The following is the Political Report delivered at the opening of the founding conference of the National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs by Club Network chairperson Irwin Silber. In preparing the report for publication, certain minor modifications have been made and some additional material included.
The sense of the Political Report was unanimously adopted by the delegates to the conference.
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The history of the communist movement is the history of two-line struggle.
Every major theoretical and practical advance in communism was made as the result of a break with and a struggle against incorrect ideas which-although they came before the workingclass movement in the name of socialism–inevitably revealed their bourgeois essence in both theory and practice.
Dialectical materialism grew out of the struggle against mechanical materialism as witness Marx’s “Theses on Feurbach” and Engels’ critique of Feurbach. Let us remember the essence of that great ideological struggle since it recurs again and again in the history of the communist movement. “The materialist doctrine that people are products of circumstances and upbringing,” said Marx, “and that, therefore, changed people are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is people that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.”
People change circumstances. In those three words rests the essence of the difference between mechanical and dialectical materialism, between revisionism and Marxism, between the passive and the active, between reform and revolution. I suppose that this daring philosophical sortie into the realm of free will earned Marx the accusation, in his day, that he had a “voluntarist” view of human history.
More particularly, in extending this struggle into the realm of political economy, scientific socialism was obliged to struggle against and distinguish itself from economic determinism, a view which explained the political and intellectual activities not only of classes but of individuals solely in terms of their economic self-interest. Economic determinism tends toward conspiracy views of history and fails to note the internal motion of classes and the particularity of contradictions within classes. More particularly, economic determinism tends to see class origin and the current class position of individuals as the inexorable determinants of politics, ideology and cultural outlook–even for Marxist-Leninists.
I trust that you are beginning to understand why I have chosen to approach my political report to you today in this fashion.
At the same time, scientific socialism grew out of the struggle against Utopian socialism and anarchism. Indeed, one entire section of the Communist Manifesto is devoted to the critique of various trends in the socialist movement. In the realm of philosophy, this represented the break with Hegelian idealism.
In short, Marxism brought dialectics (largely from Hegel) to the struggle against mechanical materialism; and it brought materialism (particularly from Feurbach) to the struggle against the most advanced idealism of the epoch, that of Hegel.
These struggles occur again and again in the history of our movement as mechanical materialism, utopianism, economic determinism and anarchism return to the fray with scientific socialism clad in new battle armor.
Revisionism first surfaced in its most pronounced form with Eduard Bernstein and his followers and has re-emerged periodically in variants on the same theme ever since. Scientific socialism was rejected as were the fundamental laws of capitalist political economy uncovered by Marx. Not only was the working class confined to seek its betterment solely through democratic, peaceful and parliamentary means, the very goal of socialism was subordinated to the cause of immediate reform. Naturally, the dictatorship of the proletariat was completely abandoned and even the theory of the class struggle was rejected because, supposedly, it would not be applicable in a completely democratic society ruled according to the will of the majority. Inevitably, the role of the party as a revolutionary party was liquidated.
The international movement remains greatly indebted to Bernstein, because even though his political descendants attempt to disguise the more odious features of their revisionism through trickier formulations and less blatant betrayals, we continue to-be reminded of the characteristic features of revisionism and, their inevitable consequences whether they are spelled out or not.
Nevertheless, the struggle against Bernstein invoked, in its’ time, a great hue and cry among Marxists that the cause of socialist unity was being undermined by those who advanced unduly provocative polemics against what was, after all, a fellow-Marxist. These defenders of unity argued that “In the modern socialist movement, there is no conflict of class interests; the socialist movement in its entirety, including the most pronounced Bernsteinians, stand on the basis of the class interests-of the proletariat and of its class struggle for political and economic emancipation.”
And when Lenin argued that this was not the case, he was “refuted” by Bernstein’s defenders who quoted from Bernstein himself to “prove” that their ideological patron remained true to the cause of the proletariat. In the course of that struggle Lenin was charged with dogmatism, elitism, and an underestimation of the role of objective conditions in the class struggle.
So you see why the study of our common history is important. Then there was Kautsky and his defense of imperialism and collapse into social chauvinism accompanied by the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and his advocacy of peaceful transition. In later years there was Browder, Tito, Khrushchev and the Eurocommunists–and while they varied in particulars, the views they advanced, the theories they advocated, the insistence that they were extending rather than rejecting Marxism, and the universal claim to opposing dogmatism–all came to characterize their fundamental unity in the abandonment of proletarian revolution.
In each instance, decisive two-line struggles wracked the communist movement; and in each instance, there were those who were more concerned with maintaining the unity in the movement than with maintaining its revolutionary principles and Marxist-Leninist ideology.
We must also note that Trotskyism, terrorism, and other “left” deviations from Marxism-Leninism likewise provoked intense line struggles whose waging was essential for the political health of our movement.
It is particularly important for us to study more deeply the period leading up to the formation of the Bolshevik Party– and especially the ideological struggle waged by Lenin against economism, which received its most articulate expression in “What Is To Be Done?” For both the circumstances of that period and the intense ideological struggles which characterized it are rich in lessons for our own circumstances.
What was the particular character of the “What Is To Be Done?” period? The two-line struggle between Lenin and the economist trend was fundamentally a struggle over party-building line. It is not necessary, nor would it be accurate, to try to develop what could only be a strained analogy between the forces of that period and the struggle over party-building line facing our movement today. For one thing, the economist trend of Lenin’s time had clear and explicit links with Bernstein’s revisionism, whereas in our present circumstances, the philosophical descendants of economism and mechanical materialism have made a formal break with revisionism on the principal political and theoretical questions. Our struggle is still much more in the realm of the ideological– this is what it holds in common with the “What Is To Be Done?” period–but it has only begun to emerge in the realm of politics and organization. At this stage of the struggle, we draw a distinction between incorrect lines and those who put them forward–which is why we say that the present struggle over party-building line is one between Marxist-Leninists.
The point here, however, is to understand that the line struggle over party-building now coming to the fore in our movement should not be subordinated to the interests of “unity,” although it should proceed in the spirit of unity-struggle-unity. This struggle over the principal strategic question facing Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. is a necessary and vital part of the task of rectifying the general line of the communist movement. Such a decisive struggle cannot be circumscribed or systematized but will burst forth in a thousand different ways.
Two-line struggle is the ideological heart of the communist movement. Attempts to avoid that struggle in the interests of unity are doomed to failure; or worse, should such efforts succeed, the political and theoretical consequences will weaken the fundamental fabric of the movement.
Our own movement is clearly the consequence not only of the historical two-line struggles which have preceded it, but more immediately of profound struggles in which, to varying degrees, we have all directly participated.
This was the basic flaw with Jack Smith’s numbered tendencies. It looked at the history of the communist movement and the various incorrect trends which emerged in it in the manner of a school attendance monitor, checking off in numerical order those who were present at the moment. This is completely incorrect. We are not a 4th tendency. We are the first tendency of the communist movement–the upholders and extenders of the main line of historical development of our movement, Marxism-Leninism.
