Issued: n.d. [July 1980].
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The National Minority Conference was a conference of national minority communists in our tendency in or close to the OCIC with the goal of taking up the crucial issue of the need to build a multinational party.
At the OC Labor Day Conference last September, a resolution which expressed strong support for the National Minority Conference, its basis of unity, and the unity achieved was put forward and overwhelmingly endorsed.
Though there was some discussion at the Labor Day conference, and since, we believe several of the central issues have not been adequately clarified or struggle over within the OC. We have major differences with and criticisms of the content and process of the resolution, and believe the significance of the issues involved requires that we present our views.
Our entire tendency has an important interest in beginning to make advances in the struggle to build a truly multinational party. The national minority ML conference took up this task, but made important errors in conception and implementation. Though there were some positive gains made–acquainting people with party building, and bringing together minority activists and communists from around the county who are within our tendency–overall we evaluate the conference and its consequences as negative. It is important for our movement as a whole to summarize this experience to learn the correct lessons.
On a general level, the issue involved is, what is the correct basis upon which to carry out theoretical work and struggle in the tendency, and how to combat all tendencies towards sectarianism and small circle spirit in conducting this work.
Our Differences, more specifically, which when taken as a whole account for our negative summation of the conference.
1. Basis of Unity: We believe the basis of unity was narrow and objectively sectarian – we believe it was incorrect to pose the basis of unity of the OC rather than that of the tendency as a whole – the conference contributed to increasing sectarianism in relations in the tendency -in its narrowness, it failed to take advantage of the full resources and potential of our tendency in addressing and advancing this important question.
2. Content: The resolution supports the high level of unity reached.
We believe this necessarily implies support for the content of the unity.
–we believe the resolution on party building was unprincipled in calling for unity around the OC in the absence of discussion of different party building views in the tendency
–we believe the formulation on sexism as the main contradiction among national minority M-Lists is flawed
–in general the process lacked theoretical rigor
3. Racism in the PC surrounding the Conference:
The resolution correctly points out some of the racist errors made in the OC in relation to the conference. However, we believe the more significant errors, made in particular by the SC, of racism and race-baiting need to be targetted. We believe that much of the discussion in the OC surrounding this conference has heralded some incorrect and dangerous practices in taking up the struggle against racism in the communist movement.
The Resolution states, “The PC correctly identified the OC’s 18 points and commitment to the development of a single center as the proper basis of unity of the conference.”
(1) there was unclarity, sloppiness and inconsistency in the process and criteria for determining participation in the conference. This is also related to unclarity as to the goals of the conf.
(2) More importantly, we believe this was an incorrect basis of unity; that it was narrow and objectively sectarian
1. On unclarity, sloppiness, and inconsistency
The conference was repeatedly billed as an independent effort of national minority M-Lists in our tendency. We Think this characterization of the conference obscures what its actual political relationship was to the OCIC.
We understand that the PC was an autonomous committee of national minority M-Lists which was initiated by the OC SC and delegated with the responsibility of developing the NNMLC. We also know that the PC was direct about stating their membership in or general unity with the OC. It is important to recognize that autonomous is not the same as independent.
The term independent, in a Marxist-Leninist sense would imply that the PC had a political perspective independent of any of the major centers or lines in the movement. This is significant, because continued reference to the independence of the PC implied that it was attempting to broadly organize participation of national minority M-Lists in our tendency, not just those close to the OC perspective. However, the practice of the PC in building the conference did not bear this out.
The resolution states that the PC identified unity with the 18 points and the single center as the correct basis of unity of the NM Conference. However, the May invitation letter in reference to the basis of unity, spoke only of the 18 points–there was no mention of necessary unity with the single center view of the OC. We know that at least in the preparation meetings in the Bay Area there was no mention of the single center as a basis of unity of the conference until after the conference had taken place.
