First Published: Marxist-Leninist Vanguard, Vol. 1, No. 3, November 1958.
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.
We, members of the James W. Ford Section of the CPUSA, in East Harlem, New York, through this statement, reaffirm our endorsement and support to the line of the August 16-17, 1958, Conference for the Reconstitution of a Marxist-Leninist Party.
We fully support, and will continue to do so, the leadership democratically elected at the conference. We support the actions of the Provisional Committee for the Reconstitution of a Marxist-Leninist Party and do abide by their decisions.
The expulsion of Armando, Marino, Dougher, Kilpatrick, Lucy and others from the CPUSA is another attack perpetrated against Marxism-Leninism, and against the working class by the pseudo-Marxist leadership of the CPUSA. These comrades were expelled because of their selflessness, their courage, their consistency for a Marxist-Leninist line in the American Communist Party, and because of their un-compromising stand and their struggle to expose Revisionism and the Revisionist leadership of all shades.
[Words missing – EROL] of the CPUSA by these expulsion will not arouse demoralization in our ranks. We are solidly united behind our Provisional Committee and behind our leadership. We respect, we support, we trust the leadership of the Provisional Committee for the Re-constitution of a Marxist-Leninist Party. Nothing and nobody will split us in our determination to carry on the line of the August Conference.
The rank and file of the CPUSA has no respect and no confidence in their leadership.
The pseudo-Marxist leadership of the CPUSA resorts to piecemeal expulsions because they are afraid to make good their threat to expel every party member that attended or was represented at the August 16-17 Conference.
Wholesale expulsion of these workers, Negro and Puerto Rican in the main, is something that the Revisionists wish to avoid for fear of exposing their anti-working-class line; but these tactics do not mask their purpose.
While honest and principled people are faced with expulsions, not one single confirmed, factionalist wrecker has been expelled. Gates and Charney left the party under their own steam, with a few thousand dollars from the Party treasury, charged with the task or organizing “The Party of Democratic Socialism”. Now this “Party” that the so-called Left and Centerists helped to create is emerging to public light.
The 10 National Committee members who voted for anti-Soviet, anti-Hungarian and pro-imperialist resolutions introduced by Dorothy Healy on the question of the execution of Imre Nagy and General Maleter are still in the Party and still remain in the National Committee.
Open liquidators that offer counter-revolutionary resolutions are rewarded with posts in the National Executive Committee, as the Party leadership did in the case of Lightfoot and Winter.
Nelson and Stone and Bittelman are placed in the program Committee as a reward for their Soviet-baiting.
The pseudo-Marxist leadership of the CPUSA has passed the point of no return. Intimately involved in the Right treason, they have to protect the traitors to save their own skin.
You, the pseudo-Marxist leadership of the CPUSA, in following the piece-meal policy of expelling individuals one or two at a time, are aiming at demoralizing our ranks and decapitating our movement. But if you think you’re succeeding, you’re only deceiving yourselves.
You do not dare to follow through on the threat of mass expulsions because you will have to expel masses of workers, white, Negro, Puerto Rican and many others, in New York, in Pennsylvania, in Illinois, in Ohio and throughout the country, workers who are supporting the line of the August 16-17 Conference.
We, members of the James W. Ford Section of the CPUSA, in East Harlem, N.Y. fully support the line of the August 16-17 Conference. We fully support the activities of the Provisional Committee for the Reconstitution of a Marxist-Leninist Party. We fully support our expelled leadership, Armando, Marino, Lucy, Dougher, Kilpatrick.
Our answer to these expulsions is a complete and radical disassociation from the corrupted leadership of the CPUSA and its revisionist line.
It’s the only decent, revolutionary alternative left open to us.
We will fight for the reconstitution of an American Marxist-Leninist Party!
At a meeting of the Waterfront Section held on October 22, 1958, we took action based on the Statement of the New York staff that appeared in The Worker.
This Statement referred to the expulsion of Comrades A. Marino and A. Roman. Although Comrade Marino is the S.O. of the Waterfront Section, to this date our Section has not received any communication with regard to this expulsion. This is proof of the contempt the leadership has for the rank-and-file members of the Party, and its awareness of the ideological and political position of the entire Section.
Bill Albertson, N.Y. State secretary was convinced of this position several months ago when he was sent by the State leadership to our Section in an attempt to win the Section membership to the belief that Comrade Marino was “misrepresenting” us. At that time the Comrades in the Waterfront let “Mr.” Albertson know in no uncertain terms that Comrade Marino was nothing else but carrying out the decisions and politics, adopted collectively, by the Section membership.