Now let us identify those two-line struggles which have come to define the present main trend in Marxism-Leninism, what has been popularly known as the anti-revisionist, anti-dogmatist trend and which, in my opinion, would more accurately be defined as the anti-revisionist, anti-left opportunist trend. (This theme has been developed at greater length in the two “Fan the Flames” columns of April 4 and April 11.)
I believe, however, that those designations are going to be extremely short-lived as our trend matures, deepens its grasp of its ideological underpinnings, moves to consolidate itself around a correct party-building line, begins the process of rectification of the general line of the U.S. communist movement and begins to identify itself with similar tendencies now emerging in other countries. For we represent, in our concededly small way so far, the future of Marxism-Leninism in the United States.
Who are we–our trend and our about-to-be-formed Club Network? As a trend we are the outgrowth of two critical two-line struggles in the international communist movement, struggles which must be understood both in their world context and in the particular history of the U.S. communist movement.
The first, of course, is the break with and the struggle against modern revisionism. This is neither the time nor the place to detail once again all the various ways in which modern revisionism in the CPUSA abandoned the basic precepts of scientific socialism. On this score, suffice it to say that the CPUSA abandoned the task of proletarian revolution in the U.S. It is for that reason and that reason alone that the consolidation of revisionism by the CPUSA imposed upon U.S. Marxist-Leninists the task of rectifying the general line of the communist movement in our country and re-establishing its party.
At the same time, we must note that the critique of the CPUSA’s revisionism has rarely gone beyond the identification of the principal political and theoretical deviations flowing from the revisionist line. For instance, it is readily and painfully apparent that the New Communist Movement never thoroughly took up the question of flunkeyism. We can amuse each other indefinitely with the more bizarre manifestations of the new flunkeyism which currently pervades the principal left opportunist headquarters in the U.S. But we must also note the fact that flunkeyism is the surest reflection of the theoretical impoverishment of our movement, so that when in the name of the struggle against left opportunism our theoretical tasks are diminished and the liberating role of revolutionary theory undermined, a movement whose own theoretical impoverishment manifests itself in more ways than one is denied the very antidote it needs for this debilitating sickness.
By the same token, we must recognize that in the critique of revisionism insufficient attention has been paid to the way in which revisionism undermined Marxism-Leninism in the realm of ideology. In particular, revisionism liquidated the role and concept of the vanguard party. Of course, the pursuit of revisionist aims does not require a vanguard party. Nevertheless, some of its outward forms are maintained. But the essence of the vanguard party, the recognition of the decisive role played by the subjective factor in the revolutionary process, the leading role of revolutionary theory in determining party line, the supremacy of the political struggle over the economic struggle–this aspect of our revisionist legacy has been dealt with inadequately and, sometimes, not at all.
Just as left opportunism never grasped the necessity for a struggle against flunkeyism, so too must we recognize that in our present party-building movement there are views which remain deeply in debt to revisionist ideology.
The second break is with left opportunism. While the break with revisionism was mandated, in the first place, by the CPUSA’s abandonment of proletarian revolution in the U.S.–a degeneration closely bound up with the consolidation of an international revisionist headquarters in the CPSU–the break with left opportunism was mandated most clearly by the line of abject class collaboration practiced internationally by the Communist Party of China and faultlessly emulated by its U.S. syncophants. In this break, the clash over Angola in our movement became the political and ideological watershed. When the CPC and its lackeys chose to side with the government of South Africa, Portuguese colonialism and U.S. imperialism against the leading liberation force in Angola on the grounds that “Soviet social-imperialism” constituted the main danger to the peoples of Angola, the full dimensions of the class collaborationist content of the pseudo-revolutionary line underpinning this stand became evident.
Let those who attempt to justify their stand of class collaboration with the most detested enemy of all mankind–U.S. imperialism– by waving the banner of anti-revisionism hurl their invectives and insults at us. These attacks are our source of pride. We have no fear or shame in defending our break with left opportunism–no more than our break with modern revisionism. Every passing day makes it overwhelmingly clear that these lines of demarcation provide the fundamental landmarks of our trend.
The importance of these lines of demarcation is not merely a matter of differentiating ourselves from two odious expressions of politics. The lines upheld by modern revisionism and left opportunism can never lay the foundation for a revolutionary vanguard party capable of leading the masses to the overthrow of imperialism and the seizure of state power. To look at this in a more practical manner, consider the revolutionary struggle of the people of Iran.
Is it conceivable that the revisionist Tudeh Party, whose ideological backwardness was expressed in its strategy of “survival” as the key to the struggle against the Shah–“survival” which, of course, meant collaboration–could unleash the revolutionary impulses of the masses? How fitting and how consistent that the Tudeh Party today supports the Khomeini regime to the hilt and backs the call of an Islamic Republic! How necessary to all this that a Soviet philosopher should find that Islam and scientific socialism are philosophically compatible! How reprehensible that the Communist Party of the USA should defend Khomeini and attack the mass women’s movement in Iran! Do we have to apologize or explain our break with this revisionism? We should trumpet it to the skies!
And is it conceivable that the left opportunist alternatives to the Tudeh Party in Iran–the pro-China grouplets–could lead the Iranian masses in revolution? One can imagine the role of such a party in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s concern over “the troubles in Iran” and his complaint that U.S. imperialism was not doing enough to protect its own vital interests in that country.
But let us bring matters closer to home. The objective conditions of the masses of laboring people in the U.S. cry out each day for the leadership of a class-conscious vanguard. Those twin reserves of capitalist exploitation–unemployment and inflation–have become institutionalized in the capitalist economy at new and permanently high levels without precedent. As the U.S. imperialist empire abroad constricts, capital intensifies the rate of exploitation of the labor force at home and attempts to cripple the unions. The racial and national oppression of the most exploited sectors of the masses–Blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans– is reinforced as capital attempts to subvert even the limited democratic gains scored in the sixties. As capital brings more and more women into the work force, thus making possible a general reduction in the wage standard (since both husband and wife must now work in order to support an average working class family), it accompanies this process with a reinforcement of the economic inequality of women and a new ideological assault on their democratic rights.
On every front, the internal contradictions of the imperialist system are deepening. The Vietnam war demonstrated that it was no longer possible for U.S. imperialism to wage an extended war of counter-revolution without provoking widespread and massive discontent at home–discontent which ultimately embraced the armed forces themselves. As the greed of capital mercilessly consumes the physical environment and threatens life with the irresponsible development of nuclear power, new movements of social protest have begun to emerge. The U.S. economy itself, for all its vaunted capacities, continues to lag behind the development of its leading capitalist rivals in Japan and Germany.
All of these contradictions have led to unprecedented political crises and a weakening of the ideological authority of the state apparatus. A widespread cynicism about the institutions of bourgeois democracy prevails among the masses.
