First Published: Workers Viewpoint, Vol. 2, No. 7, August 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Formation of the Party is a Settled Question!
In the past year we have witnessed two victories of immediate and long-term significance. The first was the ending of the third and final period in the development of the US communist movement. This victory resulted in the unification of the best Marxist-Leninists that came out of the mass movements of the 60’s and 70’s around the correct theoretical and political orientation, based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. This victory rendered the slogan, “political line is the key link,“ obsolete since the task of Marxist-Leninists unite had been successfully completed. The emergence of the Workers Viewpoint Organization as the foundation for the Communist Party of the U.S. proletariat settled the question of the party’s formation.
More important, the second victory was the reinforcement of this ideological unity by the material unity of organization as represented by May Day, 1977. The smashing success of May Day ’77 proves beyond doubt the correctness of grasping correct methods of work and leadership as the key link at the present time in the Party’s development.
At a time of such victories we need to review our struggles in the last 8 or 9 years, throughout various periods of development. As Lenin stated:
It is our duty always to intensify and broaden our work and influence among the masses. … To a great extent, the purpose of our strict separation as a distinct and independent party of the proletariat consists in the fact that we always and undeviatingly conduct this Marxist work of raising the whole working class, as far as possible, to the level of Social-Democratic consciousness, allowing no political gales, still less political changes of scenery, to turn us away from this urgent task. Without this work, political activity would Inevitably degenerate into a game, because this activity acquires real importance for the proletariat only when and insofar as it arouses the mass of a definite class, wins its interest, and mobilizes it to take an active, foremost part in events… After every reverse we should bring this to mind again, and emphasize it, for weakness in this work is always one of the causes of the proletariat’s defeat. Similarly, we should always call attention to it and emphasize its importance after every victory, otherwise the victory will be only a seeming one, its fruits will not be assured, it real significance in the great struggle for our ultimate goal will be negligible and may even prove adverse>/em>. (particularly if a partial victory should slacken our vigilance, lull our distrust of unreliable allies, and cause us to forgo the right moment for a renewed and more vigorous attack on the enemy). (On Confounding Politics with Pedagogics, Lenin, emphasis added – ed.)
Our duty to “intensify and broaden our work and influence among the masses” in this period means we must grasp correct methods of work and leadership in order to win and train advanced workers all-roundedly (theoretically, politically and organizationally) for the Party. Only in the thick of class struggle against the bourgeoisie can we train the advanced and train ourselves. Given this orientation, Lenin’s speech, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, has important lessons for us.
Lenin’s speech was delivered at the third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League held in Moscow, October 1920. The Russian workers and peasants, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, had just scored a great victory in defending the new-born Soviet Republic against foreign imperialist and White-guard attacks.
But this victory had not been won without great sacrifice and cost. The economic life of the country had been shattered; industry, transport and agriculture were in ruins and had to be restored. Starvation was widespread and goods of all kinds were non-existent or scarce. There was discontent among the peasantry and it was beginning to affect the working class.
Thus, by necessity, the economic sphere became one of the sharpest areas of class struggle. Whether one grasped the task of economic development and helped to safeguard socialism in Russia and strengthen the worker/peasant alliance or one failed to grasp this task and helped the imperialists and local reactionaries destroy socialism, was the pressing question of the day.
The imperialists desperately hated Soviet Russia and were prepared at any moment to try to crush her. Yet all their attempts at military intervention had failed miserably. The imperialists were increasingly entangled with conflicts among themselves. In the East, particularly China and India, the revolutionary movement of the oppressed peoples was stirring and growing vigorously. All this resulted in, as Lenin summed up, “… a state of equilibrium which, although highly unstable and precarious, enables the Socialist Republic to exist – not for long, of course – within the capitalist encirclement.” (Third Congress of the Third International)
The young Soviet Republic had to make use of the temporary “rest” the international situation presented to strengthen the worker/peasant alliance in order to continue the struggle against the imperialists. This meant that trade had to be stimulated, the tax in kind giving peasants the freedom to dispose of their after-tax surplus had to be instituted, Russia had to be electrified to spur industrial development, etc. It was a life or death question for Socialist Russia.
In The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, Lenin addresses the general orientation and specific tasks of the Russian Young Communist League. Given the urgent needs of the country, there was no room for idealism and intellectualism. It was of the utmost necessity that the Russian youth link theory with practice. Not to grasp this tightly would have meant practical suicide for the encircled Soviet Republic.
Thus, Lenin urged the youth to take an active part in the class struggle by rallying the masses of workers and peasants, and side-by-side with them, carry out the economic tasks. “The league should be an organization enabling any worker to see that it consists of people whose teachings he perhaps does not understand, and whose teachings he may not immediately believe, but from whose practical work and activity he can see that they are really people who are showing him the right road. ” (Tasks of the Youth Leagues.)
Lenin also showed that only by linking their education to the struggle of the workers and peasants against the exploiters could the youth become communists. Only in this way could the young generation be trained to build a communist society.
The most evil hangover from the old bourgeois society which had to be overcome in order to meet the economic needs of Socialist Russia and push the class struggle forward was the separation of theory and practice:
One of the greatest evils and misfortunes left to us by the old capitalist society is the complete divorce between books and practical life; we have had books explaining everything in the best possible manner, yet in most cases these books contained the most pernicious and hypocritical lies, a false description of capitalist society. (Tasks of the Youth Leagues)
Why is it in the interest of the exploiting class to maintain this divorce between theory and practice?
