During the decade following the end of World War II, the United States was the world’s dominant imperialist power and was the unchallenged leader of the counter-revolutionary struggle of the countries comprising the Western imperialist bloc (the capitalist camp) against the Soviet Union and the world’s other socialist countries (the socialist camp). However, in 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), a band of revisionists and capitalist readers captured that Party from within and, under the guise of various economic reforms, subsequently restored capitalism in the Soviet Union. While attempting to hide that fact by continuing to refer to the Soviet Union as a “socialist” country, the New Tsars ruling Russia, under the cover of “Detente”, have sought to dominate and exploit the Third World and Europe through various “aid” programs, military alliances, unequal trade agreements and, in certain instances (for example, Czechoslovakia and Angola) the direct military intervention into the internal affairs of other countries. In other words, the Soviet Union is now a social-imperialist country (socialist in words, imperialist in deeds) and the socialist camp which existed for a time following World War II is no longer in existence. For that reason, the struggle of the Third World and the people of the world against imperialist domination is now a struggle on two fronts: against (declining) U.S. Imperialism on the one front and against (rising) Soviet Social-Imperialism (the more dangerous of the two) on the other.
Prior to its degeneration, the CPSU had been the leading Party in the International Communist Movement. Under the guidance of V.I. Lenin, the CPSU initiated the founding of the Third Communist International (the Comintern) in 1919 in order that the numerous Communist Movements and Parties that had sprung into being in many countries around the world following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 could be consolidated into an international organization with a common center. The Comintern led the international struggle as a whole and provided guidance to the struggles in the various countries where Communist Movements and Parties affiliated with the Comintern were operating. Following the Comintern’s dissolution in 1943 (primarily to maintain good relations within the worldwide united front against fascism), the various Communist Parties around the world were no longer responsible to a higher body and were thus obliged to display independence and initiative in leading the revolutionary struggles in their respective countries–i.e., to apply the theory of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete practice of the revolution in each Party’s own particular country. Some Parties, most notably the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (which had been operating more or less independently of the Comintern prior to 1943), met this responsibility and achieved glorious results. Other Parties, among them the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), failed miserably.
Founded in 1930, the CPUSA was the product of more than ten years of struggle within the American Communist Movement. That movement had come into being in 1917, when those forces comprising the left wing of the Socialist Party, U.S.A. could no longer remain in that Party as a result of its failure to condemn the Parties of the Second International for supporting World War I and its refusal to recognize the Bolshevik seizure of power as a legitimate socialist revolution. During the more than ten years of struggle, several different parties were formed and much realignment occurred. Only when the Communist Party and the Workers Party merged into the Workers (Communist) Party of America in 1923 was organizational unity achieved. And only when the Lovestoneites, Trotskyists and other wreckers and splitters were expelled from the Party in 1929, and the Party renamed the CPUSA the next year, can it be said that ideological and political unity existed as well. But the then united Party was never able to free itself from Right-Opportunism and the above-mentioned external domination of the Comintern, and thus failed to apply the theory of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete practice of the American revolution. Among other things, the CPUSA slavishly tailed behind (and in fact was very much a part of) Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition, entered into an all-unity/no struggle relationship with the labor bureaucrats during the period the CIO was being built, and eventually came to deny the existence of the Black National Question in the U.S. To be sure, the CPUSA made a number of positive contributions prior to the mid-1950s (the most notable being its coordination of the mass campaign supporting the Scottsboro Boys); however, in 1957, less than a year after the CPSU had embarked upon the road of revisionism and capitalist restoration, the CPUSA’s Right-Opportunism and consistent adherence to the line of the Soviet Party (despite the Comintern having long since passed out of being) gave rise to the consolidated revisionism that has gripped the American Party for the past twenty years.
More specifically, at its 16th National Convention, held in 1957, the CPUSA completely abandoned the cause of the American proletariat by: 1) backing the various actions undertaken the previous year at the 20th Congress of the CPSU (principal among which were the denunciations of Stalin and the adoption of the “peaceful transition to socialism” line), thereby remaining firmly in the Soviet camp; 2)officially abandoning Marxism-Leninism in favor of “the scientific, humanist and democratic heritage of mankind”; 3)adopting the “peaceful transition to socialism” line for the U.S.; and 4)renouncing all attempts to gain leadership of the American trade union movement.