But there is no communist leadership. Neither the revisionist CPUSA or the various “left” opportunist sects can speak to these questions in a way capable of educating the workers to a comprehensive understanding of these phenomena or to an understanding of their revolutionary tasks. In traditionally tailist fashion, the revisionists attempt to breathe new life into the discredited institutions of the system precisely at a moment when the masses are ideologically open to alternatives. The “left” opportunists play a more complicated game. On the one hand, they are the advocates of super-militancy, invariably substituting their own consciousness for that of the masses. On the other, they are clearly prepared to subordinate the interests of the working class and the oppressed to the demands of the developing U.S.-China anti-Soviet alliance.
Should we be surprised then, in the absence of a communist vanguard, that reformism holds sway in all the mass movements– reinforced by the ways in which “left” opportunism objectively reinforces the stereotypes of anti-communism?
We must remind ourselves of these political realities in order to underscore the importance of the lines of demarcation for which our developing Marxist-Leninist trend has struggled so hard. We do not demarcate with revisionism and “left” opportunism over some rarified points of Marxist doctrine. We demarcate because neither revisionism nor “left” opportunism can lead the masses to revolution in the U.S. and therefore the struggle to rectify the general line of the U.S. communist movement is, in the first place, the struggle to identify properly the necessary lines of demarcation. There can be no serious talk of party-building without a firm grasp of this necessity.
In the actual political life of the left in the U.S., those lines have already been drawn. Naturally, as in any such process,, there are always those who waver and try to bridge the unbridgeable. And there are those who, for opportunist reasons, try to obscure the extent of the demarcations that have already taken place. We must recognize that present attempts by some to deny these lines of demarcation and the accompanying emergence of a Marxist-Leninist trend objectively return the movement to an earlier stage and divert the attention of our movement from its prime theoretical tasks.
So for all these reasons having to do with both the objective conditions of the world we are struggling to change and the actual political conditions of our movement as it has developed in life, let no one tamper with our lines of demarcation.
But now we must be more particular and address the history of our own organization. Again, we recognize that we are here today as the result of two important struggles. These are struggles that have taken place within our trend, that is, within these lines of demarcation and so we may tend to diminish their significance. But that would be a mistake. In their own way, in terms of the principal questions before the Marxist-Leninist forces, these are every bit as important.
First, there was the differentiation with the “fusion” line on party-building as advanced by the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC). Can it be denied that the formation of the Guardian Clubs, the very ideological underpinnings that gave them life, were based on our common critique of and struggle against the “fusion” line?
The critique of the “fusion” line is part of our common theoretical legacy. In many ways, it was the central political tenet that brought us together. It was this common stand that enabled those individuals to identify each other and begin to function as a de facto political center within the organization. I say this quite deliberately as an immediate and concrete example, obviously on a smaller scale, of what is meant when we speak of forging a leading ideological center for the party-building movement as a whole.
Does this mean that we have now declared the proponents of the “fusion” strategy on party-building outside our movement? Of course not. This is a struggle which has unfolded within the ranks of Marxist-Leninists and which we continue to define within that framework. At the same time, we must recognize that the terms of this ideological struggle are not determined by us alone. They are also determined by the leading center of the “fusion” line which is located in the Political Commission of the PWOC; they are determined by other Marxist-Leninists in our movement; and they are determined by the political dynamics of our movement as the struggle unfolds.
Further, we must recognize whether we want to or not that the PWOC has been leading a strenuous ideological counter-attack against our party-building line even as its main features were unfolding. In fact, this polemical counter-attack helps to bring out the critical points of difference between the “fusion” line and our line on “rectification.” Those who uphold our line are charged with “voluntarism.” What is this but the expression of PWOC’s liquidation of the vanguard character of communists and, ultimately, of the party? We are charged with “dogmatism.” What is this but PWOC’s negation of the leading role of theory in the present period of our movement? We are charged with “elitism.” What is this but PWOC’s negation of leadership and conciliation of backwardness in our movement?
What are we to make of this developing contradiction within the party-building movement? It will not do to wring our hands and cry with anguish that these must be sorry days for Marxism if already a sharpening contention is developing within the ranks of those who so recently found themselves in unity in drawing lines of demarcation with revisionism and left opportunism. No, we must recognize that contradiction, analyze it, understand it and face up to its consequences. The ideological struggle over party-building is already under way. It has been for some time, but it is now entering a new phase with the full emergence of our line on party-building. We have no desire to short-circuit that struggle or to hamper its full unfolding. We believe that it is only around a leading line that Marxist-Leninists can be united and that our party-building line– which is not ours exclusively, of course–can lead our movement into its next stage. But struggle it will be.
The second struggle out of which our Club Network has emerged is, of course, the struggle with the Guardian staff arising out of the critique of the State of the Party-Building Movement document. This struggle is so close to us, so much a part of our recent history and commanded so much of our emotional as well as political resources, that we may well want to leave it behind us. But we have our obligations to history, to each other and to the movement as a whole. First, it is absolutely essential that we share with each other–in the most thorough and candid fashion–our political assessments of that struggle. A common summary of our own history is a cornerstone of our own political and organizational coherence. For it is in the course of such summations that other differences relating to our next tasks first begin to get identified. The identification of differences properly is crucial to the conduct of principled ideological struggle in a rigorous communist fashion. Isn’t this one of the lessons that we learned–by way of negative example–from the struggle with the Guardian staff?
Second, we have an obligation as Marxist-Leninists trying to develop a party spirit and a sense of mutual accountability in our movement to share our summation of this struggle with others in the party-building movement. This is the meaning of the political conclusion determined by the NILC at its first meeting that in the present period, the Club Network’s relations to the party-building movement as a whole take precedence over our relations with the Guardian.
On January 19, 1979, the elected representatives of the five Guardian Clubs met with the political leadership of the Guardian, the five members of its Coordinating Committee (CC), in New York City, at the office of the Guardian. This meeting was initiated by the Clubs in an effort to resolve certain sharp political differences that had arisen between the Guardian and the Clubs over party-building line and political relationships between the Guardian leadership and the Clubs.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Guardian CC notified the representatives of the Clubs that the Clubs had been “dissolved.” It was fitting that the organizational relationship between the Clubs and the Guardian should have ended in such a manner. The attitude of the CC and the Clubs Subcommittee toward the Clubs, particularly during the period in which political differences came to the fore, was characterized by similar arbitrariness and a complete unwillingness on the part of the CC to engage in forthright political struggle with the Clubs over the questions involved.
The act of “dissolution,” of course, did not dissolve the Clubs. It merely dissolved the relationship between the Guardian and the Clubs. The Clubs had proposed the meeting with the Guardian CC for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of a “reconciliation.” There were several reasons why the Clubs adopted the course of seeking a reconciliation with the Guardian, even though their experiences strongly suggested that their attempt would not succeed:
1. The political differences had not been met head-on. After the publication of the SPBM (Oct. 18, 1978), all of the Guardian Clubs–each in their own way–developed a critique of the general perspective put forward by the Guardian. These criticisms were expressed in a series of position papers by both leading individuals in the Clubs and entire Clubs. The Guardian CC never issued a single reply to any of these documents. In fact, it barely acknowledged them and complained about the unauthorized circulation of documents among the Clubs. The Clubs believed that in the absence of a political response from the Guardian leadership, additional efforts should be made to pursue the questions involved.