However, even as an unspoken basis of unity being applied by the conference planners, it was applied inconsistently and arbitrarily. Most national minority M-Lists from our tendency who have disunity with the OC’s party building perspective were excluded from planning and participation in the conference–particularly comrades with the rectification line and from El Comite-MINP. However, other individuals with the rectification line were invited as participants. Some people were invited and then later disinvited when it was clear they held the rectification line.
In any case, as the conference drew nearer, the PC increasingly identified the goal of winning people to the OC as being central. PC members in summing up the goals speak of 3 levels–winning national minorities to M-Lism, to party building, and the OC.
2. Our main contention is, then–Why was this basis of unity incorrect, narrow, and objectively sectarian?
There are 2 possible types of conference that could have been held.
(1) A conference initiated and led by OC members and allies, to address questions by those inside and close to the OC, with the goals of consolidating the periphery of the OC around its particular perspective on the questions, and to win adherents and recruits
(2) a tendency-wide conference, with leadership and participation from the breadth of the tendency, to jointly address and struggle over questions of mutual concern.
The first type of conference is sometimes legitimate: – if all genuine M-Lists are in a single organization – or if the questions to be addressed have already been struggled out among M-Lists, if people attending the conference are familiar with the contending lines, and the conference is designed to consolidate people around one particular perspective
However, this was not the case; these were not the conditions. Therefore, a more narrow conference was not correct. On the contrary, we believe the stated goals of the OC (which the PC united with), the conditions in our tendency, and the interests of the party building movement point towards the correctness of a tendency-wide conference.
–stated goals of the OC. I’ll quote from the OC First Year Summation on this topic: “The source of the OC’s leading role is the line it has pursued in both its political and organizational work. The OC has not adopted a narrow circle approach to its tasks, devoting its attention to consolidating its own limited following, winning new recruits and contending for hegemony with other anti-left forces. Instead it has focused on the consolidation of the tendency as a whole, the organization of as many of its political currents as possible and contention with the ultra-lefts. In short, the OC has consistently determined its intervention on the basis of the general interests of the party building movement.”
–what are the general interests of the party building movement? It is not just a principle to organize broad theoretical discussion. This is based on the need to promote broad participation in the theoretical work and struggle within our movement, over key theoretical questions. Our goal is to unite our tendency over theory and political line based on common theoretical work and struggle.
We believe the correct basis of unity would have been our anti-revisionist, anti-“left” opportunist tendency. We think a tendency-wide conference to address the issue of the struggle for a multinational party would have better served to advance our movement’s understanding and practice on this question. It would also have promoted unity in taking up the theoretical struggle.
The response of the PC to the alternative proposal of a tendency-wide conference, is that this is placing unity of skin color over political unity, and is in fact racist.
This is indeed a strange argument. The conference was planned as a national minority Marxist-Leninist conference. Therefore, it was a conference of a particular portion of our Marxist-Leninist tendency, in other words, national minorities. The conference planners themselves designated that one of the bases for participation in the conference was that people be minority M-Lists.
The real question was, a national minority conference of minorities in or close to the OC, or a conference of all national minority M-Lists in our tendency. We think this charge of skin color unity towards those who proposed a tendency-wide national minority conference is nonsense. Besides which, the PC cannot have its cake and eat it too.
We must also take up the general implications of this type of argument, which are in fact more serious for our movement. The line of the OC leadership and its followers appears to be that it is necessary to agree on the limited OC party building line, the need to build a single center in our movement, in order to conduct joint theoretical work. The other side of this, as the NNMLC bears out, is that, there is not a political basis for the various forces in our tendency, with distinct party building lines, to come together to discuss the theoretical and practical questions facing our movement.
We believe this is a seriously incorrect view. We insist that our tendency is unified politically in the demarcation with revisionism and ultra-leftism that is expressed in the 18 points. It is among these forces that we’re attempting to address theoretical and practical questions and advance our party building tasks.
We strongly disagree with the view that forces must be unified around the OC perspective of a single center in order to jointly address theoretical questions. This is an expression of profound circle spirit and sectarianism. The problem is that the OC is increasingly acting as if it is the sole legitimate representative of the tendency, is equating its unity with the unity of the tendency as a whole, and equating building itself with building the tendency and the party.
