First Published: Marxist-Leninist Vanguard, Vol. II, No. 7, July 1959.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Though it is apparent that the old Communist Party leadership with its revisionist and class collaborationist policies has created a situation where the old CP is organisationally and politically flat on its back, why does the FBI, the capitalist secret police, desperately try to resurrect it?
Attorney General Rogers in a nationwide TV broadcast is the latest “resurrectionist”. Rogers said that information FBI boss Hoover gave him maintained that the old party was “being revitalized and that party work was being increased”. The question must be asked – Why are the capitalist police trying to resurrect the old decaying corpse?
The FBI isn’t stupid – they who have their agents placed in the top echelons of the old party know the exact shape of the CP organizational mess – in fact they helped cause it. They know that in most of the country the old Party is non-existent. Stretching from Minneapolis to the Pacific Coast there is not one party body functioning. There is no party in the South (and the misleaders of the old Party don’t want one.) The so-called Southern leaders of the old party never go further South than New Jersey. In the major industrial areas of the nation, Detroit. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, etc., there is a party in name only.
In New York where 50 percent or more of old party’s “forces” are, the average age is 60. There is no organized youth movement, and the small handful of youth in the old party are either disgruntled and hoping for a “left” resurrection (and classified by the official leadership as factional and sectarian), or are outright followers of the Gates-Stein-Browder bunch of open liquidators. The situation is so bad that the Gates-Stein-Browder bunch, who operate in an out of the party (working with a section of the leadership) have more forces in the borough of Brooklyn (once the largest party region) than the old party has!
There are just two Puerto Rican members left in the old party. There is not one Seaman’s Club, not a single coal miner, no longshoremen, and a mere handful of Negro members, mainly inactive.
The three major population centers in the North (New York’s Harlem, Chicago’s South Side and Cleveland’s Cedar Center) once bastions, are almost completely liquidated. In most states where the old party claims an organization, there is nothing but a skeleton apparatus which does not function.
This is the real state of the party today and with members getting older and virtually no new recruiting, it isn’t getting any better. The membership who didn’t and don’t want the party to die is caught in the deadly vise of reformism and opportunism. Most of them who have given many years to struggle wish for a revitalised party, a fighting party, a Marxist-Leninist party, but the leadership which knowingly and willingly liquidated the party will never change. Expecting them to change is a meaningful as expecting a drug peddler to lead in the fight to curb juvenile delinquency.
Once again the question must be asked – why is the FBI, the secret police of the capitalists, desperately trying to give the impression that the revisionist cabal in the CP leadership is effective in its work?
Of course, it could be that the FBI and the bosses of American capitalists, well aware of the CP’s leadership “loyalty” (recently attested to by the Un-American Committee), and doubly aware of the CP’s leadership unwillingness to enter into or lead any struggle of the masses, finds that they are a likeable confederate. American imperialism realizes very well that as long as that leadership remains in power and “active”, even if only in the FBI files and in capitalist newspaper columns, it is more difficult to build a real Marxist-Leninist party, a party of struggle, a vanguard party. They also, very obviously, with these rejuvenation tonics of Rogers and Hoover, wish to hide the capitulation of the leadership from the international Communist movement.
American imperialism wants no more Duclos letters which last exposed the party’s leadership capitulation.
They will try to do everything they can to help the CP leadership from becoming thoroughly bankrupt and exposed and to keep the working class from building a real Communist Party. For what they have to fear from the likes of Chauncey and Krchmarek – Ohio party leaders who came crawling on their hands and knees begging forgiveness. What have they to fear from them when they extract hostages to keep them on the “new road to reformism,” and the only answer they receive is a plea by the Gurley Flynn’s and Patterson’s for postcards to the president, instead of demonstrations and mobilisation of the working class. They also know that whenever they have a good job hanging around, one of the leaders will gleefully pick it up, as has S. Gerson – recently announced vice-pres. of a public relations firm.
The tactics of the enemy class police in infiltrating the party, subverting its principles and liquidating its members has been used before. The pre-war Polish and Japanese secret police did exactly this, and as their American counterparts do today, announced to all and sundry, that these party’s which were then almost entirely liquidated were growing in strength.
The bourgeoisie has had some success, they, their agents, and their reformist stooges inside the old party, have managed to liquidate almost all of America’s Marxist-Leninist forces.
It is a hollow success, for the inner contradiction of the system they vigorously defend, make a Marxist-Leninist working class party arise again and again. It will rise here too, it will rise and lead the American working class to Socialism and Communism.
It will need no rejuvenation tonics from the capitalist secret police, nor will it need big names and betrayers of the working class. It will be a party of the class, for the class, and by the class. AND IT WILL BE!!!