2. The Guardian is, objectively, a valuable instrument for the left. It is an indispensable source of information for the entire, movement. It played a leading role in the break with left-opportunism. It is a national voice in a movement still dominated by ’ localism. It has been the vehicle for promoting some of the most important theoretical debates of our movement and facilitated the critique of the “fusion” strategy on party-building. Even though many Guardian staff members and its leadership suffer from a markedly distorted sense of their own importance, the Guardian itself is much more a positive than a negative factor in our movement. Therefore, the Clubs viewed continued support of and association with the Guardian as in the best interests of the movement as a whole–and as an opportunity to conduct struggle around the opportunist line on party-building which had been adopted.
3. The virtually unanimous position in opposition to the SPBM arrived at by all the Clubs meant that the Guardian’s opportunist line on party-building had been defeated and could not be put into practice since the Clubs were the vehicle through which the Guardian planned to implement its line.
4. While many members of the Club Network were convinced that the backward line on party-building adopted by the Guardian represented the consolidation of an opportunist line in the Guardian leadership, not everyone in the network was convinced through their own experience that this was the case. Based upon the political objective of maintaining and developing the Clubs as a significant force in the party-building movement, it was necessary to go through a step-by-step process in which the Guardian leadership was given every opportunity to engage in political discussion with the Clubs, to reconsider the line adopted and–at the least–to recognize that a political impasse existed and drop its insistence on a line which did not have any possibility of being carried out in life.
In retrospect, it is obvious that the Guardian leadership never had the slightest interest in effecting a reconciliation with the Clubs. The CC did not put forward a single proposal during this period aimed at maintaining organizational ties with the Clubs. For a period they tried to promote contradictions between the various Clubs. A campaign of slander and harassment against Guardian staff members who agreed with the Clubs’ critique was launched, a campaign which gave rise, in one instance, to a reprehensible racist incident which was subsequently covered up by the Guardian leadership. Worst of all, the pages of the Guardian itself were used to distort and misrepresent the actual situation between the Guardian and the Clubs. In the 30th Anniversary issue, the Guardian reported that the staff and Clubs were discussing how the implementation of the decision to “build, expand and consolidate the Guardian trend” was “to be accomplished,” when the actual debate at that very moment was not over implementation but the correctness or incorrectness of the line itself. In an effort to influence this debate, the Guardian leadership wrote phony “letters to the editor” in support of the SPBM, publishing these in the absence of any measurable expression of support for the political line of the SPBM.
The decision to “dissolve” the Guardian Clubs, therefore, did not come as a complete surprise to the National Reconciliation Committee (NRC) which the Clubs had established. The five members of the NRC–Melinda Paras (Bay Area Club), Michael Macy (Boston Club), Ellie Schnitzer (L.A. Club), Bizhan Nia (N.Y. Club) and Michael Withey (Seattle Club)–met on the evening of January 19 and constituted themselves the National Interim Leadership Committee, of the Club Network (NILC). They designated Paras as the Interim Coordinator, adding Max Elbaum to the NILC as the representative of the Bay Area Club. They also invited Irwin Silber, former Executive Editor of the Guardian who had resigned that position as the outgrowth of his opposition to the SPBM document, to become an ex-officio member of the NILC, which he did.
The NILC agreed to call a founding conference of the Club Network for the weekend of March 30, 31 and April 1 in New York City. It also engaged in extensive discussion on the political character and objective of the new organization, its relationship with the Guardian and its general position within the party-building movement as a whole.
Those questions provide the subject for the three discussion documents which the Clubs have taken up in preparation for the Conference. Suffice it to say by way of summary, general agreement was reached on the following concepts:
a. The Club Network is primarily a party-building organization.
b. It would attempt to develop a “special relationship” with the Guardian because of the historical conditions which produced the Clubs and because the Guardian is objectively a useful instrumentality in rectification work.
c. The Club Network would attempt to develop close and fraternal relations with other organizations in the party-building movement, particularly the OC and leading organizations in the OC, as well as other groups (such as El Comite, for instance) who have played a historic role in the development of the “anti-revisionist, anti-dogmatist” trend.
d. Despite its aim of establishing a “special relationship” with the Guardian, the Club Network’s political policy would be guided in the first place by its concerns for the progress of the movement as a whole in developing a correct line on party-building “and in taking up the various theoretical, political, and organizational questions confronting the movement.
It has become obvious that in order for the Club Network to make its maximum contribution to the party-building movement forces as a whole, it must thoroughly and correctly summarize its own history and, in particular, the intense six-month struggle between the Clubs and the Guardian leadership. This is necessary for both internal and external reasons.
Without a commonly agreed upon history, the Clubs may cover up political differences among themselves, differences which might Indicate different political reasons for having joined in opposition to the line of the SPBM. It is only by discussing concretely the political history of the struggle and attempting a common summary that the Clubs can lay a solid foundation for the future unity.
The “external” reasons are equally important. For one thing, we have already observed that certain forces in the party-building movement are attempting to exploit the political contradiction between the Clubs and the Guardian staff for sectarian reasons. This has been particularly evident in the way in which the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) has commented on the significance of the political differences between Irwin Silber and the rest of the Guardian leadership. Equally important, as all the members of the Clubs know, the struggle with the Guardian leadership has been rich in political and organizational experiences leading to a qualitative leap in the theoretical level of the Clubs. This process should be shared with the rest of the party-building movement because it is precisely through such experiences, line struggles that emerge in the actual political practice of the party-building movement, that the movement as a whole will grow in experience. By the same token, in line with the general perspective put forward on party-building, these struggles are very much a part of the process of rectifying the general line of the U.S. communist movement and, as such, they are the “property” of the movement as a whole and not simply the “internal” business of the Guardian and the Clubs.
In summing up this struggle, it is clear that the political contradictions which eventually culminated in the “dissolution” of the Clubs had their origins some time back, even before the Clubs themselves came into existence. Essentially, all of the various differences of opinion, contrary interpretations of documents, differing emphasis put on various questions, problems of “process” between the Clubs and the Guardian staff, etc. come down to one basic contradiction. That contradiction may be summed up as being between opportunism and Marxism-Leninism on the party-building question. (Opportunism is sacrificing the long-range interests of the whole working class to the interests of a particular part, sacrificing the interests of the party to those of a small group, sacrificing principles for some temporary advantage.)
We pose the question in this exact fashion, rather than as between two ’’lines’’ because we cannot say that two distinct party-building lines were identified in the course of the struggle. Rather, the opportunist position of the prevailing section of the Guardian leadership was nothing more than a rather deliberate exploitation of the party-building sentiment existing among U.S. Marxist-Leninists in order to build up the influence, prestige and material base of the Guardian newspaper, its staff, and leading cadre; and, particularly, to enhance the political position of the Guardian’s managing editor, Jack Smith. The Marxist-Leninist position, on the other hand, did not yet manifest itself in a line on party-building. Instead, it consisted of bringing a Marxist-Leninist critique to bear on the attempt to transform the Clubs j into the opportunist expression of the “Guardian trend.”
