Published: Buffalo Student, Volume 1, Number 2, March 1, 1972.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
In the spirit of the call of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) to BUILD THE PARTY on the basis of MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT and AROUSE THE MASSES, the zone two branch of the ACWM (M-L) initiated a Mao Tsetung Thought Study Circle. At the first meeting a candidate member of ACWM (M-L) presented a talk entitled “The American Working Class Has High Aspirations." The presentation was enthusiastically received among everyone present. Text of the talk follows:
Comrades and friends, our purpose in coming together today is to build a bright red Mao Tsetung Thought Study Circle so as to advance the struggle against U.S. imperialism and American fascism and contribute to the cause of proletarian revolution in the U.S. and throughout the world. In other words, we want to form a group in complete opposition to fascism, imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction. Our forward motion will be determined by our resolute struggle against fascism inside the group as well as outside. Following this line means using Mao Tsetung Thought as guide to action. Studying and applying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the concrete practice of the anti-fascist revolution of the American working class and people means upholding our revolutionary history, learning from it and consciously moving forward. Studying and apply Mao Tsetung Thought means uniting our people against the fascist enemy, the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class, their fascist state machine and their lackeys and stooges in various places. Primarily, at this time, studying and applying Mao Tsetung Thought means creating material conditions for building a genuine revolutionary CPUSA (M-L). Comrades and friends, unity is not, an abstract thing and building the party is no way isolated or detached from building the mass movement to overthrow fascism through People’s War. To unite our people, to build a genuine Communist Party means to go against all the roadblocks to building the Party and arousing the masses. In the first place, it means to go against pragmatism, the ideology of American fascism, to go against liberalism and bourgeois individualism, elitism and intellectualism, and to go against all those who persist in supporting these things, that is the fascists and social-fascists.
When large-scale capitalist industry developed in Europe and America in the 19th century there appeared on the world historical scene the proletariat, the most revolutionary class in the history of mankind, the most powerful class ideologically politically and in strength. By the mid-19th century the proletariat had organised, itself into the International Workingmen’s Association built by the first great leaders of the proletarian movement, Marx and Engels and united all progressive elements around itself and was already beginning to lead all democratic and revolutionary movements, and had given rise to the revolutionary theory of Marxism. What distinguished the proletarian movement from all other movements and what distinguishes Marxism from all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies? Marx said in 1852: “Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development pf production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition 3f all classes and to a classless society."
In America, advanced elements of the proletariat, including large numbers of immigrants, at once took up the revolutionary theory of Marxism and strove to apply it to concrete conditions here. At the same time there were people nestling within the proletarian movement who attacked Marxism and the revolutionary aspirations of our people, saying “Marxism doesn’t apply to America, after all the bourgeoisie are so kind and liberal here." These negative elements spent all their energy to keep the proletariat from organizing itself according to its class interests, that is in order to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat as the first step in liquidating class society. In fact, the bourgeois elements within the proletarian movement spent all their time desperately trying to ’bourgeoisify’ the working class by concocting and putting forward lunatic schemes for reforms.
When capitalism reached the stage of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, there came Into the forefront of the proletarian movement md world history the Russian proletariat. Led by the Bolshevik Party, and their great helmsman Lenin and the revolutionary theory of Leninism, the Russian proletariat overthrew the Russian Czar, the Russian bourgeoisie and foreign imperialists and established the first socialist state under the dictatorship of the proletariat. LENINISM IS MARXISM IN THE ERA DF IMPERIALISM AND PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. How did Leninism develop? How did Leninism influence the proletarian revolutionary movement in the US? Leninism developed in the course of building the Bolshevik Party through constant class struggle against the bourgeoisie and the ruling circles, and constant class struggle within7the revolutionary movement against the bourgeois agents and revisers of Marxism; the Bernsteins, the Russian economists, the Kautskyites, Trotskyites, etc. When the news of the Great October Revolution reached the ears of American workers (until then the renegade ’labour leaders’ in the US had successfully kept Leninism from many American workers) there was a tremendous up surge in the revolutionary movement of ox people. American workers took upon themselves the widescale dissemination of Leninism among their class brothers and all sections of the population and the building of the Communist Party. This led to complete exposure and collapse of the Hilquits, Gomperites, etc., and other scab hidden among the people. The revisers of Marxism were still around, now they supported Marxism but not Leninism or they supported Marxism-Leninism only in its ’creative application’ to America. Their ’creative application’ was to go against the very essence of Marxism, to strike at the very heart of the revolutionary proletarian movement. Thus the revisionists seized political power inside the Communist Party, turned the political party of the proletariat into a social-fascist party, replaced the dissemination of Leninism by the dissemination of Browderism and other trash, and shamelessly pushed such despicable lines as “Rockefeller is a good friend of the workers", “US imperialism is a healthy capitalism", “A Communist Party isn’t needed in democratic America."