The bulk of the CPUSA’s members accommodated themselves to the Party’s degeneration, but approximately 400 persons split off from the Party and together formed the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist Party (POC). However, a lack of theoretical training and a propensity for sectarian struggle within the organization’s ranks resulted in the POC failing to establish a working class base. Though degenerating into an isolated, ultra-leftist sect prior to 1960, the POC nonetheless clung to existence until 1968, when the 42 remaining members declared themselves the American Workers Communist Party (AWCP). Not surprisingly, the AWCP completely disintegrated the following year.
Meanwhile, another left-wing split-off from the CPUSA in December 1961 led to the 1965 founding of the above-described Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
Prior to the founding of the PLP, a small number of former POC members settled in the Los Angeles area and, after recruiting other activists (mostly from the Anti-War Movement) to their ranks over a period of several years, founded the California Communist League in 1968. In the early 1970s, after having established branches in at least San Francisco and Detroit, the organization eliminated the local connotation from its name and was thereafter known as the Communist League (CL).
Shortly after the California Communist League had emerged, activists in Cleveland, Ohio founded the Cleveland Workers Action Committee. In May 1969, the Cleveland Workers Action Committee became the American Communist Workers Movement (ML)(ACWM). In November 1972, the ACWM issued a “Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists”. One of the groups responding to the call was the CL. By early 1973, the CL had gained complete control of the Conference and, upon forcing the withdrawal of all opposing groups (including the initiator of the call, the ACWM), pushed on to the creation of the National Continuations Committee (NCC). The NCC, in turn, served as the organizational vehicle for the founding of the Communist Labor Party of the United States of North America (CLP) in September 1974. In the meantime, the ACWM had rallied a number of the forces the CL had driven from the Conference, as well as several other small groups and collectives, and, in August 1973, founded the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (COUSML).
To recapitulate briefly, the initial split-off from the CPUSA eventually gave rise to the CLP; a subsequent split-off from the CPUSA eventually gave rise to the PLP; the combined activities of the SDS and the PLP eventually gave rise to the RU–now the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)–and the OL– now the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (CP-ML);the Black Liberation Movement eventually gave rise to the BWC and the RWL; the Chicano Liberation Movement eventually gave rise to the ATM; the Puerto Rican-American Movement eventually gave rise to PRRWO; and the Asian-American Movement eventually gave rise to IWK.
As previously indicated, the above groups from the various national movements were modeled after the Black Panther Party. However, the national movements also gave rise to Anti-Revisionist groups whose predecessor organizations were not BPP models – most notably, the League of Proletarian Revolution (LPR) (formerly known as Puerto Rican Resistencia), the Workers Viewpoint Organization (WVO) (founded by a former PLP member and formerly known as the Asian Study Group), and the Revolutionary Communist League (MLM) (RCL) (a product of the Black Liberation Movement’s Cultural Nationalist Sector and formerly known as the Congress of Afrikan People).
Significantly, none of the BPP’s white parallel groups ever became Anti-Revisionist organizations. However, numerous individuals from the white groups either united with one of the existing nationwide Anti-Revisionist organizations or joined (and in some cases brought into being) some of the numerous independent local collectives that emerged in every region of the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Independent collectives, by the way, significantly contributed to the spread of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought across the U.S., as well as contributing significant numbers of cadre to the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s various organizations. The product of the more recent spontaneous struggles against all manner of oppression, independent collectives arose within the struggles of the various oppressed nationalities, among workers at the point of production, in (mostly urban, but some rural) communities, among students and intellectuals, among Anti-War activists and Utopian Socialists, among prisoners and GIs, and within the Women’s Movement. Because a good many of these collectives eventually turned to MLMTT as their guide to action, most collective members came to see the need for larger, more broadly based organizations, and thus sought to unite with the nationwide Anti-Revisionist organizations already in existence. However, for various reasons, but mostly as a result of opposition to Left-Opportunism, at least a significant minority of independent collective members found it impossible to achieve unity with any of the above organizations.
