First Published: Theoretical Review No. 12, September-October 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As a result of the joint statement on the party-building line of the National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs (NNMLC) which appeared in Theoretical Review #11, and our meetings with comrades from around the country, a number of questions have arisen about our own approach to party building. We have decided to share the questions and our answers with the entire Theoretical Review readership.
QUESTION #1: What is the significance of the unfolding struggle between the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center (OC-IC) and the National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs?
Primarily, we think that this struggle reflects: 1) the immaturity of our movement, 2) the lack of a consolidated break with the forms of struggle typical of the dogmatist sects, and 3) the lack of a clear framework for principled Leninist struggle.
In the first place, our movement, those forces which are striving to break with both revisionism and dogmatism, is still young, having come into existence only in the last few years (since the Angolan liberation war and the subsequent general break with China’s international line). Its youth and inexperience have meant that it has no tradition of its own to draw upon with regard to party-building struggle. The result is that it tends to fall back on another tradition to guide itself on these matters.
The tradition it has drawn upon, consciously or unconsciously, is that of the “new Communist movement.” Several things have to be said about this tradition. First, it is not a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather the peculiar combination of the Soviet Marxism of the Stalin period and the Chinese Marxism of the Cultural Revolution. Second, it is a tradition which drew most heavily on the negative features of both these Marxisms. Put another way: the lack of theoretical-political experience in the new communist movement caused it to seize on many of the more superficial aspects of these Marxisms.
For example, from Soviet Marxism, the new Communist movement took bureaucratic centralism and the monolithic organizational form, as well as the practice of using theory as a mere justification after the fact for political expediency. From the Marxism of the Cultural Revolution, it took a heavy voluntarist streak and a strident but shallow method of ideological struggle and polemics. From both it gained a static and complacent approach to theoretical practice and a tendency to sacrifice the long-term interests of the movement for temporary advantages. By theoretical complacency we mean the belief that all the theory necessary to form a genuine communist party already exists. The tendency to sacrifice the long-term interests of our movement was reflected in the scramble to achieve international recognition from leading foreign parties in place of producing a sound and principled line on the international situation.
The new communist movement internalized these characteristics and built them into its various organizations and practices. In many instances, the revulsion against these features of the new communist movement led communists to seek an alternative: anti-revisionist, anti-dogmatist communism. The primacy of theory tendency, from its first work Toward a Genuine Communist Party, published by the Ann Arbor Collective in November, 1976, sought to ensure that these negative characteristics would not be reproduced in the newly emerging, anti-dogmatist movement.
Unfortunately, the current struggle between the OC-IC and the NNMLC demonstrates the ease with which these negative features can crop up in our own ranks. Both the leadership of the OC-IC and that of the NNMLC have elevated organizational maneuvers and sectarian infighting over comradely and principled ideological struggle.
The OC-IC steering committee has launched an ideological and organizational assault against the Club Network, primarily on the basis of the refusal of the Clubs to join the Organizing Committee. At the same time, the Clubs have made their own organizational independence central to their party-building line. The Clubs refused to join the OC-IC; the OC-IC responded by excluding the Clubs from its National Minority Conference which was open to others, who were not members of the Organizing Committee.
In their practice, both have thereby elevated organizational forms and organizational struggle to the primary position, thus displacing political line which should, in accordance with Leninist principles, be primary. We will discuss this problem of the relation between organizations and politics in a later question. For the moment, we can say that this reversal of the correct relationship between organizational form and political line on the part of both leaderships is the root of the incorrect sectarian maneuvering and unprincipled polemics which have been exchanged between the two organizations.
While it is true that the historical practice of some of the Club leaders (particularly Irwin Silber, who refused to involve himself, the Guardian or later the Guardian Clubs in any organized effort to consolidate the anti-dogmatist anti-revisionist communist movement) set a negative example, it was hoped that the OC-IC would not reply in kind. Nevertheless, the OC steering committee chose a different course, one encapsulated in Clay Newlin’s informal remark at the West Coast OC conference on point 18: we will win the clubs to the idea of joining the OC or we will smash them.
