First Published: Bolshevik, Political Organ of the Revolutionary Wing, Vol. 6, No. 11, November-December 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Comrades as we move resolutely to defeat the Right deviation and the concilliatory attitude towards it, as we move to strike yet more blows at the Right and in particular at Liquidationism which is threatening the life of our Party. We continue to wage an uncompromising, relentless struggle against Right opportunism and Revisionism in our way forward to the First Party Congress – we must lead the struggle for the nonparty revolutionary mass organizations, specifically we must build the National Liberation Support Committee and the Young Bolshevik League. Here we will deal with The Young Bolshevik League. What is the Young Bolshevik League? Comrade Stalin teaches us:
formally, the Young Communist League is a non-party organization. But it is at the same time a communist organization. This means that while being formally a non-Party organization of workers and peasants, the Young Communist League must nevertheless work under the leadership of our Party. The task is to ensure that the youth has confidence in our Party, to ensure our Party’s leadership in the Young Communist League. The Young Communist Leaguer must remember that without leadership the Young Communist League will be unable to fulfill its main task, namely that of educating the young workers and peasants in the spirit of the proletarian dictatorship and of communism. (The Tasks of the Young Communist League, Vol. #7, pg. 249)
The Young Bolshevik League is a non-party revolutionary mass organization, it is a communist organization. Its task is to organize and educate the youth, who under capitalism face almost constant and total unemployment, the bourgeois schools and tracking systems and the barrage of bourgeois youth culture which spreads anti-communism amongst the youth – all designed to sap the energy and revolutionary spirit of the youth, the proletarian and oppressed nationality youth in particular. A clear example of what the proletarian and oppressed nationality youth face under capitalism is the coldblooded murder of the 15 year old youth – Randolph Evens no different than the murder of Clifford Glover, Claude Reese or the many youth who have historically been brutally murdered either at the hands of the police, losing their lives in imperialist wars or losing their lives in the sweatshops, mines and factories. Under capitalism the youth face daily harassment, beatings, false arrests at the hands of the state – the police. In some places such as Detroit curfews are imposed on the youth as part of the repression on the working class as a whole. Under capitalism the bourgeoisie instills in the youth, going against the masses and not fighting in their interests, getting the youth involved in petty crimes, and using them as scab labor pitting young workers against old. That is why the Young Bolshevik League must bring the youth under its wing.
In this country many of the revolutionary minded youth are scattered and it will be the task of the Young Bolshevik League to bring them under its leadership to imbue them with the Party spirit, with the spirit of discipline and organization, the spirit of revolution, to train and temper them like good steel, strengthen their ideological and political conviction, in the two line struggle the class struggle so that they may swell the ranks of the Party. The Bolshevik Party cadre, the Party fraction must take a leading role in this.
The treachery of the Mensheviks in particular the Liquidators shows itself most crudely on the question of their attempt to liquidate the Party, to liquidate the illegal apparatus resulting in the liquidation of the independence and initiative of communists in the non-party revolutionary mass organizations. This has been their historic treachery in the non-party revolutionary youth organizations such as Y.O.B.U., F.F.M. and P.R.S.U. One characteristic example of liquidationism is the struggle that the liquidators inside the Puerto Rican Student Union waged, led by the notorious liquidator, traitor to the proletariat Joe Cruz. In June 1975 they waged an all out campaign against the study of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought – inside P.R.S.U. using the theoretical justification that “P.R.S.U. is a mass organization let the communists set up study groups independent of P.R.S.U., that is their job.” But there are only two ideologies Bourgeois and Proletarian and not a third ideology of “anti-imperialism”. So the call for “the independence of P.R.S.U.” “independence from the influence of Bolsheviks” is the call to strengthen Bourgeois ideology, to liquidate ’Marxism-Leninism Mao TseTung Thought, to liquidate the role of the Party in the non-party mass organizations. They frenziedly attacked the study of the science, attempting to replace the study of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought with the study of “anti-imperialism” Felix Green and Huberman and Sweezy – they attacked Bolsheviks as left and dogmatic for insisting on the leading role of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought and its application to the concrete conditions, for insisting that the key link is the hammering out of the Party’s basic line and program of action. What was all this petty-bourgeois foaming at the mouth intended to do? To cover up the treacherous role of Menshevism and of liquidationisn in particular. It was in fact to carry out the disarming of the proletariat and in this case the proletarian youth – to lead the proletariat to slaughter, to promote the worship of spontaneity in the non-party mass organizations – to strengthen the influence of Bourgeois ideology to prop up the “decadent, moribund and parasitic” bourgeoisie, in fact as the great Lenin has taught us imperialism could not stay in power another minute without the aid of opportunists, the social props of the bourgeoisie. These treacherous liquidators – liquidate the history of struggle of the two great movements – the communist and workers movements – they liquidate the historical development of fusion, liquidate that in fact communists, advanced workers and revolutionary intellectuals struggled to reaffirm