First Published: The Call, Vol. 5, No. 19, September 13, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Dear Editors,
We are friends of The Calland of the October League who recently had some first-hand experience with PRRWO (Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization) in the shop where we work (United Steel Workers Union). No sooner had The Callarticle, “Revolutionary Wing in Shambles,” (May 24, I 976) been published, than we were all “expelled“ from a rank-and-file “caucus” that PRRWO initiated. By the time we were “expelled,” there was only PRRWO and ourselves left. All the other workers had been driven out by PRRWO’s line of refusing to link party-building with the struggles of the masses.
The clearest example of this was their sectarian attitude towards the union and towards the plant struggles. They said that unions are reactionary organizations which were imposed on the workers’ movement in the past by the bourgeoisie as a trick to control and cool down class struggle.
They opposed trying to win communist leadership of the unions and to win the unions to take up the workers economic and revolutionary struggles. They never lifted a finger against the severe layoffs, speedup and discrimination.
Maintaining correctly in words that “party-building is the main task,” they in fact meant: “Study and propaganda are everything, the mass struggle and agitation are nothing.”
Even though they talked constantly about the importance of education and propaganda in this period, within the caucus they did nothing to explain to the workers how to wage struggle in a revolutionary way.
Furthermore, they not once sold their newspaper Palante at the plant gates because they said the majority of workers were too “backwards” for it. For the same reason they said they weren’t interested in making our caucus into a “mass” caucus but rather wanted to attract to it only the “minority” of workers who were ready to discuss communist ideas.
We feel it is PRRWO that is backwards, not the masses of workers. In form PRRWO is super-“left,” but in essence it is rightist. In the name of “building the party” and “educating advanced workers,” PRRWO actually drives off the most advanced workers ’by discouraging mass struggle and isolating them from their fellow workers who are less advanced. Nor does PRRWO provide communist leadership and communist agitation to the broad masses.
A new communist party of the class can only be built among the masses, in the heat of the class struggle. PRRWO opposes the efforts of all those who are trying to do just that!
Friends of The Call
Jersey City, N.J.