It is now quite apparent to all that at the time the Guardian published its special Party-Building Supplement (June 1977) and then later organized Guardian Clubs (fall 1977), this contradiction was already developing within the Guardian leadership. It expressed itself in different emphases put on the relationship between theoretical work and local political activity by the Clubs; it also expressed itself in terms of differing emphases on the relationship that should exist between the Guardian and the Clubs on the one hand and the forces represented by the OC on the other.
The opportunist position surfaced first in a document written by Jack Smith, February 8, 1978. This document, interestingly enough, was circulated outside of the Guardian staff even before it had been presented to other leading comrades in the Guardian. It was also distributed on a selective basis. While not being sent to all staff members or all Club coordinators, it was sent to several coordinators with instructions to share its contents with certain consciously selected individuals. This document, called “The 4th Tendency,” advocates transforming the Clubs into all-sided political organizations in order to enable the Guardian to “exercise maximal influence in the party-building movement.” It also puts forward the proposition that the “independence” of the Guardian from the rest of the movement is a principal political objective in itself.
On the first point, Smith’s paper represents a complete break with the view originally developed, which saw theoretical tasks as primary for Marxist-Leninists in this period, and primary for the Clubs as well. (Subsequently, in other documents, this “oversight” is corrected, but as the Clubs correctly concluded, there were many cosmetic changes introduced in order to disguise the more naked expressions of opportunism.) Smith himself summarizes this position as follows:
We must build Guardian Clubs into a serious organizational expression of our political line. The Clubs must not just be service organizations for the paper and debating societies but must develop real political practice, first in the form of joining and initiating militant actions, then developing roots in the community, then developing some experience in the working class movement. The Clubs as structured are passive. They must become aggressive. They should not exist to build another ’trend’ or influence another ’trend’ or take over another ’trend’ but to become a ’trend’ in their own right, able to seriously contend in the consolidation process.
Since this point of view is the political underpinning for the contradictions which subsequently emerged in sharp form, it is important to draw out its full implications. Clearly, the reference to “debating societies” is an attempt to downgrade the centrality of theoretical tasks in party-building. Posing “real political practice” as the alternative, with the objective of becoming a “trend” as a result, makes it clear that what Smith has in mind is not an effort at solving the principal questions before the party-building movement but a move–pure and simple– to gain some momentary prestige for the Guardian and the Clubs (prestige which would be obtainable too in the ways in which the Guardian would describe the activities of its own organization in the pages of its own supposedly independent newspaper) in order to become an organizational force that could solve the Guardian’s financial problems and place its CC in a dominating political position in the movement.
Concerning relations with the “trend” (later to become the OC), Smith’s perspective was as follows: “It would be a mistake to too closely identify ourselves with the existing ’trend’ at this stage. The Guardian has much to offer the developing 4th tendency and must not sell itself short. Indeed, the Guardian is quite probably the most important element within this emerging tendency, even with its shortcomings. To play its maximum role it must certainly not give the appearance at this stage of being behind or a part of the first of several ’trends’ to come along. Not only would this be viewed as sectarian by the broad readership of the Guardian, which we intend to bring into the 4th tendency, but it would stifle the development of our own organization and our own ’trend’.... This is why I oppose too close an involvement with the existing ’trend,’ why I do not believe Guardian Clubs should join its local support organizations regionally and why we should not become part of the ’organizational center’ and the ideological journal. All of this can only benefit the existing ’trend’ and not strengthen either the Guardian or the ’trend’ it must itself develop. ... To become too closely associated with the first ’trend’ at this stage will amount to jeopardizing the Guardian’s political future and the good works it can perform during the course of this entire process. At some point in the future, when the period before final consolidation arrives and several relatively strong ’trends’ have reached center stage, I want the Guardian to be there in force, able to influence what happens. To do so we must not only sharpen our theoretical tools but, most crucially, build our organization and develop some genuine practice.”
What emerges most clearly from all this is that not once in the entire “4th Tendency” document does Smith address the question of the political objectives of the Guardian, the concrete problem of raising the political and theoretical level of the movement or the political differences between the Guardian and the “trend.” In. order to make up for this “oversight,” Smith sent out an “addition” to his document on Feb. 12: “It occurs to me several days later’ that I haven’t gone into the politics of the ’trend’ within the,’ 4th tendency. This is because I’m assuming familiarity with this on the part of those who read this–but something should be noted.”
The “something” that is then noted follows: “In the ’trend’s 18 unity principles, Point 15 states that within the party-building movement at the present period (emphasis theirs) that the main danger is ’left’ opportunism and ultra-’leftism.’ This is incorrect .... Within our 4th tendency, the main danger is right opportunism. Indeed the Guardian represents the left wing of this tendency.” Smith goes on to “prove” his point by citing Point 18 of the principles of unity. “While correctly identifying the U.S. as the main enemy of the world’s peoples, the point omits any mention of the USSR as a hegemonistic superpower.” He notes, quite correctly, that “revisionism could live quite comfortably with Point 18.”
As in subsequent documents, it becomes clear that Smith is looking for political differences in order to justify the Guardian’s organizational “independence,” rather than the other way around–a fact which is underscored by the time sequence of the document and its “addition.” Nowhere is the difference over the “fusion” strategy for party-building mentioned and with good reason. Smith does not have a critique of the “fusion” line. Having no respect for Marxist-Leninist theory himself, he does not take seriously the fusionist claims to developing the party’s general line through the process. But he does understand the matter of gaining prestige, influence and numbers within the movement by developing a reputation and an organization with political clout.
On the question of Point 18 itself, Smith does not want ±o deal with the real problem of the OC–namely that it is based on lowest common denominator politics. In actual social practice, in the stands taken on most international questions, there is really little difference between the Guardian’s line and that of the 0C’s leading force, the PWOC. In addition, unlike the situation around the “fusion” question, the Guardian did not take up its differences with the 00 around Point 18 in. a thorough, all-sided ideological struggle, so that it never really tried to change the line ultimately adopted by the 00 or to win individual groups over.
There is no doubt that Point 18 is very weak, a reflection of the low political development within the 0C. But, by the same token, the failure to recognize (on Smith’s part) that the adoption of Point 18–even as written–was the decisive line of demarcation with the left-opportunist trend of the new communist movement is inexcusable. It speaks once again to the desire to “get something” on one’s presumed adversary rather than to make an all-sided Marxist-Leninist analysis of political phenomena.
It is also noteworthy that Smith’s one reference to theoretical tasks in his “4th Tendency” document is the acknowledgement that we must “sharpen our theoretical tools.” This formulation indicates the underlying opportunist outlook of the document. The theoretical tasks of the present period–in the first place, the rectification of the general line of the U.S. communist movement–are now reduced to the process of tool-honing while being subordinated to other tasks of organization and “real political practice.” Theory, in this view, is indeed a weapon–a weapon to be used in order to bludgeon one’s political adversaries in the struggle for organizational power and domination.