The most dangerous effect of this approach is that it indicates the extent to which the long-term interests of our entire movement and the energy of its cadre are being sacrificed to the narrow organizational ambitions of two relatively small and inexperienced political groups.
From the perspective of our entire movement, both groups have made valuable contributions as well as exhibited deficiencies. On the positive side both have been won (at least in words) to a recognition of the centrality of theory in the present period. The Club Network insists that the further development of our movement will be determined by the political line and analysis it adopts. The OC-IC has managed to bring together in a single formation the bulk of the organized anti-revisionist, anti-dogmatist communist forces.
Yet, unless both groups cease maneuvering for hegemony as organizations and attempt to struggle out substantive political and ideological differences, the dynamic and enthusiasm which our movement has generated is in danger of being squandered on a bitter and ultimately futile war which will destroy us the way similar practices destroyed the new communist movement.
The lack of a principled framework of struggle flows not only from an incorrect understanding of the relationship between the organizational and the political (see question #3) but also from a misreading of the Leninist concept of drawing lines of demarcation. In fact, these two errors complement and reinforce each other.
For Lenin, drawing lines of demarcation was the end of a political process; for much of our movement, it is the beginning of an organizational process. There is a world\of difference between these two views.
The practice of the OC-IC and the Club Network demonstrates that they hold to the view that the correct line is produced within a single organizational form, that this line then becomes the “line of demarcation” whereupon an organizational-political struggle is waged to win all others to it. The Leninist process of political struggle is cut off before it even begins, organizational lines of demarcation are drawn before drawing political ones.
Leninism has an entirely different approach to party building and political struggle in a period such as the present. It sees the most advanced line as developing in and emerging out of a protracted process of theoretical and political struggle among the various lines and organizations within our movement. Only when the advanced line has proven its superiority in this political struggle and in the political practice of party building does it become a line of demarcation around which an advanced organization can be consolidated.
Only such an approach, which enters into political struggle with an openness to differing views and a willingness to rectify one’s own line in the political interests of advancing our movement as a whole, without drawing organizational lines of demarcation and sectarian maneuvering, is truly Leninist and principled. Only such an approach can serve the needs of our movement in its present crisis.
QUESTION #2: In the course of the present struggle, we have repeatedly seen the Communist Party characterized as “revisionist” and the Communist Party (M-L) characterized as “ultra-left.” How should we evaluate these characterizations and their accuracy?
The habit of so characterizing these organizations points up some important confusions in the thinking of many communists. For example, could we not just as easily characterize the Communist Party as “rightist” and the Communist Party (M-L) as dogmatist?
Both of these formulations confuse entirely distinct deviations: leftism and revisionism, rightism and dogmatism. At the same time, a deeper confusion is the result of an effort to find a single cause or a single deviation on which to blame all the errors of a particular party or movement.
The Proletarian Unity League (PUL) has been the master of this practice. It endeavored to find the single deviation which would explain all the failures and problems of the new communist movement. In the end, it concluded that this single deviation was “leftism.”[1]
Mono-causalism, the search for the single cause of a phenomenon, is an essentially non-dialectical, bourgeois approach to reality. Nevertheless, it has a long history in the Marxist movement, particularly among political economists who sought to locate some single cause of capitalism’s periodic economic crises. As wit political economy, so too with political practice, this approach cannot serve the needs of our movement.
Instead, the question of the nature and relative importance of the various deviations which plague the communist movement must be approached from an entirely different perspective. Marxism-Leninism understands the revolutionary movement to be the fusion of two distinct but interrelated historical processes: the development of the workers movements, and the development of Marxist-Leninist theory, as expressed in its scientific, ideological and political practices.[2]
Each of these movements is distinct and proceeds on the basis of its own laws of development, but each is also influenced by and influences the other. Finally, in the course of the development of each and in the course of their fusion the domination of capitalist relations and bourgeois ideology creates pressures which lead to the reproduction within these movements of bourgeois elements, relationships and ideas.
