The task of the vanguard communist party is to transform the spontaneous class struggle of the working class into the conscious struggle of the proletariat to emancipate itself from capital. To fulfill this task Marxist-Leninists must consolidate the break with opportunism ideologically, politically and organizationally. This means drawing firm and definite lines of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and opportunism. Before we can unite, and in order that we can unite, these lines must be drawn.
One important means to draw these lines are open frank polemics, polemics which sum up practice and which clearly point out differences, the significance of these differences, whether they be differences of substance or partial matters, and whether or not these differences interfere with common work in the forging of a vanguard party. These are the purposes of this polemic.
The demarcation that must be drawn between the line of the OL and the MLOC is definitely not minor. Rather, it is fundamental, in that it represents the demarcation between opportunism and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. This comes as a result of several years of practice and struggle by cadre of the MLOC; practice as individuals working with the OL, as members of the former Black Workers Congress and more recently, as cadre of the MLOC struggling with comrades from the October League.
Recognizing long standing, significant differences is the basis to carry on protracted struggle. Such struggle requires the stand of unity, struggle, unity.
At the outset it should be clear that our attitude toward the OL is one of unity, struggle, unity. Therefore, it is important to point out the unity which actually does exist. This would include our unity with the formulation of the three weapons and party building as the central task; recognition of the leading role of China and Albania in the world communist movement; the understanding that capitalism has been restored in the Soviet Union and the need to unite the people of the world against the two superpowers; recognition and support of the right to self-determination of the Black Nation, up to and including secession, and other questions. These are not minor, but have been an important basis for common work in the past, and hopefully, in the future. However, the most genuine test of unity is not formality, but practice. Because the basis for unity and struggle exists, the MLOC sponsored the OL Fight Back Conference in December, and more recently has carried out joint action with the OL against the two superpowers and their intervention in Angola. The MLOC carried out joint work with the OL in order to struggle out differences. The MLOC determined that the correct stand toward the Fight Back Conference was not to ignore it, but to participate, and participate actively, not simply to observe. Contradictions are resolved through struggle, not sectarianism or passivity.
The political line of the Fight Back Organization was to build “one mass organization of working people to oppose the Imperialist system and its murderous offense against the rights and living conditions of people”. (CALL, October, 1975, p.1)
In short, this conference was to pull together all those who want to “fight back”. Some concrete results of this line are the following:
l) On a number of occasions, criticism was raised of the general OL slogan of “Jobs Not War”, on the grounds that it is social pacifist and does not even distinguish between different kinds of war. This was opposed on the plenary floor and in the workshops on the grounds that this criticism violates the “united front ” character of the Fight Back Organization. One OL cadre even responded to this criticism by saying that, “We can’t bother over slogans, they are not very important.” Presumably the OL does not believe that workers can understand the difference between revolutionary war in Indochina and imperialist war between the two superpowers.
2) In a workshop on mass agitation, (there was no workshop on propaganda) after a discussion in which propaganda and agitation were continually confused, a comrade in the audience presented Lenin’s position on this question, and specifically on agitation. The OL responded, “I agree completely. Agitation is written so that absolutely everyone can read and understand. It doesn’t say the ’system’ is the cause. It doesn’t use terms like bourgeoisie and proletariat, because then we are already losing someone....” This viewpoint is confirmed by Comrade Klonsky in the CLASS STRUGGLE #3, where he attacks the view that propaganda should be aimed at the advanced. The CALL, from its inception (Vol 1, No.1, p.2) was directed toward the “broad masses”, negating the task of winning the advanced to communism.
3) In a discussion on the national question, the OL held that to advance self-determination for the Black Nation would limit the mass character of the Fight Back Organization, and therefore it should be upheld only in the abstract. Right after Harry Haywood spoke of the need to call for self-determination in order to unite the working class, the editor of the CALL stood up to oppose the call for self-determination for the Black Nation.
4) In a discussion on busing, a comrade in the workshop pointed out that the proposed resolution does not raise the question of self-determination, and that therefore the resolution was reformist. The OL response was that this “violates the united front character of the resolution”. Raising the issue of busing without connecting it to the question of self-determination relegates this genuine democratic right of equal education to a reformist demand.
5) In numerous workshops, OL leadership asked all those present to state their name and place of work! Even the most primitive precautions to safeguard, workers were neglected, reflecting a clear social democratic attitude toward the state.
