, communists must be armed with the science of Marxism-Leninism. When the genuine Marxists of Lenin’s time made their break with the “legal Marxists”, a situation prevailed where the young Marxist forces had become overwhelmed by tremendous upsurge in the spontaneous working class movement. Their lack of sound theoretical grounding prepared the soil for the opportunist trends represented by the economists and Bernsteinians to spread confusion in their ranks, trends which praised the state of confusion and spontaneity. Lenin, in addressing himself to this problem stated in What Is To Be Done?:
The question now arises...What should have been the task of these who desired to oppose opportunism, in deeds and not merely in words? First of all, they should have made efforts to resume the theoretical work that the period of legal Marxism had only just begun, and that has now again fallen on the shoulders of the illegal workers. Without such work the successful growth of the movement was impossible.
There is another reason for the primacy of theory in this period. In a country where the people, and particularly the labor movement, has been oriented towards a philosophy of pragmatism, socialist ideology will root itself in the working class only through a protracted and hard fought struggle. This demands that communists first and foremost respect the role of theory and place it in its proper place; i.e., that of leading and giving direction to the spontaneous movement.
What this calls for concretely are the following: struggling to master the teachings of scientific socialism and applying these to the concrete problems facing the proletarian revolution, struggling for theoretical clarity on these questions while struggling for the unity of all honest Marxist-Leninists; it calls for the thorough exposure and routing of all opportunists both “left” and right; it calls for winning over the most advanced elements from among the ranks of the proletariat and revolutionary intellectuals; this means rooting ourselves in the factories, and trade unions as primary, taking our line to the advanced workers, building factory nuclei and trade union fractions to carry out our political line and testing it and enriching it in practice. All of these tasks are component parts of party building and necessitate our integration in the class struggle of the proletariat and in fact they are a part of the class struggle of the proletariat.
How does RU’s leadership respond to this historic task of Party building facing the communist movement? To start with they violate almost every one of Lenin’s positions on party building and in fact negate the party principle laid out in What is To Be Done. Like the economists of Lenin’s time they can no longer negate the need for a party. Like the economists of that day they too see the role of the party not as the ideological and political leader of the proletariat; not as the organization whose task is to link socialism to the working class movement and give it a conscious planned character, but rather as one of tailing the spontaneous movement. Do they speak of bringing Marxism-Leninism to the advanced workers and ideologically winning them to communism? Do they call for raising the theoretical level of their cadre or the communist movement with their empiricist and anti-theory line? No, this is what they refer to as “building a party in a closet.” Do they call for building factory nuclei or trade union fractions? No, they call for intermediate anti-imperialists (essentially economist) organizations and student organizations where “anti-imperialist consciousness” is primary which will serve to link the spontaneity of all struggles they are tailing after. Do they grasp the revolutionary role of a Marxist-Leninist party? No, they view it as a necessary evil that only became necessary a year ago and which will “for a short period ahead” divert them from building the spontaneous mass movement.
The RU’s work among farmworkers is an excellent example of their bowing to spontaneity and refusal to really make party building the central task. In Salinas, California they continue to “build the mass movement,” not concentrating on party building. The RU’ s attempt at propaganda, a pamphlet analysing the farm worker struggle called Si Se Puede, is lowered to the level of the masses of its readers, and not used to reach the advanced. This pamphlet in particular, does not contain one sentence on the party, the question of state power or of Marxism-Leninism. By focusing on trade unionism and generalities on imperialism, it fails to raise political consciousness. What’s more important, it fails to draw forth advanced workers. Because the RU believes that workers are incapable of grasping the science of Marxism-Leninism, the RU focuses on slogans like “squeeze the freeze” and “Throw the Bum out” and carrying out the political line of the organization?
He has marched, demonstrated, lead endless leafleting and petition drives, while making sure everyone from union bureaucrats to company officials know he’s a communist. When this communist was fired by the company, what was the response of the masses? A spontaneous, collective yawn. Here is the end result of failure to carry out party building as the central task. The R.U. belittles the role of the subjective factor even further. Party building is a task that is a continuous one as long as the new party exists, as long as classes exists, as long as the danger of capitalist restoration exists, the party will have to struggle against all deviations from Marxism-Leninism. Further, the RU’s lone claims that the party will spring forth from the spontaneous mass movement, that it will be based on the quantitative economic advances of the masses. The RU writes: “we stress the point of building the party on the advances and what has been learned from the mass struggle...“ (Red Papers 6 pg. 5) The ATM Unity Statement clearly lays out our position on this question:
The new revisionists claim that on the one hand the party must lead the masses and also claim that the party will spring from the mass movement on the other. To state that the party will come from the mass movement, that it must be based upon the advances of the mass movement (i.e., that the advances of the masses will be the foundations is to admit that from its very inception the spontaneous struggles of the masses will build the party, that in essence the party will be tailing the spontaneous movement.
Our position on the other hand is that a communist party is a union of the working class movement with Socialism but that the subjective factor is the leading factor in the revolution i.e. consciousness (socialist ideology), organization (the party), and direction (theory) and that this is precisely the revolutionizing and guiding force of the working class movement. Lenin states: “without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement...the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.
Red Papers 6 is an excellent exposure of RU’s opportunist line. If they hadn’t published their “credo” it would have been necessary for us to have done so, for no greater exposition can be found (outside of CL’s publications) of opportunist se1f-exposure. Let’s look at some of the gems to be found there.
They start out by identifying “pessimism and demoralization” as characterizing a trend in the communist movement. They see this as being so important that is must be proven to be “unfounded.” Why do they feel this question is important enough to be discussed? A closer look at this provides us the answer. First they fail to note that pessimism and demoralization are not the outlook of the proletariat but the outlook of the petty-bourgeoisie but they are compelled to raise this question because it is precisely this strata that forms the social composition of the RU. To identify the social base of this ideology is to expose the social base of the RU and its outlook. They see the present situation as follows:
But a careful, objective look at the present situation shows that this pessimism and demoralization are unfounded. Have all of us made many mistakes, some of them pretty serious? We certainly have. Have we been plagued by a tremendous amount of sectarianism in our ranks that has made unity a hard thing to achieve? We certainly have. Have we also been plagued by opportunism of all stripes that has succeeded somewhat in confusing some people and also made unity hard to achieve? Yes, we have.
What they refuse to mention however is that these errors have ideological roots and that the low ideological level of the communist movement becomes the soil on which many deviations of Marxism can grow. That it is only by arming ourselves with Marxist-Leninist theory that we can identify these “foul weeds.” Why don’t they realize this? Why don’t they expose this anti-theory line that has for so long characterized the communist movement? On the same page they lay it out.
For example, if we had been content simply to shut ourselves away in little rooms somewhere and study Marxism Leninism in isolation from the mass struggle, then we obviously wouldn’t be running into the difficulties and obstacles we are running into today. But we also wouldn’t be learning from being in the class struggle itself, from applying Marxism-Leninism in practice; we wouldn’t be learning from the masses and many of the advances of our struggle would not have happened”.
In the second sentence they say that they apply Marxism-Leninism in practice but this is a cruel trick they play on the young communist forces. We will expose this concretely below.
Let’s deal with the first sentence. Here they characteristically tie the study of Marxism-Leninism to “isolation from the mass struggle.” This is a thinly veiled attack on the role of theory, on the importance of studying Marxism-Leninism. Communists never stand for “isolation from mass struggles.” The communist position on the party is that a Communist Party is the union of the working class movement with socialism. What communists must in fact do is to study the concrete historical conditions facing the proletariat and then establish the proper relationship between the objective and subjective factors. But communists do not counter pose them as RU does on the right and CL did on the “left”, (we will discuss how CL does this further on in this presentation.)
Let’s look at this first sentence and delete just two phrases, the two phrases that RU uses to mask their attack on theory. The two phrases we will delete are:
1) “been content simply to”
2) “in isolation from the mass struggle” The sentence now reads:
For example, if we had...shut ourselves away in little rooms somewhere and study Marxism-Leninism...then we obviously wouldn’t be running into difficulties and obstacles we are running into today.
And this is precisely what they attempt to obscure or attack. Imagine, comrades, going into a little room somewhere and studying Marxism-Leninism – What a horrifying thought! This trick of theirs, of throwing in these cute phrases in order to attack the role of theory both for communists and advanced workers, is used throughout their publications. They use this over and over again and it is only by unmasking them that their contempt for theory is exposed. This demands that we arm ourselves with theory, with the science of the proletariat in order to expose and route their opportunism from the communist movement.
The RU claims in the second sentence to by applying Marxism-Leninism. We hold that their practice is economist. But let’s give the RU a chance to expose itself. On page 116 Red Papers 6 they begin their analysis of the Farah Strike. On page 119 under the heading “strikers unity and consciousness grows” they state:
Meanwhile, the unity and consciousness of the Farah strikers continued to grow. On July 15, the strikers organized and led a workers’ rally in support of the strike, the first workers rally in El Paso history. As one women striker at the rally said, “We were told that Chicanos could never get together. But he (Willie Farah) was wrong because we are here. We are few but we represent many and not only Chicanos. We now have many friends Japanese, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, Chinese, Black and White.
