First Published: The Communist, Vol. V, No. 13, June 11, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In early March THE COMMUNIST briefly announced the need to temporarily cutback to four pages so that the staff could fully participate in a campaign against idealism and spontaneity within the Workers Congress Marxist-Leninist (WCML). As this campaign has unfolded it has revealed serious errors reflecting male, national, and class chauvinism within the WCML. In addition it has become clear that the struggle against these manifestations of bourgeois ideology has been suppressed historically by a bureaucratic centralism in our internal organization.
Deepening the investigation of these errors has become the highest priority of the organization. Already we have had to remove the former chairman of WCML from his position in order to clear the path for unfolding the struggle against these erroneous bourgeois tendencies. Also our participation in coalition, trade union, and other mass political work will have to become more limited so that all cadre can fully participate in the rectification program.
So far the investigation into our errors has impressed upon us the importance of identifying and distinguishing the right and “left” forms of our errors. Without identifying our errors as right or “left” we cannot proceed to correct them.
We plan to say more on this publicly as we become consolidated internally on the analysis of our errors. In the next issue of THE COMMUNIST we will have a more in-depth article on the general character of errors already exposed by the investigation.
An important reason for unfolding our internal investigation and rectification publicly is to solicit the criticism, evaluation, and participation of the readers of THE COMMUNIST, of those we have worked with in the mass movements, and other Marxist-Leninists and communist organizations. While so far the focus of our campaign has been directed at incorrect tendencies in our internal organization our errors have also been reflected in the line and practice of our political work. In particular we have identified a sectarian character to our political work.
Recently we have done self criticism about two such manifestations in our political work of our internal weaknesses (“Super-seniority Exposure Criticized for Bad Style”, VOL V #9; “Pacific Collective Criticizes WCML”, VOL V #12). We encourage comrades to support our rectification campaign through their criticisms of our political work.
Finally, during the rectification period THE COMMUNIST will publish monthly instead of bi-weekly so that we can concentrate our resources on deepening our grasp of our errors and correcting them.