Meanwhile, the above-described error of merging the mass and vanguard organizations resulted in at least two-thirds of the advanced forces recruited from among the working class and the masses by Anti-Revisionist-controlled mass organizations either voluntarily resigning in protest over ultra-left lines and/or organizational sectarianism or being purged for failure to unite around the (ultra-left) line of the leading Anti-Revisionist organization. In addition, probably one-half of the original and early members of the various nationwide Anti-Revisionist organizations either resigned in protest over various manifestations of Left-Opportunism or were purged – in some cases, for valid reasons, but mostly as a result of sectarian methods of struggle.
In other words, purged or voluntarily withdrawn former members of nationwide Anti-Revisionist organizations, purged or voluntarily withdrawn former members of Anti-Revisionist-controlled mass organizations, and past and present independent collective members, presently unaffiliated with any of the nationwide Anti-Revisionist organizations, together comprise a very substantial independent bloc within the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement. And it is now clear that this large bloc of independents – totaling around one-half of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s ranks – has emerged largely as a result of opposition to ultra-left political lines and sectarian organizational practices. However, being very much isolated from each other (though less isolated from the working class and the masses than most members of the nationwide Anti-Revisionist organizations), independents have been very slow to recognize the quantitative and qualitative features of the independent bloc and, most importantly, have only slowly come to determine the common reasons for the majority of the independent bloc’s existence.
Recently, the gradual recognition among independents of the basic reasons for the independent bloc’s existence has led to the emergence of an Anti-Left tendency within the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement. Since this is a very recent development, and the basic features of the new tendency are not yet clear, this work can only note the Anti-Left tendency’s emergence without further comment. In future works, however, once the form and content of the Anti-Left tendency begin to take shape, a great deal of attention will be devoted to that tendency.
Without question, then, the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement is almost entirely comprised of advanced elements coming out of the above-described spontaneous mass movements of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. The major exception is The Guardian, a New York-based “independent radical weekly”, which first saw the light of day in 1948 as the campaign organ of Henry Wallace’s ill-fated presidential candidacy. Upon the 1948 election campaign’s conclusion, The Guardian remained in existence and gradually developed into a radical critic of U.S. foreign policy and a rather staunch defender of the Soviet Union and the CPUSA. Generally speaking, The Guardian maintained the same posture until the late 1960s, at which time it began moving away from the Soviet Union and the CPUSA and closer to China and the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement. In the early 1970s, The Guardian proclaimed itself an advocate of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and in 1973 organized a series of significant forums, including conclaves on Party-Building and the Black National Question in the U.S. A short period of unity between The Guardian and the OL ensued; but the two organizations went their separate ways when The Guardian rushed to the defense of Portugal’s revisionist CP, refused to recognize that capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union, and openly supported Soviet and Cuban involvement in the Angolan Civil War. Today, along with the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) (founded in 1974), one of the movement’s more prominent local groups, The Guardian is the foremost representative of Neo-Revisionism in the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement.
To proceed. Unification efforts on the part of various forces within the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement have been attempted on a number of occasions. Included among the unification efforts were: the National Liaison Committee (involving RU, BWC, PRRWO and IWK); The Guardian Forums (involving The Guardian, OL, RU and BWC); the National Continuations Committee (involving ACWM, CL, BWC, PRRWO, ATM and a number of other organizations); and the Revolutionary Wing (involving PRRWO, RWL, ATM and WVO). However, upon the disintegration of the National Liaison Committee in 1973, disunity has been the dominant state within the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s ranks. Moreover, the disunity hasn’t been confined to the realm of group-to-group relations, but has also manifested itself in the form of internal organizational splits. The most significant such split occurred within the BWC, when differences over such complex questions as Party-Building, the relation between theory and practice and the relation between centralism and democracy brought about a four-way split in the Spring of 1975. One of the factions (the Revolutionary Bloc) failed in its attempt to establish an independent existence; however, the other three factions each constituted themselves as separate and distinct pre-party groups: the Workers Congress (WC), the Revolutionary Workers Congress (RWC), and the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee (MLOC).
To sum up. The U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement is currently comprised of somewhere between 15 and 20 nationwide organizations (i.e., organizations with chapters in at least two or more locations) and dozens and probably scores of local groups (i.e., groups confined to one location). Generally speaking, each of the organizations and groups is at odds with most – if not all – of the others over at least one of the many burning questions currently confronting the movement (Party-Building, the international situation, the Black National Question, the role and composition of the united front, etc.). In other words, the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement is currently in an extremely scattered and disunited state.