We agree that this shows unity and consciousness, but the question is, what type of consciousness – bourgeois or proletarian? We hold that it is still not proletarian consciousness, that it is trade union consciousness. Trade Union consciousness is bourgeois ideology because it deals with the struggle between the workers and capitalists over the sale of the commodity called labor power! It restricts the struggle of the working class to a struggle over the price of this commodity and therefore condemns the working class to perpetual wage slavery. Yet this is precisely the consciousness that RU praises.
When we condemn this line of economism of worshipping the spontaneity of the working class movement, RU is forced to immediately retreat to the side of the bourgeoisie by bringing up the question of their claustrophobia those little rooms they’re afraid to enter where communists and workers study Marxism-Leninism.
Lenin states in What is to Be Done: “This shows...that all worship of the spontaneity of the working-class movement, all belittling of the role of the ’conscious element,’ of the role of social democracy, means, quite irrespective of whether the belittler wants to or not, strengthening the influence of the bourgeois ideology over the workers.”
Comrades, the Farah strike was a very important struggle on the part of the Chicano sector of the U.S. proletariat. In struggling against RU’s opportunism we must not make the error of underestimating the significance of this struggle. But it is important that we place this struggle in proper perspective. Again Lenin:
The strikes of the ’nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness: definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and examples in other places were discussed, etc. While the riots were simply revolts of the oppressed, the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, but not yet Social-Democratic struggles. They testified to the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers, but the workers were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the ’nineties, in spite of the enormous progress they represented as compared with the riots, remained a purely spontaneous movement.
Further down in Red Papers 6 RU mentions how some Farah strikers participated in a El Paso demonstration protesting a police murder. RU continues to underestimate the working class. It would probably shock them to know that hundreds of Chicano workers and workers of other nationalities marched in the August 29, 1970 Moratorium in opposition to the imperialist aggression in Vietnam – steelworkers, autoworkers, farmworkers, rubber workers, construction workers, refinery workers, etc, and they did this without the RU or any other communist group organizing them. RU continues on the same page:
In their speeches at the meetings and rallies, the two strikers emphasized the unity of their struggles with the struggles of other workers and oppressed peoples, especially the farmworkers, and that “We’re fighting with all strikes.
These two strikers were very open and straight forward – “We’re fighting with all strikes.” This is trade unionism pure and simple. This is the consciousness that RU plays up, tails after, bows to and worships. How did Lenin see political consciousness?
Working-class consciousness cannot be genuinely political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases, without exception, of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected. Moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic, and not from any other point of view. The consciousness of the masses of the workers cannot be genuine class consciousness, unless the workers learn to observe from concrete, and above all from topical (current), political facts and events, every other social class and all the manifestations of the intellectual, ethical, and political life of these classes; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata and groups of the population. Those who concentrate the attention, observation and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not social-democrats. (Our emphasis – ATM)
Now let’s compare this with the striker’s very frank statement: “We’re fighting with all strikes.” There it is, trade union consciousness – not socialist consciousness.
In these rallies and demonstrations, what is it that the RU worships? Let them speak for themselves: “The spirit was strong and militant, with cries of “Huelga!” and “Boycott Farah!” and sustained hand-clapping and foot stomping.” and
The spirit of the Farah strike and the support it has sparked was brought home in a moving moment of the Chicago meeting, when a Latino worker speaking for a Farah support group in his plant, called a Black worker, a White worker and a Chicano farmworker up to the stage, so they could stand together arms linked and fists upraised. This truly symbolized the growing unity and consciousness that the Farah strike and many other struggles are helping to buiId.
Comrades, it is good when workers can unite in struggle, but it is wrong for communists to confuse essentially trade unionist consciousness with proletarian consciousness. Nowhere will we find Lenin or Stalin, defining the criteria for political consciousness as arm linking, fist raising, hand clapping, and foot stomping.
Comrades, on nearly every question regarding the party, RU’s line either openly or covertly refutes and revises the teachings of Lenin on the party. RU’s line tails spontaneity, is economist, belittles theory and consciousness belittles the role of the conscious element, fails to impart socialist consciousness on the working class movement and in fact stands opposed to it; it belittles the struggle for ideological development and theoretical clarity; it bases its position on the party on tailing the spontaneous movement; it holds that consciousness will develop from within the mass movement; it counterposes intermediate forms of organization to communist nuclei in the factories, Comrades, this bankrupt line of the RU can only be characterized as economist, right opportunist and revisionist! The RU leadership has bowed to spontaneity so long, they don’t need further study; they need a chiropractor!
This revisionism of the RU is also carried over into the National Question. Revisionism and right opportunism on the National Question is not restricted to the RU and we will find where both the CPUSA and CLP also come to unity with RU on this question. But first, let’s discuss why the national question is of such importance.
The question must be examined as Marxist-Leninists examine any question, i.e. within the context of concrete historical conditions. Since the betrayal of the CPUSA and the consolidation of revisionism within it, it has been the task of Marxists-Leninists to build a new communist party. In the struggle for the party, the fundamental question has been on the’ proper relationship between the objective and subjective factors in the revolution and this touches on every question facing the communist movement. And this is what lies at he base of the split within the anti-revisionist communist movement.
What then is the significance of the National Question; Why is it so important in this period? There are three main reasons. First, although there is only one single proletarian class in the USNA it is a multi-national proletariat. From this we can draw three conclusion: (a) that a principled relationship of proletarian internationalism must serve as the basis of uniting the class which is presently divided; (b) that the leader in the struggle to unite the class in its struggle for power must be a new communist party and (c) that the party itself will be multi-national.
Secondly, the main ally of the proletariat in the struggle for power will be the oppressed nationalities. This demands that communists have a thorough and clear understanding of the relationship of proletarian revolution and the liberation of the oppressed nationalities. Any attempt to undermine this relationship serves to sabotage the proletarian revolution. The tactic of the United Front Against Imperial ism wi11 establish the proper relationship. The United Front Against Imperialism unites all who can be united in the struggle to overthrow the state, but does not serve as the basis for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The National Question is carried over and further developed after the overthrowing of the State.
The revolutionary alliance of the working people of the various nationalities serves as the first and fundamental basis for the new socialist order–the dictatorship of the proletariat. We will lay out the following historical analogy.
The revolutionary alliance of the workers and peasants served as the basic strategy for the Bolshevik revolution and as the first and fundamental basis for the dictatorship of the proletariat. So today we must struggle against the Trotskyites and revisionists who undermine or sabotage the revolutionary alliance of the proletariat and the oppressed nationalities. This is a fundamental question (strategy)
Third, the national question is a profoundly revolutionary question in and of itself. In the first period of the national question (prior to WW I) it was seen as part of the bourgeois democratic revolution. In the era of imperialism it became the task of communists to struggle to place the oppressed nationality proletariat, (under the leadership of the new party) into the leadership of the liberation struggle of the oppressed nationalities. But even if the proletariat does not enjoy hegemony within the national movement, communists must still uphold the right of nations to self determination, i.e. to political and territorial secession. “This does not mean of course, that the proletariat must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as they tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism and not to strengthen and preserve it.”
Now how is this connected to party building? Why must this question be struggled out in the pre-party period?
The first step in party building in this period calls for clarity, drawing firm and definite lines of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism on the one hand and all forms of revisionism and opportunism on the other. Historical conditions determine the various forms or “national characteristics” that opportunism will assume. In the USNA there are two basic conditions giving rise to this opportunism. First, super-profits attained by the USNA imperialists through their plunder and super exploitation of the world’s peoples lays the material basis for the bribery, bourgeoisification, and chauvinism, and opportunism of a narrow upper strata of the USNA working class. This labor aristocracy, in turn, helps divide the working class. The opportunism and chauvinism also affects the petty-bourgeoisie and the intellectuals.
The second basic condition is national oppression. We must see this too, through its historical development. For example, the annexation of the Southwest by the USNA (laid the material basis for national oppression of Chicanos). US imperialists ripped off the land and its wealth (gold, copper, silver, oil, etc) They extracted super profits from the working class and the peasantry.
The super profits raked in by the imperialists through their plunder of the colonies and dependent nations, coupled with the super exploitation of the oppressed nations and peoples at home lays the material basis for chauvinism, revisionism and opportunism at home.
The communist movement does not live in a vacuum and it too is continually bombarded with bourgeois ideology both from the outside and from within.
But communists must struggle against chauvinism, opportunism, revisionism and narrow nationalism in the struggle for the party. We must put forward the basis for the principled unity of the class and new party. We must expose erroneous and opportunist theories which serve to weaken or destroy the struggle of the proletariat. Without this, all talk about uniting the class, building the party or struggling against imperialism are meaningless and empty phrases and postures.