It should be noted that prior to this visit, members of the Foster-Davis group approached both of these Comrades in an attempt to bribe them away from the struggle.
Unanimously rebuffed in this attempt, they sought other means to achieve their main task.
The leadership of the CPUSA has abandoned all Marxist-Leninist principles. This was clearly seen in the decisions of the 16th National Convention. They (the Party leadership) are now hell bent on driving out of the Party all consistent fighters for a Marxist -Leninist revolutionary Party in the United States of America.
The expulsions are being directed in the main against workers–Negro and Puerto Ricans–as they are among the most consistent fighters against the revisionist, class collaborationist policies of the leadership.
While adherents to Marxist-Leninist principles are expelled, class collaborationism and anti-Sovietism is permitted to run rampant in all the Party organizations. Dorothy Healy, Steve Nelson and other National Committee members condemned the Soviet Union and the Hungarian Peoples’ Government for the execution of the counter-revolutionaries, Nagy and Maleter . . . yet they are still members of the National Committee. Claude Light-foot, recently rewarded by a promotion to the N.E.C. for his revisionist policies shares the same platform with Howard Mayhew, the leading Trotskyite in Illinois.
It is to our credit that with the issuance of our pamphlet “Against Revisionism” we were among the first in the United States to raise our voice against revisionism as projected by the Gates’ forces and condoned by the Foster-Davis group.
This pamphlet was instrumental in uniting, during the National and State Convention, those forces that were decided to save the Party and maintain its Marxist-Leninist purity. While unable to completely defeat the revisionists due to the conciliationist role of the Foster-Davis group, we were instrumental in temporarily checking the complete liquidation of the Party.
For years our Section has fought for a revolutionary program – a Marxist-Leninist approach to the labor movement, and consistently fought to put into practice Marxist-Leninist principles in the class struggles of the maritime workers.
Having abandoned Marxist-Leninist principles, the CPUSA cannot offer any solution to the problems facing the American working class.
As Communists, we recognize our responsibility to our fellow seamen, and in particular, to the American working class. The present leadership of the CPUSA has abandoned the struggle for Socialism and Peace; is collaborating with capitalism; is permitting through a policy of “no struggle” the continuation of colonialism and is helping to strangle the peoples’ fight for national liberation. These policies also aid and abet American capitalism to further the oppression of our working class.
A Party leadership that has abandoned the working class, that gives lip service to Socialism and Peace, no longer, deserves the support of workers who want a Marxist -Leninist vanguard organization.
Therefore, we members of the Waterfront Section feel duty bound in the face of our class responsibility to come to the following conclusions:
1. To join forces with the Provisional Organizing Committee For The Reconstitution of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.
2. To consider the expulsion of Comrade Marino as our own expulsion.
We, the members of the Williamsport Section, Eastern Pennsylvania District, Communist Party USA, unanimously endorse the policies and political line adopted on August 16 and 17, at the National Conference to Reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.
We unanimously agree to detach ourselves from the revisionist policies and organisation of the CPUSA under its present leadership. We will not accept their corruption and deception, nor their unauthorized and un-principled revision of the Party’s revolutionary vanguard role to that of a Social-Democratic one.
Committed body and soul to revisionism at home, the Party leadership frantically attempts to maintain a revolutionary “face” for the fraternal parties of the world to see. Fearing that mass expulsions would rip the mask from this false face, and yet faced with the growing revolt of the working-class membership of the Party, the mis-leaders attempt to maintain their position of duplicity by piecemeal expulsions of our leaders. We reject these expulsions of our Comrades; we join hands in solidarity with them. It is they and the National Provisional Organizing Committee which represents us and the honest, working class elements of the CPUSA.
We hereby form the Williamsport Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, and we join with all other Committees organized nationally for this purpose.
The struggle to defeat revisionism in the CPUSA which culminated in the historic Conference of August 16-17, and the establishment of the National Provisional Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party, was hailed by the majority of the Philadelphia working class and Negro Comrades . . . Already unable to accept the attacks on the consistent Marxist-Leninist fighters. Joe Dougher, Armando Roman and A. Marino, the South Philadelphia Section, the Third Congressional District Club and rank and file Comrades from North and West Philadelphia join with the Provisional Committee in the struggle to reconstitute the Party.
These Comrades constitute the majority of the Philadelphia actives.