Issued as mimeographed copy of a typed text: n.d. [1969?]
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Comrades:
These recent gatherings of the collective leadership of the CP-ML come at a time when a great victory has been won by the Proletarian Revolutionary Line in our party.
The recent revolutionary storms in the ranks of our party and its mass organizations has shattered the bourgeois headquarters headed by the renegade, hidden traitor, and capitalist slumlord Laski, exposed the handful of renegades, enemy agents and absolutely unrepentant persons in power in the party, taking the revisionist imperialist road, with Laski as their arch-representative, and a so-called Gene Alexander, his main accomplice, and smashed their plot to liquidate the party, by rendering it defenseless and disrupted, bureaucratic and clique-ridden, reliant upon bourgeois methods of work, capitulating to Fosterite revisionism, and opening the party to various reactionary elements, isolating the party from the proletariat and the oppressed national minorities especially. The Proletarian Revolutionary Line has achieved this victory by also rejecting the capitulationist line of leaving or dissolving the party itself, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or killing the patient to cure the disease as our Chinese comrades would say. Other forces that had previously expelled Laski from the Party, then proceeded to liquidate the party itself, selling the printing facilities that served the People’s Voice, and then proceeding to disappear from any form of political activity. (See the so-called “Bogus Issues” of People’s Voice). The Lustig-Hoffman clique were revisionists like Laski, but they preferred to function without Laski, afraid that his instability would expose them early. They then pretended to continue the Party, actually liquidating it. Thus we can hardly say that the Lustig-Hoffman clique was in any way a genuine Proletarian Revolutionary Line, although their criticisms of Laski and various other point raised in their so-called “Bogus issues” of People’s Voice are essentially correct and valuable in that respect. Another tendency, also opposed to the Laski-revisionist line, showed their true colors when they began waving the little yellow book of Liu Shao Chi. They evidently represented a right-wing split, rather than the principled expression of the Proletarian Revolution Line in the party. However, they have since continued to develop politically and may rejoin the ranks of proletarian revolutionary forces in the future. A third tendency, representing primarily the workers of national minorities who had been attracted to the party and its mass organizations, broke away bit by bit, most of these elements later joining the Black Panther Party or various nationalist tendencies. This tendency reflects the primary section of the party which must be restored, the proletarians of national minorities, the militant Black youth who rallied to the United Front and the Party in Watts, Los Angeles, before the Laski betrayals and wrecking activities had achieved their full results.
However, the Proletarian Revolutionary Line which has presently expelled Laski is distinguished primarily from all these previous tendencies by the fact that we have taken up the immediate tasks on the political and ideological level as well as the organizational level. We are armed with a program, we have put politics in command of our action, and this makes us determined to continue and develop the party. The Proletarian Revolutionary Line in the party in fact represents the mast active members of the party, the basic party rank-and-file, while the Laski-revisionist line represents the inactive and party-wrecking bureaucrats and “sources of funds”, men behind the scenes, etc. having a completely negative effect on our activity whenever it was applied.
In fact the party membership and leadership upholding the Proletarian Revolutionary Line has been forced by local and general circumstances especially the advancing level of the proletariat and oppressed nations to simply disregard various Laski-revisionist instructions. This was especially true in regards the Laski-revisionist line of “sell all literature” and “make lots of money selling all kinds of stuff”, totally ignoring and negating the role of leaflets, posters, buttons, and other mass literature. We ended up handing out most of the newspapers free of charge as well as most of the books and pamphlets at hand, thereby getting: Mao Tsetung Thought into the hands of many advanced workers, youth, and lumpens who would otherwise not be able to afford buying it if we had followed the Laski “sell all”-sellout line. We also relied strongly on our own efforts in various places to produce our own leaflets, posters, and other mass literature, especially linking up these materials with actions by the party membership and friends, such as street meetings, picket lines, and meetings in the party center.
The Proletarian Revolutionary Line has been well-represented in New York and Los Angeles both, as well as throughout the other and non-exposed levels of party organization and activity. The Proletarian Revolutionary Line is definitely not the expression of an isolated faction in one city or another, but rather the resolute nation-wide struggle of the majority of the party membership and leadership against a handful of renegades and enemy agents taking the party and mass organizations connected with the party down the revisionist road to liquidation.
The essential questions in the current struggle between the Two Lines in the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) are:
1. National Question: The Proletarian Revolutionary Line calls for dropping the “USA” from the name, abolishing the use of the word “negro” from the program and from party literature in general. The Proletarian Revolutionary Line affirms the right of self-determination of the oppressed nations, especially the right of the proletariat to form its own Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Parties, armies, and united fronts and National-Liberation Fronts. This smashes the Laski-revisionist line of ignoring the Chicano Nation, of ignoring various other national minorities, and especially Laski’s chauvinist position of “one party in the USA”, in other words, one party, based in the American nation, representing four nations, three of which are oppressed by the American nation.
2. Trade Union Question: The Proletarian Revolutionary Line calls for the smashing of the TUs and raising of struggle of the proletariat to a higher level, in new organs of struggle, armed struggle. The Laski-Alexander revisionist line, like PLP and other trotskyites, wants to “capture” the TUs and the so-called “Labor Movement”, disregarding the fast that 3/4 of the proletariat, the most oppressed and exploited national minorities of the proletariat in fact are outside the TUs. Thus the Laski-revisionist line on the TUs, supported especially by the petty-bureaucrat Alexander has been chauvinist and racist in essence, as well as revisionist in the sense of liquidating Class Struggle and Class War into reformism, legalism and Trade-Union economism.