Before assessing the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s impact on American society, let us briefly review the periods through which the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement has passed.
A. The Spontaneous Period, 1957-1965
The U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s first period of existence, the Spontaneous Period, covers the period of time from the initial left-wing split-off from the degenerate CPUSA in 1957 through the second such split-off in 1961 to the founding of the PLP in 1965. It is called the “Spontaneous” Period because this period’s various Anti-Revisionist organizations failed to utilize revolutionary theory as a guide to their participation in the principal spontaneous mass movements of the day. During this period, very little was said or written concerning the need for theory and theory’s relationship to practice. The prevailing view among the Anti-Revisionists of this period was that the accumulation of experience in the mass movement was the key to developing the ability to lead the masses to revolution.
B. The Eclectic Period, 1965-1969
The second period in the life of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement was the Eclectic Period. Beginning with the founding of the PLP in 1965 and coming to an end upon the RU’s founding in 1969, this was the period in which the need for revolutionary theory became universally recognized within the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement. However, different theories were being advocated by different U.S. Anti-Revisionist groups. For example, the PLP tended to view Mao Tsetung Thought as a theory unto itself rather than as a further development of the already-existing treasure of Marxism-Leninism. The BPP went even further, completely removing Mao Tsetung Thought from the realm of Marxism-Leninism and combining Mao with Fanon and Malcolm X to come up with the “lumpen as the vanguard” line. Such vulgarizations of Marxism-Leninism and the combining of certain aspects of that theory with other theories were the underlying features of the Eclectic Period.
C. The Period of Theory and Line, 1969-?
The third period, the Period of Theory and Line, began upon the founding of the RU. As a result of that organization’s explicit exposure of the PLP1s deviations and implicit exposure of the vulgarizations on the part of the BPP, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought (MLMTT) was firmly established as “the only correct revolutionary theory”.
However, the third period involves a great deal more than recognizing MLMTT as “the only correct revolutionary theory”. The essence of the third period is the grasping of MLMTT’s basic laws and principles and the application of those laws and principles to the concrete and peculiar conditions in the U.S. Based upon such an analysis, the Programme of a Party can then be written. Of course, when the conditions demand the elaboration of minimum and maximum parts of the programme, “it goes without saying that strategy for the minimum part of the programme is bound to differ from strategy designed for the maximum part.”[1] In other words, strategy is the product of the programme (i.e., the programme determines the number of stages the revolution in a given country passes through and the strategy for each of the revolution’s given stages) and both the programme and strategy are products of the analysis of the concrete conditions. Thus, the third period involves four phases: 1. Affirmation of MLMTT’s basic laws and principles; 2. Application of those laws and principles to the U.S.’s concrete and peculiar conditions; 3. Elaboration of the Programme; and 4. Development of the strategy for each of the American revolution’s given stages. The U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement has yet to even successfully negotiate the first phase; yet until all four phases have been successfully traversed, the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement will remain in the third period, and the matters of organization and tactics will remain future considerations.
Let us now assess the impact of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement on American society. Such can easily be determined by gauging the extent to which that movement influences the masses of the American people. As a means of determining the extent to which the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement influences the American masses, the present work will employ the most representative and reliable gauge available in a bourgeois democracy such as the U.S.
What is that gauge? “Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class”, wrote Frederick Engels.[2] Thus, the extent to which the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement influences the masses of the American people is eloquently summed up in the returns of the Presidential Elections held in the U.S. during the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s entire period of existence.
Year........% Voting.......% Not Voting.......% Voting for “Left” Parties.......% Voting for Anti-Revisionist Slate
1960..............62.8%..................37.2%............................0.13%.........................................0. 00%
1964.............61.8%.....................38.2%..........................0.11%.........................................0.00%
1968..............60.9%..................39.1%.............................0.27%.........................................0.05%
1972..............55.4%..................44.6%.............................0.33%..........................................0.00%
1976..............54.0%....................46.0%..........................1.25%...........................................0.00%
As the above figures clearly indicate, the level of voter participation in the U.S. has been steadily declining since 1960, meaning that the level of voter alienation is steadily on the rise. While nearly all alienated voting-age Americans demonstrate their dissatisfaction by passively boycotting the elections, a small but increasing number demonstrate their distrust of the “system” in general and the ”two major parties” in particular by voting for the plethora of “Left” (and Right) fringe parties. However, with the exception of 1968 (when the BPP/PFP alliance ran the recently “born again” Eldridge Cleaver for President in seven states), the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement has completely avoided the elections, that is, has failed to utilize the electoral process for the purpose of mass education and organization and as a means of gauging its level of influence among the masses. That tactical error aside, the above figures clearly speak for themselves: The relationship between the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement and the masses of the American people – i.e., the extent to which that movement influences the masses of the American people – is virtually non-existent.
