In March 1977, our organization hosted a closed forum in Denver, Colorado. The topic of the forum was “The Overall Situation In The Communist Movement and How to Complete the Central Task of Party Building”. The main forum speakers were the League for Proletarian Revolution (M-L), August Twenty-Ninth Movement (M-L) and ourselves (COReS). The Kansas City Revolutionary Workers Collective and the Lexington Communist Collective prepared shorter statements on the forum topic although LCC was not able to participate in the forum. We invited these organizations in order to broaden the participation at the forum and to begin to develop systematic and consistent ties with other small organizations and collectives.[1] This pamphlet is the prepared statements of these organizations as presented at the forum and as verified in a recording of that forum.
The forum was significant in that:
A) This was the first public polemic between LPR and ATM since the initiation of the open, comradely polemics by LPR in their newspaper, Resistance (Vol. 8, #1, Jan., 1977).
B) This was likewise our first open polemic with ATM concerning our increasing differences with their new dominant right opportunist line.
C) The content of the forum concerned the most burning question – how to complete the central task of party building and served to further draw the lines between the genuine and the sham.
D) The substance of the two lines and the struggle at the forum clearly showed ATM’s turn to the right as essentially being a new anti-theoretical trend.
The forum helped to raise the consciousness and unity of forces in this area as well as increase our involvement in the larger communist movement. We were able to see that our local experience with ATM’s practice as well as our theoretical disagreements were not empirical illusions but rather significant questions for the entire movement.
Our organization COReS (M-L-M) is four years old but for most of that time we have been ’hidden’, a result of our past small group mentality and a right line which we carried for much of our history, though we did have some contact with other organizations. This forum was a part of our opening up to the communist movement, the working class and the masses. In the future we will continue this process through publication of our sum-ups and political line and through implementation of our party building line.
Basically, we are a multi-national communist organization whose cadre come chiefly from the Chicano national movement of the 60’s and early 70’s, and from the student, women’s and anti-Vietnam war movements. We have at this time major unities with the line of LPR (M-L) and are deepening our understanding of those unities. Our statement at the forum provides more information as to our line.
The forum lasted for two days, approximately 12 hours, and provided a rich example of the type of struggle which must be carried out against opportunism if we are to have us a genuine communist party in the U.S.
During the 2nd day of the discussion periods we gave concentrated attention to having the different organizations struggling over their line on the following questions: propaganda and agitation, reforms (ERA, busing, community control of the police), right opportunism and trotskyism, the student movement, etc. We will be publishing shortly a sum-up of that forum and a summation of our differences with ATM.
We encourage comrades to study this pamphlet, the references to published articles and the classics, as well as the polemics and sum-ups which we, LPR, ATM and others may publish in the future. We encourage all readers to submit criticisms, analysis, etc. to us and to the organizations participating at the forum. This polemic must be broadened, deepened and consolidated by all conscious forces in the U.S.
The need for a new communist party rallying the majority of the honest communists becomes more of a necessity with each new day. Imperialism can be overthrown and socialism established only under the leadership of such a party. It is to further the building of that party that we publish this pamphlet.
Colorado Organization for Revolutionary Struggle (M-L-M) 4/77
[1] We had originally invited a collective from Wichita to present a short statement and to participate in the forum. We had had no real exchange or unities developing prior to the forum other than that-we knew we needed to investigate the collective and their line. Two days prior to the forum we received two documents from them including one “analysis” of the leadership of the CPC in which they laid out the following two points, among others:
“The results of our scientific investigation has revealed that the revisionists have consolidated their hold on the CC of the CPC and are in the process of consolidating their power in the CPC at large and the entire state apparatus.”
“...we and other comrades are studying the history of revisionism...We feel that after all this is done, how communists stand as to the history of revisionism in power in the SU and the current takeover in China, will be a demarcation of the genuine from the sham...”
COReS considers the recognition of the international leadership of the CPC and the PLA to be a fundamental line of demarcation between all genuine Marxist-Leninists and all the sham Marxist-Leninists. On this point we make no concessions. And we and Wichita are on opposite sides of that line. They claim to have a consolidated, “scientific” analysis; they were not simply raising questions. Consequently there was no room for struggle with them. For this reason we withdrew the invitation to the forum. COReS (M-L-M)