The circulation of this document by Smith coincided with the organization of a secret faction within the Guardian staff whose purpose was to work for the adoption of this political perspective. This faction, through a variety of opportunistic devices and appeals, gradually brought a majority of the Guardian staff into its orbit. It was the struggle organized by this faction against Silber’s line on the Clubs and party-building that led to the paralysis of leadership from the Guardian to the Club network over a period of some four months.
The SPBM document became the next major point of contradiction in the unfolding struggle. Originally drafted as a statement of reasons why the Guardian was opposed to an organizational affiliation with the 0C, the document was transformed by the faction so that it used Smith’s schematic formulation of a “4th Tendency” (among six or seven), identified the Guardian as a “trend,” exaggerated differences with the 0C and introduced certain concepts that were to lay the theoretical foundation for a plan to transform the Clubs into the scheme for organizational hegemony that was finally floated some months later. There is little doubt that those Guardian staff members who eventually sparked the opposition to Smith’s line made a number of tactical errors during this process and failed to recognize early enough the far-reaching political significance of the changes that had been made to the original draft.
The first version of the SPBM was circulated simultaneously to the five Guardian Clubs and the constituent groups of the OC at the end of July 1978. This was significant because, for the first time the struggle which had up until that point taken place only within the Guardian leadership began to bring the Clubs into the arena. At the beginning, most of the Clubs did not yet grasp the full political significance of the SPBM, although there was widespread criticism of the Guardian for having distributed it to the OC and to the Clubs at the same time, thus making it a political fait accomplit. Some significant criticisms of different aspects of the SPBM were raised by two leading comrades of the Bay Area Club, Paras and Elbaum, but even these were in the context of a generally positive view of the document.
Meanwhile, within the Guardian leadership, the faction moved to put its opportunist line into practice. This took the form of a “Draft Proposal on the Future of Guardian Clubs” submitted by Smith August 20 to the Subcommittee responsible for Guardian Clubs. In this draft proposal, Smith gives concrete organizational expression to the views put forward in.’ his “4th Tendency” paper. It is the first time in the course of the entire struggle that Smith’s position has been put forward as a proposal for adoption.
At the same time, it was becoming obvious that after a year of functioning, the Clubs were beginning to take on their own political character. Leadership was emerging in the various clubs and taking important initiatives in the theoretical, training of members and the implementation of the general perspective on Guardian Clubs. The West Coast Clubs had each begun to establish contacts with local OC groups and to participate in various coalitions. A similar impulse in the New York Club was throttled by the heavy-handed presence of a number of Guardian staff members who attempted to run that Club as a private fiefdom, stifling political debate and theoretical discussion by instantly invoking the specter of “anti-leadership” tendencies at every expression of political difference.
These various signs suggested that a corps of cadres was developing in the Clubs who could not be counted on to rubber-stamp every political and organizational move made by the Guardian opportunist faction as it attempted to carry out its line leading to hegemony over the party-building movement. It is this factor that explains the following statement by Smith in a special memo accompanying his Draft Proposal:
We might have to be tough. A lot of people in the Clubs may not be prepared to move this far with us. Some of them won’t make it from the 10 to 29 points. Some won’t want to devote themselves as much as required to the Clubs when it becomes necessary to do so.
Some may reject our continued emphasis on centralism at the expense of democracy during the first couple of years. It is entirely possible half our club people might drop out. Likewise, entire Clubs may disband. If that’s the price for progress, I think we should pay it. We’ll build on a more solid foundation.
Anyone familiar with the actual situation of the Clubs will find the above near-incredible. It is clearly designed not to drop some “dead wood” from the Clubs or to eliminate people with backward political views. It is an attempt to eliminate the leading political forces in the Club Network–not on the basis of clearly defined political differences but because the more developed forces represented a genuine threat to the unchallenged domination of the organization by the opportunist faction in the Guardian leadership. As subsequent events demonstrated, this was a “rule or ruin” proposal–a typically opportunist approach which is perfectly willing to destroy an organization unless it has that organization completely under its own thumb. It is not surprising that such an approach avoids ideological struggle like the plague; the more it tries to “explain” its position, the more blatant its opportunist motivation appears.
The basic rationale for Smith’s approach is a thoroughly pragmatic view of party-building, one which sees the process as principally the negotiation of power relations rather than the struggle for a common political line. Here is the way Smith sums up his view of the way in which the party will be formed:
It is possible for a genuine vanguard party to emerge from the independent Marxist-Leninist, anti-dogmatist, antirevisionist movement (the 4th Tendency). Two among several trends have so far emerged, the Guardian trend being one of these. In time, through struggle and unity, some trends will fall by the wayside while others will gather strength. There will come a time when two or three of these leading trends will merge to form the party. Our belief is that the stronger the Guardian organization, the faster a party will be formed and the better the party will be. Thus building Guardian Clubs is party-building.
In essence, that is the party-building strategy underlying the SPBM document. This is a thoroughly anti-Leninist line, one which was developed not on the basis of politics in command but the Guardian in command, the assumption being that the Guardian is an organization–like the party–whose line will inevitably be the most advanced.
The Clubs did not have a full grasp of these political implications of the SPBM at that time because the Draft Proposal was never made known to them. It was not even made known to the Guardian staff. The Clubs only became aware of this highly important document in December 1978 when a member of the Guardian CC inadvertently passed a copy of it on to a New York Club member who then circulated it throughout the Club network.
But within the Guardian leadership, the Draft Proposal served to join the issue in a clear-cut fashion for the first time. In a lengthy response written 10 days after the Draft Proposal was circulated, I offered the following comments:
The Draft Proposal operates on the assumption not only that a leading political line has emerged and “been identified, but that the Guardian staff as presently constituted is, in effect, a Central Committee (and the CC a political bureau) capable of putting whatever finishing touches are required on this political line in order to make it a viable basis for organizing a democratic centralist organization. Seriously to entertain such a notion is either to grossly underestimate what a leading political line is for a communist organization or to wildly overestimate the political level of the Guardian staff–or both... In this scenario, if the Guardian’s formation has enough troops and resources, its views will then prevail in the formulation of the new party’s general line–and presumably its influence would be reflected in the apportionment of seats in the central committee, selection of officers, dominance of the organizational apparatus, etc...
The Draft Proposal is incorrect on several fundamental counts. It assumes that the principal theoretical tasks before Marxist-Leninists have in the main been solved. This is not true. It fails to see the significance of uniting Marxist-Leninists in a joint effort to take up communist theoretical tasks. It bases its views on the future of Guardian Clubs on an incorrect strategy for party-building, one which promotes sectarianism and will heighten organizational rivalry. It allocates a task of Marxist-Leninist leadership, the crucial task of developing a general line and party-building strategy for the movement as a whole to a group of individuals– the Guardian staff–who are politically incapable of performing this task. In fact, the plan amounts to a scenario for party-building which would always remain under the firm organizational control of the Guardian CC.