In 1949 the proletariat and oppressed people in China, led by the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao, stood up and overthrew feudalism, imperialism and bureaucrat capitalism. Upholding Marxism Leninism and proletarian internationalism the CCP and Chairman Mao led the struggle against modern revisionism, with the Soviet revisionist, cliques of Krushchev and now Breshnev and Kosygin at its head and their sinister theories of “peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition and peaceful transition, socialist state of the whole people, internationalist socialist community and limited sovereignty."
Personally initiated and led by Chairman Mao, the Chinese working class and people carried out the GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION to overthrow the persons in power taking the capitalist road, smashed the plot to restore capitalism in Socialist China, solved the problem of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and smashed the revisionist line of the hidden scab and traitor Liu Shao-chi who propagated the sinister theory of “all production, no revolution" which in essence boils down to keeping certain “expert so-called Marxists" in power and the masses of working people enslaved. MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT IS MARXISM-LENINISM IN ERA IN WHICH IMPERIALISM IS HEADING FOR TOTAL COLLAPSE AND SOCIALISM IS ADVANCING TOWARDS WORLD-WIDE VICTORY.
Just as our class brothers all over the world rejoiced at the victory of the Chinese people as their own, the American working class which has never given up its revolutionary heritage and revolutionary aspirations, has always upheld Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and striven hard to apply Marxism-Leninism to the American revolution, is today taking up the widescale dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought and taking up anew the glorious task of BUILDING THE PARTY on the basis of Marxism-Leninism Mao-Tsetung Thought. Led by the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist- Leninist) along the path opened up by the INTERNATIONALISTS and their leader Hardial Bains, many American youth and students and American workers have come forward since 1969 to take up the bright red banner of Mao Tsetung Thought and the building of the party in the style of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, that is, on the mass democratic basis and by following the method of integrating theory with practice, relying on the revolutionary capacity of the masses and moving from a low level to a high level. Comrades and friends, the negative influence in the mass movement – the revisers, the mystifiers, the cowards, the pro-imperialist lackeys, the bourgeois individualists and lumpen intellectuals, in a word the holy alliance of the ’left’ are still around. Today, they support Marxism-Leninism but not Mao Tsetung Thought or they support Mao Tsetung Though, but not in North-America, or they support trade unions and ’mass actions’ or so-called ’mass movements’ but not building the party. Aren’t these tired old arguments and diversions pathetic? In a word, they support the fascist dictatorship over our people and oppose the proletariat seizing political power from below, first in its own revolutionary party, and proceeding step by step to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat through Anti-fascist People’s War. Comrades and friends, the American working class is the largest in the world. Our people have created modern socialized production and with great ingenuity created the most advanced technology in the world. The American proletariat has rich experience in class struggle, in building the Party and struggling for the seizure of state power. Comrades and friends, we are not afraid of fascist Nixon, who must go hat in hand to visit our great leader Chairman Mao. We are not daunted by the mystifications of the old and new style renegades and revisionists and their cohorts – we know that a Marxist-Leninist is someone who builds the Party in practice and we are determined to do just that. We will always disseminate Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought among the people, always unite our people on the principled basis of opposition to fascism and strive to build the Party by following the Internationalist method of work and build the Party in the midst of the masses and under their supervision by building mass democratic, anti-fascist struggles.
Comrades and friends:
LONG LIVE INVINCIBLE MARXISM-LENINISM MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT!
LONG LIVE THE GREAT REVOLUTIONARY ASPIRATIONS OF THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS!
LONG LIVE THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST WORKERS MOVEMENT (MARXIST-LENINIST)!
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO!
A LONG, LONG LIFE TO CHAIRMAN MAO!