Of course, since no Anti-Revisionist group has ever attempted maximum utilization of the electoral process (for, among Anti-Revisionists, it is the fashion to abstain from the electoral arena), the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s established groups would have the reader dismiss the above evidence as irrelevant. But the gauge of universal suffrage is not the only means of measuring the extent to which the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement influences the masses of the American people. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s relationship to the American masses can be determined on the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s own terms. That is, by listing a representative cross-section of Anti-Revisionist organized and/or sponsored mass activities held in the U.S. during the past few years, and the level of mass participation in those activities, the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s degree of influence among the American masses can be gauged quite accurately.
Demonstrations at the 1974 United Steelworkers of America Convention (Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 23, 1974)
At the 1974 United Steelworkers of America Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, separate demonstrations were held by the OL and RU. Despite extensive mobilizing efforts among steelworkers in the Baltimore area and throughout the Midwest, the OL’s activity drew only 50-60 persons – not one of whom was a steelworker. Nearly all the participants were either OL members or friends.
The RU’s demonstration was approximately three times larger than the OL event, involving slightly less than 200 people. Several rank and file steelworkers were in evidence and at least one of them spoke at the rally which concluded the RU’s activities. However, the overwhelming majority of the participants in the RU event were in some way connected with the RU or its student affiliate, the Revolutionary Student Brigade (RSB).
March for Jobs (Washington, D.C., April 26, 1975)
On April 26, 1975, nearly 50,000 employed and unemployed workers converged on Washington, D.C. and participated in a March for Jobs from the U.S. Capitol to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. The event was particularly noteworthy for two reasons: 1. Mass indignation at the rising unemployment rate (then officially listed as 8.7%) was such that the union misleaders were compelled to protest the situation in an attempt to maintain a semblance of credibility among the rank and file; and 2. Despite that attempt to maintain credibility, widespread rank and file dissatisfaction with the union misleaders (and with the labor-oriented Democratic Party politicians as well) was graphically demonstrated when several thousand people occupied the stadium floor and drowned out the scheduled speakers with boisterous, militant chanting, eventually forcing the premature ending of the program.
The OL was the only Anti-Revisionist group to openly participate in the March. An OL-sponsored “Fight, Don’t Starve” contingent assembled on the steps of the East Wing of the Capitol Building and then joined in the main march to the stadium. The “Fight, Don’t Starve” contingent consisted of no more than 120 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were OL members and friends. During both the March and the program takeover, as well as during a small, OL-sponsored post-event rally outside the stadium, the “Fight, Don’t Starve” contingent acted as a virtual separate entity and in no way influenced the course of the day’s events (just as the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement in no way influences the course of the ever-present spontaneous workers movement).
1976 International Women’s Day Activities (New York City, March 6 & 7, 1976)
In New York City, the Black Women’s United Front (BWUF), which was founded and significantly influenced by the Congress of Afrikan People (CAP) (now the RCL), sponsored a Multinational Women’s Conference on March 6, 1976. The next day, the BWUF, CAP and OL sponsored a march and rally from Tompkins Square to the United Nations. Though nearly 500 people attended both events, the level of mass participation was negligible, since the overwhelming majority of participants were either members or friends of the sponsoring organizations who had been transported in from several Eastern cities.
“Revolutionary” Bicentennial Celebration (Philadelphia, Pa., July 4, 1976)
Another clear example of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s isolation from the American masses was the RCP’s attempt to build a “Revolutionary” Bicentennial Celebration in Philadelphia on July 4, 1976. After more than six months of organizing around the country and especially in Philadelphia’s working class and oppressed nationality communities the RCP could only mobilize slightly more than 3,500 people for its march and rally, the location of which was a multinational working class neighborhood in North Philadelphia. At precisely the same moment the RCP event was occurring, nearly 2,000,000 people were jamming downtown Philadelphia for an official, government-sponsored celebration. Most of the participants in the RCP event were members and friends of the RCP, the RSB and assorted mass affiliates of those two groups. With only several hundred local community people marching along side of the mostly out-of-town activists, it was clear that the multinational working class and oppressed nationalities of Philadelphia had stayed away in droves.