It is not within the scope of this presentation to lay out our position on the Black or Chicano national questions. What we intend to do here is to carry out the struggle against revisionism on these questions. Therefore we will be limiting our discussion to this. On the national question, ATM’s positions is based on Lenin’s and Stalin’s teaching on the national question. We uphold the right of nations to political secession, their right to form independent states On the Afro-American National Question in particular, we recognize the existence of an oppressed Afro-American Nation within the Black belt South which has the right to political secession from the U.S. multi-national state. Let there be no confusion we state that if Afro-Americans in the Black Belt South were to raise the demand for political secession today, ATM would staunchly uphold and defend their right to secede and to form and independent state.
We will clarify here what the proper role of communists is in regard to the question of secession, especially in light of the distortions of this question by the RU, CP, and CLP. By upholding the right of secession we do not advocate secession. However we also do not oppose secession. What we say is that if the Afro-American nation wishes to secede it has the right to do so and that it is the duty of communists to defend and uphold that right.
CLP’s distortion is based on their erroneous view of the right to self determination. They call for independence for the Negro Nation. They state: ’’There is but one scientific and revolutionary demand around the Negro National Colonial Question. That is independence for the Negro Nation. That independence is necessary before any real self determination can proceed. Self determination means freedom to choose. This freedom to choose doesn’t mean anything unless a nation is free to choose, i.e., independent.”
They are totally incorrect when self-determination is won by the Afro-American nation, it may decide to secede or not secede i.e. they may decide against independence. Independence and self-determination are not the same thing. The Comintern very clearly stated in the 1930 resolution on the Negro Question in the United States:
If it desires to separate it must be free to do so; but if it prefers to remain federated with the United States it must also be free to do that. This is the correct meaning of the idea of self-determination, and it must be recognized quite independently of whether the United States is still a capitalist state or whether a proletarian dictatorship has already been established there.
CLP knows what this means very clearly. They simply choose to distort the meaning of self-determination. They refuse to explain why the Comintern was wrong in its formulation and why CLP’s slogan is correct. We can only conclude that in spite of CLP’s attacks on the “Bundists.” they themselves have already concluded that the multi-national proletariat is incapable of unity, either before or after a socialist revolution.
Comrades, RU has recently published a so-called “draft programme” for the party of the U.S. working class. The programme includes an attempt by the R.U. to cover up their chauvinist and revisionist position on the National Question. A careful study of their “new” position reveals that fundamentally R.U. has changed nothing. Therefore, we will first analyse their original position on the National Question (both Afro-American and Chicano) and then expose the chauvinist essence of their recent position.
RU on the other hand, liquidates the national question in a very sophisticated manner. “Theoretically” they uphold the right to self-determination. In Red Papers 6 they state:
Finally on this question–from the standpoint of achieving minimum unity to build the Party–it is not necessary to hold strictly to Black people being a nation in terms of the five criteria laid out by Stalin.” Just what are the five criteria the RU prefers to not adhere to?
A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture....
It must be emphasised that none of the above characteristics taken separately is sufficient to define a nation. More than that, it is sufficient to define a nation. More than that, it is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be lacking and the nation ceases to be a nation.
We hold to Stalin’s definition of a nation as still valid. By attacking Stalin’s definition the RU liquidates the Black National Question altogether. Stalin’s definition is the only Marxist definition of a nation. Why this attempt to revise the Marxist definition of a nation? They continue on page 11:
The heart of our analysis is that on the one hand Black people are an oppressed nation of a new type overwhelmingly workers, dispersed throughout the US, but concentrated in urban industrial areas, with real but deformed class structure.
What does “dispersion” mean? It means that there is no longer a common territory. If we accept this definition of a dispersed nation, we are saying that it is no longer necessary for a nation to have a common territory. And if there is no common territory then it no longer meets the five criteria Stalin laid out and as a consequence,” ... it is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be lacking and the nation ceases to be a nation.” Comrade Stalin points out:
Bauer’s point of view, which identifies a nation with its national character, divorces the nation from its soil and converts it into an invisible, self contained force. The result is not a living active nation, but something mystical, intangible, and super natural. For I repeat, what sort of nation, for instance, is a Jewish nation which consists of Georgian, Daghestanian, Russian, American and other Jews (since they speak different languages) inhabit different parts of the globe, will never see each other, and will never act together, whether in time of peace or in time of war?
No, it is not for such paper “nations” that Social Democracy draws up its national program. It can reckon only with real nations, which act and moves, and therefore insist on being reckoned with.
Although Stalin touches on a number of points, the question of common territory is made clear. Nations are real and concrete. But precisely the point that Stalin condemns is the point that RU upholds. In Red Papers 5, they state:
Their culture, based on their common historical and present day experience as a people, is still a single culture, whatever part of the country they inhabit. It is possible for them to unite into a ’single national union’? We believe it still is.
So there we have it, comrades, an outright revision of the Marxist-Leninist definition of a nation. Interestingly enough, their position just cited above, is in fact a Bundist position. And yet they turn around and call us Bundist! In calling for the creation of a party in Red Papers 6, they ask all honest Marxist-Leninist not to uphold Stalin’s five criteria, to be liberal and opportunist in fact chauvinist and revisionist, in coming together to form the RU’s party.
In their recently published draft programme, although, the RU doesn’t believe that Afro-Americans constitute an oppressed nation as laid out by Stalin, they feel compelled to recognize Afro-American right to self-determination. The mass upsurge of Afro-American peoples struggles along with growth of Marxist-Leninist consciousness among black advanced workers has forced the RU to pay lip service to “self-determination.” Recently, the RU has even had to start talking about the Black Belt as the Afro-American homeland.
Though the majority of Black people have been dispersed from their homeland in the US, millions remain in this ’black Belt’ area, mainly in the cities and millions in the North still have ties with the South. Though the majority of Blacks living in the North were born there, 3 in 10 were born in the South, most in the ’Black Belt’ area. For all these reasons the working class and its party upholds the right of Black people to return to and reclaim their homeland.
So Afro-American people, can reconstitute themselves if they return to their original state. Comrades, this is simply a sneaky way of denying Afro-American the true right to self-determination. A nation either exists or it doesn’t. Nowhere in history can the RU point to a nation which dissolved when people moved away and then reconstituted itself when people came back. This slightly new formulation is only a cover for the dispersed nation theory.
The RU goes further:
The proletariat and its party in the US upholds the right of Black people to self-determination, the right to secede from the rest of the US and set up a separate state in the general area of the ’Black Belt.’
But at the same time the proletariat and its party does not advocate this separation nor favor it under present and foreseeable conditions. Nor does it see that reconstituting Black people in the deep South in order to exercise their right of self-determination is the main thrust and highest goal of the Black people’s struggle. Self-determination is a legitimate demand for Black people, but it is not the main demand”.
The RU then goes on to say that the main demands are for democratic rights, an end to national and class exploitation. Comrades, here to RU’s position stands out in bold relief. They are for the right to self-determination, but against separation “under any present and forseeable conditions.” The question of whether to succeed or not is one to be decided by Black people themselves, not the geniuses of the RU. This position of the RU is chauvinist to the core.
The RU’s position runs directly counter to Lenin and Stalin and to the position of the Comintern 1930 resolution:
As long as capitalism rules in the United States the communists cannot come out against governmental segregation of the Negro Zone from the United States. They recognize that this separation from the imperialist United States would be preferable, from the stand point of the national interests of the Negro population, to their present oppressed state, and therefore, the communists are ready at any time to offer all their support if only the working masses of the Negro population are ready to take up the struggle for governmental independence of the Black Belt.
RU’s position refutes Marxism-Leninism. They claim that there is a new third period and a new stage in the development of the national question and that these have emerged nations of a completely new type that Lenin and Stalin could not have foreseen and whose writings are no longer completely applicable (Red Papers 5, Pg 37), and therefore, must be revised by the new geniuses and “creative” Marxist within RU’s leadership. Comrades we will now show how RU’s position on this question is chauvinist and revisionist. The RU basis its position on the following theses:
1. That Black people have been dispersed from the Black Belt South into the urban centers of the North.
2. That the social composition of the Afro-American nation and national minority has been changed from overwhelming peasant to overwhelming working class.
3. That the social composition of the Afro-American nation have been not for secession but for general democratic demands.
From these three theses they draw the following erroneous conclusions:
1. That the Afro-American nation has lost its right to secession because (a) most blacks no longer live there; (b) Blacks are overwhelmingly working class therefore the Black National Question has been transformed into a “proletarian” question, (c) That since secession was not at the heart of the spontaneous struggles of the sixties (which had no communist leadership) that Blacks have forfeited their right to secede.
2. That there is a new third stage in the national question, just as the second period negated the first period, the third period is the (mechanical) negation of the negation.
3. That in this third period the teachings of Lenin and Stalin are no longer applicable, that they must be revised; and to uphold them is dogmatic and mechanical.
4. That in this new third period the question has once more been transformed into an internal state problem, as it was in the first period.
We have already shown how RU’s line is revisionist. Now we will now continue to show the basis for this position.