6) And finally, in the closing plenary session, a comrade from the MLOC pointed out that some of the international speakers indicated that the Fight Back must be a struggle for more than just crumbs, and that the solution to our struggle is socialism. Therefore, that a basic propaganda slogan of the Fight Back Conference should contain the demand for socialism. In the course of opposing this on the grounds that it violates the “united front character of the Fight Back Organization, one Spanish speaking worker rose to state that “Marxism is like English to workers.... the workers cannot understand all this talk about Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao and Trotsky...” This speaker received the loudest ovation of the entire session. Not a single OL cadre rose to distinguish the great teachers from Trotsky, or to uphold the position that workers can grasp Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
7) In general, the OL leadership did not represent themselves as OL cadre, did not advance socialist ideology and in no way sought to actively transform the spontaneous class consciousness of the workers to scientific socialism.
These examples of the political work of the October League serve to illustrate that the OL does not recognize the need for the conscious leadership of the spontaneous working class struggle, and sacrifices the long range interests of the proletariat to a short term gain; they believe that, as Bernstein stated, the movement is everything, the goal is nothing. The OL fails to recognize the higher forms the working class movement takes, and therefore fails to lead the working class at all, on the grounds that communist leadership would “sacrifice the united front character of the Fight Back”. In the national movements, the OL takes only a formal stand on the question of self-determination, without giving it any real content. In reality, the unity of the working class demands that the right to self-determination be upheld at every turn.
These and other examples should serve to indicate that the line of the OL merits very close study; that it is not a question of what the OL says in this or that document, but rather what they do. When we study the line of the OL, we find that the episodes reported from the Fight Back Conference are not in any way isolated examples, but accurate reflections of the basic line of the OL. This line is not simply a deviation from a basically correct line on the working class movement, but a definite trend, a trend which has crystalized into an opportunist stand.
This polemic against the opportunist line of the OL is not the first effort to expose the right opportunist stand of the OL on many questions. The Workers Viewpoint Organization issued a polemic, in which there were important points with which the MLOC has agreement. Some of these points are the WVO’s criticism of the OL line that the trade unions can be “pushed to the left”, criticism of OL’s line of unity with the trade union bureaucrats, the criticism that OL promotes bourgeois reformist illusions, and other questions. There are also important points where the MLOC differs with the line of the Workers Viewpoint Organization, and its criticism of the OL, but those will not be taken up here. The MLOC sees this polemic as building on the correct aspects of the WVO polemic, recognizing, in our view, that the earlier polemic needed to be carried further to reach the essence of the OL’s stand.
In studying this polemic, comrades and friends should seek to find the essence of the OL position on these questions. Basically the outlook of the OL is vulgar materialism. Vulgar materialism is characterized by a total ignorance of dialectics and an idealistic approach to society. Vulgar materialism reduces all the processes of nature to outmoded mechanics, denying the self-movement of things, denying discontinuity or qualitative leaps. In nature, such leaps are always spontaneous, while in society, they result from the conscious activity of the masses. As Stalin states in DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.
If the passing of slow quantitative changes into rapid and abrupt qualitative changes is a law of development, then it is clear that revolutions made by oppressed classes are a quite natural and inevitable phenomena.
Vulgar materialism results in liquidating the revolutionary role of the masses as the makers of history, and in their place, substitutes some theory of productive forces; that is, the theory that social progress is a result of the forces of production, of Imperialism transforming itself gradually into a progressive force, or the dying out of class struggle through the development of the productive forces themselves, not through class struggle. If all this seems to contradict your understanding of the line of OL, we invite your careful study of this polemic and the line of the OL, to look beneath the surface to the real essence of the line of the OL. (ANTI-DUHRING, by Engels, is recommended for background on vulgar materialism).
The vulgar materialism of the OL is expressed in their basic tailing of the masses, belittling of socialist ideology, inability to perceive new and advanced developments, and general denial of the subjective factor. This is not a question of what the OL says, but of what their practice reflects. No matter how many times one calls out that the masses are the makers of history , consistent economist work among the masses denies this call in fact.
In attempting to sum up the ideological, political and organizational line of the OL, what yardstick do we use? We have already indicated that the line of any organization must be judged first and foremost by their political line on the central task, the objective task set before the working class in any period of the revolution. “Marxism holds that one who promotes the development of the objective world according to its inherent laws is left and revolutionary,” states PEKING REVIEW (Oct.18, 1974, p.10).Therefore we must first turn our attention to the OL’s views on the objective situation, that is, the crisis of Imperialism, as it is from an analysis of the objective situation that the central task of our movement is defined.