Fifth Congress of the
Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores
Resolution on Work in the Mass Movement and the Union Movement
Whereas:
Marxist-Leninists must simultaneously employ all forms of struggle (ideological, economic, political, military), being able at each stage of the class struggle to recognize which predominates over the others and to what extent.
The current stage of the class struggle, defined by our party as one of preparing for war, is marked by pre-revolutionary conditions coinciding with a rise in spontaneous economic struggles by the workers.
The extremely favorable conditions for beginning armed struggle are themselves limited by the weakness of our party and its meager influence among the proletariat, the extent to which the working class in the country as a whole lags behind the most advanced sectors, and the powerful syndicalist and nationalist hangovers that persist in these most advanced sectors.
Propaganda and political agitation among the masses constitutes the basic tool in this preparatory stage for advancing the proletariat and the popular sectors toward realizing the necessity for revolutionary war against the regime. This must be combined with an ideological struggle against bourgeois nationalism, populism, and reformism, as well as self-defense on a large scale and armed propaganda, spreading and generalizing of the economic struggle, and building the party.
The participation of revolutionaries in the economic struggle must take the form of linking up with the more backward layers of the proletariat, mobilizing the entire proletariat against the regime and helping to deepen the penetration of agitation and political propaganda into the working class. The economic struggle must not be considered as opposed to the political one, rather as a lower level of the proletariat’s struggle that we as revolutionaries must harness to achieve our strategic objectives, while constantly trying to raise each one of its phases to a political level.
To this end the party must provide itself with a clear political program in order to participate in mass movements, in particular, in the proletariat’s union struggles, in the student movement, and in other sectors that we regard as allies of the proletariat.
In our mass line for the workers’ movement, our basic orientation of political agitation and developing the party must be combined with defending the living standard of the masses and paying great attention to immediate demands, taking into account the fundamental features of the present situation (disastrous drop in the standard of living, political oppression, a semi-miitary regime in the plants, the dictatorship’s attempt to bring the union movement completely under state control, indiscriminate political repression, etc.).
The revolutionary leadership of the party is the only guarantee for a union movement that is at the same time faced with a dictatorship and strategically involved in a revolutionary war.
Be it resolved that:
1. The basic task for revolutionists is propaganda and political agitation among the masses and building and expanding the party. Consequently, each section and branch, every team and each party activist must be closely linked to the masses, with the central thought in mind of audaciously building the party, putting its name, its line, the concept of revolutionary war before the broadest possible sectors through energetic propaganda and revolutionary agitation.
2. In its daily activity among the masses the party should pay great attention to all immediate demands, whether economic, political, cultural, etc. Each party activist must win the affection and respect of the masses, not only to be able to point out the revolutionary road, but to be in position to stand up to all kinds of injustices and setbacks as well. The aim is not only to denounce oppression and exploitation, explaining them from a revolutionary political point of view, but to organize the masses to struggle directly against these injustices.
3. The construction of the broadest and least clandestine possible mass organizations that will struggle for immediate demands (unions, factory commissions, class groupings, community commissions, etc.) and the struggle for the leadership of the existing organizations—all are necessary to the party’s strategy in order to strengthen its influence on the more backward layers of the proletariat, broaden and generalize the economic struggle, and smooth the way for the broad masses to understand revolutionary socialism. This task is closely linked to developing the party’s organization in the working class and subordinate to it, and in no way can it be neglected.
4. In view of the dictatorship’s policy of subjecting the unions to state control, clandestine channels are, or will be, needed for conducting the economic struggle.
Our party must inspire and encourage the spread of broad class-struggle formations and factory resistance commissions wherever the conditions are favorable for extending and generalizing the proletariat’s struggles, making sure that this does not detract from the revolutionary political activity of the party but promotes it in the broadest sense.
This should not exclude defending the legal rights of unions and fighting to win back for the working class those that have already become half incorporated into the state, although at this stage it will be a secondary objective.
5. The party must steadfastly and consistently struggle for the leadership of the anti-dictatorial trade-union movement, avoiding falling either into sectarianism or into opportunism, between which we oscillated constantly in the syndicalist stage of the organization that we have definitively put behind us.