1. Whatever quantitative changes occur within the Afro-American Nation this is not enough to cause a change in the presentation and essence of the national question in general.
In other words, the transformation of the national question from an internal state question, into an international question linked to the question of the colonies was based on Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism, on world historic changes. The RU cites no world historic changes that would transform the national question in the US back into an internal state problem. This is a very important point. We hold to Stalin’s definition of Leninism as “Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.” We hold that the era has not changed. As Comrade Chou En-lai stated in the political report of the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China:
Since Lenin’s death, the world situation has undergone great changes, but the era has not changed. The fundamental principles of Leninism are not outdated, they remain the theoretical basis guiding our thinking today.
So where does RU find the basis for a third period or its “new theory”? There is nothing new about it. It is the same as the position of the revisionists of the Second International, the same as Kautsky’s and the same as the modern revisionists. Only the disguise has changed. The essence remains revisionist.
RU basis its position on empirical data which reveal primarily quantitative changes in the Afro-American nation. Imperialism often drives oppressed nationalities out of their homeland. In all oppressed nations and colonies, there is a tendency towards cutting down the peasantry and building up the working class. Does the RU believe that the Palestinian Nation, for example, has ceased to exist because the Zionists have driven the Palestinians off their land? Have not many Palestinians become workers in neighboring Arab countries and inside Israel? The RU’s position is chauvinist and revisionist because it makes an exception for a nation oppressed by the RU’s “own bourgeoisie.”
The RU attempts to justify its “dispersed nation” theory by claiming that the US is in a new third stage of the national question. Marxist-Leninists agree that during the first period of the national question, before WWI, the national question was primarily an internal state problem and part of the general democratic revolution. During the second stage, after the Bolshevik Revolution, the national question became part of the world socialist revolution. Now the RU wants us to believe that we are in a new third stage when the national question has become an internal stage problem once again. Therefore the teachings of Lenin and Stalin are no longer strictly applicable.
Whatever quantitative changes have occurred within the Afro-American Nation, this is not enough to cause a change in the essence of the national question from the first period to the second period was based on world historic changes: the rise of imperialism and the necessity of linking national liberation struggle with proletarian revolution. The RU cites no such world historic changes that would transform the national question back into an internal state problem.
Finally, by stating that the “essential thrust of the Black Liberation movement has not been for secession and that therefore the main demands are for democratic rights is chauvinist, right opportunist, and revisionist. Just because the main content of the struggle of the masses of oppressed Afro-Americans has been for reformist, general democratic demands does not mean that communists must tail after this spontaneous struggle. RU makes tailism and the worship of spontaneity a principle. In the labor movement they worship the spontaneity of the working class and those would bring Marxism-Leninism to the workers are condemned as “dogmatist”. In the national movement they worship the spontaneity of the oppressed nationalities a little more carefully. Anyone who would attempt to bring revolutionary content to these struggles is called a “Bundist”. How should communist approach this question of general democratic demands or partial demands?
The CI’s 1930 resolution on the Negro National Question makes this clear:
...The slogan for the right of self-determination and the other fundamental slogans of the Negro question in the Black Belt do not exclude but rather pre-suppose an energetic development of the struggle for concrete partial demands linked up with the daily needs and afflictions of wide masses of working Negros. In order to avoid, in this connection, the danger of opportunist back-slidings. Communists must above all remember this:
(a) The direct aims and partial demands around which a partial struggle develops are to be linked up in the course of the struggle with the revolutionary fundamental slogans brought up by the question of power, in a popular manner corresponding to the mood of the masses, (confiscation of the big landholdings, establishment of governmental unity of the Black Belt right of self-determination of the Negro population in the Black Belt.)
Yet, when communists put this correct line into practice the RU immediately labels them “Bundists,” “liars,” “worse than poverty pimps.” etc. Why such a venomous attack by the RU?
Because, essentially, they take the same position as the social chauvinists and social imperialists of the Second and two and a half Internationals. In words, these social democrats “upheld” the rights of nations to self-determination, but in deeds they staunchly supported political and territorial integrity of their respective states. And essentially this is what the RU is doing on the national question in the US. Their starting point on the presentation of the question is not the rights of nations to self-determination. And they openly admit this. In reality their starting point on the presentation of the question is the territorial integrity of the USNA multinational state.
Up until their draft programme was published the RU upheld the position that Chicanos constituted a nation. In Red Papers 2, 4 and 5 they toss out that Chicanos are a nation, in the Draft Programme they completely reject their earlier theory and declare that Chicanos are a national minority. We ask has their been a change in objective conditions? If their previous position was incorrect, where is a principled self-criticism from the RU “theoreticians”? by simply rejecting their earlier theory the RU cannot escape the fact that their original position was chauvinist. If in theory the RU held that Chicanos were a nation and had the right of self-determination, their practice then would have been a reflection of that theory. In practice they discarded it. An excellent example...
An excellent example of this is their practice around the Farah strike. In summarizing this in Red Papers 6 they state:
The key political points we felt should be brought out were: 1) that the Farah strike was an important battle in the overall class war between the working class and the monopoly capitalist ruling class and the state apparatus... 2) that the Farah strike also represented “an important battle in the overall struggle of the Chicano people against their national oppression at the hands of this same monopoly ruling class; and 3) that the entire US working class must support the Farah strike because it is both an important battle in the overall class struggle and also an important struggle against national oppression which the entire multi-national working class must take up...
There we have it. They long ago recognized the existence of a Chicano nation and claimed that they must uphold the right of self-determination. Here in laying out the ”key political points” they recognize the strike as part of the struggle against national oppression. Yet they don’t even raise the question of self-determination. Not once in the almost two year long struggle did these social-chauvinists raise the question of self-determination. Not once did they point out that the material basis for the national oppression lay in the annexation of the Southwest by the USNA, the expropriation of the land and its wealth, together with the super-exploitation of the working class and the peasantry through whose toil the riches of the region and super profits were realized. Not once did they lay out the basis for the equality and revolutionary unity of the class. These social-chauvinists leaders are nothing but traitors to the class. It’s one thing to picket, pass out leaflets, to link arms and raise fists,to hand clap and foot stomp but let’s not get carried away. If you raise the question of self-determination you might fall into that “Bundist” marsh of proletarian internationalism. There is essentially no difference on this question between the RU and the CPUSA. The CPUSA states in their 1970 resolution:
The Communist Party wholeheartedly supports these struggles of the Chicano people. It recognizes that they are not only central to all struggles in the Southwest but of concern to the entire country....
Among other things the Party must fight to secure the full support of organized labor to the struggles of Chicano workers. The demand must be raised for protection of the rights of immigrants and commutor labor–for full application of all federal labor laws to these as well as resident workers.
So the CPUSA has also discovered the “essential thrust” of the Chicano National Question. And this is where the social-chauvinist, right opportunist and revisionists CPUSA and RU unite.
And so comrades, on the two most burning questions facing the communist movement the question of the Party and the national question, the RU’s leadership has launched an attack on the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism and those who uphold those principles as dogmatists. And like agents of the bourgeoisie have done throughout the history of the communist movement, they too hide behind Marxist phraseology, they too pose as Marxist-Leninists.
Why is it that they have been able to get away with this? There are two primary reasons. First because they agree with such things as armed insurrection as the only road to socialism, i.e., questions that are not immediate tasks of the communist movement. By taking these general revolutionary postures they gain credibility within the anti-revisionists communist movement and from this position they are then able to attack and subvert the essence of Marxism-Leninism on the most burning questions that face the communist movement today.
Secondly, and most importantly, they are able to take advantage of the extremely low ideological and theoretical level of the forces in the anti-revisionist communist movement.
Historically US communists have had a low theoretical level. We must struggle to raise our ideological and theoretical level in order to move the communist movement forward and to be able to recognize opportunists and their revising of Marxism-Leninism, regardless of how clever their disguised might be.
Now we understand why the RU finds it necessary to belittle the role of theory in the communist movement the RU in essence tries to place fetters on the theoretical development of this movement.