Within the process of development of Marxist-Leninist theory and within the process of fusion of communism with the workers movement, the reproduction of bourgeois ideology and practices produces what are called deviations.
The major deviations which arise in the course of development of Marxist-Leninist theory are revisionism and dogmatism. The major deviations which arise in the course of development of fusion are leftism (or voluntarism) and rightism (or tailism).
These deviations cannot be defined as static categories; rather they refer to the character of the process of which they are a part. Revisionism and dogmatism are both deviations from the process of production of Marxist-Leninist theory because both seek to impose upon it laws of change and development which are alien to it as a living science.
Revisionism is a particular development of Marxist-Leninist theory, not on the basis of its own laws and concepts, but under the influence of hostile bourgeois ideological notions and methods. A good example of this is Khrushchev’s introduction of the bourgeois notion of “cult of the personality” to try to come up with a Marxist analysis of the Stalin period. In so doing, Khrushchev reduced the product of the contradictions and class forces in the Soviet Union to the errors and influence of one man. Therefore, only a change in personnel was seen as necessary and not a thorough-going analysis of the Soviet social formation.
Dogmatism, on the other hand, is the transformation of concrete Marxist-Leninist concepts and methodology from active elements in a living process into necessarily deformed static and historical abstractions. A good example of this is the transformation in the 1930’s of what Marx identified as a tendency toward working class impoverishment into a law of absolute impoverishment, good for all times and all places.
Leftism (or voluntarism) and rightism (or tailism), as we noted above, are deviations in the process of fusion of communism with the workers’ movement. They refer to the way in which communist theory is translated into ideology and politics and disseminated in the workers’ movement. For conscious communist ideology to effectively transform the spontaneous ideology which is produced within the workers movement, it must both Intersect that ideology (share some common ground) and transform that which is common by presenting it in the context of a more advanced framework of understanding.
Communist intervention in the workers’ movement can be successful when the correct dialectic between what is shared and what is in advance of the spontaneous ideology is achieved. Leftism is when the communist ideology being presented is so far in advance of spontaneous working class ideology that it shares no points in common with it and thus is unable to communicate with and advance the thinking of those to whom it is directed.
Rightism is when the communist ideology is identical with or shares so many points in common with spontaneous working class ideology that it requires no significant advance in thinking in order for it to be understood by those to whom it is directed.
Wherever communists are, they are using one form or another of Marxist-Leninist theory; wherever they are, they are interacting in one way or another with the movements of the working class and the oppressed. Therefore, both the process of development of theory and the dissemination of communist ideology is occurring. At the same time, deviations in both processes are inevitably manifesting themselves in the course of these struggles.
While a number of deviations other than dogmatism and revisionism, leftism and rightism, can appear in communist practice, these are often only particular expressions of these primary deviations. For example, one form of revisionism is empiricism, the “development” of Marxist theory, not on the basis of its own concepts and methodology, but from those of the bourgeois ideological system called empiricism. Likewise, the practice of economism is a particular form of tailism, tailing after the spontaneous economic struggles of the masses.
To simply see the movement in terms of one set of deviations (dogmatism and revisionism, or leftism and rightism) or worse to simply see the communist movement as a whole or individual groups in terms of a single deviation, is to abandon a full-sided dialectical analysis. But that does not mean that we should be content with presenting a laundry list of deviations for everyone to memorize.
What is required at every stage in the growth of the communist movement is an analysis of which of the two processes is primary: development of theory or development of fusion, and from there, which deviation (or deviations) constitutes the greatest danger to our further progress.
