8/9/90
1. The objective conditions are not there for an organization with the level of discipline which we had in the past.
2. We need to build a broader organization than the LRS, which allows and encourages the participation of various progressive ideologies, rather than just Marxism-Leninism.
3. We are in danger of creating an organization in which Marxist-Leninists are not able to participate. This would be a grave error.
4. The present confusion of many comrades regarding the exact type of society which we propose (including myself) should not make us unable to put out an explicit critique of the capitalist system as it exists in the US today.
5. The critical element of the LRS’s line which we cannot afford to lose is the concept of a Strategic Alliance between the workers movement and the oppressed nationality movements.
I am writing as a person who finds much to agree with in both positions which have been put out, and some problems with each of the views. While some other comrades in the Watsonville District have expressed views similar in some ways to mine, this is intended only as an expression of my personal views, rather than as an attempt to synthesize the views of various persons.
1. The objective conditions are not there for an organization with the level of discipline which we had in the past. Both positions lay this out in, but in somewhat different ways. I feel that the Minority Position sees this mainly as a question of adjusting policies, while the Majority Position views it as a more fundamental change. I am in agreement with what I understand to be the Majority Position on this point. I have felt for a long time that our standards and level of demands were not realistic for building an organization for the long haul, and that they tended to eliminate many people in a variety of strata. This includes workers and others with families who simply don’t have 64 hours per week, older people, etc. To build an organization which can have real impact we have to allow for far greater diversity among our members than we have in the past, and this is an important element in that process.
2. We need to build a broader organization than the LRS, which allows and encourages the participation of various progressive ideologies, rather than just Marxism-Leninism.
I am also far more in agreement with the Majority Position than with the Minority Position on this point. The Minority Position once again seems to see this a a mere adjustment, rather than as a fundamental change. Just as we have in the past drawn on a variety of progressive ideologies to build our viewpoint as the LRS, I feel that the new organization must be able to draw on individuals of various progressive ideologies.
I have met more than one proponent of Liberation Theology, for example, who was every bit as much of a productive potential comrade as most people in the LRS, but who you could never honestly call an ML. We need to allow those people to be in the new organization, not just as junior members with an ideology which is at odds with the actual (although perhaps unexpressed) ideology of the organization, by rather as full participants, whose ideas and beliefs are accorded equal respect.
This is not just a cosmetic change of not calling ourselves ML’s because of the current unpopularity of the term. This is a much deeper and more structural change.
3. We are in danger of creating an organization in which Marxist-Leninists are not able to participate. This would be a grave error.
I am extremely disturbed by the Majority Position analysis of ML and by their proposed public statement on the subject. The statement defines certain things as fundamental viewpoints of ML with which the LRS now disagrees. The statement goes on to say that ML is no better than any other ideology. In the first place, as one comrade said in our discussion of the Majority Position, “Fascism is an ideology. Do we now put it on an equal plane with ML?” Obviously the statement could be reworded, but the basic problem that I have is that we are saying that the LRS disagrees with what it defines as basic tenets of ML, and then invites those in the LRS who still consider themselves ML’s to join in building this new organization.
In reading the Majority Position, I feel that there is some danger that we will go past wanting to broaden out to include various other viewpoints and end up arriving at anti-communism instead. There are certainly many people in the LRS who continue to consider themselves ML. I feel that a more proper formulation would state that we have certain disagreements with how ML parties have handled various questions around the world, that some of us no longer consider ourselves ML’s and that further, we no longer feel that an ML party is the correct form to be building, that wc wish to build an organization in which all progressive ideologies would be able to work on an equal footing.
4. The present confusion of many comrades regarding the exact type of society which we propose (including myself) should not make us unable to put out an explicit critique of the capitalist system as it exists in the US today.
I find myself personally unclear as to how exactly to define what I think that the economic structure of this country should look like, and given the current dismal state of world socialism I am not necessarily enthused about using the term “socialism”. This does not mean that I am so confused that I have come to feel that the form of capitalism under which we live is ok, or just needs some tuning up.
If we are to take pointers from the ANC, let’s look at the fact that while they do not allow themselves to be labelled, they are certainly not shy to express their critique of the current political and economic system in their country. This would certainly not put us far to the left of DSA, and I feel that this type of critique of US capitalism today is well within the reach of the organization that we are talking about building. I feel that the Majority Position is very weak in this area, and would do well to incorporate some of the ideas of the Minority Position (and the LRS Program) on the subject.
5. The critical element of the LRS’s line which we cannot afford to lose is the concept of a Strategic Alliance between the workers movement and the oppressed nationality movements.
I understand the impatience of many comrades to get on with what we are doing and not stand around haggling about theory. I further believe that we are probably going to end up building an organization along the lines proposed by the Majority Position, which will have a much less defined theoretical basis of unity at this time than the LRS has had. At the same time, we need to synthesize the best of what we can learn from 12 years of building the LRS, and take that with us into the future. The core of our politics is our understanding of the strategic alliance.
I didn’t join the LRS because they were ML. I didn’t join them because they were nice folks. I joined because they had an understanding of how the struggles of workers and progressive whites fit together with the struggles of oppressed nationalities. Eleven years after I joined the LRS, we still have the best grasp of that around, and that has played a key role in guiding our work. There are plenty of nice hardworking people in the CPUSA, or the SWP, and in their day they both had their share of minority cadres, but their line sucks in this area and ours doesn’t, and that has made all the difference in the world when you look at their work and ours.
The most recent version of the Majority Position deals explicitly with the question of self-determination for the black and chicano nations, rather than just talking about multicultural unity. This is an encouraging movement. We need to be very sure that we keep our historic strengths in this area during this time of transition.
The Majority Position seems much weaker and less clear on the question of the role of the working class. It kind of stops at saying that we identify with workers, and since we’re for the majority and they are the majority then we must be for them. No one seems to be proposing a narrow view that says that everyone has to leave school and go work in a factory, but a lot of our ability to play a role in things like the Jesse Jackson campaign have come from our base among workers, and if we turn too far away from that in search of broadening out into other classes we will certainly regret it This is another area where the Majority Position could borrow from the Minority Position.
In conclusion, I find myself leaning more towards the Majority Position. However, I see a very real tendency to go too far in this rush towards a new form, to throw out too much of the good with the bad. I think that this must be checked. In the spirit of not making this a “two-line struggle” between right and wrong, I think that the Majority Position needs to look closely at the Minority Position, and see in what areas they can borrow from it.