Counter-Inaugural Demonstration (Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 1977)
On the evening of January 20, 1977 (Inauguration Day), the RCP sponsored a march and rally in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the event was to protest possible cutbacks in Unemployment payments and the general thrust of Jimmy Carter’s economic policies. Though the Nation’s Capital is a predominantly Black city with a higher than average rate of unemployment, the level of mass participation in the demonstration was virtually nil. In all, less than 100 RCP members and friends participated.
May Day, 1977
The RCP held May Day programs in 20 cities, with attendance ranging from several dozen in some cities to 450 in New York City and 500 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The RCP’s own estimate of the average number in attendance at the various events was 125-200 (Revolution, June 1977).
Meanwhile, the OL held May Day programs in 12 cities. The dozen events drew an average of 200 people (The Guardian, May 18, 1977) and, taken together, were further evidence of the OL’s isolation from the working class and the masses on the eve of the OL’s transformation into a “party”.
With the exception of the WVO, which held marches and rallies in Los Angeles and New York City (and which dubiously claims to have drawn 1,000 people at the latter location), no other U.S. Anti-Revisionist groups bothered to organize visible May Day events.
Demonstrations at the 1977 United Auto Workers Convention (Los Angeles, Calif., May 15, 1977)
Yet another example of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s isolation from the American masses occurred on May 15, 1977 at the opening session of the 1977 United Auto Workers Convention in Los Angeles. Here was a priceless opportunity to reach out to some 4,000 industrial workers and their families–a considerable number of whom were honest, though misled, proletarians. Also, the presence of the CPUSA, the PLP and various Trotskyist sects afforded a priceless opportunity to further isolate and expose those deviators from genuine Marxism-Leninism. However, instead of an attempt on the part of a united U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement to patiently win the workers away from their corrupt misleaders on the one hand and the revisionists and Trotskyists on the other, there occurred the following pathetic scene:
Spurning the attempt to integrate with the sea of workers engulfing them, some 110 OL demonstrators instead marched before the convention hall in tight oblong fashion, while a half-dozen other OL cadre attempted to hand out leaflets and copies of The Call to delegates entering the building. None of the marchers stopped to talk to the mystified auto workers, very few of whom understood the principal OL slogan, “Build A Class Struggle UAW”. Thus, almost the entire UAW convention force walked around the OL’s pickets without comprehending the line being put forward by the OL, and without gaining even an ounce more consciousness about the union misleaders; the revisionists and Trotskyists, and the need for socialist revolution. In fact, the OL’s antics caused so much confusion among the workers that many of them thought the OL’s picketing was directed against the workers themselves.
At the end of their picketing, the OL forces held a brief rally. They stood almost alone, 10 or 20 yards from the few workers who had stopped to gaze at this curiosity. Occasionally, the OL cadre would cheer their own speakers. No one else did. It was a sad but revealing spectacle.
Later that day, after all but a few stragglers had entered the convention hall, the RCP held a small, lonely rally outside. Through this action, the RCP too clearly demonstrated its isolation from America’s working masses.
Also on hand for the UAW Convention was the ATM. However, in contradistinction to the other Anti-Revisionist groups in attendance, the ATM did not confine itself to holding isolated rallies and handing out obscure literature. Instead, the ATM operated out of a small “communications center” in a nearby hotel, to which delegates were invited to visit throughout convention week. While the number who did so was undoubtedly small, the ATM alone among Anti-Revisionist groups attempted to make genuine contact with the workers at the convention.
That notwithstanding, the Anti-Revisionist presence at the 25th UAW Convention clearly demonstrated the currently scattered, disunited, isolated state of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement.