The betrayal of the October revolution by the revisionists of the CPSU was carried out by a new bourgeoisie that developed and grew under the conditions of capitalist encirclement and socialist development in the Soviet Union. It is not the old bourgeoisie who laid in hiding for forty years as claimed by the League for Proletarian Revolution, now a part of CLP. As the Albanian comrades lay out, a new bourgeoisie emerged from within the apparatus of the state, party and the management of production. It is not within the scope of this presentation to go into the development of the restoration of Capitalism in the USSR. We wish to merely point out the social base of this ideology. It was from these positions of authority that this new class arose. A class divorced from work in production, a class enjoying relative privileges and authority, which developed a bourgeois outlook. When the opportunity arose it usurped power in the Soviet Union. After usurping power it began its purge of the Bolsheviks within the party. They began with Comrade Beria of the State’s Security Forces and later purged comrades Kaganovich and Molotov. They then turned on the proletarian elements within the lower levels of the party, purging the majority, while recruiting members of management and other bourgeois strata into the party and made anew class analysis. Intellectuals were now part of proletariat, regardless of their relations to production. In order to continue their attack on the proletariat from the right, just as the Trotskyites attacked from the left, the new bourgeoisie viciously attacked and slandered comrade Stalin. They attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat and the principles of Marxism-Leninism and came forward with their revisionist line of:
1) Party of the whole people
2) state of the whole people
3) peaceful transition peaceful coexistence
The revisionists throughout the world, especially in imperialist countries where bribery and social democratic traditions prevailed, began attacks on Marxism Leninism within their own parties. Why were the revisionists successful in the CPUSA? Because of the social composition of the Party and because the revisionism of Browder had never been thoroughly uprooted. The CPUSA had already liquidated its factory nuclei and trade union fractions. The party underwent a purge in 1950 that threw out mostly workers from the ranks of the party. What was left? Primarily party union hacks and petty bourgeois elements. As late as 1970 the CPUSA was still lamenting its non-working class base:
Especially noteworthy is the fact that the Party has made substantial headway in turning its face to the working class in becoming more decisively a working-class party.
And two years later Gus Hall was still sniveling:
We do not have fully a class bent in our Party. We do not have fully a working-class mentality in our party and in our leadership. That we are a working-class party does not come through, very often. I was thinking, when Comrade Bill was speaking about the auto plant and about the workers pinning certain articles up on the bulletin boards on department walls, that it is for those people that we should be writing and to whom we should be speaking. Exactly those people. That’s what we should be doing. If we write for them, everybody else will understand it. But we don’t do that/That’s not in our minds because we are not oriented in that direction.
We raise the question in particular in relation to the social composition of the leadership of the RU. It is no accident that both the political line and the social composition the RU leadership are both bourgeois and petty-bourgeois. RU cadre have correctly pointed out that what is key is not social background, but political line. This is true, but comrades lets not be idealists, social consciousness is determined by social being as Marx pointed out. It is a protracted struggle for the petty bourgeoisie to intellectually transcend the limitations imposed upon it by the material conditions of petty bourgeois existence. The political line of the RU fully corresponds to the social composition of its leadership. As Comrade Mao Tse Tung points out, they must be struggled against before they recreate the party in their own image.
In IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM Lenin laid out the social bases for the betrayal of the parties of the Second International. He showed how the imperialist countries were able to bribe the upper strata of the working class. He referred to the writing of Engel of the bourgeoisification of a certain strata of the English working class which was based upon the colonial monopoly that England enjoyed at the time. Today the working class in the U.S. is in a similar situation. U.S. is not only imperialist but it is a super power. From this position it has been able to bribe a far wider strata of the U.S. working class than other capitalist countries, (however in relation to the class as a whole, this bribed strata still represents a small section of the class. This has been the material basis for the bourgeoisification of this strata of the working class. The right opportunist line holds that there is insignificant or no bribery at all, rather than seeing this as a social phenomenon with a material basis in the era of imperialism. By playing down or liquidating this question they hide the fact that this strata is well entrenched strategically within the working class that this labor aristocracy is the social prop of imperialism within the class and that from this position it carries’ out its task of perpetuating and fanning the divisions within the class, of confusing, misleading and betraying the working class. To gloss over this question is to play into the hands of the imperialists — to become their agents. The left opportunists of course hold that all or nearly all of the working class has been bought off.
Lenin also pointed out that the social composition of the revisionist parties was the aristocracy of labor and the petty bourgeoisie who had also been bribed in the upper sector. He said that the tasks of communists was to draw a distinction between the bribed strata and the real proletariat, to go lower and deeper into the real proletariat – that section of the proletariat that forms the overwhelming majority and that has not been bribed by the crumbs the imperialists throw at a section of the class.
A look at the struggles of the working class over the last decade shows us that while all nationalities have been involved in militant struggles over the last decade, that oppressed nationality workers have been in the forefront of the struggles in auto, steel, textiles, garment and agriculture, among others. These workers have usually been in the dirtiest, most dangerous and lowest paying jobs. This has been one factor contributing to the militant character of these struggles, but there is yet another important ones, while the Anglo-American proletariat receives higher wages in general, they also have political privileges not accorded to oppressed nationality workers. There is no one-to-one relationship between economics and politics, although an oppressed nationality worker may get an increase in income (they still do not get an income equal to that of Anglo-American workers in general) he will still suffer national oppression as opposed to the political privileges of the Anglo-American worker.
We point out these divisions within the class, i.e., between the bribed strata (which is also multi-national), and the working class masses and the division between the Anglo-American workers and oppressed nationality workers, in order to place them in proper perspective and to avoid ‥left” or right errors, or chauvinist or nationalist deviations when addressing ourselves to divisions which objectively exist within the working class. We believe that the division within the class along national lines is a temporary one but to which communists must address themselves to now by laying out the principled basis for unity of the class although this task can only be carried out completely by the New Marxist-Leninist Party, a Bolshevik party.
Bolshevism and Leninism are one. They are two names for one and the same thing. J.V. Stalin TROTSKYISM OR LENINISM.
Bolshevism arose as a political trend in 1903, in the years of preparation for the 1905 revolution. As a party it came into existence in 1912 with the purging of the Mensheviks from the party. Leninism arose on the granite foundation of Marxist theory, a theory proven correct by the revolutionary experience of the proletariat throughout the world. It arose in the era of imperialism, when the proletarian revolution had become a practical inevitability. The imperialist was gathered all the contradictions of capitalism and accelerated the revolutionary battles of the proletariat. Russia was a country pregnant with revolution; feudal, capitalist, national colonial and militarist oppression reigned, a country in which the worst features of imperialism were concentrated to a high pitch. Most importantly the revolutionary proletariat was under the leadership of a Bolshevik party. Russia alone was in a position to solve these contradictions in a revolutionary way.
Over one hundred years of revolutionary experience were concentrated into the fifteen short years that preceded the October revolution. During this period, Comrade Lenin, the brilliant leader of the international proletariat, laid out the theory, strategy and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general in the ear of imperialism. During this fifteen year period Bolshevism developed in the heat of class struggle–theoretical, political and economic gained a wealth of revolutionary experience in so short a time. This revolutionary experience took in not only the development of the proletarian revolution in Russia but learned from the struggles of the international proletariat.
We hold that certain fundamental features of the Bolshevik revolution are of international significance and applicable to the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat in advanced capitalist countries in general, and to the USNA in particular. It is to these fundamental features, as applicable to the USNA that we will now address ourselves.
A Bolshevik Party differs qualitatively from the populist parties like the Peace and Freedom Party or La Raza Unida Party in that it is the party of the proletariat. In FOUNDATIONS OF LENINISM, Comrade Joseph Stalin explained the six characteristics of a Leninist Party of a Leninist Party of a new type. The party is (1) the advanced detachment (2) the highest form (3) the organized detachment of the working class. It is the (4) instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat, (5) the embodiment of the unity of will, unity incompatible with the existence of factions, and finally (6) The party becomes strong by purging itself of opportunist elements.
In his twelve points of Bolshevization, Stalin further explained that the party must apply those principles in practice. He explains that the party cannot be merely an arm of the parliamentary machinery, but it must be the highest form of organization of the working class, capable of leading all struggles, that it must master revolutionary Marxist-Leninist theory. That it must be able to draw up correct strategy and tactics based on a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Then the party must be able to test that strategy and tactics in practice. The entire party must run on the organizational principles of democratic centralism. The party must combine strictest adherence to principle with maximum ties and contact with the masses. It must be flexible, able to combine legal and llegal work. The party must not fear criticism from the masses and should genuinely engage in self-criticism. The party must recruit its leadership from the best elements of the advanced fighters of the proletariat. The party must systematically improve its social composition by purging opportunist elements. The party must achieve iron conscious discipline based on ideological solidarity. And finally, the party must be able to carry out its decisions and have a system to verify and correct its methods of work.
Comrades, how are we to build the new party? To properly answer this question we must analyse the dialectic of theory and practice. Russian Revolution, Stalin lays out three basic periods.
The first period was the period of formation, of the creation of our party. It embraces the interval of time approximately from the foundation of Iskra to the Third Party Congress inclusively (end of 1900 to beginning of 1905)
In this period the Party as a driving force was weak. It was weak not only because it itself was young, but also because the working class movement as a whole was young and because the revolutionary situation, the revolutionary movement was lacking, or little developed, particularly in the initial stages of this period...
In this period the Party focused its attention and care upon the party itself, upon its own existence and preservation...
The principal task of communism in Russia in that period was to recruit into the Party the best elements of the working class, those who were the most active and most devoted to the cause of the proletariat. To form the ranks of the proletarian party and to put it firmly on its feet. Comrade Lenin formulates this task as follows: “to win the vanguard of the proletariat to the side of communism”
The second period was the period of winning the broad masses of the workers to the side of the Party...
The third period is the period of taking and holding power...