In their public documents, both the Club Network and the OC-IC have adopted the position, first put forward by the Ann Arbor Collective and the Tucson Marxist-Leninist Collective, that theoretical work, not fusion, is primary in this period. Since theoretical work is primary for communists at this time, deviations in the production and practice of theory constitute a greater danger than deviations in our relation to the masses.
Having determined that the process of development of theory is primary, it is next necessary to determine which deviation within that process poses the greatest danger to our carrying out this primary task. However, upon examining both the history of the development of Marxist theory in recent years and the present state of our movement’s theory, we are struck by a singular fact.
The crisis of Marxism through which we have been living since at least the end of the Second World War can best be characterized, not by the dominance of one deviation with respect to others, but rather by the fusion of the two major deviations, revisionism and dogmatism.
In the 1930’s, as a result of the abandonment of the Leninist path of socialist construction in the USSR, and the historic defeats of the world communist movement, Marxism-Leninism ceased to be a living science. A portion of its revolutionary conceptual system and methodology were abandoned; another portion was transformed into lifeless dogmas and abstractions. At the same time, new elements, essentially revisionist in character, were added, particularly after 1935 and the Seventh Comintern Congress.[3]
To recognize this historical process and its continuation in our own day is to understand:
1. That for Marxism-Leninism to be revolutionary, it must be a living science, and as such must grow according to its laws like any other science;
2. When Marxism-Leninism ceases to be a living science, it degenerates by way of dogmatism and revisionism;
3. The Marxism-Leninism of the present period contains within it a body of essentially revisionist concepts and methodological principles;[4]
4. The failure of the new communist movement to practice Marxism-Leninism as a living science means that it has uncritically adopted pre-1956 theory bequeathed to it, revolutionary as well as revisionist elements, in a static and historical (that is, dogmatist) manner.
From this understanding of the crisis of Marxism, we have drawn the conclusion that the principal obstacle obstructing our elaboration of the advanced theory necessary to build the communist movement is neither dogmatism nor revisionism by themselves, but their particular fusion, the dogmatist-revisionist conception, which blocks the practice of Marxism-Leninism as a living science.
The implication of this view is that our future progress is conditioned upon our undertaking the following tasks in an interrelated and organic way. First, the rediscovery and mastery of the revolutionary theory and theoretical practice of Marx, Lenin, and others, uncontaminated by the use to which they were put and the uncritical reading of them in the long years of dogmatism. Second, the beginnings of a concerted effort to expose and eliminate from the body of Marxism-Leninism the revisionist elements which have grown up within it Third, the study and incorporation within our theory and practice of the important contributions to theory which have been made in recent years by Althusser, Bettelheim and others. Fourth, the application of the revolutionary theory which is the product of these tasks to the political problems facing our movement. These tasks are not progressive stages of a process, each requires and depends upon the other.
Seen from this perspective, the previous characterization of the Communist Party and the Communist Party (M-L) are inadequate. To only see the revisionist aspect of the Communist Party, USA, is to be dangerously one-sided. While the body of Communist Party theory is unquestionably dominated by revisionism, the use and practice of this theory is mechanical, static and dogmatic.
At the same time, it does not follow from a recognition of the primary importance of theory to primarily characterize the Communist Party (M-L) in terms of its relation to the masses. The basic line of the Communist Party (M-L) is the “Theory of Three Worlds,” a notorious revision of the Leninist theory of imperialism and class struggle on a world scale. By the same token, the CP (M-L)’s use and practice of this theory has always been characterized by a rigid and mechanical dogmatism.
To only see the Communist Party’s revisionism and not its dogmatism, to only see the Communist Party (M-L)’s relation to the masses and not its revisionist-dogmatist conception and practice of theory, is to fail to grasp the significance of these forces, and to fail to draw the kind of lines of demarcation necessary for a genuine break with them.
QUESTION #3: What is the relationship between organizational form and political line? Does organizational form have a political content of its own?