This document, too, was kept from the Clubs–not by wish of the author, but because its clear references to the Draft Proposal would have “declassified” that document. Nevertheless, in the course of the sharp political struggle that emerged within the Club Network over the next three months, the overwhelming majority of Club members were able to “deduce” the political propositions underlying the main line of the SPBM.
As the result of this opposition to the Draft Proposal, a roadblock was thrown in the plans by the faction to proceed directly with their scheme for reorganizing the Clubs and driving leading comrades out of them. Because of this opposition, joined in by another member of the Guardian CC, Prances Beal, it became necessary for the Guardian staff to “reaffirm” the main line of the SPBM. I then introduced a lengthy amendment designed to remove from the SPBM all references to the future of Guardian Clubs, arguing that this question could not be resolved on the basis of the vague references in the SPBM and without consultation with the Clubs themselves.
Smith, in turn, introduced a number of changes in the SPBM designed to “strengthen” it. These included the designation of the Guardian as a “left” trend and the OC as a “right” trend in the party-building movement. Certain “unitary” terminology in the earlier version of the SPBM was excised and the idea of a “limited” political organization was introduced as a cosmetic device in order to deflect some of the mounting criticism.
Smith’s amendment was overwhelmingly adopted and mine rejected-although some staff members who were not part of the “resident” staff were denied the opportunity to vote on the questions. Their votes would not have changed the outcome but would have demonstrated a larger body of opposition within the Guardian staff than was actually registered. Once again, the new and final SPBM was rushed into print, this time in the pages of the Guardian, without prior consultation with the Clubs. With the decision to publish the document, I notified the Guardian staff of my decision to resign as Executive Editor of the paper.
Following the publication of the SPBM and my resignation, Jack Smith went on a national tour in conjunction with the Guardian 30th Anniversary events. During that tour, members of all the Clubs had the opportunity to meet with Smith and struggle face-to-face over the issues at hand. In the course of that struggle, the political and ideological bankruptcy of Smith’s position was exposed to Club members. In some cities, meetings were held also involving other Marxist-Leninists in our trend, and the movement as a whole had a chance to examine and criticize the sectarianism and opportunism of the Smith line.
Their common experiences in struggling with Smith and their developing unity in the course of sharp ideological struggle played a major role in laying-the groundwork for the Clubs to consolidate as a national organization. It raised the theoretical level and deepened the ideological outlook of Club members.
After more than six weeks of internal debate, the Clubs overwhelmingly came to oppose the line of the SPBM. Of some 75 Club members, only nine voted to uphold the position of the Guardian staff– and four of those nine were Guardian staff members who also were members of the New York Club.
During the course of the debate, each Club produced one or more documents dealing with the line of the SPBM and the commandist methodology employed by the Guardian staff to impose a line on the Clubs concerning their own future in which their views were not even solicited nor their experiences summed up. The following excerpts represent a typical cross-section:
Bay Area Club: “Ultimately a line must be judged by its objective essence, not what its supporters claim their intentions are. What is the objective essence of the line in Smith’s amendment and the SPBM? The line invents a non-existent ’trend’ and places the Guardian newspaper staff at the center of it. It calls for the newspaper to build a strong organization around itself. It asserts that the Guardian is the ’left’ and therefore the most advanced force in the party-building movement. It implies that all who oppose this trend and organization-’ building scheme either disagree with the Guardian’s political views or are anti-organization.
What this adds up to is a line which one-sidedly sees things only from the point of view of the Guardian newspaper staff. What it adds up to is a justification for the indefinite independence of the Guardian and offers nothing but good intentions as to how this situation could ever be altered. And this line is recklessly advanced, knowing that it may split the Clubs and the staff itself.
Boston Club: “The SPBM document supports–through a series of errors, ambiguities and omissions–a sectarian, ’go it alone’ approach to party-building. Specifically, the exaggeration of the Guardian’s differences with the OC, the emphasis on organization-to-organization struggle, the failure to specify the role and nature of theoretical tasks, the failure to specify the purpose of organizational expression of the Guardian’s political views and the total absence of any discussion about the party-building tasks in this period lend themselves to the interpretation that the Guardian intends to build an organization capable of struggling for hegemony within the 4th tendency.”
Los Angeles Club; “Replacing the political struggle around the general line–which should take place within the Guardian network, as well as between us and other Marxist-Leninists such as the OC–with organizational form objectively abandons the task of rectifying the general line and inhibits the ongoing ideological struggle. In essence this substitutes organizational rivalry for principled ideological struggle ... To create these artificial lines of demarcation and establish a competitive organizational form is sectarian. The proposed consolidation of the Clubs seems related more to competing organizationally with the OC than to a Marxist assessment of the current situation.”
New York Club: “To consider the Clubs as some kind of Guardian ’franchise,’ expanding them if they are ’profitable’ to the newspaper, or to ’disband them as an experiment which failed,’ or telling members to ’transfer their work to other areas’ if there is any disagreement does not reflect a communist view of political organization . . . The Guardian should publish a statement indicating that the future of the Clubs as put forward in the SPBM is not a settled question. It only reflects the views of a majority of the Guardian staff, but in no way reflects the views of Club members.”
Seattle Club: “We must avoid the left sectarian error of judging every political difference as a splitting question . . . Otherwise we will succeed only in splintering our trend into numerous competing organizations all destined to develop preparty organizations and ’go it alone’ to build the party. We must get rid of the notion that there is already a consolidated right and left trend within our tendency. This only serves to exaggerate differences and place questions of organizational independence above political principle. . .. It is true that the errors which the OC makes generally come from a right direction–their line on fusion, on the main danger, i.e. to a low theoretical level, narrowness of outlook, localism, lack of a plan, etc. rather than to consolidated right opportunism or revisionism.”
During the course of the discussion, the Clubs realized that the Guardian had abdicated completely from any political role of leadership. There was no response to the various criticisms advanced by the Clubs. There were no proposals for resolving the differences. There was only a national speaking tour by Smith, who used the occasion to hold lengthy discussions with every Club. These discussions convinced the Clubs that there was no legitimate theoretical foundation for Smith’s views on party-building or the general assessment made of the party-building movement.
As a result of all this, the Clubs took the initiative of calling regional conferences of all members on the East Coast and West Coast. Independently of each other, these conferences reached general agreement on the necessity for the fact of the Clubs’ disagreements with the Guardian SPBM document be made known through the pages of the Guardian and that the Guardian staff must recognize the right of the Clubs to participate in the formulation of policy on party-building questions as well as in relation to their own future. To carry out their proposals, the regional conferences mandated the formation of the National Reconciliation Committee.
In fairly compressed form, this is the history of the struggle over party-building line between the Guardian Clubs and the Guardian staff. Naturally, there are many other points that came up in the course of debate–but none of these would in any way modify the main line of development as described above.