ATM believes that the USNA is in the first period, the period when building a new communist party is the central task. Therefore we concentrate on developing and grasping Marxist-Leninist theory, carrying on struggle against incorrect lines both within our own organization and within the communist movement. We seek to build unity with other honest Marxist-Leninist forces. We try to bring Marxism-Leninism to and unite with the advanced workers through participation and leadership in the struggles of the class. This is consolidated politically and organizationally by building factory nuclei. Secondarily, we try to educate intermediate workers on the need for revolution and for a new party. We carry on day-to-day struggle around issues in the shops and attempt to win, through political exposures, the mass of workers to our minimum trade union program and communist leadership. Our organization focuses a great deal of attention on internal Marxist-Leninist education and carrying on of two line struggle. We recruit workers to Marxist-Leninist study groups, issue communist propaganda and agitation, build shop nuclei, and generally devote the majority of our time to the central task of party building.
What are the main right and left deviations on this question of theory and practice? Unquestionably, the CPUSA represents right opportunism, the main danger in the USNA. They completely downplay the role of theory and focus on the need for more “day-to-day” struggles. They go so far as to revise Lenin and Stalin’s definition of the party as the advanced detachment of the working class. By advanced detachment, Stalin meant that the “...party must be armed with revolutionary theory, with a knowledge of the laws of the movement, with a knowledge of the laws of revolution.” Compare this with the CPUSA’s “new definition”: A Marxist-Leninist party is one “...which strives to imbue the working class with a sense of its historic mission, of its responsibility for leadership of all progressive forces in society. Fighting for the most advanced political goals, identified with the most advanced social outlook, it is the most advanced detachment in the struggle for social progress.” Nowhere do they mention revolutionary theory, educating the party cadre or the masses in Marxism-Leninism. But, then again, we don’t need Marxism-Leninism if all we’re struggling for is reformist “social progress.”
We can see a practical example of the CPUSA’s belittling theory in their work in the auto industry. The CPUSA says that they want to build “shop clubs” and “organize” the spontaneous workers movements. But what do they mean by “organize”? The CPUSA is building the Auto Workers Action Caucus (AWAC). AWAC has a four point program: 1) bring the union back to the shop (a steward for every foreman), 2) strengthen the power of the union, 3) take the burden off the backs of the workers (30 hours work for 40 hours pay), 4) democracy in the union. These trade unionists do not deal with National oppression, women’s oppression, or international questions. In their haste to indict the “adventurists”, the CPUSA revels their own bourgeois outlook. “The people display profound wisdom,” says the Party Program, “in being skeptical of the radical who promises to solve the fundamental ills of society in one big revolutionary sweep and yet lacks the will and competence to solve an on-the-job grievance or community problem. Through immediate struggle workers organize and learn the need to battle further. They learn who the enemy is and how to fight ultimately to the socialist revolution.”
Through struggle workers learn to fight ultimately for socialist revolution. Does this line sound familiar? Is it echoed anywhere within the party building movement? A certain “Revolutionary” Union claims that the new party will be built on the advances of the mass movement. This formulation by both the CP and RU revises a basic Leninist theory: socialist consciousness is brought to the working class from without. Left to its own spontaneous struggles, the working class will only develop trade union consciousness, i.e., bourgeois ideology. And we see it daily in the practice of these two “communist” groups. They participate in strikes, student demonstrations, etc., which is good. They never bother to educate the advanced workers in Marxism-Leninism, leaving them under the influence of bourgeois ideology. During last year’s wildcat strike at Dasco, for example, the RU never attempted to educate workers in Marxism-Leninism, from study groups, or distribute genuine communist propaganda. Neither did any of the other communist, including EBLC which later formed part of ATM. The key errors we committed in Dasco were (1) failure to do communist political work and (2) failure to concentrate on building factory nuclei. By limiting our activities to narrow economist organizing of a more militant union, we failed to consolidate the advanced and build factory cells to link up politically and organizationally to the entire work force. We admit our right error and are moving to correct it. RU still won’t acknowledge theirs.
This same struggle against left and right errors occurs within existing honest Marxist-Leninist groups and will occur within the new communist party. Why? Comrade Stalin pointed out that communist, like everyone else living under bourgeois society are daily subjected to bourgeois ideas. He offered a second reason:
I think that the proletariat, as a class, can be divided into three strata. One stratum is the main mass of the proletariat, its core, its permanent part, the mass of “pure blooded” proletarians, who have long broken off connection with the capitalist class. This stratum of the proletariat is the most reliable bulwark of Marxism.
The select stratum consists of newcomers from non-proletarian classes, from the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie or the intel1egensia. These are former members of other classes who have recently merged with the proletariat and have brought with them into the working class their customs, their habits, their waverings and their vacillations. This stratum constitutes the most favorable soil for all sorts of anarchist, semi-anarchist, and “ultra-left” groups. The third stratum mostly, consists of the labor aristocracy, the upper stratum of the working class, the most well-to-do portion of proletariat, with its propensity for compromise with the bourgeoisie, its predominant inclination is to adapt itself to the powers that be, its anxiety to “get on in life.” This stratum constitutes the most favorable soil for outright reformists and opportunists.”
Communist groups struggling to form a new communist party must carry on principled struggle against alien class ideas within the working class. Within the CPUSA, however, ideological struggle is downplayed or completely ignored. In describing how to run party meetings, for example, the CP explains that “longer meetings indicate either rigid mechanical approaches, trying to predetermine every detail of mass activity, or an unhealthy situation of inner struggle, or an inability to decide priorities, or notions that the revolution is coming tomorrow therefore everything must be decided at one sitting.” (emphasis added)
In their theoretical documents, the CPUSA completely omits any mention of the need for purges to strengthen the party or iron discipline based on ideological solidarity. This is not surprising. The CP has grown in its social composition and outlook, to represent the petty-bourgeois and labor aristocracy. To them all mention of “purges” or “ideological struggle” bring out cries of Stalinism! And what’s the result in practice? The CPUSA is crawling with factions, members often vote against each other at mass meetings. Because of lack of theoretical training, the rank and file can rarely explain or defend the leadership’s line. One of the best examples of this rampant petty-bourgeois individualism was during the 1972 elections. Large numbers of party cadre voted for George McGovern even though Gus Hall was running on a “communist” ticket.
The left deviation on the question of theory and practice is the overemphasizing of the subjective factor. The old Communist League gave us many examples of this “left error”. In forming their new “party”, they declared that the ideological lines of demarcation had already been drawn. They gathered together a few intellectuals and workers in a mass “continuations committee”. They expelled honest Marxist-Leninist forces from that committee and promptly declared themselves a party. Since the formation of the Communist Labor Party (CLP) in September 1974, they have maintained a “left” form on many questions. CLP continues with its Trotskyite position that there will be no 2-stage revolutions in Third World countries. In fact they won’t even acknowledge the existence of the Third World as a political force.
But since the formation of CLP, they have steadily revealed their rightist essence on a number of key points. Their call to build a United Front Against Fascism sees an immediate danger of fascism and therefore incorrectly assumes a defensive strategy. As a result they have sent their cadre into organizations like the NAACP and Democratic Party; hardly places crawling with advanced workers. They have revised their definition of an advanced worker. They consider militant trade unionist to be “advanced”. Most significantly, it has been ATM1s experience that CLP has dropped its “ultra-left” cover in trade union work and is now openly right. In one local of the International Association of Machinists, for example, their cadre pushed for the formation of an employed/unemployed committee. In advancing the demand they stressed that the committee could provide information about unemployment insurance and food stamps. They did no political exposures a-round the crisis of imperialism, the role of the labor bureaucrats or the role of the state. In fact, they appealed to the bureaucrats “good graces” by pointing out that the local Democratic Party organization had endorsed their plan. Needless to say, with no base among the rank and file, their appeals to the local bureaucrats failed. No employed/unemployed committee exists in that local, and even worse, no workers were won to Marxism-Leninism.
Comrades, in the first two sections of this presentation we summed-up what is revisionism and what is a genuine communist party. Now we consider three major questions in the practical application of our theory of party building: advanced workers, political exposures, and legal/i1 legal work.
Marxist-Leninists agree that the task of communists is to educate and unite with the advanced workers. But there is great theoretical unclarity on what exactly is an advanced worker. Comrades, the question is not new. It confronted Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Lenin wrote in a Retrograde Trend in Russian Social Democracy:
From among these come, in the main, the advanced workers that every working-class movement brings to the fore, those who can win the confidence of the labouring masses, who devote themselves entirely to the education and organisation of the proletariat, who accept socialism consciously, and who even elaborate independent socialist theories.
Today, however the RU states.. “to us, the advanced worker is one who has the respect of his fellow workers to whom they come when they are in trouble, and need to discuss their problems, whom they rally around when they face a collective problem and who provides leadership in struggle. And this is true even if the individual professes some anti-communism. (our emphasis) His anti-communism is socially and media conditioned and can be overcome through his work with communists, precisely because of the devoted practice he has shown to others.”