Given the organizational maneuvering and sectarianism which characterizes much of our movement, the correct answer to these questions is of the utmost importance, especially since incorrect answers already have considerable currency among anti-revisionists.
An attempt to give a theoretical-historical cover to an incorrect view is contained in the Proletarian Unity League’s book, Two, Three, Many Parties of A New Type? PUL argues that organizational practice is on an equal par with political and ideological practice as essential components of Leninism. For PUL, the construction of organizational forms in and of themselves, independent of political lines, is entirely legitimate. Indeed, in their book, they could write: “The organizational level occupies the foreground in the struggle for the party at this time.”[5]
It is extremely unfortunate that the PUL line on the international situation was defeated in the OC-IC at the same time that its line on organization was gaining such support. We will discuss what this means later on. For the moment, it is necessary to clarify the correct relation between organizational forms and politics.
Although PUL cites Lenin to justify its position, its arguments have nothing in common with Leninism. Lenin himself was absolutely clear that the relationship between political line and organizational forms was not one of equal principles but one of content and form. In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he wrote.
I am sure that there is not a practical worker ... in our party who does not understand that it is precisely the form of our activities (i.e., our organization) that has long been lagging, and lagging desperately behind their content....[6]
Lenin went on to explain this content as the theoretical, political and ideological line of Russian Social Democracy. For Lenin, organizational forms were the political structures which should register the degree of political unity achieved. Their value consists in their providing the best possible vehicle for realizing that political content.
Lenin’s explanation of this relationship in terms of Russian Party history is instructive:
As long as we had no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics, we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we did not even talk of the forms of joint organization, but exclusively discussed the new ... problems of fighting opportunism on programme and tactics. At present ... this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of unity ...; we had to take the next step ... working out the forms of a united organization...[7]
Organizational unity presupposes a degree of political unity. Equally, organizational unity must be seen as a register of the degree of political unity which exists among the forces coming together in that particular organizational form.
Accepting Lenin’s analysis, we can see the flaw in PUL’s strategy for defeating the small circle spirit by a struggle over organization: any organizational form built without a necessary unity on political line is a structure devoid of political content, an empty form. In our movement at the present time, certain forces accused of upholding the “circle spirit” do not reject the need for a national organizational form. What they reject is the content of the politics which present national forms embody.
That the OC-IC steering committee has succumbed to the PUL line on organization is indicated by the fact that it has taken up the struggle against the Club Network, not on the basis of its political line but because of the refusal of the Clubs to join the OC. At the OC’s labor day conference, a resolution proposing that this struggle be conducted primarily over political differences rather than questions of organization was overwhelmingly defeated.”
Yet, if Lenin’s words have any relevance to our struggles, it would seem that the OC’s demand that separate circles be abolished, in the absence of unity on “fundamental questions of program and tactics,” is reversing the necessary order of things and elevating questions of form over the real political differences which now exist.
Communist unity will be genuine and lasting when it is built on a common theoretical, political and ideological foundation. The struggle to build this kind of unity can only come from the commitment of each group to put politics in command in its relations with others. For the OC steering committee to make comradely relations and comradely struggle with the Clubs conditional on their joining the OC-IC is not only to elevate the OC-IC as an organizational form above the political requirements of our movement as a whole. It is also to postpone the necessary political struggle which is required if our movement is going to ultimately unite.
At the same time, we cannot overlook the negative effects that this sectarian course, if pursued, will inevitably produce within the OC-IC itself. The effects sectarianism had on communist parties in the ultra-left third period (1929-35) have been described by one observer:
Sectarianism breeds bureaucracy and cliquism within the party itself. The unhealthy introverted orientation of sectarianiam, running counter to all the objective demands of the class struggle and to the inner necessities of the revolutionary movement, can fortify itself only by building up an abnormal regime upon which it can rest. In order to overcome all signs of protest against the ever more obviously false policies of the official leaders, in order to prevent differences of opinion from arising within the organization and challenging the system, in order to miseducate the new membership into ready acceptance of the new gospel, a most repressive regime and order have grown up in all official Communist parties throughout the world. (Emphasis added)[8]
QUESTION #4: What is the value of the OC-IC as an organizational form?
