Developing The Subjective Factor was the main working document of the founding conference of the National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs (NNMLC). The conference delegates, representing Clubs and Club Organizing Committees in six cities, unanimously adopted the document as the party building line of the new organization and its basis of political unity.
The Club Network grew out of the Guardian Clubs, an organization formed in September 1977 by the Guardian Newspaper staff. Sharp differences between the overwhelming majority of Club members and the majority of the newspaper staff emerged, however, during the time of the Guardian’s publication of the State of the Party Building Movement paper in October,1978. Club members rejected the sectarian line expressed in that paper.
The sharp, two-line struggle which broke out in the Club system over these differences lasted some months. In the process the Clubs developed strong unity with one another and deepened our collective grasp of the party building question. Thus, when the formal separation from the newspaper staff occurred in January of 1979, Club members were convinced we had the unity, commitment and leadership required to forge the Clubs as a distinct organization. Our founding conference in March, 1979, consolidated that unity with the adoption of the document printed here and the election of leadership to guide the new organization. A National Leadership Committee was elected to lead the organization between its periodic delegate conferences. In addition, a National Executive Committee consisting of Irwin Silber as National Club Chairperson and Melinda Paras as National Club Co-ordinator was chosen to act as day-to-day leadership of the Club Network.
Developing The Subjective Factor is a collective product, a synthesis of ideas that have been advanced by many comrades both inside and outside of the Club Network over the past few years. Since the demarcation in the anti-revisionist communist movement over the question of Angola in 1975-76 which gave rise to the anti-revisionist, anti-left opportunist trend, an intense struggle has been waged over party building line within our trend. On the one hand is the “fusion” line advanced principally by the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee, a line leading to the formation of the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center in February of 1978. On the other hand is a body of ideas that have criticized the fusion line and advanced the opinion that theoretical work to develop a leading general line for the U.S. communist movement is the key to party building. This line has evolved and deepened in the course of struggle against the fusion line, as well as in deepening the summation of the demarcation with left opportunism. The line was further developed in struggle against the sectarian line of the Guardian Newspaper staff. The result is the formulation put forward in the document printed here: The central task of U.S. Marxist-Leninists today is the rectification of the general line of the U.S. communist movement and the re-establishment of its party.
The Club Network believes that this formulation, and the elaboration upon it drawn out here, provides the Marxist-Leninist forces with a scientific line that can guide the path to the re-establishment of the party. Undoubtedly, the line will undergo refinement and modification as the party building movement proceeds. But overall, the Club Network is enthusiastically united that a sound foundation for party building work has been laid with the publication of this line.
To reflect the background of development of this line and to give further elaboration to some of its aspects, some supplemental material is included in this pamphlet: a number of articles by Irwin Silber originally printed in his Fan the Flames column in the Guardian. Ideas in these columns were among those drawn upon to produce the party building line of the Clubs. The major work of drafting the main document itself was done by Max Elbaum, a member of the Club Network National Leadership Committee and co-ordinator of the Bay Area Club.
The Club Network has set as its major task advancing and struggling for this perspective within the Marxist-Leninist movement. As a national formation with strong leadership and many enthusiastic cadre, the Clubs are in an excellent position to take up this task. And it is a crucial task, as the struggle over party building line is at present the key struggle within our trend. At the same time, the Club Network recognizes that we are far from the only force holding and advancing the rectification and re-establishment line. A significant number of Marxist-Leninists in other organizations or presently unaffiliated have contributed to developing this view and also advance it within the movement. In fact, the rectification and re-establishment line is already becoming a material force. It has demonstrated its ability to initiate the development of study projects, systematic cadre education programs, and various forms of communist intervention in the day-today struggle.
We hope, of course, to win the entire Marxist-Leninist movement to our line. However, the Club Network has no intention of trying to gather within its ranks all who agree with this perspective; part and parcel of the line itself is the need for a multiplicity of organizational forms to carry out the complex tasks of rectification and re-establishment. The Club Network is only one among many of such forms.
The National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs invites and encourages active study and struggle over our party building line. We hope to draw the questions, comments, and criticisms of the entire communist movement. This process itself is in fact a demonstration of the rectification process, the crucial struggle for line among communists that is essential for the party’s re-establishment. Only the sharpening of struggle over party building line will bring the developing Marxist-Leninist trend in the U.S. to a higher level of unity on a correct party building line and will set the basis to concentrate our efforts, advance the rectification movement, and take concrete steps towards the re-establishment of a vanguard party in the U.S.
Irwin Silber
Melinda Paras
May 14, 1979