African Liberation Day 1977 (Washington, D.C., May 28, 1977)
As described above, ALSC had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist as a result of the RWL having committed the error of merging the vanguard and mass organizations – in other words, of imposing the line of a vanguard organization on a mass organization. Paralleling, the above organizational degeneration was a decline in the level of ALSC’s mass practice, as a mere five years following the triumphant African Liberation Day 1972 (which involved 80,000 participants throughout North America and 40,000 in Washington, D.C. alone) ALSC completely abstained from any form of mass commemoration of African Liberation Day (ALD) in 1976. After having purged all its opponents within ALSC, in other words, the RWL itself abandoned ALSC to concentrate on “the central and only task of party-building”. An effort to reconstitute ALSC was then initiated by the WVO. Originally involving at least a half-dozen Anti-Revisionist groups, the reconstitution effort quickly degenerated due to the WVO’s hegemonic ambitions, resulting in the purge or forced withdrawal of every group save the WVO and the RCL.
Keeping that background in mind, let us now examine the Anti-Revisionist sponsored mass events for ALD 1977, and the extent of mass participation in those events.
ALD 1977 was centered in Washington, D.C., with Anti-Revisionist sponsored activity consisting of the following two programs: 1. A “National Conference” and a march and rally sponsored by the reconstituted ALSC (in reality, WVO and RCL); and 2. A march and rally sponsored by the African Liberation Day Coalition (ALDC), which was mainly (though not solely) comprised of the Anti-Revisionist groups purged or forced to withdraw from ALSC during or after the reconstitution process (RCP, RWC, MLOC, ATM and WC).
1. The ALSC “National Conference” drew about 150 people, most of whom were out-of-town RCL and WVO members and friends. Though multinational in character, in other words, the “Conference” was clearly not a mass event.
The ALSC march and rally, held the following day, attracted about five times as many participants as the “Conference”, that is, approximately 750 people. Again, the overwhelming majority were imported members and friends of WVO and RCL, though a small number of workers did participate. Thus, the ALSC march and rally, while again multinational, was no more a mass event than the previous evening’s “Conference”.
2. The ALDC march and rally attracted nearly 1,500 participants. The majority were youthful members and friends of the RCP and/or RSB bused in from Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh and New York City. However, a small number of workers and their families were scattered throughout the multinational crowd.
To sum up. Both the ALSC and ALDC coalitions put a great deal of effort into bringing their respective component groups’ members and friends to Washington, D.C., and in fact were very successful in doing so. Also, both events were multinational in character, with that being the most positive feature of the entire weekend. However, what stands out most about ALD 1977 is this: Two Anti-Revisionist programs were held, instead of one, and neither event was significantly mass in character.
And so, as is the case with the electoral statistics, the above examples clearly speak for themselves: The consistently low (at times, virtually non-existent) level of mass participation in the overwhelming majority of Anti-Revisionist organized and/or sponsored mass activities held in the U.S. during the past few years convincingly demonstrates the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s profound lack of influence among the masses, its position of extreme isolation from the life of this society.
As is by now quite evident, only the totally blind or the most naive optimists are unable to see that the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement is extremely isolated from the masses on the one hand and in an extremely scattered, disunited state on the other. However (to paraphrase Marx), our purpose is not to dwell on the grim details of that situation, but to identify the situation’s root cause and, more importantly, to defeat it.
To identify the root cause of the U.S. Anti-Revisionist Movement’s scattered, disunited, isolated state, one must look for the basic unity shared by the various groups comprising the movement. Here we are not concerned with similarity in party-building line or lines on the various other ideological and political questions currently confronting the movement. This is so because trends have developed around at least several of the outstanding questions – with one trend often containing two or more groups in opposing trends with regard to one or more of the other questions. Therefore, what we are here concerned with is the under lying unity shared by all the movement’s groups (with the exception of a small number of forces in the emerging Anti-Left tendency). And the underlying unity to which we refer is the belief that the socialist revolution in the U.S. consists of one stage.
But doesn’t such a belief correspond with the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought? That is, while in developing capitalist countries oppressed by internal reaction (Russia) and in semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries oppressed by imperialism (China) the socialist revolution involves two stages (i.e., the democratic and socialist stages), isn’t it a basic premise of Marxism that in advanced capitalist countries such as the U.S. the task is a one stage revolution?
The final installment of this series closely explores that question.
[1] J.V. Stalin “Concerning The Question of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists” Found in Stalin: On Strategy and Tactics (10th Street Bookshop, New York City) pp. 34-35
[2] Frederick Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970) P. 170