Comrades, the RU has not described an advanced worker – they’ve described a militant trade unionist. Such a worker is in reality a militant, but lower stratum worker.
From our own experience we know that Lenin was correct in stating that every working class movement brings real advanced workers to the fore. We must develop the advanced workers into conscious communists. In this period the best method for implementing this process is the study circle. Why? Because we can ascertain: 1) will the workers study, study, study and turn themselves into conscious Marxist-Leninists? 2) will they apply the science to the task of EDUCATING AND ORGANIZING the proletariat? 3) will they thus be able to win the confidence of the laboring masses. Within the study circle we can see how the workers apply their knowledge, their theory, to answering the questions RAISED IN THEIR SHOP POLITICAL AND PRACTICAL WORK and with what purpose. The purpose must be in line with our central task, i.e. to ideologically win over more advanced workers to communism and to raise the political consciousness of all with whom they work. In addition, they must actively participate in the struggle for ideological clarity, discussing the most burning questions of the party building movement. It is our task as communists to constantly meet their ever developing quest for knowledge, to constantly provide political leadership, to recruit them into our organization and later into the New Party. We must especially ensure that the new communist leadership and the core of the new party is built from their ranks. Of course, we have to realize that the advanced workers are a numerically small stratum in relation to the class as a whole. Precisely because the capitalists control the superstructure – the educational apparatus, the media, religion, etc., they are able to keep the masses of workers politically and culturally backward. Only the advanced are presently able to rise about the constant barrage of lies and bourgeois propaganda – on TV the working class is presented as Archie Bunkers, Sanford and Sons, backward and naive simpletons incapable of political activity. At the same time the masses have the widest selection of literature and newspapers – filled with sensationalism and chauvinism. Once we understand that there are not presently masses of advanced workers we will realize that very often the workers we win into study circles will be intermediate level workers (a broader stratum of the class). These workers – or rather their upper level – will sometimes agree to enter into study but lack in one or another respect the requirements of an advanced worker. They may fail to either study and grasp fully the Marxist-Leninist theory or conversely they fail to apply this theory to the education and organization of the proletariat. Does this mean we refuse study with intermediate workers? No, it means the task of raising broad sections of the intermediate to the level of the advanced can BEST be carried out of our study circles – it does mean we EMPHASIZE training the advanced. As imperialist crises deepens and objective conditions deteriorate, the spontaneous struggles will bring more advanced to the front.
Who constitutes the lower stratum of workers? They are characterized by Lenin as – “The lower strata of the proletariat, the very underdeveloped workers, might, under the influence of the preaching of Rabochaya Mysl, fall victim to the bourgeois and profoundly reactionary idea that the worker cannot and should not interest himself in anything but increased wages and the restoration of holidays...” In other words, workers who are concerned only with their individual problems.
Many comrades seem to get confused when they read, in Lenin’s definition of an advanced worker – the “even elaborate independent socialist theories.” We hold that this is an essential part of the definition but that these independent socialist theories are not SCIENTIFIC socialist theories. For example, an advanced worker may understand the necessity or inevitability of socialism but may not tie this to the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat. This understanding comes through the study of socialism as a science, i.e., in a Marxist study circle.
Now that we understand who Marxist-Leninists are trying to win over, we can discuss how we will do it.
All round political exposures are the most effective way of bringing communism to the working class movement. Political exposures can be either agitation or propaganda. Propaganda is not to be understood as sloganeering or as phraseology. Propaganda is the presentation of many complex yet clear political ideas, so many and of such depth that they will only readily be understood by few people – the advanced elements. Agitation on the other hand, is the presentation of a single idea comprehensible to all sectors of the class. In this period agitation must serve propaganda. “Agitation must plough up a virgin field, propaganda must plant and cultivate it.” In general, agitation serves the purpose of rousing discontent and indignation.
In this pre-party period, agitation must be geared for bringing forth advanced workers so that they can be provided with propaganda. Propaganda will give them a fuller explanation of capitalism’s inevitable downfall, show them the absolute necessity for the party.
Our present day communist forces use of agitation and propaganda for political exposures is characterized by amateurishness. It is evident right here today that the present day anti-revisionist movement has been largely separated from the experience of the working class movement. Many of our propaganda forums including this one, are mainly geared at educating ourselves. In one respect this is good. Our movement is in desperate need of clarity on these questions, but it must be emphasized that we can only ensure the success of our central task by recruiting large numbers of advanced workers. Again, in this period our primary purpose in doing agitation and propaganda is to win advanced workers to Marxism-Leninism and organizationally into factory nuclei. As we have said we must utilize ALL METHODS of political education. We forego no opportunity to do political agitation and propaganda; we hold discussions in the locker room, discussions of the daily new, forums, leaflets, union meeting, anything that allows us to do political exposure must be turned to our advantage. We know full well that the defeat of revisionism will only finally come about in the heat of class struggle. We must first win over worker to real Marxism – sham Marxism, revisionist, cannot be defeated in the sphere of theory alone – but must also be defeated in the application of that theory to practice.
Comrades a key area in which we must carry on daily political exposures concerns the right of all oppressed nations to self-determination. Within the USNA this involves raising and upholding the right of the Afro-American people to self determination. The bourgeoisie exploits the Afro-American people for superprofits, from which they have been able to buy off a labor aristocracy. We must expose this connection to the class – showing them how it relates to their own exploitation, and how the ruling class uses this to split the multi-national proletariat. We emphatically hold to the position that the Anglo-American proletariat is fully capable of understanding and upholding its proletarian internationalist duty-particular its duty to support the right of all oppressed nations to self-determination.
Another realm of political exposures concerns the unmasking and isolation of the revisionists within the working class movement. We must do constant political exposures – showing the class concretely how the revisionists betray their interests. For example the revisionists continually collaborate with the liberal bourgeoisie and the reformist labor bureaucrats. We must show the working class (using the example of Germany in the 30’s and Chile in the present decade) the connection between revisionists to lull the working class to sleep until fascism is upon them. We must also educate the class, particularly the advanced workers, to the fact that imperialism is able to bribe these renegades through their exploitation of the colonies and oppressed nations – which gives them the superprofits to maintain the system of privileges of this bourgeoisified strata.
Among groups claiming to be anti-revisionist, the main danger is the right deviation–best characterized by the Revolutionary Union. Under the cover of opposing dogmatism the RU has turned the Marxist-Leninist method and principles of party-building upside down: instead of bringing Marxism Leninism to the proletariat, they preach “build the mass movement”, a theory of spontaneity: instead of political exposures through agitation and propaganda, they substitute the economist theory of stages which they call the “single-spark theory”. That is, one cannot raise political questions to the advanced workers until we have done a sufficient amount of economic (read economist) work. Sound familiar? When Lenin was struggling with economists he said:
Is it true that, in general, the economic struggle is the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into political struggle: IT IS ENTIRELY UNTRUE (emphasis ours–ed). Any and every manifestation of police tyranny and autocratic outrage, not only in connection with the economic struggle, is not one with less ’widely applicable’ as a means of ’drawing in’ the masses.”
Comrades, we repeat again, agitation must serve propaganda. It must be used to bring forth the most advanced class conscious workers. In turn the heart and soul of the new communist party will come from among the vanguard of the proletariat.
A particular failing of the revolutionary movement in the past few years has been the lack of concrete understanding that revolution is illegal, i.e. it cannot be achieved within the context of the present bourgeois social–juridical-economic system. The goal of our work is to smash, to destroy the bourgeois system. Of course the bourgeoisie will consider our work illegal. Lenin explained it thus:
In every single country in the world, even the most advanced and ’freest’ of the bourgeois republics, bourgeois terror reigns, and there is not such thing as freedom to carry on agitation for the socialist revolution, to carry on propaganda and organizational work precisely in this sense. The party which to this day has not admitted this under the rule of the bourgeoisie and does not carry on systematic, all-sided illegal work in spite of the laws of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois parliaments is a party of traitors and scoundrels who deceive the people by their recognition of revolution....
Many organizations have made “left” errors on this question. With the rise of spontaneous rebellions of the oppressed nationalities and the anti-war movement, we saw the birth of many para-military organizations of the type of the Brown Berets, the Black Panthers, and their multi-national off-shoots – Venceremos organization, the Weathermen etc. These organizations, with the exception of the Weathermen which focused only on militarism, gave emphasis primarily to the military self-defense aspect of struggle – an aspect by its very nature illegal. This was combined with a type of legal work of the self help variety: drug programs, health programs, free breakfast programs, legal aid, etc. Many more groups made the right error: sinking to Social Democratic traditions in methods of work and organization, i.e. doing no illegal work whatsoever. The communist movement as a whole has yet to purge itself of the old, deep-rooted, reformist traditions in policy, organization and methods of work. This has been a historic characteristic of the Communist movement in the U.S.