The Resolution states, “The Conference represented a real success in carrying concrete developments in the U.S. party building movement to national minority M-Lists...The OC strongly supports the high level of unity reached by the conference participants on these important points.”
(1) The SC has insisted that this point doesn’t represent endorsement of the content of the papers or resolutions. We believe it is incorrect to support the unity without supporting -the content– that in this case that is a paternalistic/racist error.
(2) We are not just opposed to this point because in principle it is incorrect to support the unity reached without knowing the content, though on this basis alone it should be opposed, as one PC member argued at the Labor Day conference. In examining the content of the papers and resolutions we believe there are serious weaknesses, and we cannot sum up the “high level of unity” as a “real success”.
A) Party Building
It is positive that the speech highlights the importance of party building and the primacy of the theoretical struggle. However, we believe it was incorrect to put forward the OC as the correct form during this period (in the speech and resolution).
It is unprincipled to call for unity on the OC as the most correct form in the absence of fuller discussion of different party building views and organizations in the tendency. This is particularly true since many of the conference participants were advanced workers or M-Lists unfamiliar with the content of the party building struggle. Winning people over to a particular line must be done on the basis of full consciousness of and struggle over contending lines.
B) Sexism
The paper and resolution asserts that sexism is the principle contradiction among national minority M-Lists. In noting the particular tasks of national minority M-Lists, the primary one is seen as taking up the struggle against sexism among national minority M-Lists.
This formulation is asserted, it is not argued historically or theoretically. We believe it is seriously incorrect. We believe there is not a different contradiction among national minority M-Lists than among M-Lists in general. The principal contradiction is lack of revolutionary theory, and lack of unity on political line.
Sexism is a contradiction among communists and needs to be addressed theoretically and struggled against. However, this struggle does not have a special place among minority comrades.
It reflects two general weaknesses evident among OC forces.
(1) sectarianism, narrowness in taking up theoretical work. This limits the forces taking up the work and struggle over the issues. This objectively weakens the work itself, particularly in that it doesn’t draw out and struggle over contending lines.
(2) often theoretical work is taken up in a sloppy manner where assertions substitute for theoretical analysis -where only one side of an issue is presented, then a consensus on that particular view is called for
* * *
On the question of racist errors surrounding the Conference. Many specific errors have been enumerated. We unite with some of the criticisms, others we believe are unfounded and incorrect. To clarify our views on this, and given the prominence of the current struggle against white chauvinism in the OC, we think our time is best served by us making some general observations on the unfolding struggle against white chauvinism in the OC.
First, we must recognize that we are all united on viewing the struggle against white chauvinism in the communist movement as an integral and important part of our party building tasks.
In this period of party building, the struggle against racism is one of the cornerstones of constructing a multinational party. The struggle against racism in the party building period, and the struggle for a multinational party, in our view, includes the following components:
(1) First, and primarily, developing theoretical analysis and political line on the question of racism and the struggle against it in U.S. society
(2) beginning to take up political practice in the anti-racist struggle, demonstrating our capacity as communists to play a leading role in this struggle
(3) taking up the struggle against white chauvinism, and secondarily narrow nationalism among the ranks of communists.
The OC has recently taken up the struggle against racism, in particular the struggle against white chauvinism in a very concerted manner. We need to address our differences around how this struggle is being taken up. We believe the current course of the anti-white-chauvinist campaign is doing a grave disservice to the struggle against racism and to the ideological fiber of the OC.
(1) The OC is taking up the struggle against white chauvinism in the communist movement in isolation from the struggle against racism in society.
As William Foster wrote in his article, “Left Sectarianism in the Fight for Negro Rights and Against White Chauvinism,” “White chauvinism cannot be fought as a think in itself by a separate campaign. It can be fought only in connection with the struggle of the Negro people for full economic, political, social and cultural equality. The fight against white chauvinism is an organic part of this broad struggle for Negro rights and cannot be divorced from it without itself becoming reduced to an empty, harmful abstraction.”