the leading role of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought and have in fact completed this task by 1972. They attempted to liquidate the particular role of P.R.S.U. in the struggle against Right opportunism and Revisionism. P.R.S.U. during the period when ideology was the key link, had taken a clear stance on revisionism and Soviet social imperialism and the study of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought – in fact in 1971 a revisionist faction led by Diego Pabon was purged from P.R.S.U. for upholding revisionism and Soviet social imperialism, and so in 1975 these liquidators want to liquidate all the historic struggle, for indeed our movement has been characterized by intense two-line struggle, but they must liquidate this, they must falsify history in order to bring the non-Party revolutionary mass organizations under their Menshevik Wing. The liquidators are in fact staunch anti-communists, most clearly seen today in the fact that they constitute an Anti-Party Bloc. The liquidators carry out the practice of red-baiting, wrecking and splitting, attempting to isolate communists, the Party from the masses, in fact carrying out the groundwork for state repression. This is the dagger that they want to place in the heart of the Party, in the heart of the proletariat and proletarian revolution.
But we Bolsheviks have and continue to turn that dagger around and place it squarely in the heart of imperialism and its social props – all the Right Opportunists and Revisionists, the Marsh, the Sham Wing the liquidationist and Unity trends. We do this comrades by perservering in our struggle to build the U.S. Bolshevik Party, by never relaxing our vigilance and continuing to strike more blows, more ruthless and determined blows at Right opportunism and Revisionism. We do this comrades by ensuring that the social basis of our Party is the proletariat, by eliminating that fertile soil for opportunism the petty-bourgeoisie. We do this comrades by struggling against the Right deviation which is produced by Right opportunism and Revisionism most specifically by the Menshevik line which raises up that the Young Bolshevik League is a party organization. In order to make the Party loose knit, amorphous and diffuse, in fact to subordinate the interests of the proletariat to those of the petty-bourgeoisie inside one Party. The nonparty mass organizations are essential in carrying out Proletarian Revolution, they are in fact transmission belts, a weapon in establishing, consolidating and maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat. But these mass organizations are not Party organizations and this cannot be made diffuse, this cannot be liquidated!
The Party, the apple of our eye must be the advanced detachment, linked with the proletariat and consistently nourishing and strengthening its ties, but the Party does this precisely by marching at the head of the class and raising to ever greater levels the political activity of the class by giving it a planned and conscious character in its struggle for the seizure of state power, the establishment and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat building socialism and on to the abolition of classes – the final aim, and not by tailing behind in a loose amorphous social-democratic organization. The Right raises that – it is a Party organization in order to change the social basis of the Party, because the Right views the work among youth not as the work among young workers, unemployed youth and high school and college students but only amongst college students trying to group as many bad petty-bourgeois intellectuals together as possible, forming “anti-imperialist” student organizations and “independent” study groups fight back committees, Budget Cut Committees and Students Rights Organisations all for the most slavish worship of spontaneity. Let’s examine the practice of the liquidators of W.V.O. on this question: W.V.O. with their Higher Education Committee of the Budget Cut Committee of the Citywide Committee the committee of the committee and so on, groups together the most backward elements, they can muster together, from amongst college students to record events, discuss phenomenas aspect by aspect and point by point to proudly champion the most purely legal struggle, to put forward solely realizable demands “they say cutback and we say fight back”, taking the road of least resistance. They carry out purely economic agitation, never once carrying out a shred of communist propaganda as they are incapable of this. All the while attacking the developing revolutionary mass organizations such as F.F.M. and P.R.S.U. as “fronts” – What are they really attacking? The genuine unity that has been forged through two line struggle, the genuine line unity that has developed in the fight for the U.S. Bolshevik Party, in the training of future Bolshevik Party cadre, in carrying out propaganda as the chief form of activity. And where are the real “fronts”? The fronts are the paper organizations, legal organizations which WVO so cowardly hides behind, and their Charlie Brown Newsletters – we will punish you WVO by quoting from one of your newsletters “Hey Charlie Brown are you going to the meeting? – Charlie Brown: “No –” “Why not haven’t you heard there’s a Budget Crisis?” And who is Charlie Brown but a pessimistic petty-bourgeois spoiled brat, none other than Jerry Tung in his youth; there we have it the “propaganda” of WVO – Straight up legalism – propaganda as the chief form of activity does not mean cartoons as Resistencia also seems to think that it is – it means communist propaganda and revolutionary art which expresses Socialist Realism, does that scare you WVO? It means the open propagation of our views as Karl Marx taught us – arming the Party Cadre with the theory and tactics of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung thought which you revise! What contempt for the masses! – the proletarian youth have loftly requirements – which you simple-minded intellectuals could never fulfill – All your playing with concepts – trying to fit objects into concepts – with your bankrupt apriorism – idealism and metaphysics, serves your class the Bourgeoisie – in your vain attempt to reform capitalism.