It is now overwhelmingly clear to the Clubs that from the beginning of this struggle they were being confronted with a thoroughly opportunist scheme whose objective effect, if implemented, would have created havoc in the party-building movement. It is also clear that rather early in the struggle, the Guardian leadership realized that there was no possibility of implementing its line. Nevertheless, they pressed forward with it and deliberately provoked a split with the Clubs. The actions of the Guardian leadership in this regard, just as much as the actual sectarian line put forward, should alert the entire party-building movement to the dangers of careerism and a narrow concern for one’s own organization and position in opposition to the needs of the party-building movement as a whole.
What is the source of the opportunism manifested by the Guardian leadership?
First, it is the reflection of a small-minded, petty bourgeois entrepreneurial spirit which has infected leading members of the Guardian collective. Just as they saw the Clubs as their “property,” so too do they see the Guardian as their “property,” rather than as a newspaper which is supported by the general left movement and has responsibilities to it. This spirit is fed by the Guardian’s mode of ’ ideological production, which is strongly influenced by concepts of “coverage” and “deadline” and leads to a generally pragmatic style of work.
Second, the Guardian staff depends upon the movement remaining in its present state of political, ideological and organizational backwardness in order for its “leading” role to be enhanced. It tends to view the development of theoretical work–a task for which it is poorly equipped and therefore has little respect–as threatening to its own standing. Should Marxist-Leninists unite and be able to move forward the party-building movement in a common effort, such a consolidation might make the movement less dependent on the Guardian and lead to a loss of influence and “leverage” by the Guardian staff.
Desperately seeking material support without wanting to relinquish the slightest measure of political or organizational control, the Guardian staff has elevated the concept of “independence” into a principle and participates in the party-building movement only to the extent that it can “control” it.
To be completely blunt about it, the Guardian staff does not practice Marxism-Leninism and is not seriously committed to party-building unless it can exert hegemony over the process.
These are very harsh judgments. We are convinced on the basis of our intimate experience with the present Guardian leadership and a careful analysis of the political views they have put forward that it is a correct judgment.
Fortunately, the Clubs were able to develop the political and theoretical capacity to defeat the efforts by the Guardian leadership to put their opportunist line into practice. In effect, the Guardian staff has removed itself from the party-building movement. It would have been better if the Guardian could have been enlisted to play a positive, leading role in party-building, a direction which most of us felt was being charted when the Clubs were first organized. But considering the consolidation of an opportunist faction within the Guardian leadership, forcing the Guardian staff out of the party-building movement is a good thing.
At the same time, it continues to be true that the Guardian has a great value as a newspaper and an institution independently of the backward line and opportunism of its leadership on party-building matters. Our movement would be poorer without it. The Guardian merits our material support, but we cannot allow our need for its continued existence to blind us to the political shortcomings in the Guardian staff or to hold back the absolutely essential critique which must be made of its line on party-building and the thoroughly opportunist fashion in which the Guardian leadership conducted the political struggle with the Clubs.
Having been close to the Guardian staff for a considerable period of time, we are not too optimistic about its ability to overcome the strong opportunist tendency now prevailing. The anti-party faction is powerfully entrenched and will not easily be dislodged. It has many resources at its command and has already demonstrated thorough unscrupulousness in conducting the struggle with the Clubs. There is a grave ’ danger that the opportunism manifested on party-building line will infect other areas of the Guardian’s political line and practice.
We have no apologies to make for having responded to the call by the Guardian to start the Clubs. Life has already proven that whatever motivations some may have had for launching the Club system, the Clubs served as a significant vehicle for advancing the efforts of the party-building movement, for deepening the critique of left opportunism, for advancing the struggle against the “fusion” line on party-building and for helping to develop a “party spirit” in our movement. For all that some wish to smear the Clubs because of their association with the Guardian’s sectarian party-building line, the fact is that the Clubs never accepted that line and led the struggle to expose it in all its dimensions.
For the Clubs themselves, a new chapter has begun. Ideologically tempered by the struggle with the Guardian leadership, we have come to a deeper understanding of the tasks confronting Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. today. As a result, we are more firmly committed than ever before to working for the unity of all Marxist-Leninists and struggling for the most advanced political line as the basis of that unity.
Now we are on the verge of a bold new initiative. We are building an organization–national in scope, Marxist-Leninist in content– devoted to the task of reconstituting the revolutionary party of the U.S. working class; not by our efforts alone, not as a proprietary undertaking or in search of accreditation in some other capitol, not as a means to any other purpose but that of taking up the responsibilities incumbent upon a revolutionary vanguard in preparation for the final war with the monopoly capitalist system and its state.
To contribute toward this task, we have taken up a very simple formulation: “The principal task before U.S. Marxist-Leninists today is the rectification of the general line of the U.S. communist movement and the re-establishment of its communist party.” This conference, I am confident, will adopt that formulation, deepen its meaning through discussion, and lay the basis for our Club Network to play a key role in the process we hope to unfold.
More particularly, the Club Network–in keeping with the spirit of that formulation and the content of the draft on party-building line--should see itself as a “rectification” organization. This means that our efforts will be devoted to promoting a widespread movement of ideological and political rectification aimed at developing a new, revolutionary general line of the U.S. communist movement and training a large body of cadres capable of taking up the varied theoretical, political and organizational tasks of our movement in the framework of a communist approach to party-building.
It is the rectification movement among Marxist-Leninists which sets the most favorable conditions for the formation of a leading center capable of moving ahead with the concrete plans for re-establishment of the party.
“Rectification” is the concrete expression of Marxism-Leninism’s confidence in the subjective factor as the key to revolutionary activity.
This report began with two themes: the history of two-line struggle in the communist movement and the ideological origins of our science of historical and dialectical materialism. I should like to close in similar fashion.
We are ourselves the living incarnation of all the two-line struggles which make up our history as a single communist movement. Those struggles are not over. The ideological struggles that take place within the ranks of the revolutionary movement are themselves another front in the class struggle–for we are constantly battling the influence of bourgeois ideology.
A true communist never loses such a struggle. For while a communist may indeed make a serious political error, may even adopt a backward or reactionary line for a period, that comrade wins when he or she recognizes and surrenders those errors and those backward lines. This is the spirit in which we enter into the ideological struggles of our movement: not to defeat individuals or organizations, but to defeat lines and to win over individuals and organizations.
At the moment, our principal ideological struggle is over party-building line, for this is the principal question corresponding to the present level of development of our movement and the historic tasks before it.
But beyond the immediate is the larger task. The task of actually re-establishing the party, of making its theory and its political line into a material force among the masses, of becoming that vanguard of the working class and all the oppressed that can help illuminate the path to revolution and guide the efforts of the working class in its own emancipation, of bringing down this rotten system of exploitation, greed, racism, national chauvinism, sexism and cultural degradation, of establishing the dictatorship of the working class and undertaking the tasks of building a socialist society.
It is a long way from here to there and I would be less than candid if I did not say that even though this whole imperialist world system is ripe for revolution, I do not expect to see this process through to the very end. Perhaps some of you here will. That, of course, is not the crucial thing.
The important thing is that by taking the steps we do here this weekend, by unleashing that subjective power which is capable of political miracles beyond foretelling, by committing ourselves to this common cause and undertaking, we have joined history–not to read it or simply understand it–but to make it.