Of course, the OC is not in a position to lead the practical struggle of the working class for full racial equality. However, the OC must take up the struggle against white chauvinism in the context of our tendency’s efforts to develop theory, political line and practice which can guide the working class struggle against racism.
(2) The OC is taking up the struggle against white chauvinism as a problem of individuals rather than a social problem. We must be clear, the main source of racism is capitalist society, not racist individuals. This is true in the working class movement as well as the communist movement. It is on the basis of developing an objective materialist analysis of racism in society that we can clearly understand its impact in the working class and among communists. Then we can objectively take up racism in the communist movement as reflective of broader social dynamics, rather than subjectively targetting individuals as racists.
The problem is racism, not racists in the communist movement. Charging someone as a racist is a very serious condemnation. It cannot be thrown around recklessly; any such criticisms must be carefully explained and objectively justified. It is essential that we develop objective criteria about what constitutes racism, that our discussion proceed on that basis.
Now, it is definitely true that individual communists, though consciously anti-racist, make racist errors. The pervasive racism in society becomes manifest in errors of individual communists that have a racist character or impact. The question is, how do we take up the struggle to rectify these errors?
The campaign against white chauvinism in the OC has taken on the atmosphere of a moral crusade. Ritualistic criticism-self-criticism has been encouraged. It is as if people can purge and purify themselves of their racism, as if racism is a sin to be confessed.
Comrades, this is no way for communists to take up the struggle against individual errors of white chauvinism and racism. The purpose of criticism self-criticism is to understand the basis, roots and impact of our errors, and in so doing, become able to change our practice. In terms of racist errors among communists, we must identify the social roots of individual racist errors, examine the impact of the racist errors on communists ability to carry out their tasks. Struggle against ideological errors must be taken up as they relate to our capacity to advance the theoretical, political and organizational tasks at hand. We must take the approach of educating, not smashing individuals. Remember, our goal is to cure the disease to save the patient.
In analyzing the character of this campaign against white chauvinism it to us closely approximates that which the CPUSA carried out between 1949-1953; in fact the SC has stated that is one of the example of the struggle. Well, all accounts we know of “by people who participated in this campaign, from all parts of the political spectrum within the party, are that it was a destructive campaign. Foster characterized it as Left Sectarianism in the struggle against white chauvinism. Haywood called it the “Party’s Phony War”, and said, “In the end, white chauvinism was strengthened as a result of this phony war”. I strongly encourage comrades to read the xeroxs we have made available. They make it abundantly clear both the similarity of the current OC struggle with the CP struggle of the early 50’s, and the negative, destructive character of both.
A couple of final notes on the mishandling of the struggle against racism.
We believe there has been the very unfortunate development of race-baiting as a tactic, particularly of the OC leadership. We call race-baiting those efforts to discredit and isolate comrades who raise political differences through the use of unsubstantiated charges of racism. This race-baiting relies on demagogy, and appeals to prejudice, rather than on substantive points. We believe there are all too many of these instances, the effect of which has been to blunt struggle over many crucial questions facing the OC.
The majority speech makes the charge of a white chauvinist conspiracy, that white communists seemingly subconsciously conspire to maintain a superior position with respect to minority comrades. This conspiracy concept is theoretically unfounded, and has no relationship to Marxist science. It is very reminiscent of the line of white skin privilege, which our movement has repudiated and represents some of the worst aspects of a white-guilt, moralistic and un-Marxist approach to the question of racism and the struggle against it among communists. We think given the damaging nature of this charge it is imperative that the leadership retract this formulation.
The struggle against racism and for multinational unity, in the working class and among communists is indeed central in our struggle for the party. Our correct handling of this struggle is a crucial indicator of our capacity as practitioners of the science of Marxism-Leninism.
We are committed to struggling for a Marxist-Leninist approach to the struggle against racism in our ranks.