Today we are called upon to create the means for continuing communication and increasing cooperation among us in order to be better able to overcome our weaknesses and grow in strength. We need a means, a facility or an instrument for dealing with the dialectics of the contradiction between centralized development and autonomous effort. We believe that, at the present juncture, centralization, authoritative control or direction would have a stifling effect on the initiative and self-reliant responsibility which is necessary for the health and continuing growth of our movement. It is true that the balance in the contradiction centralization-autonomy must move to centralization for the party to be built. Therefore, the means or instrument for communication and cooperation we provide now should facilitate the shift to the time and conditions when central direction will be useful and productive rather than stifling. But we believe fundamentally the problem involved in the centralization-autonomy contradiction will be resolved only as we resolve the underlying contradiction already discussed, namely theory-practice and the correct implementation of the mass line.
In our view, there is a long way to go before we can begin to speak of centralization and a national pre-party formation. We don’t know how long that way is in time; we do know we are a long distance from resolving the problems of theory and practice and in implementing a correct mass line. Some form of voluntary coordination of aspiring communist groups is essential to overcome the major deficiencies of the fragmented Marxist-Leninist trend. We believe it is not only important to overcome destructive elements of competition among ourselves and their consequences in promoting bureaucracy and sectarianism; but we must also overcome the tendency to turn inward to the small world of Marxists-Leninists in the U.S. and learn to deal with the large world of the U.S. working class, of which we are now only a fringe. Some coordination is, we believe, even more important as a positive means for exchanging experiences, for building the necessary trust in each other as comrades who share a common purpose, even though we do not yet know how we can achieve it together, and for learning from each other’s positive contributions while overcoming the negative. Obviously, the sooner we can agree on a common denominator which can effectively serve those purposes, the better.
We do not have a blueprint for the course of development from here on. In fact, we believe a blue print would be anti-Marxist. As revolutionaries, as Marxists-Leninists, we must learn to mature, learn from experience. At this time, we seek only an agreement or discussion on this perspective and on a beginning.
First and foremost, each of our groups must rely on learning from its own efforts, from its experiences combining study and practice, improving the role of its members or activists by improving their understanding of theory and practice. Yet, as we know, this alone has not saved us from our current problems of dogmatism.
In fashioning our proposal, we start with the constituents of our movement, local and autonomous groups, uneven in ideological, political and organizational development, still growing in numbers, many growing in size, and necessarily composed of members with unequal political development.
The first task of our movement today is to overcome the deficiency recounted earlier, reflected in the experience in New York City, which to a lesser or greater extent can be reproduced throughout the country. Out task is not merely the negative task of not contributing to divisiveness. The mantle of Marxists-Leninists can rest only on those who know how to overcome divisive tactics when confronted with them and contribute to uniting our own forces and the other workers in the common tasks before the working class. This cannot be taught by establishing an authority to issue directives. It can be learned only through the voluntary association of those of us who understand that our guiding objective cannot be its promotion of our own organization but of its purpose. At this time, our main purpose should be to promote class consciousness and unity in the working class and a sense of its own power.
We propose to begin by organizing voluntary communication and coordination centers on a local and regional level. Guided by the specific content of the resources, activities and problems of the constituent groups involved, the means can be provided for learning from each other by exchanging experiences and Ideas, and hopefully by engaging more and more in common or joint actions in the course of time, all on a voluntary basis. For ourselves, we can say that we have learned the merits of this approach, from our experience in the work of the steering committee responsible for this meeting, in stimulating our own efforts at self-development. We have similarly profited from exchanges with other groups; and we look forward to being able to engage in joint activities with like-minded-groups serving a common goal beyond the scope of our limited local activities.
We suggest that wherever constituent groups are available locally in a given city or metropolitan area, such a center be established locally. But we think it is also important to establish geographically broader regional centers to assure a more fruitful flow of ideas back to the local groups and the sharing of broader experienced.
Lastly, we suggest the creation of a continuing national committee to receive and disseminate reports from the regional centers and to consider the reconvening of a meeting or conference in a year or two – whenever there is a consensus that our experience warrants an evaluation and analysis to improve our plans.
We are hopeful that by this voluntary means which encourages local initiative and responsibility to develop in the service and the interest of the working class, we will in time gain the adherence of groups which will fill out the necessary multi-racial and multi-national character for a truly representative and effective communist movement in this country.
When we collectively grow sufficient roots among the masses and especially the working class, and advance sufficiently in resolving the contradiction between theory and practice and between our movement and the masses, that will be the time to put the question of party organization on the agenda.
Saying that the process must start through the efforts of local and autonomous groups does not mean that the process should end there, nor does it imply that we are glorifying localism, as the intellectual elite and dogmatists are apt to respond, obscuring their own real national, as well as local, isolation from the masses. We do not attempt to impose local particularities on the coming party or, obverse]y, to seek a national program based solely on the experiences of local groups. The process of building a revolutionary party embracing a multiplicity of local groups and collectives must be based on an understanding of our situation through critical reflection and analysis based on current realities, and not on our subjective wishes. We can only in this way work to overcome current limitations. All too frequently we find groups and collectives which have not succeeded in consolidating their forces anywhere, not even In the city or region where they are based, but attempt nevertheless to project themselves as “national organizations.” We find organizations engaged in profound discussions about class struggles at the international level, but who scorn concrete analysis with reference to class relations and struggles where they work and “organize.” These forces place all their efforts on studying the international situation, while neglecting to study the problems they confront directly or the problems affecting the working class in the U.S. Others, under the influence of empiricism, and consequent frustrations, impatiently call for the integration of all local groups into a national organism – a “pro-party formation”–as the solution to the inherent limitations of “local work.” This is often done without clearly defining the principal tasks of the national organism, as well as overlooking or disregarding the uneven development of the component elements of the national formation.
We have perhaps reached our limit in development within the present structure of the Steering Committee made up of five local groups, themselves at different stages of development. All of our efforts will be futile if we do not overcome the attitude that “anything is better than the present situation” or if we do not understand that, in the relationship between theory and practice we are at the stage where theory is fundamental if we are to move forward in setting the basis for a real pre-party national formation.. We believe we have reached the stage that Lenin described as “without revolutionary theory there is no movement.”
In our view, the revolutionary party is not the integration or federation or sum of local organization, but rather the organized unity of the Marxist-Leninist Cadres integrated among the masses, an organization which is greater than the sum of its parts. We must, therefore, develop the mechanisms that will facilitate the formation of such cadres, individuals that unite in one being social practice and revolutionary theory, in opposition to the incorrect conceptions of the elitist intellectuals who view Marxist theory as solely a process of bookmanship. These cadres, capable of analyzing their everyday experiences, become the basis for not only for the formation of a pro-party national center but for the correct delineation of the U.S. Socialist Revolution and for the submersion of the party in the masses.