Looking at the development of the anti-revisionist Communist movement over the past few years we see that, as the more advanced elements began to study Marxism-Leninism they passed over, more and more to activity among the working class, and this was a good thing. Unfortunately the work carried on was overwhelmingly economist work of the RU type – focusing on reformism and the development of strictly legal forms of organizing the factories. By legal, we do not mean that they were necessarily open organizations – many times they functioned as secret or semi-secret, closed caucuses, committees, work teams, etc. But they are legal because their work was not political communist work. It focused on trade unionist, or at best, liberal politics which never raised the question of the party or state power. How do we raise the question of the party or state power? This is done by the method of political exposures, either in the form of agitation or propaganda. Our cadres carry this out verbally on a daily basis, they carry this work out through written propaganda, and with the development of a political organ, ATM will further expand this aspect of our illegal work. The second aspect of our illegal work is the development of our illegal form of organization, the factory nuclei. The development of an illegal factory apparatus was completely negated and all activity was to develop caucuses, intermediate anti-imperialist workers organizations, etc.
Comrades, REVOLUTION IS ILLEGAL!!! We must cast off the Social Democratic style of organizing—style which often ends up exposing Communists to the boss and to the state, while accomplishing very little in terms of party building. What is the correct organizational form for our illegal work? It is the factory nucleus and trade union fraction.
The nucleus has many functions, but its main role is the link between the Party and the working class masses. In this pre-party period the nucleus has two main tasks. The first is to win over the advanced of the proletariat to communism, which can only be done in the heat of class struggle. However in doing so, they are required to turn the spontaneous movement of the working class into a planned, politically conscious movement. This is best achieved by the building of a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party. However, we will win over the advanced workers only to the extent that we carry out our work in the spontaneous movement correctly. This cannot be done by propaganda alone, or by trade union work alone – but only through daily patient political work. This work cannot be carried out mechanically – it calls for the utmost creativity, perserverance and energy. After all comrades, we are talking about class struggle, a struggle to overcome (even in advanced workers) the dominance of bourgeois ideology, to replace it with proletarian ideology. Anyone who imagines that there is a magic formula for this had better go back to potions and recipes and give up revolution. The second task of the nucleus is testing the political line in practice. In the course of this struggle and by leadership in this struggle, communists draw forward the advanced. In this sense then, the nucleus becomes a key factor in party building. Party building is carried out ideologically, politically, and organizationally. It cannot remain within the realm of ideas alone. The nucleus, by bringing theory to the point of production translating it into political practice raises the practical struggle to a political level, bring consciousness and direction to the unconscious process, and verifies the theoretical aspect. In this sense, then, we can say that this new practical knowledge, learned in the struggle to implement a scientifically formulated line, is higher than theoretical knowledge, for it has been proven correct by objective results.
Does this mean that theoretical struggle is no longer primary? Not at all. Theory is still primary in this period. What it means if that communist organizations are not debating societies, that there is an inseparable bond between theory and practice, that theory guides practice, and practice verifies theory, that to separate the two is not Marxism-Leninism but bourgeois scholasticism. It means that the key to implementing political line, to linking it to the practical political struggle of the class, to scientifically summing up the line and practice of a communist organization is the factory nuclei. And in this sense, the nuclei are a key aspect of party building. In laying out the relationship between the nucleus and fraction the Comintern said:
The factory nucleus should be the backbone of the respective trade union group in the factory, backed by the factory trade group the factory nucleus spread its influence over the rest of the workers, drawing them into struggle for immediate demands and explaining the course of that struggle the general line and the tasks of the revolutionary trade union movement and Communist Party.
Before we discuss the different types of legal activities we should like to speak briefly as to where we should concentrate our forces at this time in order to develop our illegal, secret apparatus. Lenin lays it out very explicitly:
...the main strength of our movement lies in the organization of the workers at the large factories, for the large factories (and mills) contain not only the predominant part of the working class, as regards numbers, but even more as regards influence, development, and fighting capacity.
The large basic industries, e.g. steel, rubber, auto, mining, oil, chemical etc., are key because of both their strategic importance in the running of the economy and because of their high degree of socialization – i.e., the situation of social being which allows these workers the clearest and quickest grasp of scientific socialism.
The principle material basis for the development of proletarian class consciousness is large-scale industry, where the worker sees the factories running, and daily feels the power that can really abolish classes.
As Comrade Lenin has said, “it is obligatory (for communists) to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle... in order to forge links with the masses, precisely in order to organize, in order to build nuclei we MUST do legal work. We must become involved in the spontaneous mass struggles of the proletariat and win the leadership of those struggles through (l) Our organizational work, (2) and most importantly, through our political work. For example, say we become involved in a rank and file caucus in a unionized plant which is preparing to put forth demands for an upcoming contract. Our secondary task is to organize the caucus to fight for the contract demands. Our primary task, is to do political work: to explain to the workers in the course of the struggle the nature of capitalism, the role of trade unions under capitalism, the bribery of the labor bureaucrat through imperialism’s plunder of the colonies and oppressed nations. We must, in a word, raise before the eyes of the workers the whole question of political power–that their exploitation can only end through advanced workers with whom we can conduct propaganda and study on the broader questions of political economy and the theory of the Party, etc. Needless to say this political work must be carried out in a non-dogmatic and non-phrasemongering style, taking into account the level of political consciousness of the workers we are working with. At the same time we must become the hardest fighters for the workers’ economic demands and the best organizers of that struggle. But as Lenin says, “The most effective way to secure real reforms is to pursue the tactic of the revolutionary class struggle. Reforms are won as a result of the revolutionary class struggle, as a result of its “independence, mass force and steadfastness.” We must always keep in mind that our use of reforms, of legal work, is diametrically opposed to that of the bourgeoisie. Again from Lenin:
The proletariat takes advantage of every breach, every weakening of the regime, every concession and sop in order to wage a more extensive, more determined, more intense and more mass struggle; the bourgeoisie uses them to cause the struggle gradually to calm down, weaken and die out, to curtail its aims and moderate its forms.
As we know, it is our duty to utilize all legal possibilities in order to do political work, bearing in mind that legal work is guided by and serves illegal work. We mean all possibi1ities–not just caucus work. We must utilize shop steward and committee elections, union local elections, shop newspapers, shop issues, etc – all with the purpose in mind of linking the struggle for socialism with the working class movement in order to carry out our task of party building.
Comrades and Friends – as the imperialist crisis deepens, and as the USNA in particular accelerates its decline, we shall begin to see a change in the methods of class combat used by the bourgeoisie. As each day passes we move further and further away from a bourgeois-democratic dictatorship to and outright fascist dictatorship. Concessions are bound to lessen and the use of outright terror to control the working class is bound to increase. Comrades the Comintern in 1928 laid it on the line:
The principal aim of Fascism is to destroy the revolutionary labor vanguard, i.e., the Communist sections and leading units of the proletariat.
Therefore it is only an illegal organization, surrounded by and in close contact with legal organizations, which can protect the vanguard and the advanced workers with any degree of assurance. If there is no systematic illegal activity and revolutionary apparatus, then there is no party. This is the only Bolshevik method of party organization, factory nuclei, led by advanced members of the proletariat, living in direct contact with the class, which must spread its influence throughout the factories and the trade unions making them proletarian reserves rather than bourgeois tools of control and exploitation. Comrade Lenin pointed out our path:
The objective conditions require that the basis of the Party’s organization should consist of illegal workers’ units that are modest as regards to size and present forms of work... Initiative and independent activity...is required of them in order to learn to carry out revolutionary Social-Democratic work systematically, undeviatingly and in a planned way...These primary units cannot solve the tasks of constant influence on the masses and interaction with the masses without establishing, firstly, firm connections with one another and, secondly, without strong points in the form of all possible kinds of legal institutions.
To build the new party means, organizationally, developing, strengthening and increasing the factory nuclei, utilizing all forms of legal work to accomplish our goal.
Comrades, in this presentation, we have addressed ourselves to the burning questions facing the communist movement internationally and at home. We have dealt with these questions and shown what they mean to the revolutionary proletariat here in the USNA today. The trust of our polemics are directed at revisionism and right opportunism which are the main danger within the working class movement both internationally and nationally. We expect this presentation to be attacked by the revisionist as being dogmatic and sectarian. We hold however that it is not dogmatic in that its content and analysis in general corresponds to the state of the objective and subjective factors internationally and nationally. It is not sectarian in that we lay out ATM’s position on what we hold to be the principled tactic for unity of the revolutionary proletariat.
In a presentation of this type we obviously could not be able to expand on every question as we would like. This presentation, a further development of ATM’s line, however, will serve the purpose of clarifying our positions and as a basis of struggle for unity with honest Marxist-Leninist. We welcome criticisms, questions, and struggle from all our comrades in the communist and working class movements, for without principled struggle there would be no basis for principled unity.
We will close with the same words that Comrades Marx and Engels ended the Communist Manifesto:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of all Countries, Unite!
To which we add:
MARXIST-LENINIST UNITE!
SMASH REVISIONISM, OPPORTUNISM AND CHAUVINISM!
BUILD THE NEW MULTI-NATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY!
WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORLD UNITE!