3. Armed Struggle: Laski has done everything possible to liquidate the party position and activity in regards armed struggle and armed revolution. Laski and his lackeys have basically ignored the tasks of formation of PADG’s and other organs of armed struggle, and even in the party newspaper referred rarely to this question. When the subject was brought up in the New Worker, issue no. 2, in the report on the L.A. United Front section, it was done in a typical petty-bourgeois and party-wrecking manner, exposing armed cadres in phonographs a la Panthers. Laski only wanted party members and friends in order to serve as his personal bodyguard and goon-squad, protecting him from the justifiedly angered workers in Watts and elsewhere, many of whom have had personal experience of Laski’s manipulations and betrayals, and were seeking to perform a service to the party and the proletariat by ridding both of him. Laski’s bodyguard line, his hysterical call for reinforcements to come to L.A. from other vital party sections and activities, fully exposes his reactionary nature: a so-called revolutionary who fears and hates the oppressed masses and who in fact is part of the bourgeoisie. And this raises the next point:
4. Laski’s Class Nature: It was not until just recently however that the full nature of Laski’s Class nature was known: his ownership of the Space Advertising Agency as “Michael Connelly” and his role as a slumlord in Watts itself. Many people in the left, and perhaps some in the party, may be strongly tempted to yell “Pig!” as many have been doing for a while now. However we feel that this is not only incorrect factually, but is an opportunist evasion of the basic political and ideological task of combatting revisionism. As the expression of a political tendency in the party and the class, Laski is more dangerous than a thousand police-spies and agents-provocateurs. A police-spy would never have blown his cool so completely as Laski did, would never have been careless about his true identity, (as Michael Isaac Laski) and home address and sources of income, as Laski did. His moving of the L.A. Party facilities out of Watts and into a capitalist business district and building, in the same floor, in fact, next door to the Laski Advertising Agency, was an indication that Laski and his cohorts were totally exposing their true nature, has no shame or quilt about their utterly reactionary role.
5. Commandism and Bureaucratism: The struggle against the Laski-Alexander revisionist clique is also a struggle in the organizational sphere, a struggle to reorganize the entire party along democratic-centralist lines, eliminating the bureaucratic-commandist structure of “General Secretary, Secretariat, Standing Committee, Chairman, Vice-Chairman”. The Proletarian Revolutionary Line affirms the collective leadership of the party and the class. The Laski-revisionist line follows the bourgeois line of bureaucratic-commandism, establishing non-elected permanent posts, dividing mental and manual labor in the party, basing activity on personal and clique needs rather than politica1 and programmatic approach to all questions.
6. Party Security and Party Solidarity: Laski has been guilty of more directly party-wrecking activities than anyone else in the history of the CP “USA”(M-L) now the CP-ML. Continually opening the party to the most unreliable and unstable elements, he finally allowed an entire clique of reactionaries, police spies, and opportunists to take over all United Front activity in Watts and gave national prominence and publicity in party press to a certain Ernie Smith. This disruptive activity caused the disaffection of many party members, friends, and potential friends.
7. Methods of Work: The Proletarian Revolutionary Line opposed the Laski-revisionist line with new methods of work, including the technical work on the newspaper and its distribution, contact and communication with M-L groups internationally, and relations with other groups. The Laski-Alexander revisionist line is that of unsystematic propagandism and tailendism, as in the case of the “National Mobilization Comm.” and ’Overthrow the Johnson-Nixon War makers’ revisionist line, reliance on the bourgeois media, as in the above, also, deliberate wrecking activities in regards to inner-party contact and communication, fits of energy without any real activity, interspersed with long periods of depression and inactivity, arrogance and dogmatism in the face of criticism, journalistic and formalistic styles of writing, and aversion to manual and practical tasks.
8. The Lumpenproletariat: Despite the fact that on a broad scale the Lumpenproletariat has been playing an increasingly revolutionary role, and the fact that many lumpenproletarians have been attracted to the CP-ML providing the party with some of its best members and friends in many situations, the Laski-Alexander revisionist line persisted in the Labor-Aristocracy social-chauvinism position of totally rejecting the Lumpenproletariat, while at the same time calling for alliances between the proletariat and the middle and petty sections of the bourgeoisie. This position further reveals its chauvinist essence by echoing the Nixon-Agnew-Wallace imperialist line on the poor as “parasites”, by characterizing women on welfare as “prostitutes”, unemployed workers as “thieves” and street youth as “hustlers” and then declaring that this is an unreliable and unstable ally for the proletariat. Laski himself, his circle of friends, his arch-renegade accomplice and shadow Alexander, and the class forces they represent, Labor-Aristocracy, petty-bourgeois and middle-bourgeois are the real prostitutes, thieves, and hustlers; they are the real unreliable and unstable elements!
The Proletarian Revolutionary Line is that of struggle, learning through doing, serving the Proletariat, developing self-reliance, and building a nation-wide force in an all-round way. The eight above points can be added to. The defeat of the Laski-Alexander revisionist clique and the Revolutionization of the Party and its Program is an important experience rich in valuable lessons, adding to the experience of the struggle against revisionism in the International Communist Movement. The Victory of the Proletarian Revolutionary Line in our Party firmly upholds Mao Tsetung Thought, the Marxism-Leninism of our era, and looks to the world-shaking Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China as the center of the world anti-revisionist struggle, the basic banner leading the entire struggle against right and ’left’ opportunism and liberalism and revisionism forward. This victory carries our struggle against revisionism in general to a higher level, arming us better for the smashing up of the revisionists, trotskyites, PLP, etc. The Party and the Proletariat is strengthened by this victory.