Right opportunists have historically attempted to change the social basis of the Party to attack the main force of the revolution, the proletariat. From in the last period lumpen as the vanguard, students as the vanguard – and in this period raising up the petty bourgeoisie as revolutionary or students as a direct reserve as an attempt to sneak students really the petty-bourgeoisie in as the main force in the revolution. The Right the Mensheviks and conciliators in attempting to change the social basis of the Party – attempted to flood the Revolutionary Wing with all kinds of careerest elements from the petty-bourgeoisie and in this way covered up the secret political police as well.
But all these attacks have only strengthened our conviction to build our Party into a solid Proletarian fist that will smash the bourgeois state and on its ruins set up the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has strengthened our conviction that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class. The Bolshevik line has historically fought to insure the social basis of its Party against all attempts to subvert it and we know that we must insure the proletarian core of the Young Bolshevik League and all the non-party mass organizations as well.
The Right has shown itself on the question of the Y.B.L. in the view that its too soon to build it. Negating that the history of the Y.B.L. that we must bring into being is long and rich, for the history of the Y.B.L. is not that of S.D.S., C.Y.O. or A.B. or the Higher Education Committee or Students Rights Organization that belong to the revisionists old and new the OL the “RC”P , and WVO but rather to the history of the many youth that have come forward in the struggle against U.S. imperialism, and in the struggle for the Party struggling against Right opportunism and Revisionism. Just as every proletarian movement has brought forward staunch fighters from amongst the advanced youth. Youth who came from organizations such as the B.P.P., Y.L.P., Y.O.B.U., F.F.M. and P.R.S.U. and in the mass student organizations throughout the country. Black Student Unions and other organizations of workers, students and oppressed nationalities. These youth did not come from the elite schools – Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Barnard, Princeton but in the main from the community colleges – F.C.C., W.T.I, in Washington, Rutgers Newark, Texas Southern University, Laney in Oakland, Temple University in Philadelphia, N.Y.C.C.C., B.C.C., B.M.C.C., C.C.N.Y. in N.Y.C. just to name a few.
In fact, many of the comrades who attended the Plenary Meeting and throughout our ranks on all levels of leadership were some of those youth and as stated in the General Political Report we hold this fact in honor. No, Comrades the start from scratch view – liquidates this history of struggle and development, it cries out we’re going too fast, this is voluntarist – but this is to cover the Right! Whether the Y.B.L. is called before or after the Congress, this is not the essential point, its tasks as Comrade Stalin laid out is to stand by leadership, stand by the Party and train the proletarian successors of the revolution.
Comrades the Y.B.L. like our Party has a long and rich history and we must never forget this – for this is the main thing that all the Anti-Party elements must try to falsify and this spells their doom. Your days are numbered Anti-Party elements. Not only can we, but we must and will forge ahead Bolshevik Party cadre, close our ranks and safeguard our line and our leadership ensure the proletarian social bases of our Party, wage an all around campaign to strike yet more blows at Right Opportunism and Revisionism and build our U.S. Bolshevik Party and the non-Party revolutionary mass organizations!
Forward to the First Party Congress