The rule of the bourgeoisie is based on the exploitation of the proletariat. They must exploit the working class or cease to be capitalists. In order to preserve their criminal rule the bourgeoisie must try to keep the masses’ heads up in the clouds, away from the concrete class reality. They must promote idealism arid metaphysics in order to separate our understanding the subjective, from the objective; the real world. They must lie, distort and blur the truth about capitalism to delay as long as possible their inevitable overthrow.
One of the main ideological prop’s of bourgeois rule is the idealist theory of abstract “freedom”, of above class democracy, democracy for “all”. The capitalists promote the illusion of bourgeois democracy so as to disarm the working class and suffocate or crush its resistance. The bourgeoisie shamelessly tries to pretty-up the most glaring evils of capitalist society with all sorts of fantastic theories.
The total hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and the bankruptcy of the theory of above class democracy stands exposed when we look at the actual practice of the capitalists.
The bourgeoisie constantly sings praises to the “freedom” of speech, the “freedom“ of expression under capitalism. But freedom is only an idea, only a paper freedom if it cannot be exercised, if it cannot be used by the working class in fighting for their interests. Under capitalism freedom of speech exists only for the bourgeoisie and not for the proletariat.
When Rockefeller wants to say something he has access to all the major newspapers, television and radio. Yet when coal miners wildcat over unsafe conditions or when auto workers walkout over forced overtime, speed-ups and the heat, they have to struggle to get coverage in even the local media. In countless ways the proletariat’s “freedom” of speech is restricted, undermined and suppressed.
More important, the proletariat is not satisfied with merely expressing its discontent, with merely talking about the evils of capitalism. Their interest lies not in describing their exploitation but in ending it.
The bourgeois democratic form of rule, being more “flexible” than outright fascist dictatorship, enables the capitalists to expand the range of “freedom” of expression when forced to. However, this is still “freedom” only in appearance, Talk about the exploitation of the working class, expression of discontentment with capitalism, even “communist” ideas is tolerated as long as it remains idle talk and abstract ideas. But this “freedom” dissolves into dust when the proletariat begins to turn its ideas into action, when talk about exploitation becomes acts that aim at ending exploitation.
It is this hidden clause, this unspoken hypocrisy underlying bourgeois principles that is most poisonous. This is why it is in the interest of the bourgeoisie to separate theory from practice.
For the proletariat, freedom exists only in recognizing necessity and through knowing laws which govern reality, in order to change that reality.
One form of separating theory from practice is “revolutionary” phrase-making, Lenin once called this an intellectual “itch”.
Slogans are necessary and valuable to capture and concentrate the revolutionary sentiments of the masses, to tap their resistance to oppression. But if slogans become a gimmick, a catch-all for problems, learned by rote and empty or concrete content, then it can seriously damage the course of the revolution.
The Bolsheviks had always believed in the need to prepare for a revolutionary war in the event of the victory of socialism in one country. After the October Revolution this victory became a reality and the concrete question facing the Bolsheviks was how to actually prepare.
For the new-born Soviet Republic, exhausted economically after three years of imperialist war, peace was a practical necessity. The Bolsheviks accepted an unjust treaty and a separate peace with imperialist Germany in order to buy time to strengthen the socialist revolution. This was the concrete and correct way to prepare for the inevitable revolutionary war.
Trotsky, infected with the heat-rash of “revolutionary”, phrase-mongering, pit the general task of preparing for revolutionary war against the actual content of this task given the conditions of Soviet Russia in 1918. He agitated in favor of an immediate “revolutionary war” with Germany and against the signing of the peace treaty!
Lenin exposed the material basis and conditions for this form of idealism:
Revolutionary phrase-making, more often than not, is a disease from which revolutionary parties suffer at times when they constitute, directly or indirectly, a combination, alliance or intermingling of proletarian and petty-bourgeois elements, and when the course of revolutionary events is marked by big, rapid zig-zags. By revolutionary phrase- making we mean the repetition of revolutionary slogans irrespective of objective circumstances at a given turn in events, in the given state of affairs obtaining at the time. The slogans are superb; alluring, intoxicating, but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the revolutionary phrase. (The Revolutionary Phrase)
Slogans are revolutionary only as long as they serve the concrete needs of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie at a given time, place and conditions. Slogans are a product of concrete analysis of concrete conditions made in the thick of class struggle, for the sole purpose of furthering the struggle.
When slogans cease to reflect objective reality and instead express only one’s subjective wishes then they become harmful to the fight against the bourgeoisie.
Revolutionary phrase-making is an attempt by petty bourgeois intellectuals to substitute a deep understanding of the laws that govern the class struggle, the sentiment of the masses, the concrete state of the relations between our enemy and ourselves with mere forms and appearances. As Lenin stated:
Communism will become an empty word, a mere sign-board, and a Communist a mere boaster, if all the knowledge he has acquired is not digested in his mind. You should not merely assimilate this knowledge, but assimilate it critically, so as not to cram your mind with useless lumber, but enrich it with all those facts that are indispensable to the well-educated man of today. If a communist took it into his head to boast about his Communism because of the cut-and-dry conclusions he had acquired, without putting in great deal of serious and hard work and without understanding facts he should examine critically, he would be a deplorable communist indeed. Such superficiality would be decidedly fatal.
It is even more dangerous if one proceeds from slogans and attempts to make reality conform to it. If one does not wage a constant struggle to raise vigilance on this question, if one allows this idealist deviation to become a force of habit then one risks being drugged by the “power” of sheer ideas and falling right into the welcoming arms of the bourgeoisie.
As long as classes and class struggle exist, linking theory with practice will always be a matter of life or death for the exploited and oppressed.