The present importance of the OC-IC form is that it unites the majority of organized anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist communists around an embryonic political line embodied in the 18 points.
The vagueness and looseness of this organizational form is directly related to the low level of political unity in the OC-IC, the generalness of the 18 points and the lack of an articulated common line on party building. Having a national form such as the OC-IC is not valuable in itself; the history of the new communist movement presents us with a multitude of such national centers. Its value must be determined from an assessment of the political lines and political practice it embodies and the manner in which it approaches the question of raising its own level of unity and that of our entire movement.
A genuine organizing center for ideological struggle cannot function by simply putting forward the line of its steering committee, and striving to win the membership to it, while waiting for an opposition to appear. If the ideological struggle around questions on which we do not have a consolidated, advanced position is to be real and productive, the steering committee must do more than present its own line.
It must also seek out varying other views within the OC-IC and our movement as a whole and provide specific channels through which these differences can be struggled out theoretically and politically in a comradely and principled manner. In this way, a national center for ideological struggle can have real value – by promoting the mechanisms for a genuine debate and discussion so as to advance the political unity of our movement and not simply the organizational consolidation of one particular view.
As noted above, a tendency has developed in the OC-IC which sees this national center as a virtue in itself, to which all other forces should subordinate themselves regardless of political differences. No one can deny or should condemn the spirit of unity which exists in our movement. It was a mistake on the part of the Clubs to simply put forward their own independent position and disregard the ideological effect of their “go it alone” attitude. However, it is equally dangerous for the OC-IC steering committee to play upon the desire for unity and not struggle to keep the discussion primarily focused on the political differences which are at the root of organizational independence.
The real question is not “do we all want unity?” but, “on what basis will the anti-dogmatist, anti-revisionist communist movement be unified?” The small circle spirit will not be defeated by empty appeals to unity. It will lose its reason for existence only when an advanced political line and principled political practice and organizational forms are created and come to dominate our movement.
The history of the communist movement holds forth two possible roads for the future development of the OC-IC. It can follow the path indicated by Lenin in making politics primary and therefore organize political and ideological struggle within and without the OC-IC so as to advance not only its own political cohesion but also that of our whole movement. Only to the degree that its political unity is raised will higher and stricter forms of organization become necessary.
On the other hand, it can follow the tradition outlined by PUL and practiced by the new communist movement, which makes organization key. This would mean that organizational forms and unity would remain primary rather than the political lines (or lack of them) that the forms embody. Allegiance to political principles would be replaced by loyalty to the national center. Developments in our movement would be evaluated, not on their effect on the movement as a whole, but on the basis of their effect on the OC-IC.
It is an undeniable fact that this second course has been followed by every major party-building center in the new communist movement to date. We cannot afford to be indifferent to this history and the dangerous tradition it represents. The course the OC-IC decides upon will determine whether it represents a qualitative break with the past or another dead end on the road to a genuine communist party.
[1] Proletarian Unity League, Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type?, Chapter 2.
[2] Lenin, “What Is To Be Done?,” Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 383.
[3] For a discussion of the Seventh Cominterm Congress and its significance, see “Anti-Revisionist Communism in the U.S., 1945-50,” in Theoretical Review #11.
[4] We refer here to such concepts as “superpowers,” “Third World,” “social-imperialism,” “negation of the negation,” “black nation,” etc.
[5] Two, Three, Many Parties of a New Type?, p. 48.
[6] Lenin, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 390.
[7] Ibid., p. 387-88.
[8] Will Herberg, “The Viewpoint of the International Communist Opposition,” Modern Monthly, Vol. VII, No. 5 (June 1933).